End of March Check-in
I can’t believe it’s already the end of March! It’s my first Monday back from my vacation to Hawaii and I feel like I have lost my sense of time in both the day of the month and the time of the day. This hasn’t been an unpleasant experience; it’s a bit refreshing and it feels helpful that I’m not really following a schedule right now. Today I reacquainted myself with my studio again, and I’m going to use this blog post to help me sort out what my priorities are for the coming month.
What I’m working on
I have at least two, potentially three, more paintings to finish for the California Highway One series. I’m currently working on two paintings. I’m debating whether or not to paint one more painting (for a total of seven paintings in the series). I have a reference photo picked out, but it is similar to a painting I have already done for the series which also is my least favorite painting in the series so far. I think I’ll make a decision next week based on whether I have attention/time for it in April.
I sent over the second draft of the commissioned painting that I’ve been working on. I’m really happy with how it turned out with the changes and I’m excited for the feedback!
I started some plein air paintings. I really want to stick with painting en plein air each day in April, so I figured it would be helpful to start building the habit before April starts. Painting en plein air reminds me of the painting class I took in college, and it’s bringing me back to caring less about how my painting turns out. I’m still very focused when I paint, but I think I’m more loose with my painting and nothing is really a mistake during this process. Taking the judgment away from these paintings has been really nice.
Last post, I had a long section on improving and updating my website. Writing out a list in my blog has actually kept me accountable, so thanks for indulging me! The updates are:
I updated my artist bio.
I wrote a description for my embroidery hoops page.
I took photos of all my finished paintings with not a phone camera, and I plan on editing them this week in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. I plan on updating my website with these new photos soon!
Inputs
I’m re-reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman again. The takeaway from this read through is that I am going to try to be better about working on less than five projects at once. Ideally, I’d like to stick to three projects at a time. I know that I just listed out four things that I’m currently working on, so I’m hoping to stick to those four things for the time being. I want to be “busy but not overwhelmed”, so I think sticking to a smaller number of projects at a time will help with that.
Outputs
I just came back from a week-long trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. I have never been to Hawaii before and I had a really good time! I took a lot of photos, which I’ve uploaded to my external drive but haven’t looked through yet. They might turn into paintings one day 😀
That’s all for this check-in. I hope you are all doing well. Hopefully the weather is warming up wherever you are and spring is rolling around. Say hi in the comments and let me know if you have any recommendations on staying focused and not picking up too many projects at once.
