This week I did a whole lot of little things. After last week’s larger paintings I wanted to scale it back a bit and focus on some skills. I also felt like I was getting a little perfectionist-y and wanted to cut that out before I started stressing over every leaf on a tree. So I decided this day that I would put paint on the page, even if its ugly.

I started with this cactus exercise. I saw a TikTok (here) that demonstrated two ways for shading: either putting contrasting colours as a base layer or putting them as a glaze. I tried both on this cactus but I couldn’t figure out how wet to make the paint so the colours either blended together or looked streaky. I’ll have to try this again in the future though because I do see the potential, especially in the one with contrasting base colours. (I also was careful this week to show my process a but better haha!)

My cacti were just an exercise, but I felt less confident after painting them. I was starting to feel a little stuck. Too worried about the little imperfections I could be making. I wanted to improve but didn’t know where to start. I found an exercise that was all about being loose with the art and exploring and decided to try it out, hoping maybe it would pull me back towards some confidence. Painting these little streets was not only really cute but also super fun. It was cool working through the process and trusting that the blobs would turn out alright. I picked out a colour palette and started laying down shapes. No plan really, just basic building shapes. Then details. This could be a shop, that’s a church, maybe that’s an apartment building. It was fun to just play and see what I could make. Its not perfect but I love this for how much fun I had painting it.