I know from experience that it’s really hard for me to stick to a month-long challenge and often I feel like giving up midway through the month. The 30×30 direct watercolour challenge is the one monthly challenge that I have managed to do every year but, in hindsight, I’ve realised that I generally hit the 30 mark around day 15!

So it’s no surprise that I hit a ‘crisis’ point last week. I’m enjoying having a theme and I absolutely love indulging in some Baroque sketching. But the pressure to do 7 per week is a little too much at the moment. So I’ve decided to scale it back.

I’ve previously written about the ups and downs of doing monthly challenges and my thoughts from 7 years still hold true today. Here are three articles I wrote while doing the Every Day in May Challenge back in 2015:

• Why Bother? Part 1: Pushing yourself for a challenge
• Not pushing yourself!
• Why Bother? Part 2: When you don’t have the time

But to return to my 30×30 Baroque sketches…

I still want to continue the series (there are about 5 more church facades in Rome that I want to sketch as a minimum) but I’m not going to worry about keeping up. Maybe I’ll throw a few teacup sketches into the mix.

Once I made this decision I thought I’d go back and see how many other direct watercolour sketches I have done this month… and well, what I discovered has totally taken all the pressure off.

1 teacup sketch to kick off the month.

 
8 pears in preparation for the first Livestream for my Watercolour course.

2 more pears – these were demos done during Livestream 1

6 capital columns to test brushes (see here for more)

1 at a larger scale done with an extended point

And 6 quick sketches of cups of coffee or tea.

So that makes 26 small direct watercolour sketches that I’ve done in addition to the 16 Baroque churches. If hitting the 30 number was a big deal for me at the start of this month, I can relax now and see what I manage to achieve now that the pressure is off. 🙂

If you are doing the 30×30 challenge this year, I hope that you are finding a way to keep up! 🙂