30 Paintings in 30 Days

30 Paintings in 30 Days: The Story Behind In Full Bloom

30 paintings. 30 days. One very big dream.

When I decided to give myself 30 days to create 30 paintings, I knew it was going to be a challenge.

What I didn’t know was just how much it would teach me about myself, my creativity and the kind of artist I want to become.

What started as an idea quickly became one of the biggest creative projects I’ve ever undertaken — and by the end of it, I had created an entire body of work that I am incredibly proud of.

This is the story behind my 30-day painting challenge.

Why 30 paintings in 30 days?

The idea came from something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

I have a very big dream of becoming a full-time artist.

For years, painting has been an important part of my life.

Art has always been so much more to me than simply painting. After spending means years in a very high pressure and stressful career, painting became my escape - a place where I could switch everything else off and lose myself completely in colour, texture and creativity. When life felt overwhelming, my studio became somewhere I could breathe, slow down and be present in the moment. Creating has played a huge part in my own wellbeing and healing, giving me a way to process emotions, quiet my mind and reconnect with a part of myself that had been lost amongst the pressures of everyday life. I think that is one of the reasons I feel so passionate about what I do now. Every painting carries a little piece of that journey and creating art has reminded me just how important it is to make space for the things that bring us joy and make us feel like ourselves.

For a long time I have dreamt about becoming a full-time artist but actually taking steps towards making that dream a reality are two very different things.

I knew I needed to push myself.

I needed to stop waiting for the perfect time.

I needed to create more.

I needed to experiment.

And, perhaps most importantly, I needed to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

So I decided to give myself a challenge.

30 paintings. 30 days.

No waiting for inspiration.

No spending weeks agonising over one piece.

Just me, my paints, my ideas and 30 days to see what I could create.

The planning and inspiration.

Before I started, I knew I needed some kind of direction.

I didn’t want to simply paint 30 completely unrelated paintings.

I wanted to see whether a body of work could emerge naturally from the process.

I decided to focus on floral-inspired abstract paintings.

Flowers have always fascinated me.

Flowers have always been a huge source of inspiration for me even in my abstract pieces. So when I decided to take on the challenge of creating 30 paintings in 30 days, it felt natural to explore them in a completely new way. I love the way flowers can be delicate, bold, calming and vibrant, structured yet completely unpredictable. There is so much movement, colour, texture and emotion in them and I have found myself fascinated by how differently they could be interpreted through abstraction. Rather than trying to paint flowers exactly as they appear in nature, I wanted to capture how they make me feel, their energy and beauty.

In many ways, they became the perfect subject for this challenge, a reminder of growth, new beginnings, resilience and the simple joy of creating something beautiful.

I started thinking about colour palettes, compositions, textures and different techniques I could experiment with.

But I deliberately didn’t plan every single painting.

I wanted the challenge to have room to evolve.

And that turned out to be one of the most important decisions I made.

And then Day 1 arrived…

Suddenly, it wasn’t an idea anymore.

It was time to paint.

And then paint again the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

At first, it was exciting.

I couldn’t wait to get started and see what would happen.

But very quickly I realised that creating a painting every single day was very different from painting when I felt inspired.

There were days when the ideas flowed.

There were days when I knew exactly what I wanted to create.

And there were definitely days when I stood in front of a blank piece of paper thinking…

“What on earth am I going to paint today?”

The reality of creating every day

One of the biggest lessons from this challenge was that creativity doesn’t always arrive when you invite it in.

Sometimes you have to start anyway.

There were paintings that came together incredibly quickly.

Others fought me every step of the way.

There were moments when I loved what I was creating.

There were also moments when I really didn’t.

Some paintings looked completely different from what I’d imagined in my head.

Some felt too safe.

Some felt too experimental.

And that’s okay.

Because one of the most valuable things this challenge taught me was that not every painting has to be a complete success.

Sometimes you have to create the bad paintings to get to the good ones.

Learning to be brave

The word that kept coming back to me throughout the challenge was brave.

I wanted to be braver with my art.

Braver with colour.

Braver with composition.

Braver with my mark-making.

Braver with trying things that might not work.

And brave enough to share all of it publicly.

Because when you’re creating something personal and then putting it online for everyone to see, there’s always that little voice asking:

What if people don’t like it?

But I realised that if I allowed that voice to control me, I’d never grow.

So I started giving myself permission to experiment.

To make mistakes.

To paint over things.

To start again.

