I’ve made a surprising discovery while doing my quick daily sketches for World Watercolor Month. These little doodles have given me some ideas I might not have thought of to make new paintings. There are two or three out of the month of daily quick paintings that I’m going to take to a bigger canvas and do again.

Here’s the three I liked enough to do that with so far. There are still a little more than a week’s worth of sketches to do, if I do the entire month. I’m thinking of trying to keep this up for a lot longer, though I’m not sure I’ll actually have the discipline to do it daily once this specific challenge is finished.

New Subjects and New Techniques

I used my daily sketches to practice some new things I hadn’t given myself much opportunity to try. Even better, it was low risk, so I didn’t feel the pressure to ‘get it right’. One of those things is making looser watercolor paintings. I think it’s a common thing for new watercolorists to paint in the same way they might draw, using lots of details. I still like that effect for my birds. I like them having lots of details. But I also like the washes and effects I can get from those, now that I’ve learned a little more how to do it.

Another thing I have allowed myself to do is paint subjects I might not have painted before. The old tractor is one of my favorite photography subjects, so I’m glad I thought about trying a painting. I love it! And I would not have dreamed of painting a fish. I like the whimsy of that one, and of the old faucet on the post of daily sketches. I just love the smell of rain on a forest floor, and had no idea how I might capture that in an image, but I like the quick sketch. So I think I’ll try it again later on a bigger sheet of paper.

Quick Daily Sketches >> Fodder for Future Consignments

I like that I have a single post with lots of ideas – a visual idea board that shows a scope of what kinds of things I might be able to do. Anyone interested in a commission can get a good feel for whether their idea would work. Or they can pick one of the quick sketches and request a bigger, better one like it. At any rate, it makes a good complement to my gallery of finished paintings at the Paleo Paints website.