30 Faces in 30 Days, Week 1

I'm doing the 30 Faces in 30 Days challenge this month, and the first week is already over. Here are my first seven faces, all done in acrylics/mixed media in my big Moleskine watercolour art journal.

Theme of day 1 was Drips & Splashes.

Day 2's theme was Dream and day 3's Text. It was a busy weekend, with family visiting, long walks in the forest and in the nearby animal park, good food and conversations. But it didn't leave much time, let alone energy for painting, so especially the one on Sunday evening was a real struggle.

The theme for day 4 was Wing, for day 5 White/High Key and for day 6 Twins. There are a few bottles of Lascaux paints in some of my, at the moment, favourite colours standing around on my desk, and I stuck to them for the rest of the week.

Yesterday's theme, that is day 6, was Animal Spirit. It's going towards the end of the week, and it is getting harder to do a painting in the evening, after work, when you really just want to flop into your comfy chair and watch Neighbours for a bit. Instead it's walking through the door, throwing your bag into the corner, getting the stuff ready and start working. A quick break for dinner, and yes, an episode of Neighbours, and back into the studio. Then trying to find a place where it is still reasonably light enough to take a photo, and then editing the photo, trying to get the colours right, because it really is already too dark for taking photos. And then it's already 9pm and time for a chat with N on Skype.

I miss that there isn't any time left to do anything else. But then there are, of course, there's a lot of good things too. The fact that time is limited means that you have to work quick, which in turn means working loser. And of course doing a face every day is a great practice, and I hope that it will help me with some issues I always have when doing portraits. I don't know if I will make it to the end of the challenge, but for the moment, I certainly intend to keep going for a bit longer.