“This Sweet Simple Existence”…Daily Art Project 2026 - June
Another month gone by of “This Sweet Simple Existence- Daily Art Project 2026”. As of today, June 30, I have completed 6 months worth of daily paintings, 181 paintings in total. I started June’s paintings a bit late, 10 days into the month, so I had to work fast. To that end, I decided to paint on acrylic paper, 9×12”, with each sheet of paper taped off at the halfway point so that I could do 2 paintings per sheet, each 6×9”, give or take with a white border around it. I then painted the background pink for each 6×9” painting. Some of the pink seeped through the tape and some of the tape edges were not perfectly straight but I like the rustic look of it. The paintings were painted using goauche, oils and acrylic on paper.
Initially, I was going to to do the 30 brushstrokes challenge for the whole month, that is, using only 30 brushstrokes for each painting, which would force me, along with the small surface area, to make quick decisions and paint fast, simplifying shapes and color choices. Basically just identify the shadows and highlights and the mid tones. I did that for the first few paintings. However, I was running out of many of my colors and I did not want to purchase more, so I decided to paint each painting within a time limit of 45 minutes to an hour, just to give myself some breathing room when it came to making critical color palette choices. Also, each pair of paintings followed a certain theme, for example, a blue mug and a red one; or lemons and limes, or Eggs Benedict and Belgian waffles that I had for breakfast that day. This simplified the subject matter for me so that I was not always spending time looking for something to paint. So if I was going to paint coconut and a glass of water for the first painting on that sheet of paper, the second one would be a study of a cut up coconut.
The limited time frame I gave myself, the small surface area, the economy of brushstrokes that I tried to employ and the consistent theme for each pair of paintings, resulted in a body of work for that month that I’m really proud of. I felt my brushstrokes were looser and more confident because I was focused mainly on values rather than proportions or composition. Of course, sometimes, my perfectionism would take over and I would end up overworking a painting. Eventually, I became more adept and comfortable decoding a reference image by its value scale. I would look at a reference image, and identify where the shadows and highlights were and then fill in the mid tones. I would leave the brightest highlights till the very end. This method of painting simplified and demystified the whole values concept for me as I was just blocking in darks and lights and larger shapes that became smaller and more detailed as the painting progressed. Basically, I was tuning out the background noise and just looking at the image as a whole or as a series of large blocks of values.
All in all, this was the most enjoyable body of work that I have created, mainly because I worked quickly and was almost efficient with my brushstrokes. Even if I went back the next day to touch up the previous day’s painting, I would add a few details I missed and then just let whatever mistakes be part of the story the painting was trying to tell. Therefore, I can really observe a dramatic improvement in my skills.
Having completed 6 months worth of paintings, 181 in total, this feels like a good time to pause this project, for a few reasons. I’m planning to start a new project based on this one, that will enable me to curate the paintings I’ve created within a meaningful framework, in a way that tells a story. And so I need to devote time and energy to this new project which would not be feasible if I’m furiously cranking out one painting a day. Also, I’m planning to start few series or collections of paintings around themes and ideas that I’ve been wanting to explore for a while and so I need to give those collections the time and attention that they require. I’m also hoping to incorporate these upcoming series of works into my new project.
Since some of the tape edges were not perfectly straight and the pink background seeped through, the originals have a messy, yet rustic look to them which I like. But for the sake of neatness, I will be offering only borderless prints of the originals in 6×9” size. They will be up on my shop soon.
