The Colortober Collection

A collection of Color-coded Diary Entries

Out of all the October daily art challenges (eg. Inktober, Peachtober, etc.), I was really inspired to take part in Case for Making’s Colortober challenge this year. For the month of October, there was a daily painting prompt of a specific color, rather than a subject matter. As someone who loves observing and celebrating color in all of its forms, this was right up my alley. I’ve decided to treat the project as a visual diary, documenting little pieces of my life that went with the color prompt.

To sell or not to sell?

Originally, I thought I would keep these. I figured they would just be the product of a fun personal project. After posting the first few on my IG, I got some incredible and surprising feedback - they were resonating with people. I don’t often post about my personal life (or make that many original artworks, frankly) and it was so cool to see folks react positively to both of those things. So I added them to the shop! I love the idea that they’re living happily in homes with people who I have a shared experience with.

Experimenting With a New Style

These paintings are a pretty big departure from my regular work and that is by design. I wanted to see if I could layer watercolor paint in the same way an oil or acrylic painter might. Classical watercolor paintings have their subject painted on top of plain white paper so each color is true and the luminosity of the white paper shines through. Then, full color backgrounds can be painted around the subject matter. With this collection, each painting started with a solid square of the daily color and, once dry, I sketched out my subject and watercolored on top. I used a lot of white watercolor (normally a big no no) and left in a lot of my pencil marks. I wanted these to have a sketchy, loose quality to them, unlike my usual work which is precise and clean. The result is something totally different and I love that!

SHOP THE COLORTOBER COLLECTION

At the time I’m writing this, over a third of them have sold with most of those sales happening the day they were posted. There are now only a few paintings left!