I don’t know about you but I am pretty bad when it comes to participation of art challenges. First I am all excited and plan to do it all and then life gets in the way, I miss some days and then I lose motivation since I already missed so many days.

But here is my thought and how I approach challenges from now on: Who says I have to do them all? Why not simply participate for the fun of it, to be inspired and simply do what you can? From now on I will do exactly that. I will try to do as much as I can and want – no longer will I feel guilty if I cannot make it one day or am a day late.

Fox and Hazel had a fun “Mini Watercolour Challenge” last week, 7 prompts – one for each day of the week. I started a day late and you know what? I survived, haha 😉 Usually I work on spreads in my art journal but to make it nice and easy, I kept it small, using only one page at a time.

Day 1 – our name.
I used my Schmincke watercolour set, some Twinkling H2Os and my black pen.

Day 2 – circles.
Just experimenting to see how the colours would react to each other. Again I used Schmincke. Not sure if it is visible on the image but the granulation is to die for!

Day 3 – yellow
For this one I only used one colour – Indian Yellow (Schmincke) to be exact. Practising my lifework and a steady hand (not!)

Day 4 – Autumn
It is finally Spring here Down Under and I am really looking forward to the temperatures climbing and sunshine. So I broke the “rules” and changed it into Spring. I love cherry blossoms, do you? (I used Schmincke and my black pen)

Day 5 – orange
I think this is my favourite of all my paintings I did for this challenge. In the beginning I wanted to paint it realistic but I lost patience and loosened up a bit and I simply love how it turned out! See, I have a love&hate relationship with watercolour – I can’t control it and it usually never turns out the way I want it. However, I love watercolour paintings and the more I practise, the more I like the results. (Schmincke)

Day 6 – splatters
This one I actually finished on day 7, since my daughter and I went to see a ballet performance. I had the idea of a very loose painting which in my opinion goes really well with splatters, ugh – what a challenge! (Schmincke & Dr. Ph. Martin’s India Ink)

Day 7 – leaves
And this last one I just finished before writing this post. I went for a pattern this time, in a rush, after work because daylight was fading. Not my best work but it isn’t ugly either.

I have to say, I had a lot of fun doing this challenge and because I didn’t put any pressure on myself, I actually managed to do each prompt (thank goodness Torrie only posted 7 prompts though ;))

Inktober is coming up – are you participating? Every October, artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month – 31 drawings in 31 days. In previous years I have managed to do only one drawing for the entire month. Now I will not worry about how many I can do, I will simply have fun with whatever I can do.