Beginning of March Check-In
March is kicking off with a lot of rain in the Bay Area, which I think is slightly unusual because it doesn’t rain here much and we’re at the end of the rainy season. But I’m enjoying it because the overcast skies are providing the perfect lighting for painting in my studio. I’m still working on the same set of paintings for the California Highway One series and started the largest painting, 24”x36”, in the series. I also have many ideas for other series of paintings and art business related things I want to do, which I’ll share under the What’s on the Horizon section. I think it’ll be helpful for me to share what I want to work in the future in this blog so I stop procrastinating so much.
What I’m working on
I’m actively painting three of the California Highway One series paintings. Each of the paintings are in pretty different stages. In theory, I’ve finished three of the paintings, but every time I look at the paintings, I find that there is something that I want to change or improve. I had the ambitious goal of finishing the series of paintings, which would contain six to seven paintings, by the middle of March before I leave for a trip to Hawaii. I’m not so sure that I’ll make this timeline, but the timeline is pretty arbitrary and I have been using it to motivate myself to keep painting when I hit a mental block on a painting. I know myself and I know I work pretty well with deadlines, but I also know that I don’t need to stress myself out too much as long as I keep making progress.
I’m working on a second draft of the commissioned painting that I’ve been working on. I met with the client and they provided great feedback that’s helping me move forward with the painting. I’m really happy with how it’s turning out and I’m learning a lot through this process because I’m painting something that I wouldn’t have chosen to paint on my own.
What’s on the Horizon
As I mentioned in my last post, I started painting close up paintings of flowers. Those paintings have been on hold while I work on the paintings for the California Highway One series, but I hope to pick them up again and have multiple paintings of different flowers.
In April, I want to try to paint en plein air every day. Back in 2020, I participated in a plein air challenge called Plein Airpril, hosted by Warrior Painters on Instagram. I want to participate in the challenge again to help me grow as an artist and practice painting en plein air.
A general art business goal that I have is improving and updating my website. There are a number of items that fall under this category and I’m procrastinating on all of them.
Learning how to use Adobe PhotoShop and Lightroom is something that I’ve mentioned before but haven’t made progress. I want to learn how to edit the photos I take of my paintings to have better pictures on my website.
I also want to update my artist bio. I have a hard time writing about myself because it feels awkward and uncomfortable, but I think I just need to get over that hurdle and put in time and effort to write a better bio than the one I currently have on my website. I think writing these blog posts have helped me become a little bit less self-conscious. But now that I’m talking about it, this all feels awkward and uncomfortable again 🙄
Related to writing, I want to write out descriptions of my collections of works to describe what the collections mean to me and the process of how they came to be. I think I did a decent job of writing a description of the Thought Collection.
Related to collections, I want to update the portfolio page of my website. I don’t really like the way I designed it and it doesn’t have paintings from the last year.
That’s all that I can remember in terms of things I hope to start working on in the near future, but I know that there’s more, so I’ll probably be adding to this list in future posts. If you have any recommendations on tutorials/how-to’s for any PhotoShop/Lightroom or writing artist bios or anything else, let me know in the comments (password is bonvoyage to access the blog), I’d greatly appreciate it!
Inputs
I’ve been reading Aging Well by George E. Valiant, which shares vignettes of the lives of participants in a longitudinal study of aging to provide guideposts on “how to age well”. It’s more of a descriptive book than prescriptive books and it’s been a nice read.
Outputs
I haven’t been out that much because of the rain and I’ve been painting a lot in the studio. I do have a trip to Hawaii coming up, which I’m looking forward to! Maybe I’ll come back with another series of paintings that I’ll want to work on.
That’s all I have for this check-in, thanks for making it this far in the post. Say hi in the comments!
