(4/100) October Comes With a New Art Challenge

Today sees the start of another daily challenge.  For the month of October I'm making the commitment to fill a sketchbook during this time and to paint at the easel for at least thirty minutes every day.

Today was an awkward day for art making, with a morning visit to the dentist for an extraction, an unexpected visit from a family member in the afternoon and preparations for my grandson's 15th birthday tomorrow.  But I managed to get the work done by fitting it in before evening dinner with the timer set for exactly thirty minutes.

I am still learning to be more at ease with sketchbook work, I find it difficult to let go and just explore and not worry about making ugly messes on the page.  So the only way to do that is to keep the practice going.  

So for this month I opened a brand new sketchbook, a quality one,  a Pink Pig (UK) brand A4 spiral, with 150gsm cartridge and 35 leaves.  I normally buy cheap sketchbooks and pads, so this one made me nervous, but it will be interesting to see how it takes different media. I plan to do many various things in it, from abstract mark making (as I did today), drawing exercises from life,  copying from the masters, sketching from photos, to working out ideas for possible paintings.

Today I tried brushwork with pan opaque watercolour (Arteza brand) and drawing with Neocolor 11 crayons.  I think I could do some more working with the crayon page, I may try adding some pen work to it.

I've been enjoying working with these colours recently, pinks, ochres and browns. I expect I'll be staying with them a little while yet.

For the thirty minute painting I forgot I was meant to be working on a canvas at the easel because of all the activity of the day.  What I did was on a small (9x12") acrylic pad at the table. I made random brush marks and I was not expecting to bring it to any conclusion, but I like what happened and will probably leave it as it is.  I like the curving brush strokes and the patches of texture around the circles.