Small Oil Paintings

I sometimes follow Mary Gilkerson, an artist with a large on-line presence. She gives a lot of good tips about painting, not so much from a technical point of view. Her tips are more about motivation and a general approach. They are always useful. She issued a “challenge” recently – to make a small oil painting in 30 minutes every day for five days. The idea is to force you to paint quickly, spontaneously, and often. I enjoyed that a lot and have been doing a small oil painting almost every day for the last couple of weeks. I am a boat builder and have lots of scrap plywood laying around my shop. I used these scraps, cut into 9×12 pieces and coated with an acrylic ground, as a support for oil painting. Some of these little oil paintings came out pretty good and I have put a few up for sale on this site. Take a look.