#30x30DirectWatercolor 2024 : The Year I Cheated With Oils

I have had a lifetime problem with attention deficit / hyper-focus type behavior. I get serial obsessions, and I find it next to impossible to deny my urges. Whatever I’m into at the moment is my ENTIRE BRAIN.

At the time I started working in Direct Watercolor (probably over ten years ago) I thought I was going to be exclusive to watercolors my entire life. But even then it wasn’t true, beacause I had been urban sketching in pen and ink for ages, and watercolor was a natural growth > draw things > color your drawings > start skipping the drawing!

It’s a slippery slope.

Well the truth is – by 2024 I was a man with a secret life. I had been painting in oils for a few years, leading a double life. I considered watercolor my marriage and oils a bit of an affair. I felt like every time I wasn’t making watercolor content I was letting people down. But on the other hand, I was learning so much about what I like in a painting. What kind of image I think is eternal, worthy of becoming a painting, of investing that energy and spark which is our creativity.

It’s January 2025 as I write this, the annual event is well over and gone, and looking back I’m feeling some regret that I allowed myself to be distracted. But you can’t change what you are :) Art is not all logic and discipline, because if it was, it wouldn’t be magic :)

Inspiration demands to be fed!

But I do know a lot of you only come around here for inspiration about watercolor painting :) So I won’t do it again! I promise :) Maybe I will start a *different month* for oil painting binges :)

So for this index post: I’m not going to rehash my day-by-day progress. (You can look back at earlier #30×30’s for more of the daily-diary format people love.)

Without further ado: here’s my top 15/30 oils from 2024.

(Yes I failed the marathon! It happens to everyone sometimes! Next year I’m coming back with a vengeance!)

Here is everything I painted in June, 2024! >>>>>