30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge - Day 21

I didn't think I'd have time in the studio this afternoon but it happened and I am grateful once again.

I started late this afternoon and this drawing took me about 2 hours. I have tried to pay attention to what I'm doing and when my eyes get tired and the muscles in my eyes don't want to work anymore where everything starts to go fuzzy. It's when I'm drawing. It's not when I'm painting. It seems to be when I'm drawing. This just means more breaks and the drawing process will need to take longer than what I'm allowing for it. 

BUT, the purpose of this challenge isn't to take as long as possible. The purpose of this challenge is to see what I can accomplish in 2 to 4 to 6 hrs of time a day with a drawing on one day and the painting on the next. Yes, I know I took two painting days on the last painting. I'm leaving some of these rules flexible to see what's working and what's not. 

There's a lot to learn in painting. I've been told by several seasoned painters that we will never know everything about everything about painting. It's a life long learning process. 

And so I will leave you tonight with the following quote from the Japanese artist, Hokusai Katsushika which I love.

The first time I heard this was during an interview of artist, Joseph Todorovitch, on The Savvy Painter podcast. I highly recommend the podcast.

“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.” ― Hokusai Katsushika