I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Sorry, but the fun and games are over now and it’s time to get back to the routines of life. I have my new 2016 Chihuly planner ready to go and suspect this is going to be an intense sort of year.
Do you make New Year resolutions? I do and have for as long as I can remember. I like the feeling of a fresh start. I am one of those weird people who like change. Boredom sets in easily with me so I like to shake things up. I usually start in November looking at what has worked and what has not in the year then adjust accordingly.
This year includes my wedding and a move so the first half of the year is going to be hectic. The wedding is very simple, but the house remodeling before the move is not. Bear with me. The plan is to keep getting my posts done each week, but we all know how those best laid plans go.
Work/art (They are one in the same by now.) is getting simplified in 2016. I was all over the place in 2015 and felt very scattered. It was fun to experiment with many different things, but I couldn’t get focused. It also hurt the bottom line of my business a little. So this year the artwork gets back to the basics of drawing and painting. The drawing also feeds back into my design work as I focus more on the illustration/design again where there is more profit than just the printed products. I have recently started to have more sales of my clipart in my Etsy shop and would like to add to those items.
Here are a few quick pieces I have worked on since mid-December. Over the past, uh, couple of decades (where does the time go?) I have had very limited time/space for painting and my skills have suffered. I am feeling the need to paint again and am happy to report that some of my past skill level is returning. It just took a few hours of concentrated focus to get back in the swing of wielding a paintbrush.
I am working small right now. That cuts down on the intimidation factor of a big white canvas and gives me a sense of accomplishment to finish a painting instead of having a large one lurking in the corner mocking me when I am piled high with work or life events dominating my time. Hopefully some of these paintings will land in my Etsy shop or in my extremely neglected Fine Art America shop.
The usual “need to get more exercise” and “keep up with all the filing” are still on the resolution list. I REALLY need help with the filing. It’s not in the budget yet for help so if anyone has any suggestion on how to stay on top of filing I would love to hear it. Since I am in the printing business I have a paper heavy filing pile all the time. I do as much digital filing as I can though I could do better with that as well. My email runneth over!
I will continue to post projects and let you see what is going on around here. Maybe I should post a weekly photo of my desk to force myself to FILE. Desperate times require desperate measures!
Best of luck with your resolutions. Let’s see if we can make it into February with them!
Have a great week!
Pencils, Paint & Paper 