The Thirty Days of September

​I have spent all day long trying to decide what was my favorite part of this month's challenge. Aside from painting every day, it has to be painting abstracts with the vision of hanging them in our recently renovated one hundred year old home. The "farmhouse style" really yanked me out of my comfort zone. My color palettes became more muted and my palette knife really got a work out! And I loved every minute of it.
 
Technically the thirty day challenge is over. But we all know, of course it's really just the beginning. 
 
This is the time for all of us to build upon what we have accomplished this month. Whether you painted five or thirty paintings, it doesn't matter. We have all learned something from painting more often, from blogging everyday and sharing our art on Facebook and Instagram. The results have snowballed and have been amazing. Many of you told me that you have already blogged more times this month than all of last year. Most of you have found a way to leave "the stuff" behind so when you enter your studio it's all about painting. A lot of you are painting faster and having little trouble finding inspiration to paint. Most of you are painting better. It's been a great 30 days and I thank you all for joining and inspiring me to paint every day this month.
 
Tomorrow we will head back in to our studios and paint some more. We will continue to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and take some risks. We don't need to feel rushed and we don't need to ignore our families anymore (haha). Just paint what you want, but take a little more time to build on the momentum you have created these past few weeks. 
 
I promise we will do another 30 in 30 Challenge in January of 2018. In the meantime I will be busy painting and having fun with my art business and my new blog www.my100yearoldhome.com. 
 
Here is my "collage" of the 30 paintings I completed this month.  I created my collage with an on-line program called picmonkey. Just go to PicMonkey and select "create a collage". You can use one of their designs or you can design your own. To make a collage with 30 photos you will need to design your own with six rows and five columns (or you can use one with close to 30 spaces and just add the additional ones). Then you can drag your uploaded photos in to the collage until you are done. (When you drag in a photo, you can see where to place the photos as you move them around. If you move them around carefully a small gray bar will appear and you can create columns and rows by adding more photos.) One suggestion I have for you is to be sure to use lower resolution photos as it won't upload very large file sizes. If you try to upload all 30 and it won't do it, just re-size your photos until it works!
 
It's a fun tool to use. You can change the width and color of the grid lines between the photos and then save the completed collage as a jpeg on your computer. Please post your collages here! And it doesn't matter how many paintings you completed. Create a collage to show off the paintings you created this month.

Thanks to the 1012 artists who painted with me this month. You rock! Continue to paint. But do it on your schedule and take on some new projects and challenges. You deserve it!

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