The first of the year is coming quickly and I know a bunch of you will be making resolutions to paint more.
I'm here to tell you that I want to help you to keep that resolution. One of the best ways to paint more and more often is to not make keeping that resolution so hard on yourself. I say paint sketches and make them a lot smaller than the paintings you normally do.

Robert Wade of Australia taught me early on to divide one's watercolor paper into a bunch of smaller sketching areas. Robert would take a half sheet of paper and divide it with artist tape and then do small watercolor studies. See below for an example.

This is such a great exercise for learning how to simplify a value pattern and it's a great way to figure out a color scheme. Robert Wade calls this exercise "Visioneering".  He says, "One of the most important aspects of my way of working is how I apply my process of Visioneering.  I'm never satisfied with representing a subject just how it is.  I want to give my own interpretation of what's there and my reaction to it.  In other words, I don't want to paint how it looks, I want to paint how it FEELS."

you can then use these small sketches to work on bigger paintings of the same scene and everything will already be planned out for you in the sketch.

So my advice to you for working a lot of paintings is to do a smaller sketch each day and maybe once a week try for a larger painting from one of those smaller sketches.

Practice makes perfect, but you have to practice otherwise there is nothing to show that is perfect.