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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, December 28, 2011 · 38 Getting to 365, one small painting at a time By Dominik Kurek OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Every day over the past year, an Oakville illustrator and artist has produced one small painting, and now that he's reached the magic number of 365, he plans to keep on going. Robin Mitchell paints mostly 6 by 6-inch pieces, starting and completing one every day. He then puts the paintings up on his blogsite where people can buy them. "It's a very relaxing pastime. You can also express yourself quite well using it. You get a great sense of accomplishment," the longtime Oakville resident said. "It's also a lot of fun." Mitchell is just one person in a growing online community of similar artists, who produce small-scale paintings each day and sell them over the Internet. His own paintings sell for about $100, with shipping. "I belong to something called Daily Paintworks," he said. "There are probably a few hundred people who belong to it." The trend has been growing for the past five years or so, Mitchell said, and there are groups other than Daily Paintworks out there as well. "I think this is a growing trend because of the size of paintings," he said. "The cost of purchasing one of these, if you think about $100, is not really a lot of money when it gets packaged and mailed to you. It's an original piece of artwork. It's basically one of a kind." Each painting is signed and numbered. Number 365 was a self-portrait, a first for the long-time painter. Mitchell graduated from Sheridan College's illustration program in 1989 and has been a painter, on and off, since then. He's also worked in the television commercial advertising field during most of that time, winning a Gemini Award back in 2001. He won the award for artwork he produced for the made-for-television film Nuremberg, starring Alec Baldwin. He painted artificial backgrounds for the film. As a resident of Oakville, many of his depictions can be seen in the town. No. 1 is a picture of the lighthouse at Oakville Harbour. He likes to paint people, either portraits or scenes with people in them. "I really like to paint portraits. Portraits don't really sell but I paint a lot of kids' portraits. I paint my daughter a lot," he said. He admits that getting to painting number 365 took a little longer than a full year, as there were days when he was sick or on vacation. But those days are rare. He also observed a progression of his artwork; an improvement. "I think it's quite an accomplishment to paint that many," he said. "I think the quality is quite high. Some of them have been a real success, some have been a somewhat success, and some have not been a success at all." Regardless of how the painting turned out the day before, each day is a new beginning, he said. "People ask if I want to sell all of them. There are a few of them that I will not sell. It is sometimes hard to part with some of them," he said. Mitchell said his paintings have been purchased by people in countries such as Germany, South Africa, Australia and the U.S. Now that he's passed painting 365, he's driven to keep going. His artwork can be seen on his blog, at www.robinjmitchell.blogspot.com. Dominik Kurek can be reached at dkurek@oakvillebeaver.com or followed on Twitter at @DominikKurek. michael ivanin / oakville beaver hitting the mark: Oakville artist Robin Mitchell paints one small painting every day and puts it up for sale on his blog. He has now reached the magic number of 365 and is still going. Art for charity eric riehl / oakville beaver at Lollipop lounge: Oakville's Lollipop Art Lounge and Party Shoppe hosted a Charity Fundraiser Open House earlier this month with proceeds going to Safetynet Children and Youth Charities. Pictured on the left is Taryn Gee with her illustrations and on the right are Gary Li and Taylor Brown with Li's items from Convallaria. The event raised about $300.