#30×30, 2025, Day 08: Into the Thick of Things

Ok – I’m really starting to like these gouache paints.

These are still miniatures, (still 4×4″) – but they look HUUUGE to me. Like – if they were wall paintings? They’d be amazing!! If only I can pull these off one day at a full size!

Day Eight feels like an important stage in the work – when I feel like I have a few good ones under my belt, so therefore I can take some risks?

Like if I blow it, I can look back at the good ones and defend myself from internal criticism :)

The internal critic is the worst. No matter how many paintings you’ve done, you somehow feel like the next failure will reveal you’re a total fake, and you should just give up :)

At least that’s how it works for me; and that’s why this kind of exercise offers me so much freedom.

These tiny, rapid paintings keep everything feeling low stakes. There’s no risk when you’re just playing around with paints.

I firmly believe this is the only way to be creative. To stay in the sense of play; not in a place you might call ‘performance’. You can’t let it matter if they turn out good or bad!

There is a huge risk around showing your work online, that you might enter ‘performance mode’, where you’re showing off for the audience – and suddenly you care too much what the audience will think.

What do you think about this painting?

If this was a painting in a gallery, on the wall with all the other masterworks, would you choose this one?

I can easily imaging most people saying ‘Ermmm, no thanks?’

Or, maybe not specifically rejecting it, but looking around and seeing something more ‘finished’, something ‘well done’ and maybe they think – ‘I like this realistic one better. It’s so much more detailed. It must have been so difficult to paint. I respect that artist.’ And then two minutes later, ‘Wow, I like this one with a horse in it, I love horses.’

If you listen to these imaginary critiques, you just go crazy. Suddenly you’re painting horses in a field and you’re drawing every blade of grass, and maybe you’re not having any fun anymore :)

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So: this is kind of a dumb comment “Captain Obvious!” here; but – – you can’t do this in transparent watercolor :)

This is the same painting. Before, on the left, with a stand to trees, then After, on the right – with the pines completely removed.

(I very much prefer the simplification. No trees is preferable to some poorly painted trees!)

Mainly the trees were blocking my sense of a distant horizon. So I just deleted them. And cooled off the sunset colors in the sky, gave it a misty, low cloud kind of feeling, and entirely reworked the foreground to make some diagonal movement leading into the center of the image.

It’s completely transformed!

Honestly, I had to carefully study my in-progress pics to convince myself, yes, this is in fact the same painting before and after. There’s two orange dots on the right side, just above the midline? They were my my proof that these are the same panting.

Only a watercolorist could be so excited about this thing, which is so basic to every other kind of painting :) Imagine that! You can paint *on top!* Hahaha!

One last pitch for miniature studies:

I’m pretty sure I’d never do a revision like this on a wall size painting! I mean maybe? But I’m really not sure. Certainly not without a lot of procrastinating, and agonizing.

If this was a ‘real painting’ I’d have to deal with the fear that I was about to obliterate all my work. That I would only make it worse! That I’d be wasting all that expensive paint! All these thoughts that get in your way when you need to make a major revision.

Tiny and fast = freedom!

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One more before and after.

It’s subtle – by if you compare the painting left to right, maybe you can see how I’ve created a stronger overlap in the planes?

There’s a more clear set of ‘steps’ in the terrain. The diagonal foreground rocks cast a blue shadow on the orange step below, leading down once more to the grass-green hill, and again to the blue horizon beyond.

Less dramatic example – but still a pretty good argument for having gouache in your painting kit.

Ok – that’s my Day Eight! How about you guys?

Post me some links in the comments! Show me your socials! – Or maybe you are already sharing on Vivify? I hope you guys are getting into the flow. Things are starting to click for me! The magic of daily painting is working!

See you tomorrow :)

~m