End of April Check-in
Hi friends! It’s been a busy month, so I want to jump right into the updates.
What I’m working on:
I’m wrapping up the third seashell painting that I’ve been mentioning in my previous updates. I want to use this painting for an art call that’s due this Friday. The deadline has been helpful in keeping me focused on this painting. I normally don’t like to paint until the last minute for a deadline, but I had a little bit of poor planning in the middle of the project with other projects that I was working on, so this is just where we are. The bright side of this is that I won’t spend an inordinate amout of time nitpicking and fixing little details that are bothering me and will just have to be happy with what I’m able to complete by Friday.
I’m still going strong with the #100dayproject, althought I am looking forward to when it’ll be over. I am glad that I gave myself space to explore watercolors and try some new things out, but I do think I really want to focus on my oil paintings for a while. I was able to explore a couple of watercolor projects, which I think was the main goal of this challenge, so I feel like it has been a success.
I’m still posting videos every other Wednesday to my YouTube channel. I have a new video coming out in a few hours. It’s a timelaspe of me painting Flash Flood Warning, a landscape of Joshua Tree National Park that was accepted to the California Nature Art Museum’s 2023 California National Parks: Stories of Water Exhibition and awarded an honorable mention. What’s cool about this video is that I was able to collaborate with my brother because he produced the background music for it!
Outings
I was able to go plein air painting again since my last update. We went to the coast one weekend and I was able to paint a couple of coastal landscape paintings. I did enjoy the process, so I’m hoping to find some more time on the weekends to do a few more coastal paintings before it gets too warm out.
With open studios coming up next month, I’ve been trying to prepare for them by making sure I have prints of my paintings. I’m also considering creating greeting cards for my floral paintings. I’m hoping this provides people an accessible way to buy my art. I’m balancing preparing for these shows with still applying to gallery and museum art calls, which helps me get my artwork in front of more people. There’s quite a number of art calls with upcoming deadlines, and I want to try to apply to as many as I can with the paintings that I have. I also have a lot of new ideas for another series of paintings and am trying to figure out when I’ll be able to start working on those projects. I would like to finish five paintings in my seashell series; the last two paintings of the series are prepped and planned. I just have to remind myself to stay focused on a small number of projects and that the projects do take a while to complete.
I think that’s it for now. I hope you all are doing well, and I’ll see you in the next check-in!
