30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 1 - Poppies

I've decided to have a go at Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge for January. I've spent the last few days making some preparations to make sure I don't fall behind with it. I've already made a few sketches in a 4x4 size, which is a good size to have a painting with a nice little border around it from my sketchbook paper. I'm not really sticking to a particular theme since I know I'll probably feel like doing something else half way through anyway, but so far I've planned some abstracts and animal portraits. 

I currently have little post-it notes with sketches on them scattered about my room. I was so stoked to learn, after deciding to work in 4x4 format, that post-it notes are exactly 4 by 4 inches. It was very satisfying to sit the little book of post-it notes on my template sketch and find that it fit perfectly. So my preliminary sketches will be going on the post-its. Convenient for the size and shape, but less convenient that I have to peel each one off to start my next sketch and have a million loose sheets laying around.

The first artwork I'm posting for the 30 Day Challenge is a vase of poppies. I coloured it with coloured pencil and I intend to smooth out the pigment with rubbing alcohol later, but I thought I'd better post something now in case I don't get another chance today. The photo I took with my phone makes the border looks a bit wonky, but it is really a square.

I've already started on a few other things. I think I prefer to work on bits and pieces of different artwork at a time, which makes it hard to have a deadline every day. So far I have a bunch of sketches and a few pieces of lineart. Hopefully I'll have something else ready to post tomorrow.