Ten Minute Challenge class results

Personally, I found this exercise to be one of the BEST we've done in my classroom in a long, long time. I learned a lot from it, and I saw some wonderful things happening in my students' work, as well. I must give a hearty thank you to Carol Marine for this idea, which was one of the Daily Paintworks Challenges in February this year. I've admired her paintings for a long time and I know she's a busy workshop instructor. No wonder!

At the top is the sheet I painted yesterday and below are some close-up shots to show you the details. I found gouache to be a great medium for this experiment, although I was certainly tempted to use pastels. The ease of making color adjustments, as well as using edges and overlapping in pastel, lends itself to quick work, while the color shift and drying time of gouache may seem to work against you, but in actuality I think it resulted in some 'happy accidents' (a phrase I'm a bit tired of using...let's say 'pleasing incidents' instead.)

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Let me share some of the work done by my students. These were all in progress, and all are in pastel. Most of the divisions were in the 4"x6" range or smaller. We painted a total of 80 minutes yesterday, in 10-minute increments with breaks, of course. A few were a little frustrated at first, some just took off flying, and we all had to push ourselves to do the last couple of them, but in the end I think each of us benefited from this.

Annie's apples

A couple by Carol

 Jaffa's red bottle

Lisa's apples

All in all, this was another good class. I hope those of you who are taking part remotely will try this one and find it as helpful as we did.

Good job, gang!
Deborah

PS I have had to adjust this class schedule. Some dates have been changed and one class has been added, so please see the Current Class Schedule page for details.

Class 4— April 7– Ten Minute Challenge

You’ll divide your paper or canvas into eight smaller squares/rectangles, select a single simple object and paint it eight times, allowing only ten minutes for each one! You can change the viewpoint, alter the light, angle it differently—but only ten minutes per section. Can you say spontaneous? 

This class was inspired by the Daily Paintworks Challenge posted by Carol Marine. I suggest you take a look at the paintings there for some wonderful inspiration! 

It's easiest if you use one simple object and paint from life. I find it inspiring to have a colorful ground, too, since I'm painting the object over and over, so you might bring colored paper, a cloth or whatever you desire as a background. You aren't trying to paint the thing in radically different settings, or vary things too much, it's just that painting the same object eight times can get a little bit boring, so if you want to change the shadows or vary the arrangement a little, I think that's fine. However, don't lose sight of the main point and get bogged down in the variations. 

 

Go look at Carol Marine's painting, as well as what the others have done at DPW, but with an eye to the lesson, not the final product. It's not a competition to be creative or original, it's an opportunity to learn to express an object quickly and effectively. Speed will add fresh strokes to your work, and repetition shows you how to most effectively describe what's there. In theory the progression will show!

The idea is to paint it fast and well, learning to distill your strokes as you go, in order to express the thing effectively. If the object or the ground is too complex, with too many details, it takes longer to paint it effectively. I'll have my timer on hand and we'll paint together for ten honest minutes at a time. So remember KISS--keep it simple, sweetheart!

I think it's best if the squares or rectangles are in the 4x6" range, minimum, or a little larger. You can also use two small pieces of paper/canvasses and divide each one into four. Keep them the same size. I'll do a demo of one quick example in class.

See you on Thursday!

Deborah