This final week was definitely a challenge for me. I just didn’t want to paint. Once I started, I was fine, but getting started was difficult. I painted a few images from a trip to Wilson Arch last year and I absolutely loved painting them! I did so many because I was really enjoying creating the texture of the rock and capturing the colors. I think my favorite part is adding in the blue highlights in the shadows. Something about the blue really made the whole painting pop and look real. I love it! I need to find some more arch photos to work from.

Even after so many years of painting, it still blows my mind how far the paint goes. I started this challenge with a set of five 20ml tubes and after 30 paintings, I still have a ton of paint left. I ran out of white during the final two paintings, but that is the only color I completely used up. It was the only color I expected to possibly run out of. I’m running a bit low on yellow and wouldn’t expect it to last much longer, but every other color I still have half a tube or more of.

Aside from Ultramarine Blue, I really enjoyed working with this color palette. I think I’m going to continue to use it until I run out while I work on larger versions of some of these paintings. As far as the blue is concerned, I think I just prefer Phthalo Blue. I’m used to working with that strong blue and getting really vibrant sky colors. I couldn’t stop being amazed at how much Ultramarine Blue I had to use in my mixes when I was used to the tiniest touches of Phthalo Blue stretching for miles in mixes.

My plans for painting now that this challenge is over, is to work on some larger paintings. I kept running into the problem of wanting to put too much into these small 6×8 panels and I think that is where a lot of my frustration and difficulty getting myself to paint stemmed from. I have a lot of great reference photos that I wanted to use, but the idea of painting them small was seriously daunting. So I have a lot of large paintings ahead of me that I’m really excited to work on. It’s just a matter of making the time to paint. I know I can do it, I just have to.