Greenhouse Gerberas, oil pastel, 11 x 15 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

February 2020 Personal Creative Challenge, Day 3: Greenhouse Gerberas (so far)

Greenhouse Gerberas, oil pastel, 11 x 15 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Greenhouse Gerberas, oil pastel, 11 x 15 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

I began this year with a pledge to myself and my art: To be certain I won’t let ideas pass me by I’m setting myself up for a personal painting challenge in February, similar to the painting challenges I’ve participated in in past years. I aspire (but don’t expect) to create a painting or sketch every day in the month, to be posted on my blog each day.

Well, it’s February 3 and I’m finally posting my first painting for this month—and it’s not even done! But it’s begun and that’s important just as well. Typically the ideas line up in my head when I prepare for one of these, and I did make a list in January so I’d be able to find my references and prepare my thoughts before now. But even with that I found it difficult to get back into an art space and focus, even on which one I wanted to start with.

Really, February is usually our snowiest month, and with my hip replaced and healed I was looking forward to hitting the trail for some winter artwork. But we’ve seen nary a snowflake at all this winter, and today the temperature was 65 degrees. I decided to JUST PAINT SOMETHING and decided to start with flowers, since, if we aren’t going to have winter, I’m going to start my garden early and I’m looking forward to flowers.

I took the reference photo for this painting at a local greenhouse in 2013. I’ve always liked colorful gerbera daisies and their bold smiling faces. I’ve used it for a few graphic designs and decided someday I’d paint it too. So that time was now. I chose oil pastel because I’ve come to enjoy working out the flowers with layering and impasto on a rough-textured paper.

I didn’t finish it today, but I will work on it tomorrow. I’ll put it up for sale when it’s done!

This is my painting from Day 3. See other paintings in this and other painting challenges on the page Creative Challenges.

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