Internet Challenges - Obsessives, approach with caution

Sorry, it’s been over a week since my last post. Excuses? How many would you like? This week has been allocations week in work and the upshot is that the phone line is red hot all week and I have been too exhausted to be thinking about what to post. It can be difficult to find any thing I| think is even remotely interesting enough to write about during the off season when we’re waiting for Quizzy Mondays to return. Also, it’s June. During June I usually participate in the internet 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge and that acts as a bit of a spare time hoover. Basically, if you take part you need to try to paint 30 direct watercolour paintings during the month of June. Direct is the key here. Direct watercolour means you start directly with the paint, no sketching or drawing the design on the paper first.

What do you get for completing the challenge? Nothing material, certainly. I first took part in 2018, when I completed the challenge. Since 2018 I’ve completed the challenge 5 times. I didn’t do it in 2020. Not sure why? Lockdown, perhaps? Then I started in 2024, produced 8 terrible pictures and got so despondent and frustrated with it that I gave it up as a bad job. This year I’ve so far made 24 paintings in 21 days, so I’m looking good for a completion. But that doesn’t answer the question, what do you get out of it, does it? Because once you’ve done it the first time, then you know that you can do it. Which is where competitiveness comes into it. I want to do better each year than I managed to do the previous year. I want to produce better individual paintings and I want to produce a better set overall.

All, or at least most, of the above does actually sound quite positive. But while I do find challenges a great motivating force to actually do things the great drawback is that it does tend to play on the obsessive side of my nature. Being honest with you, if I have a day when I don’t paint during June, then I get really quite anxious about it. Case in point. I had completed 17 paintings by last Sunday, June 14^th. Monday, the 15^th was my birthday, and I knew that kids and grandkids would be coming round after I got in from work, so I wasn’t going to be doing any painting. Well, come Tuesday 16^th – still one day ahead of schedule – I was in a bit of a state, convincing myself that I was going to have a hell of a job trying to finish by the 30^th. I did calm down. I’ve made 24 and with six paintings still to make and 9 days to do them even I’d have hard work convincing myself that I’m not going to do it.

Well, as regards the personal challenge, yes, I do think that some of the paintings I’ve made this year have been better than anything I’ve done in the challenge before, and yes, I do think that this set are on target to being the best set I’ve done yet. But then, I do always think that.