Painting Project: Iterations

I'm trying to get out of a painting rut. Really, I'm trying to figure out how to paint. Every session ends in frustration. Blah. Dave mentioned an old illustration assignment where we would draw a single object 100 times. I thought I might do that; but it seemed a bit rediculous. Drawing an object can take 30 seconds and a quick painting for me would be about 15 minutes. So, with little consideration of math, I decided to tackle it a different way:

5-10 paintings of 5 different objects.

Because drawing didn't take color into consideration, multiple objects get out of relying on a repetitive color palette. Figuring out how to combine colors is one of my issues. Also, different objects allow me to explore different textures, folds, etc. Tackling my problems slowly by adding complexity one object at a time.

My first object was a dog squeaky toy. It's ugly. I have no ambition to frame or hang it. This helps me get around pressures painting it prettily; this helps loosen me up. It was a good exercise over the course of about 4 hours; a few interuptions, but most of it was spent painting and reflecting. Here's the breakdown as I consciously tried to pare down how much time I was "dwelling" on a particular painting:

1. 7x7 inch: 1 hour
2. 5x5 inch: 45 minutes
3. 5x5 inch: 30 minutes
4. 5x7 inch: 15 minutes
5. 5x7 inch: 20 minutes