November | 2023 | Just Sketching

30 Square Challenge #23

22 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number twenty-three. Cooley Lake. I’ve passed by the sign many times, but never – at least until now – wandered down the road to see what was there. Well before arriving at a lake overgrown with vegetation and nearly impossible to access, there’s a bend in the road with a couple of grain storage buildings nestled in the crook.

The 30 Square Challenge has officially ended, but I’m going to continue posting the little 6 x 6 inch paintings that I made during the challenge.

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The challenge is simple. Make 30 square paintings over 30 days. Any style, any subject, any media – just make art. October 15 through November 14. #30squarechallenge2023 #30squarechallenge #landscape #landscapepaintings #acrylicpainting #sketchbook #sketchingdaily #sketching #sketchingart #sketchingartist #trees #square #river #hiking #farm #farmland #field #backroads #barn #shed #cornfield #lake

30 Square Challenge #22

Posted on November 20 by azorch

20 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number twenty-two. Did you notice a little blue-green added to the palette? I’m not yet sure how I feel about that color, but there is definitely a liveliness of some kind.

The 30 Square Challenge has officially ended, but I’m going to continue posting the little 6 x 6 inch paintings that I made during the challenge.

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30 Square Challenge #21

Posted on November 19 by azorch

19 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number twenty-one. By the time I’ve gotten halfway through a late afternoon hike, night has fallen. It’s still more than a month away from the shortest day of the year, yet – as always! – it feels as though the days are shorter than ever before. Only with difficulty do I recall the bantam days of Fall and Winter. Selective memory, I suppose. Even still, I do love this time, limited as it is. I enjoy a long walk dressed up in a sweatshirt or a jacket, my head covered in a wool flat cap. Some mornings, gloves are comfortable.

Trout are biting sinking flies; other fish are sluggishly hanging out … somewhere? In the depths of the lakes and streams? It’s hard to say, really. Annabelle, who once enthusiastically danced alongside me across fields and roads, is too frail to do so now. She sleeps most of the time these days, occasionally rolling over and looking way in expectation of an ear rub. I miss her companionship on these walks.

The sun rises and sunsets have been magnificent. They are also fleeting, gone within minutes.

The 30 Square Challenge has officially ended, but I’m going to continue posting the little 6 x 6 inch paintings that I made during the challenge.

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30 Square Challenge #20

Posted on November 15 by azorch

15 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number twenty. One evening I got out the kit and made this painting. At the time I didn’t think it looked as “sketchy” as it does in this photo, so it was an almost afterthought when I realized I’d nearly scribbled the paint onto the paper – a happy afterthought! Those thin marks of paint are so transparent they almost glow. And that mixture of earth tones in the divide between roads has some nice contrasts too.

The 30 Square Challenge has officially ended, but I’m going to continue posting the little 6 x 6 inch paintings that I made during the challenge.

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30 Square Challenge #19

Posted on November 14 by azorch

14 November 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number nineteen. Boy, those big, sloppy brush strokes that show through in the sky make me happy!

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30 Square Challenge #18

Posted on November 13 by azorch

13 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number eighteen. I don’t diligently post every day, and sometimes skip updating this blog for several days in a row, so it looks like I’ll be playing catch up for a while. The 30 Square Challenge officially concludes tomorrow, but I don’t want to post more than once in a day (if that, even), so each of the thirty little paintings will be posted one at a time.

As the foliage changes, so too do the colors on my palette change as well. I typically use that bright orange to mix with blues and greens to get neutrals and grays. But there it is, almost pure from the tube! After nearly a month of this exercise, I’ve found myself less focused on the geometry that drew me to these in the first place. The paint is a bit fussier too, and I find myself having to purposefully not work the shapes. The sloppy field of green color that indicates grass is brushy and thin, and I like that it feels fresh. Unburdened. I’m happy with the sky, especially that slight tint of greenishness in the lower area, and how it contrasts nicely with the warmth of gray above. It’s almost, but not quite, bordering on preciousness, and I’m happy to have backed off before that happened.

Because these are small, they are also quick – around half an hour to sketch. And because they are quick, they remain relatively loose. And that was one of the main points for me in the first place. In that regard, the challenge has been successful.

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Square Sketches

Posted on November 12 by azorch

12 November, 2023.

30 Square Challenge #17

Posted on November 8 by azorch

8 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number seventeen. Leaving the paint kit at home in its entirety, we traveled across state for a couple of days in search of quiet, solitude, and hiking trails. As my legs can attest, excellent trails were located. A few days ago I found myself wandering for miles just adjacent to a clear, cold stream. The trail crossed the water a few miles on and I paused midway through my ford to enjoy the dense schools of fingerlings darting around in the water. Eventually the trail turned away from the stream. We found ourselves marching upwards, tracing limestone bluffs, through woods of oak and other various hardwoods, ultimately emerging into a meadow near at the top of the final incline.

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30 Square Challenge #16

Posted on November 2 by azorch

2 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number sixteen. This is, I have to believe, the final throes of green foliage. The air is quite cold in the morning, and all of my zinnias and wild flowers have dropped their flowers. The drive is covered in brown leaves from the Magnolia tree; acorns are crushed into powder in the road. I’m driving east tomorrow and taking a few days to update my reference sketches; I will definitely be packing yellow ochre and orange and rosy colors that turn greens into neutrals.

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30 Square Challenge #15

Posted on November 1 by azorch

1 November, 2023.

#30SquareChallenge2023, number fifteen. I’ve painted big, round bales of hay many times now. To me they are one of the most iconic of autumn sights, and they beguile me to no end. I don’t know if it’s the fact that they are circular in shape – I love to design with circles and squares. Or that a field of round bales forces me to search for a visual pattern, another design characteristic that holds enormous appeal for me. Or perhaps it’s the interplay of warm color, the intrinsic contrast of values. Perhaps it’s all of those things.

As a rural teen, one way to earn money was hauling hay. Those bales were rectangular and much smaller. The job required a team of (usually) classmates: one to drive the flatbed, one on back to stack, and two on the ground to “buck” bales up in the air and onto the back of the truck. Those bales could weigh, perhaps, fifty pounds or so if they were straw, and upwards of 80 or 90 for clover, and they made for an exhausting, dusty, and long day. I don’t recall the exact wage, but I seem to recall something like a few cents per bale, with the driver getting the smallest percent, the stacker next, and the buckers getting the best cut. We all bitched about the number of bales in a field, but more bales meant more money – something that was in short supply for most of fifteen and sixteen year olds.

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