The first challenge of many...

So in trying to jumpstart my creativity this year (like I said last week) I decided to set myself a challenge to do something I’ve wanted to do for several years now and never followed through on…. starting a YouTube channel. I’ve never really edited video, don’t know a thing about it and that always made me say, “oh I can’t do videos; I don’t know how to edit or shoot them and no one wants to listen to me talk anyway….” Just a whole bunch of excuses. Until one day I was watching a video from one of my artist channels and she said something along the lines of, “what’s stopping you from doing something you want to do? Just do it! Even if you suck, just do it! See what happens.” So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m just gonna try. I’d love it if you’d check it out and maybe leave me a nice comment? Or not. Your choice. Happy Wednesday y’all!

That's not a mistake, that's a learning opportunity....

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make Good. Art.”
- Neil Gaiman

I don’t know if I’m making good art, but I’m making art and that’s the important part. I’ve been reading quite a bit since the first of the year and making plans for the coming year and giving myself some deadlines. Hellfire, I even printed out one of those “Goal Setting Workbooks” and even tried to plan out my year quarter by quarter with some clear-cut goals every three months. I know everyone makes resolutions in January, but I really wanted to give myself some time to not only make resolutions for the year going forward but a plan and a roadmap to get there. I think what I’ve been missing in my creative life is a little application of my business knowledge and giving myself some clear deadlines to get stuff done. They’re arbitrary deadlines, just for me, but it gives me some accountability. And honestly, they’re not all BIG goals, but just some small goals that are completely doable if I’ll just take the time to sit down and do them.

I’ve been playing around in a new journal/sketchbook with limited success. The paper is great for writing and handles pens, pencils, and colored pencils fairly well, but NOT water. It’s almost like the most minimal amount of water turns this paper to mush. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s disappointing because I love watercolors, watercolor markers, and watercolor pencils, but this paper literally tries to melt when you apply water to it. The second drawing is a result of my trying to use watercolor markers on top of some crumpled brown paper bag. I had thought just to scrap the page, but sat down the next day and tried to layer some different papers and acrylic paint on top, and it just…. ugh. Not my best moment. To me, it’s a failure, but it’s also a learning moment too. Sometimes we just have a fail and that’s okay. You learn from it and move on. And needless to say, I won’t be buying another Royal & Langnickel sketchbook any time soon. It will probably make me use my colored pencils more though I have a love/hate relationship with colored pencils.

I hope you’re all doing well here in the new year. Let me know what you’ve been up to in the comments below. I’ll try to get more consistent with blogging again. I am writing more for the local newspaper so maybe I can get back into the general writing habit again. Have a great day my lovelies, all the best to you. Thanks as always for reading.

Little Sketches....

I journal quite a bit. It’s a mixture of art journaling and pure journaling where you just pour words on a page. Sometimes there’s a theme, many times not. I normally use sketchbooks instead of true journals with lines because then the book can become my playground. A place to write and doodle and mess around with watercolors, pencils, and markers. I drew the above on my birthday and just wanted something cute on the side of the page for the season. It’s drawn with just a Ticonderoga #2 pencil and watercolor pencils. Nothing fancy or honestly very good but just a little happy on the side of the page. I did scan it in and turn it into something fun for Thanksgiving that I’ll share next week. Happy Wednesday my friends!

Wordless Wednesday - Fungi After the Rain

This was the largest most beautiful fairy circle I’ve seen in a long time.