100 DAY CHALLENGE!!!!

OK! I am so excited, because I am starting THE 100 DAY CHALLENGE! For the next 100 days I, Calvin Messinger, and two other artists will be doing one painting every day.

The criteria for the challenge is as follows:

• open to any size, (though the size we suggest is 5"x 5") 
• any medium is open so long if it is paint (so digital counts)
•  any subject matter can be covered
• time to do the painting should be 1-3 hours

It seems a daunting task, however the way I see it, if I cut out 1 hour on Facebook, and 1 hour on video games, I have 2 hours in which to complete a painting. That doesn't seem too crazy, right? Besides, I will be putting hours towards mastering the painting and rendering process, and its not a big deal if I miss a day or two. Even if I only finish 35% of the paintings, that's 35 paintings done!  That's 35-70 hours I just spent making paintings. (now that I think of it, I might start keeping track of how many hours I put into this project)

My main goal for this challenge is to practice rendering images in paint, and figuring out how to do so quickly! with only 1-2 hours to finish these sketches, I will be forced to work quickly. I believe this will help me in the concept art world, since rendering a design quickly is an important part of a concept artist's job. I may not always be doing designs, but I will be observing light and shadow, and their effects on forms, color and the theory behind it, and hopefully some good anatomy studies, all of which will help me in my field of choice.

So, to kick this off, I started with a simple still life of a pear sculpture. I focused on getting the color correct, especially the dark areas, and getting edges. I used a little white in the highlights, but for the most part, I avoided using black paint or white paint. to get the darker values, I combined complimentary colors to achieve a neutralized color, which was darker in value, and tinted it with the base color. I feel that I was less successful on getting edges correct, however I will continue to make this a focus for successive paintings.

I'm excited to show you all my art and I hope there is a marked improvement from this painting an the last on e I do.