This is a quick watercolor done this evening of a leaf collected while walking my dogs.  Fall in L.A. is a strange affair. Hot temps and very few beautiful leaves.  Most trees just go from green to brown and drop leaves when the wind blows.    The image is 4 X 4 done with Winsor & Newton watercolors in my sketch book.  Not really watercolor paper, but works ok.

And now for the challenge announcement:

I’ve decided to bite off probably more than I can chew, but I’m going to try.  There is a movement going around in the art world about a comment that has been attributed to several people over the years, so who knows….that to really know a medium, one needs to complete 100 paintings in that medium. In last month’s issue of the Pastel Journal,  artist, Maria Bagetta, wrote an article about her having achieved that goal.  In order to make this workable, Maria confined her paper size to 10 X 10 and decided to restrict herself to 30 minutes on each painting.

The photo of the 100 paintings is amazing!  Debrah Secor, a pastel artist and teacher in Albuquerque, N.M. challenged readers of the website, Wet Canvas, to do the same thing.  She opened up the challenge to any medium, not just pastel, and each person could choose the size of painting and time limitation.  She had a great response in October that has rolled over to November.  There’s one member that has completed something like 70 so far and is expecting to complete the 100 this month.

So………….I decided to pick up the challange (there is no time limitation, of course and many may not finish, but so far they are  having a great time of it.   I will work in pastel, 5 X 7 size and 30 minute time limitation.

The following illustration is called a Notan.  A Japanese word for simplified drawing of the values (dark, medium & light) of the proposed painting.   Unfortunately, I skipped the medium value, but you’ll get the idea.

That’s as far as I got today.   Let me know if anyone in Vegas makes book on my finishing!