More holiday fair preparation and 2023 planning
It has been getting quite busy in the studio preparing for the holiday season. I think I hit a point last week where I felt ahead of schedule, which made me feel less motivated to do the things I had planned on working on. To help me with my motivation, I decided to plan out 2023 at a high level and then more granularly plan out the first quarter of 2023 to help me prioritize the work that I should do in the last few months of 2022. I’m still adjusting to a work environment where all of my work is independent and most of the time I don’t have someone else who I have to deliver my work to. I know that I function well with projects and external deadlines, so I went through the process of providing my own long-term deadlines. I am hoping that having a longer term vision and plan will help motivate me day to day because I know that if I don’t work on what I had set out to do at the daily and weekly level, the long term goals will fall through. That being said, I think that I can add a new section here on “what’s on the horizon” to help provide some context and scope of what I hope to do in the coming months.
What I’m working on
Yesterday I picked up my prints of the “Thought Collection” and the Seashells of Northern California from Berkeley, which is partially why this blog post is coming a day late. I’m working on signing all of the backs of “Thought Collection” prints and the front of the Seashells of Northern California prints. I had meant to sign the front of the Seashell of Northern California painting, but I had only remembered to do that after I dropped the painting off, so it’s a lesson learned.
I’ve now moved onto painting the seashells for the next “botanical” illustration of Northern California tidal pool creatures. I’ve been using watercolor painting as a break from oil painting.
I finished painting six 4x4” mini oil paintings of ocean waves, which follow the similar theme set by the Thought Collection. I have three more paintings to finish, which will have used all of the 4x4” canvases I have. I don’t plan on painting this small again anytime in the near future. I hope to have all nine of these paintings finished, signed, and varnished by Thanksgiving so I can bring them to my first holiday fair.
I painted a 12x16” sunrise over the ocean painting, which I thought would be part of the next collection of paintings I would do. I keep going back and forth on which collection I want to work on next.
What’s on the horizon
A month of weekend (and weekend adjacent) holiday fairs!
I’ve had this idea of painting a sunrise a day for over a year and I’ve been working on the motivation and sleep schedule to make me successful in this endeavor. I’m hoping to start this next week and I’m hoping that writing that here will keep me accountable!
I want to finish another collection of paintings by the middle of February next year. One collection idea that I have is sunrises/sunsets over the ocean. Another collection idea is a series of landscapes of the California coast along Highway 1. I’ve even collected the nine reference photos I want to use from the photos I’ve taken from my trips to the coast over the past year +. Right now, in my daily planner, I’ve set aside time to paint and I plan on being slightly unstructured by allowing myself to paint for whichever collection I feel like painting. This may change once I make a decision or find that it’s not a helpful method.
Something I also want to work on is learning how to use Adobe Lightroom. I want to create better pictures of my paintings for my website and general marketing, which will require me to learn how to use photo-editing software. I’m going to use the photos I took on my trip to Joshua Tree and practice photos to learn, so if anyone has recommendations on tutorials or online classes, let me know!
Inputs
I’m still listening to “No Stupid Questions” hosted by Stephen J. Dubner and Angela Duckworth and I listened to the episodes “How Can You Improve Your Mental Endurance” and “Can You Learn to Love Hard Work”. To be honest, I don’t really remember any sticking points. My main takeaway was that I want to read more psychology papers again.
Outputs
I went on a very nice hike in Muir Woods National Monument with some friends this weekend and really enjoyed the cool weather of fall. Again, I’m reminded that I should take more walks during the day and I can’t rely on a long weekend hike soon because I will have my holiday fairs to attend.
