I’m back with an update on my 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge. It’s such a good way to work, I had a lot of busy work days the last few days and couldn’t paint much, but because I painted ahead I’m still on track & feel great.
With these two paintings I wanted to paint more intuitive again. I feel like those paintings are always the ones I love the most in the end and as soon as it gets too figuratively I’m a bit let down in the end because they don’t feel like myself.
You can see two in progress pictures from the beginning of the painting, I think it’s always super interesting to see where the artist starts. I love to so some loose brush work first, without a lot of thinking, that sets a bit of color on the background and inspires any further steps.
Next I like to ’sketch‘ the outline of what I want to do, in this case kind a floral image, and try to do this very lose as well. At any stage I like to add water to the background or this outline, so that it flows together with the other color or it build up transparency and paint drips. I let that dry completely, I only work immediately over it when I’m totally out of time.

Franziska Schwade – Daily Painting / 30in30
160104 „Flower Explosion I“
Acrylics on stretched canvas
20×20 cm / 7.9×7.9 inch
available for 85 € + shipping
I usually start to paint with palette knife after all the ground work is done, because this takes the longest time to dry and it’s quite easy to mess up with a lot of color smearing. This step is always so frantic, splashing colors in every direction, that I forget to take photographs – it’s when I’m in the zone.
At the moment I like to apply my paint straight from the tubes without mixing. I feel like that’s as closely I can get to my crazy wild colors. In the past I’ve mixed a lot, but who cares? It’s abstract, it’s not a photorealistic landscape painting, I want my colors to be wild and vibrant!
Lastly I tend to put in the lightest and darkest colors when I feel something is missing. Some white accents and in this case here, some Payne’s Grey (as you all know, one of my favorite colors & my black of choice 🙂 ).

Franziska Schwade – Daily Painting / 30in30
160105 „Flower Explosion II“
Acrylics on stretched canvas
20×20 cm / 7.9×7.9 inch
available for 85 € + shipping
See you in a few days,
Franzi