Blue and Gold Macaw, Parrot, with Toy Ball, Daily Painting #6, July 22, 2010

Here's my painting for today -- again, too ambitious.  It's #6, painted July 22, 2010.  I think I did okay on it, but it took way, way too long and didn't allow me to do my regular work, too.  But it was a lot of fun to learn, and I can see that I am already learning tons more than I was learning by just doing custom paintings.  This difficult grind of doing a painting a day I think is going to pay off in huge rewards after even just a few months.  I'm not claiming at all to be even a half-good painter, but I think that by learning and studying and DOING (Nike was right with their "Just Do It" slogan), I'm going to progress to be a better and better painter much more rapidly than I would have if I hadn't undertaken this endeavor.  Let me know what you think. 

I went to the bookstore today and bought another art book, this time on color theory.  It blows me away.  You know what, I studied neuroscience for nearly five years in graduate school, and this study of art makes that seem like child's play --- seriously!  This is a lot of complex stuff to learn and then to keep juggling it all in your mind and through your hands while at the same trying to do a painting - really, it's amazing that anyone can ever, ever master it all.  But I love, love, love a good challenge - always have - and this is the best and most difficult one yet.  And it'll take me the entire rest of my life to even begin to begin to grasp it.  I can't remember who it was, but some really accomplished artist was reputedly said to have stated right before he died something like "and I was just beginning to get it."  I know that's very crudely paraphrased, but you get the idea.

Well, anyway, this painting and print are both listed on my website and on my Artfire studio (yes, I'm starting to use it more and more as a "gallery" to showcase my artwork).  Here's the link:  http://www.artfire.com/users/LarkStudios. 

Okay, onto that subject, Artfire, as I've mentioned before, I am getting to like it more and more all the time -- but I still am not selling well on it.  I'll let you know if and when that changes; I expect it will.  As I may have mentioned before, there's a way to have it be the "store" for my website, some sort of seamless linkage.  When I have the time to figure all that out, I think it will really pay for itself (which it has to do at some point or I'll have to drop it.)  But again, I expect it will before too long.