A Glimpse At My Creative Process

An 8 Week Painting Challenge + New Paintings

Hello Friends!

I’m sitting in my studio, surrounded by countless paintings, each at a different stage of completion. The giant French doors are open, letting the breeze in while the crickets sing.

I just finished a few pieces in my sketchbook. I’ve been dedicating time each morning to plein air painting and sketching as part of a new painting project.

On August 18th, I began an 8-week personal art challenge. Each week, I’ll create four completed-ish pieces of art.

Last August, I undertook a similar challenge to experiment with new techniques, which inspired my daily sketchbook practice and completely transformed my work. This time, my goal is to explore abstract realism, starting with the raw canvas techniques I’ve been experimenting with on primed canvas. I want to explore color and faces in new ways.

This challenge is about expanding both myself and my creativity. While it will focus on figurative work, I’m keeping it open to painting whatever inspires me and letting creativity flow.

For these new paintings, I am working with acrylics, inks, pencil, and pen on canvas.

I’ve been exploring new techniques in my first layers, covering the white space with raw canvas techniques using fluid acrylics, while allowing some of the white canvas to show through.

I’m experimenting with abstraction, but I also felt drawn to see what might happen when I added a figure.

Painting a face as I’ve done in the past didn’t feel right. I became obsessed with finding new ways to incorporate realism and figurative elements.

After trying pencil, ink, and pen, I returned to my sketchbook. As you know, I love sketching outside on white paper, and the breakthrough came when I applied that same approach to canvas.

These new paintings explore overlapping themes of imagination, memory, and natural beauty. These are elements I have addressed in my novels, middle-grade, and picture books—that without imagination, our world loses its color, like the difference between black-and-white and color television.

These new paintings are intended to bring color, light, and hope back into our world.I can’t wait to share more with you soon! I’ve been posting more of my process on my Instagram.

Thank you for following along in my journey! I also shared more of my process and raw canvas techniques in this post… you can read more here.

Happy painting!

xo Juliette 

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PS This challenge with inspired by my amazingly talented friend and artist Alexandra Swistak.