Today — January 28th — is National Daisy Day. Perfect timing for finishing an 8×8 painting I was working on from Acrylic University‘s “Bold and Beautiful” Summer Challenge from last year. This painting is based on a reference photo taken by Jed Dorsey.
I did my painting on an 8×8 black canvas that I had painted over with a blue gray color which ended up working well for conveying the shadows on the back petals.
This is the final and below are some in-progress shots.
I went the entire 2025 calendar year without painting AT ALL — I was in ICU at the first of the year, and later, dealing with my dad’s metastatic cancer and eventual death. Just wasn’t inclined to pick up a brush.
Back in 2024 I started Jed Dorsey’s mini painting challenge series, but about halfway through the year I got bored of copying someone else’s artwork, so started skipping around with the mini challenge weeks. I only did about half of the 52 so now will do a few more of the remaining — those that most appeal to me.
This is the week 38 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Mountain Atmosphere” and is based on a reference photo by Ravi Pinisetti. 6×6 canvas panel, toned in a medium-dark gray.
This is the week 26 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Blue Sky Poppies” and is based on a reference photo by Sergey Schmidt. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
I’m not overly happy with this one. I struggled with the flower shapes and the soft focus of the reference photo. The result is that it’s more abstract than I had originally intended. However, I AM (mostly) happy with the colors.
This is the week 25 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Mountain Flowers” and is based on a reference photo by Emmanuel Lamboley. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
This was fun to do!
This is the week 27 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Desert Sky” and is based on a reference photo by Joe Cook. 6×6 canvas panel, untoned.
I’ll be working on some of the previous weeks’ mini paintings in the next few days, skipping ones I’m not fired up about.
It’s been 7 weeks since I’ve picked up a paintbrush… just busy doing other things, (like reading for a book club, Ancestry DNA analysis of my mom’s matches, and some day trips w/ hubby). I had this red-toned 8×8 canvas lying around so decided to do a grayscale version of a coffee cup (image from Unsplash).
I actually painted this back in mid-May: it’s on offer from Ali Kay‘s “Fresh Paint” membership, and I never got around to posting. I went with my own version of the background as I’m getting tired of copying teacher’s work, lol.
This is the week 19 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. (I’ll get back to weeks 17 and 18 some other time). It’s called “Roses for Mom” and is based on a reference photo by Ann Dorsey. 6×6 canvas panel, toned in Naphthol Red.
I listened to the video of the class weeks ago — we’re already up to week 23 — and just used a grayscale printout of the photo as my reference. For the roses, the darkest red is Quinacridone Magenta, otherwise it’s just Naphthol Red with varying amounts of Titanium White.
This was a fun one to paint.
Back in March, I posted about painting a vase of purple tulips, from a one-off online class by Ali Kay. I had decided I would consider joining her “Fresh Paint” membership, which from what I can tell operates more or less like Jed Dorsey’s Acrylic University.
So, the doors opened for a limited time last week, and I joined for a year. We’ll see how it goes. I like the work she posts on Instagram, and I like her subject matter — a lot of people and animal portraits, as well as flowers.
This painting is actually based off of an Unsplash photo. I struggled a bit with her process, which seemed a little bit paint-by-number to me, but I wanted to try it. Hardest for me is remembering to leave touches of the underpainting visible, as I’m used to often painting on white canvas and skipping the whole underpainting thing. Also I rarely layer to the extent she does — but perhaps I should.
She also primarily works from photographs, and transfers the key lines from the photo to the substrate so you focus on painting rather than drawing. Also, she works on gessoed wood panels, using fluid acrylics, while I’m working on canvas using heavy-body acrylics so the flow is obviously different. (It’s too hot where I live to use a lot of fluid acrylics — they dry in something like 2 minutes.)
I’d like to try doing this on a wood panel to see the effect; I might like it. But I’ve got a stash of canvas to work through first.
