Start of a new series

Yahoo! I’m into the new year with a vengeance. I have started a small series of 6×6″ acrylic abstracts based on views of the cliffs round Patea beach. They all use a similar colour palette but each one is based on a different vantage point or angle. They’re for sale on Etsy here and on my website here.

Journal your blog

Michelle set this challenge for January: to record the evidence of blogging. So here goes: I printed out a post from late last year, made a journal page background with oil pastels, then stuck down the text and photos from the blog.

Packaging assistant

Packaging up parcels to send off can be a tricky business, and an extra pair of hands is quite useful . Luckily our young cat, Goldie, is always prepared to lend a helping paw.

If Goldie spots a plastic bag, a box or a roll of corrugated card she just has to climb in and explore. Weird, but fun!

The personal cost of NOT creating

is feeling vaguely grumpy, out of sorts and mildly depressed. Yuk. I need to spend some time making something, anything…

Checklist: washing on line, birds fed, Mum fed, bed made, dishes put away, ironing done, dog and cats fed. Yep – all lights are green.

Art room here I come 🙂

Inspiration from nature

Sometimes I paint from what is in my head, sometimes I paint from what is right in front of me, sometimes a combination of both.

Then there are times when I kind of know what I want – a shape or a colour or a pattern. That’s when I turn to my visual diaries. I have photos, newspaper cuttings, pictures out of magazines, off the internet, from all kinds of places. I look through them and often the answer is right there, tucked away “just in case”.

Over the Christmas break I went out into our gardens with my digital camera and took heaps of photos, looking at colour, texture, pattern, shadow…

Here’s one of the photos that will get glued into the first of this year’s visual diaries. This is a silver dollar gum tree. I love the colours. Pretty huh?

Getting the boring stuff over with…

Once a year I do a stock take of my paintings; checking what I have against my records, making sure they are where I think they are. Then ensuring that details listed on websites are correct. Increasing my prices by 10% once a year, every year (thanks Robert Genn). This year some of my prices got out of alignment, and now is my chance to fix that. Some will go up, some will come down.

It will take me a few days to complete. And then once the boring stuff is out of the way, it’ll be back to play time in my studio. Yahoo!!!

Even though I would rather be wrist deep in paint and pastel, I know that if I do not look after the business side of my art, no one else can do it for me. It’s like ironing or cleaning the bathroom, it just goes with the territory.

Art goals for 2008

I did a scrapbook page of my wishes and goals for 2008, so it is time I also documented my art goals.

My art goals for 2008 –

1) Load new work regularly on my own website and Etsy.

2) Promote myself by being active on the web.

3) Continue to build my relationship with the one gallery that has my work.

4) Think hard about potential benefits before taking on auctions, cafes etc.

5) Paint when I feel tired, because NOT painting makes me tired. Try to remember this when I am tired!