A ’Small Study a Day’ painting challenge!

I’ve set myself the challenge of doing 1 small study per day for as long as I can keep it going (might not last long!).

Purely painting practice - no pressure to produce any finished work, just playing and experimenting. I like to play along the spectrum of being very loose and abstract to being more representational, so I’ll vary the studies as I progress.

I’ve been posting these everyday on my Instagram account (huwblackerart), so here’s Day 1 - 3.

Day 1

Using this coastal theme to play with layering and texture

Day 2

Trying to loosen up a bit - it’s based on a marsh area near where I live (Loughor estuary). The texture of the watercolour paper works really well for this subject. Plus scraping through the acrylic paint with a palette knife before it dries to reveal the layers below and create some energy.

Day 3

Trying out some colours, loose brush strokes, pastels, pencil and some stencil work. Again, looking for different ways to bring some ‘energy’ to the work.

I used cerulean blue in the bulrush reeds in the foreground which added a nice ‘spark'.