The studio is cleaned up, well clean enough for me, in other words I can find enough flat surfaces to work on now I really need to get started painting and putting my creative life back in order. It is amazing how I can find any sort of distraction to keep me from working and yet make me feel like I am really doing something worthwhile, cleaning is good painting is better. The holidays are over and all that I have been working on is finishing a bunch of abstract acrylics from my creative class at the Art League. Over the past year I have been posting creative jumpstarts, these being designed to help the artist at any level of accomplishment to get back into the creative groove. Everyone has times when due to outside forces their art has taken a backseat to the other aspects of life, this is normal and there should be no quilt about having a life outside of art but now it is time to crank it back up and really make 2013 the year of your art. I am going to do a series of warmups and daily paintings, one a day for 90 days, to get myself going and they will be the focus of my next few postings. Start working with me and we can get there together. I hope this regime works for you too. I have a good feeling about it.
Day One: Today I want to just paint a simple painting with a simple color palette, not getting too involved with details and minutia. I have drawn a low horizon composition using a harbor theme from my recent cruise to South America. 
I am pretty sure this evokes the feeling of coming into Cartagena, Colombia. I will be using a palette of Raw Sienna, Cobalt Violet, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. 
The big thought I have is to work loosely with lively brush, not getting too crazy about dryness of paper and soft edges. I just want to paint, but I do want to have a feeling for the subject matter and paint expressively. Pick a subject that is fairly simple and put the composition low in the paper and use a big 1 inch brush for as long as you can, getting smaller only when the details become important to you. 
Have lots of fun and copy mine if you want to. See you tomorrow with number two.
5 Comments on “New Years Resolution, One Painting a Day for 90 Days”
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😎 Love the colors, the low horizon, and the loose brush strokes. Happy New Year’s resolution!
Love it! Great energy and power in the sky. It sets the mood, a dramatic tone for the vivid graphics in the foreground. The stillness of the waterfront has a dramatic effect of its own. A nice playing back and forth – Sky to human scale and back to the dynamic sky, and back to humanity in it’s stillness.
🙂 great idea to push oneself.
It’s time for me to enroll and join a class series with you again. Helps get juices flowing
Love this! And great thoughts on getting back into it. Everyone I talk to has run into this since the holidays started. I am sending our Shenandoah Valley Watercolor Society members to your site and blogs, and they are also impressed and inspired!
I think I’m in with this 1 painting a day for 90 days. I have also decided that I am doing one sketch a day because I’ve gotten so far away from drawing…thanks for the boot…