21 Day Wild Colour Painting Challenge

 

For the last few years, I have endeavoured to do multi-day painting challenges as a way of raising money for Bracelets For Buildings (B4B).  Paintings that were created during these 18 (2018), 19 (2019) and 20 (2020) Day painting challenges were sold and proceeds donated to B4B to build homes for the desperately poor in rural Cambodia.  

Each morning during these three challenges, I would wake up and pull a prompt provided by fans and followers from my B4B hat.  I would then paint something based on the prompt. 

As you can see, the results over the years have been all over the map.

Normally this challenge occurs after a trip to Cambodia to build homes in February or March.  However, none of us who volunteer with B4B are able to go over this year due to Covid.  So, I'm going to jump into the challenge right at the start of 2021 so that the funds can help keep our Covid relief program going.  The 21 Day challenge will be a little different in that I'm going to return to my artistic roots and focus entirely on wild colour portraits.  My style has evolved over the years and I'm interested in seeing what will emerge with a return to the unlikely and bold colour choices that defined my first few years of painting.

I've already started taking suggestions of potential subjects.  As the point of the exercise is to raise money by selling the paintings, it is important for me to stick to doing portraits of famous people: writers, politicians, athletes, actors, directors, celebrities of some note.  Doing paintings of cousin Millie or Uncle Bob probably won't cut the mustard as I need to create broad interest in the subjects that I paint.  The list of suggestions that have come in so far is impressive:

Dr. Deena Hinshaw (famous here in Alberta)
Dr. Bonnie Henry (famous over in BC)
Fleetwood Mac
Socrates
Marcus Aurelius
Stan Rodgers
Farley Mowat
Jason Mamoa
Michael J. Fox
Shania Twain
Anne Frank
Billy Joel

As the suggestions pour in, names that I have already painted pop up.  I often forget that only a small number of people are familiar with my back catalogue of portraits.  Here are some names that have been suggested that I have painted before.  In some cases, multiple times:

Mother Theresa
Jim Morrison
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Jane Goodall
Margaret Atwood

That absolutely doesn't mean that I won't paint these folks again.  I love returning to familiar subjects to see what the passing of time does to my approach. 

If you have any suggestions, I would love to receive them.  You can email me at russell.thomas@birdsongconnections.com or add a comment to my post on the Russell Thomas Art Facebook page. 

This may seem a little crazy, doing 21 paintings in 21 days and donating the net sale proceeds.  I have many good reasons for doing so.  Here are a few that pop to mind.