Daily Paint Challenge

I have seen and been inspired by artist daily paintworks and have been wanting to do something for awhile now.  Well this month is the month.  my birthday is on the 24th and that is the day I will start my challenge.  I will be painting one animal a day but that is not the challenge.  My goal is to paint an animal in five brushstrokes/layers or less.

         How is this a challenge you ask?

Because I nitpick everything to death and I want to practice being more precise and clean. I also want to have more experience drawing animals.  I plan to sketch out several character studies then paint the final selected pose.

         Why not start now?

Because I want to put together a reference library to work from and what better day than to start on my birthday.  Hurray!

         What will I do with my finished works? 

Sell them of course.  But because I am an illustrator and an author,  I will publish them all into one book.  But that will be next Christmas.  Right now it's just one day at a time.  Wish me luck!

Below is a pelican I painted while in Mexico and I tried to do a simple sketch.  It looks like it was done in 6 layers  so this will be similar to the paintings i want to do,  whether or not a use a pen like in the second I'm still debating.