Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Watercolor Painting in Twenty Minutes

Just checking in with the Artist Babes here to see how everyone is doing. What creative ventures have all you artists been up to?

Me? Well, I've learned I need to paint my watercolor paintings with a time limit. Yup, you heard it right the first time! Twenty minutes to be exact. Why twenty minutes, you say? It seems I do my best work in this time slot. Any longer and I end up belaboring over it, muddying it up, making a mess, generally ruining whatever I was painting. I would get frustrated and decide to ditch my piece.  But with twenty minutes running on the clock, I have found success!

Here in cyberspace I had found a blog called The Twenty Minute Challenge. The premise couldn't be any clearer: Paint your work within twenty minutes and stop. For me it's been working. I have been building a nice body of watercolor paintings in that twenty minutes of time. It has helped me in my daily battle with resistance too. Yes, Resistance and I battle it out every day. Before I learned about painting in twenty minutes he would win almost always. Now I win almost always!

I'm painting fast and loose, quick and free, and done! A quick sketch on the paper without alot of water on the brush, painting my subjects with abandon. When I'm done I sit back and look at my work. Most times I'm pleased with the outcome. However, it's been the process that has kept me painting.

If I tell myself I'm going to work on this piece every day for as long as it takes to get it right, I'm fried! But in twenty minutes I can paint and be finished. It's very freeing and gives me just enough motivation to do it all over again the next day, for another twenty minutes!

©2010 Dora Sislian Themelis

Here's one of my still life watercolors painted in twenty minutes. Although I have a big palette with plenty of colors to chose from, this little travel set has been my go-to set. It's available when I want it, along with my still life objects. I've been babysitting a new granddaughter so painting in the studio is not happening for now and the dining room table is where I'm at. When the baby takes a quick, twenty minute nap, there I am painting.

Let's say it's been working out for the both of us!

Visit me on my blog for more of my yapping about art and life, and not fitting it all in at Coffee And Paint Drips!