To create something simply because I enjoyed it.

And gradually, I noticed something changing.

I was becoming more confident in my own creative voice.

The collection

When you’ve spent time creating something, it’s easy to become emotionally attached to it and this happened with a lot of these paintings.

But creating a collection isn’t simply about having 30 paintings.

It’s about deciding which pieces belong together.

Which paintings feel like you.

Which ones push the collection forward.

Some I was going to remove as they didn't feel like me but I decided to leave them in the collection as art is so personal, what I might not be 100% in love with someone else might.

Somewhere along the way, a collection appeared

What I hadn’t expected was for the individual paintings to start feeling connected.

As the days passed, I began to see common threads appearing.

Colours started repeating.

Shapes started evolving.

Techniques developed.

Ideas from one painting found their way into another.

Something was emerging.

It wasn’t something I had completely planned.

It had grown organically from the process.

And eventually, it became a collection.

In Full Bloom.

The name felt perfect.

Because the collection wasn’t just about flowers.

It was about growth.

About allowing something to develop.

About stepping outside my comfort zone.

And about giving myself permission to see what I could do when I really committed to my creativity.

What I learned

Thirty days of painting taught me far more than I expected.

1. I don’t have to wait for inspiration

Sometimes inspiration comes after you start.

The act of putting paint onto a surface can create the idea you were waiting for.

2. Experimentation is essential

Some of my favourite discoveries came from simply trying something without knowing whether it would work.

3. Not everything needs to be perfect

This might be one of the hardest lessons for me.

A painting can be imperfect and still be beautiful.

A painting can evolve through mistakes.

And sometimes the part you thought you’d ruined becomes your favourite part.

4. I am capable of more than I thought

Thirty paintings felt like an enormous number when I started.

But day by day, they accumulated.

One became five.

Five became ten.

Ten became twenty.

And suddenly I was looking at thirty finished pieces.

It reminded me that big things can become much less frightening when you break them down into small steps.

5. My artistic voice is becoming clearer

Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve taken from this challenge is a stronger understanding of what I want my work to feel like.

Colourful.

Joyful.

Textural.

Expressive.

Contemporary.

And unmistakably mine.

The emotional side of the challenge

There were definitely moments when the challenge felt difficult.

Trying to fit creativity around everyday life isn’t always easy.

There were busy days.

Tired days.

Days when I questioned whether I could keep going.

But there was something incredibly rewarding about knowing that I’d made a commitment to myself and was determined to see it through.

Every day I showed up, I was proving something to myself.

Not that I could paint.

But that I could believe in myself enough to keep going.

And that felt much bigger.

The final day

I don’t think I’ll ever forget finishing the 30th painting.

After spending an entire month thinking about the challenge, suddenly it was finished.

Thirty paintings were sitting in front of me.

Thirty pieces of work that hadn’t existed a month earlier.

I felt exhausted.

Excited.

Emotional.

And incredibly proud.

Not because every painting was perfect.

But because I had done what I set out to do.

I had an idea.

I committed to it.

I followed it through.

And I created something I hadn’t known I was capable of creating.

In Full Bloom

Looking at the finished collection now, I feel incredibly proud.

In Full Bloom represents much more than 30 paintings.

It represents a month of showing up.

A month of experimentation.

A month of doubt.

A month of learning.

A month of pushing myself.

And a month of believing in my dream.

It has also made me incredibly excited about what comes next.

Because if I can create this much in 30 days, what could happen if I keep pushing myself?

What could I create with more time?

More confidence?

More bravery?

More belief?

I don’t know the answer yet.

And that’s actually quite exciting.

So, what’s next?

The challenge may be finished, but this feels much more like a beginning than an ending.

I’m continuing to develop my work, explore new ideas and think about where I want my art career to go next.

There are new collections I want to create.

New techniques I want to explore.

And a very big dream of becoming a full-time artist that I’m still working towards.

This challenge reminded me that dreams don’t become reality by simply thinking about them.

They require action.

They require courage.

And sometimes they require you to give yourself a slightly ridiculous challenge and say…

“Let’s see what happens.”

I’m so glad I did.

Because 30 days later, I don’t just have 30 paintings.

I have a collection.

I have a clearer sense of who I am as an artist.

And, perhaps most importantly, I have a little more belief in what’s possible.

30 paintings. 30 days.

And one very big step towards becoming the artist I’ve always dreamed of being.

Welcome to In Full Bloom. 

Jo x