"Owyhee Mountains" Painting Has Been Accepted...

...Into the 40th Annual Western Federation of Watercolor Societies (WFWS) Watercolor Exhibition! This year it's taking place in Lubbock, Texas at the Museum of Texas Tech University, from April 16th to July 15th, 2015.  I'm so excited and honored.

A Day in the Studio…Strive for Personal Education over Results!

What would happen if on one of your studio days you decided to paint using the thought process of “personal education” for one of your paintings? Working toward your education and the learning you can achieve, not focusing on every detail and expecting fabulous results to frame or enter into a show but painting for the pure education and experience.

The main goal is to experiment and dig into new territory, resolving all you can on the way. If the painting is not working, continue stepping through the problems with as many solutions as you can come up with. In the end you will most likely arrive with a new fresh finish, but if not, work until you get every possible bit of education you can. If the painting is not a success your education certainly is. Keep the painting, do not discard, but use it for a reference of what you have learned, jot down notes of what you have discovered. These will be very valuable in your next works of art.

In the future you can use every bit of what you learned, what worked and even what didn't, both are equally important. Mostly we learn from our mistake, which means I should be a real expert by now! 

Some of you use this process every time you paint, painting with abandon while, others of us need to step out and be braver and bolder. (By the way you were brave if it was scary!)

All of us have a lot to learn, with never ending possibilities.  How could we ever be bored or out of a job as an artist? 

Create to see what you can discover:

1. Use new color
2. Try different textural techniques     
3. Use granulating paints, opaque colors along with transparents   
4. Have an element or principle as your focus, such as line
5. Edit out details or maybe add lots of detail in new ways   
6. Try opposites…do the opposite of what you would usually do
7. Use different painting surfaces or mixed medias
8. Paint with abandon  
9. Embrace the dark values
10. New subject                        

Be brave, bold experimental…use phrases like:

• What would happen if?    
• Problem solve to discovery 
• Creativity awaits to be discovered
•  I can do it! Never give up!                       

I continue to strive for personal excellence in my own creative path, -- pushing the limits to my best outcomes!

Keep painting and keep experimenting, on to the new in 2015!

© Linda Aman February 2015