#30×30 Direct Watercolor 2026: Redux!

For those of you who are regular readers, you may have followed along with this year’s #30x30Direct Watercolor. [ Our annual event where we do thirty watercolors in thirty days each June ]

If you’re a subscriber, you’ve been seeing my posts go by, and some of you might have noticed I was off my game this year?

I certainly felt I was.

Out of my thirty days, there were only a handful of days I was happy with.

Even though we’d passed the finish line – I felt that I could absolutely dig a little deeper – and so; I signed up for the annual life drawing intensif at UQAM (University of Quebec at Montreal).

This event runs five days, and offers two models a day, for a total of *thirty hours* of life drawing.

All my drawings this year are watercolor over a pencil gesture, 10×10″ high, on Fabriano Artistico, 140lb cold press paper.

The magic of the #30×30 marathon is the way your work responds to daily practice. The way your drawing sharpens up, and your sense for the flow of the watercolor becomes more instinctive and you line up your day’s of practice.

This year – for whatever reason – I just didn’t have that.

I wasn’t getting consistently good results. I felt like it was hit or miss every day.

I think I was feeling some anxiety about putting on a good show? (This being the ninth year, next year is a big deal for me!) Or perhaps I’m still feeling some concern that if I’m not doing Urban Sketching, maybe I’m betraying my readers to some extent?

Whatever it was – as soon at the event was officially over – I was magically able to paint every day with enthusiasm, and every single page flew out of my brush with ease. I don’t know what’s up with that???

So; I’ve removed my day-by-day journal for this year. (Of course, all the previous years are all still up here). And instead; here is my bonus week! 46 pages of drawing from life in five days!

Thanks so much to everyone who participated by posting and sharing during June, and especially for commenting on other people’s work up in our classroom on Vivify – and I hope to see you all back next year for the big tenth anniversary!

~marc