Kathy thanks for your comments and for introducing us to Joseph Raffael’s paintings! I also love how he incorporates the margins into his design and mark making.

Thanks Kathy for the referral to Joseph Raffael. His work is STUNNING!!! And I love the way he incorporates all his marks – the marks of the artist, visible in all forms!

Sally thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I admire your commitment to a regular painting practice. I’m so glad that you picked up on and wrote about painting shapes rather than flowers, it’s not easy to do but makes all the difference both in the process and in the results. I also appreciated Gail’s blog gathering painting advice from 20 Master Pastelists. It further reinforced for me the importance of thumbnails, in particular, and drawing in general.

Thanks Jeanne for your comments. I love that my work can help inspire, we really do that for one another. I’m so glad the Pitt Pen idea has caught on, and truth be told I got the idea from an artist that I’ve followed by the name of Sarah Sedwick. She does these gorgeous thumbnails on brown craft paper in preparation for her paintings. I do hope you give the florals a try.

Salli thanks for your WONDERFUL comment! I love that you are now adding your voice here.

I’m glad my blogs seem so timely. Funny you should write about showing up – my next blog is all about that!! Sooooo true! Love that you are making the daily commitment. Some days will test you but stick with it and the reward will be HUGE!! Lisa Daria Kennedy’s commitment is awe inspiring. And getting up at 5am. All I can say is WOW.

Love that you can see the value of thumbnails and doing them. I like using the grey paper too but I’m very used to using the regular sketchbook paper. I am doing more on grey and have now ordered a white gel pen like Steph’s. Can’t wait!

Thank you for your long reply. Look forward to more when the feeling arises 🙂

😀

Your welcome Diane, and thank you for sharing about the importance of thumbnail sketches. I too noted that most of the artists in Gail’s wonderful recent advice blog shared about the importance of drawing and making thumbnails. I hope you bring in some hothouse flowers and have fun!

Carol thanks for your comments, particularly in mentioning the balance of exercise and art making. I wasn’t sure about including that in my blog, and not sure others could relate, but it’s so important to me and part of who I am that I needed to share about it. I love Gail’s previous suggestions to stand and paint and to set a timer to take movement breaks, I plan to incorporate both!

I’ve wanted to do daily paintings for some time and began my journey as a daily painter this year after taking a workshop with Lisa Daria Kennedy. Her motto is, “Just show up.” She paints a small (6”x6”) floral painting every day at 5am. She completed her 3,535th one today. I completed my 26th painting this morning. I am scheduling each day when I will paint—usually for about two hours max. I am also mostly painting small floral still lifes.

My goal is to work at painting more loosely and I’m finding Steph’s paintings to be wonderful examples of painting shapes not flowers. I’m also doing a thumbnail using my viewfinder but I’m going to start doing the values as she does on grey paper—just need to get one of those white pens. It was your workshop this past fall that made such an impression on me of the importance of doing thumbnails. I saw first hand that you practice what you preach.

Sorry for this long response, but I wanted to show the personal connections for me with these three blogs and how they have been so helpful in motivating me as a new daily painter. I am loving it and look forward to that scheduled time every day. As Lisa Daria Kennedy says about being a daily painter, “It’s both grounding and freeing.” Thank you Gail and Steph!