Watercolour challenge - #30x30DirectWatercolor2018

At the beginning of this week, I decided to join in the fun of the #30x30DirectWatercolour challenge. I found it through one of the Youtubers I am following, Steve Mitchell (The Mind of Watercolor). I thought that since I have been painting and experimenting a lot with watercolours lately anyway, I might as well join this challenge. The challenge is to paint one direct watercolour painting every day for the month of June, and share it online with the hashtag #30x30directwatercolor2018. Direct watercolour means that you paint straight with watercolour on your paper without doing any pre-drawings.

The founder of this challenge is Marc Taro Holmes. You can find all the info on this challenge on his blog: https://citizensketcher.com/2018/05/15/announcing-30x30directwatercolor2018-lets-do-30-paintings-in-30-days/

I often begin my acrylic and oil paintings with an abstract painting for my background, but I have never tried painting start to finish with no drawing involved. That is why I decided to start this challenge with imaginary landscapes, then any inaccuracies won't be so noticeable. Maybe I will be courageous enough at the end of the month to try and paint a bird in the same way?

Anyway, it has been really enjoyable and surprisingly freeing to paint like this. I am only on my 8th painting in this challenge, and I have already learned a lot about controlling (hm, more like managing) the paint and water. For one: do not use too much water when you wet your paper. You think you will have a beautiful abstract thing going on until it dries, and everything is much faded away. Second: use a bigger brush than what you normally do or you think you need. I am expecting I will find many more things to add to this list in the following weeks!

Day 1&2. Watercolour on small cotton paper greeting cards. The only plan I had was to make some kind of forest painting. First I lay down a wash of colour, and when it was almost dry I started to ad the trees. This technique can definitely be developed into something I do on a more regular basis!

Day 3&4. (greeting cards/cotton paper) I really like how the left one turned out. I overworked the one to the right, but it still has potential.

Day 5-7. (greeting cards/cotton paper) I started quite traditional, and then I went more abstract. My favourite of the three is the last one. I will have to try this a little bigger. A greeting card is not that big a surface after all...

Today's painting. A little bigger paper. Again an imaginary landscape. Not sure if I like it or not. 

The founder of this challenge has also created a facebook group where we can share our progress, and so far I have to say that the response has been overwhelming! My first post got over 300 likes, and the third post has now 240- something likes, and more than 20 comments each...