End of March Check-in
Happy Spring everyone! I’ve just returned from a trip home on the east coast and am getting back into my regular working schedule. It was good to take a break from the studio and work in general. I had a number of various deadlines for grants and applications that I worked on before I left from my trip, so last week I did very little work. Now that I’ve been back home for a few days, I have started painting again and have some more applications that are due at the end of the month/early April that I am wrapping up.
What I’m working on:
I finally finished painting the cherry blossom flower painting! It’s the fourth flower painting in this collection of paintings. I initially planned to do ten of these kinds of paintings but I’m thinking about sharing these four as a set. I want to make some greeting cards out of these paintings because I think they look really nice together.
I’m continuing to work on the third seashell painting. I think I’m also finally done with the first two paintings in this series, but I’m going to wait on sharing these paintings until I’m further along with the whole series. My current plan is to create seven of these collections to make a series and I’ve painted the underlayer for two more in the series.
I’m still painting my watercolor paintings for the #100dayproject challenge. The intention for these paintings was (and still is) to have fun and no expectations from them. This has worked out really well, and I happened to get a watercolor painting series idea that I think I’ll explore a bit more with my daily paintings to help me fully form the idea. Hopefully more to come on this!
I’ve been editing some longer videos for my YouTube channel (subscribe if you haven’t already!). I have a number of videos recording my painting process for a few paintings and I thought it would be nice to share some timelapses.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I have more applications to work on for public art opportunities, calls for art, and grants that are due in the next two weeks. I’ve been trying to set aside time in the evenings to work on these; I spend my mornings in the studio and don’t bring my computer with me so I can focus on paintings. This has helped with some work life balance, but I always want to paint more than work on my applications.
Since April is next month, it’s time for the Plein Airpril challenge. I don’t intend to do this as a daily challenge since I’m already doing the #100dayproject daily challenge, but I still want to paint en plein air. I have a plan to go out to the coast every Saturday in April to paint some plein air paintings, so I’m excited to share updates of how this goes!
While on my break, I’ve been thinking about how I can focus on a single project better. I like to bounce from project to project and have a lot of different ideas that I want to explore. I do a good job of starting projects and testing out new ideas, but feel like I struggle with sticking to one thing and seeing the project to completion in a timely manner. I have made more concrete plans about painting the additional paintings for my flower collection, so I’m hoping this helps. I do think I need to make a more concrete timeline for my projects. I like working in collections but I also like to bounce between collections. I also like to share all my paintings in a cohesive collection at once, so it feels like it takes quite some time before I share my paintings. I’m working on figuring out a balance between my working style and being able to share my paintings, so I’m open to any and all recommendations! Thanks for reading my update and I look forward to your suggestions!
