Daily Practice - Artist Spotlight: Dan McGhee
Guests on the show often talk about the power of limitations. Artist Dan McGhee took this to a whole new level in his #20for20 project. He choose one reference and painted it every single day…for 20 days. What he discovered may surprise you.
Learn more about McGhee here.
When in your day did you put your 20? Why there?
I work as a chef, so mornings are my free time. I would have my space setup and ready to go the night before, then enter the studio with a morning coffee and get right to work and it made it easy to fit the 20 minutes into my morning routine.
Did you use the 20 as the maximum or the minimum amount of time?
I would say more of a general guideline. If I had more than 20 minutes, I would use it but I didn’t let myself feel that pressure of having to finish a painting.
Mentally, how was it useful to have that as a number? (As in did it make it easier to get started knowing it was “just” 20 minutes”?)
Very freeing and it made painting more playful. If today’s painting is a complete miss, I can laugh it off and start fresh tomorrow.
MATERIALS & GOALS
What were your specific goals for this 20for20? (Including any parameters you set for yourself.)
My goal for this particular challenge was to really breakout of my color comfort zone. I paint primarily landscapes, and so much of that painting can be trying to accurately match the colors of nature and that can feel like a chore.
This challenge let me explore colors that I wouldn’t have normally, like painting trees a vibrant teal or grasses a deep purple. It also enabled me to have fun with each painting, because I didn’t have to think of a composition each day, I just had to put the paint down.
What were you hoping to explore over the course of the 20 days? (Why those goals?)
Color mixing and color relationships were my biggest goal. I felt like I would so often reach for a certain tube color because that’s what I knew, or that’s what other painters have said you should use in that application.
I’ve always liked exploring what happens if you bend the rules, and the freedom of exploring color taught me so many valuable lessons that otherwise may have taken years of painting to get through.
How much did you keep your materials the same for the 20 days? What did that give you as an artist? Did you find that helpful? Why?
Having canvas panels prepped was the biggest help. Already being setup and ready to paint can make or break an entire studio session. I did also challenge myself to use different brushes each day and complete the painting with one brush.
Again, I feel like I reach for similar brushes every time so I wanted to free myself from that. It taught me a few interesting things, specially that using a fan brush for a 6x6” painting can work, and will give you wild variations of texture.
THE PROJECT
You set some pretty focused parameters. Did you have any hesitancy to go that focused? Any fears going in? Were they warranted?
Actually, quite the opposite and I have you to thank for the idea of doing the same composition each day but switching the palette so thank you for that! Already being familiar with landscapes, I felt I knew how to create some depth and distance, so this completely freed me just to mix whatever colors I wanted and make painting fun and playful again.
You stayed with one reference the whole time. What do you think you would have lost if you’d changed subjects each day while also changing the colors each day? What did staying with one reference give you?
I think I would have lost that playful element to a degree. Instead of being able to focus 100% on color, I would have been distracted by form, proportions, scale etc…those parts that can become tedious in a painting if we let ourselves paint too tightly. Even brushwork became more playful, which is something I’d like to see more in my work.
So often we want to change things up in our painting process. Ultimately, how did the parameters you set help you explore? Do you think they limited you or helped you explore deeper? Why?
I definitely think the parameters were helpful to the way I approached the challenge, specifically how I would get to a point where I thought “What colors HAVEN’T I mixed yet?” So normally where I would never think to mix cobalt teal with cadmium red medium and a touch of chrome oxide green, I felt I had nothing to lose by trying it and that ultimately became very liberating in the studio.
What benefits did you find working daily? How surprised were you by the amount you learned during just 20 days?
Painting daily seems to compound what I learned and become cumulative instead of learning one thing that day and trying to remember it 3 weeks later when I sit down to paint again.
I felt as if I learned years worth of color theory in a month! I’ve read the great Todd M. Casey’s Oil Painter’s Color Handbook, but this exercise drove that knowledge deep into my brain as opposed to just reading it on a page. So, I must make this point…as painters we so often endlessly search for that one book or one video that will finally click and turn us into great painters and my opinion on that is that it doesn’t exist.
The way to get to great paintings is to paint paint paint!! Definitely supplement the studio time with books and videos to expand your knowledge, but nothing teaches faster than doing.
Did you have any favorites from the Challenge? Which and why?
Hmm that’s tough! I’m going to say it’s a tie between day 18 and day 19. I loved pushing color temps in day 18, having deep teal trees in the shadows and vibrant orange yellows in the sun provided really interesting contrast. For day 19, it was much more loose and playful and that’s something I’ve always strived towards.
Related, did you have any days that taught you most? Which and why?
Probably the painting on day 21! (See below.) There is not a single color on that painting I would have ever chosen to mix for a landscape. However, focusing on values and color temperature, I still feel like it was a successful painting and I got to explore the neutrals between yellow and purple in a new way.
If you were to design this specific Challenge again, what would you adjust for the next time through? Or maybe a different way to ask it if someone else wanted to try your set up, any changes you’d suggest?
I’m a huge fan of the way you construct these challenges and I loved the different suggestions of how to approach this one! I think I would explore more subjects, maybe paint something for 3 days with either different compositions or color schemes.
I certainly don’t feel like I lost anything or that time was wasted, but if I were to do the same challenge again, I would set more specific color exploration goals.
Learn more about McGhee here.
About the Series: The #20for20ArtChallenge inspires artist to commit to 20 minutes a day for 20 days to jumpstart a daily art practice. In this series, you'll learn how past participants have set up their 20 days and discover pieces of insights for designing your own daily art practice.