30 Day Painting Challenge - How It Helped Me Improve

I decided to take on a challenge of painting 1 small painting (6" x 8" canvas board) every day for 30 days with a time limit of one hour. Not only was it a physical challenge to create these paintings, but it was also quite a mental challenge to do this much work in such a tight schedule.

Not only did I do a painting a day but I also videotaped all of them as well. Here's an image showing the first half of the paintings completed. I painted a mixture of mostly landscapes, a few still life images, and one or two animal portraits towards the end of the month.

After a few paintings into the challenge, I started to develop a process for how to approach my compositions. I would first sketch out my composition of simple lines and shapes with light blue paint.

I would then begin to paint in the dark shadows and most saturated tones before moving to neutrals and lightest tones.

Finished painting below.

Here are some other pieces from the challenge.