Since regaining the use of my right arm,  I have been working on getting back into oil painting.  It’s been a challenge to try to fit it into my schedule.  It’s not just busyness with work, but with family, church, and personal goals (meal prep, exercise, language-learning).  When I’m trying to fit it all into a day, something has to give and that something is usually time at the easel, mostly because I know I’ll get lost in it.  I completely lose track of time when I’m painting, drawing, or creating, so I get stuck in the mindset that I need a large, uninterrupted chunk of time…which rarely comes. So, I decided to do another “index card art project” to get myself going again.  I did one last year and it was such a great challenge to get me painting consistently and to help me paint more relaxed.  You can

Well, I finally finished the #indexcardartproject!  It’s about a month late, but that’s okay.  It really didn’t need to be completed in a set time and I found I didn’t want to rush through it.  I was enjoying these little studies and I didn’t want to miss the lessons along the way, simply because I was hurrying. One reason it’s taken me so long is that I’ve already been using these studies as inspiration for larger paintings, which was the whole idea in the first place. I really enjoyed the freedom I felt from painting on a “disposable” surface.  I was looser with my brushstrokes and more experimental with my colors.  I learned a lot about composition, value, and the magic of impressionist-style painting.  Seemingly random strokes look like a scene when you take a step back. For the last one, I did a study of a James Kroner painting.

Through the month of March, I’ve been working on the #indexcardartproject with two of my Instagram friends – @mishwooderson and @openfieldmercantile .  It’s been such a great exercise for me in a lot of ways and I thought I would share my thoughts and takeaways so far. First off, if you want to get into art in any capacity, a project like this is a great way to do it.  It’s a commitment to consistency, not to creating anything great or frame-worthy.  It’s about learning through putting pencil-to-paper so to speak.  And, with just 17 cards done, I have already learned a lot.   Here are five of the areas where I feel like I’ve grown the most. one | shapes I’m learning to focus on the larger shapes of a subject.  I seem to be able to do this with certain things, but I get bogged down with the details

My whole oil painting journey started with a challenge.  Michelle Wooderson, a watercolor artist I took a class from through Jeanne Oliver’s artist network, started the #100meadowsproject as a way to dive into oil painting.  I really wanted to learn and I figured the best way was to put paint to canvas, so I joined her. Another Instagram friend, Page Ellis, took on the challenge as well and the three of us encouraged each other and shared our research, trials, and victories.  I sent them so many pictures of bad paintings and they always found something nice to say!  Anyway, I learned a lot during that project…  everything from the discipline of creating daily to how to handle the paint better. I followed it with the #100oilstills challenge I set for myself.  And I learned even more from my mistakes and successes, as well as from online classes and art books. Lately,