A friend of mine retired and as we are always talking about trying to get more painting in, we challenged each other to the January Strada Challenge. For those who don’t know, the idea is to do a daily alla prima painting (sketch, doodle, sculpture) each day. (Forgive more explanation: Alla prima simply means first attempt. It encourages direct observation of life, rather than careful studies done in the studio.)

I decided I could use some work on my water technique. What is the point of being an artist living on the coast if you are afraid of doing water? So, each morning, I’d walk the dog and stop at the little group of benches overlooking the ocean. This is not a change to any part of our daily schedule. What did change is that I would spend ten minutes or so doing a painting in a small book.

This experience proved so nice (except for a few days when the paint on my palette froze) that I’m going to try to continue into February. But no pressure.
Here are the 31 paintings from January. As you will see, there were a couple days that got away from me. And a couple more days where I didn’t paint “my spot”. But I’m proud of this body of work. The images are overexposed, so they look lighter than they are. Still, as the month went on, I think my use of values grew stronger. Now to develop it!
Jan 1-7
Jan 8-14
Jan 15-21
Jan 22-28
Jan 29-31