Creative Resolutions for the New Year

Just a week into the new year, a time for change.

For me, I need to make some real creative changes. I’ve spent this last week thinking about the last two years.  I’ve had some big changes in my family life, but no real change artistically. In fact, I’ve been in a big creative rut and haven’t gotten nearly enough artwork done. So here an now I’m setting out some artistic resolutions:

1. Better time management. That’s been my biggest obstacle. It’s not that I’m out of ideas, believe me I have plenty of them, it’s that I can’t possibly get everything I want to do finished. Admittedly, there have been weeks when I just don’t get anything done because I’m lucky just to get a couple hours a week to work. I need to find more ways to get my artwork done, without sacrificing my family time. Maybe I’ll just clean my house less, but I’ll find a way.

2. Be more focused and carry through on creative ideas.  I feel like I have artistic ADD sometimes. Like I said, I’m not out of ideas. My big problem is I have too many and I tend to jump from one idea to the next. I leave a lot of unfinished paintings and tend not to carry through with painting series ideas. This is also partially due to my time management problem, I start working on one idea one week, and by the next week I have a new idea I can’t wait to embark on, and so little time to work on it! I’m just going to have to write my ideas out and then force myself be a bit more patient.

3. Explore new mediums. Part of my artistic rut has left me sunk in only one medium. oil painting was all new to me 5 years ago, and understandably so, that is what I focused in on. I love painting, but I really want to explore more with other mediums as well, and do more mixed media paintings. Maybe I’ll finally try out some woodblock printing, which I’ve been wanting to do for a long long time!

4. Draw more. I’m a pretty great draftsman and I need to be using those skills more. I would like to go beyond just doing my sketchbook and do some real completed drawings or incorporate them somehow into a mixed media piece.

I really want the new year to bring my art into new life. I’ve already gotten things off to a great start and I am doing much planning and lots of sketching. Times of renewal and the circle of life are themes that have been in my head lately. Here are just a few thing ideas I’m working on.. and there are so many more…

Discovery Center Learning Art and Great Artists

Every week my children and I attended some great little classes for home-based learners at a local community run school. Heck, I wouldn’t call this a school per-say, more like a small community that wants to encourage all children (whether homeschoolers or public schoolers) to be life long learners and not to be limited to what they can learn in “school.”

The Discovery Learning Center is a volunteer run non-profit, and I’m very excited to be one of those volunteers by running a new art class for them. Art and Great Artists starts January 20th and is aimed at kids aged 6-12. We’ll be starting out with one of my favorite artists Chagall.

Like I said, DLC is a non-profit. That means they rely on donations, and this has left them lacking in art supplies ( I know, I looked in their supply closet). I REALLY would like to make this art class great, and keep the prices low. I would HATE to have my kids fighting over glue sticks and paint brushes. So with that, I’m donating all my profits from now until Feb 28 2012 to the Discovery Learning Center for art supplies for all classes, and possibly if there is enough, to sponsor a family. This includes all my paintings at the January Mushroom Festival and paintings posted on Etsy and my website.

DLC is a really wonderful community that has been growing to serve even more children as a great learning resource, and I would like to see it continue to grow, especially in a time when it seems education is on the chopping block. The DLC of course always accepts direct donations and you can learn more about their program HERE.

Mushroom Fest Sneak Peek

I look forward to the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz’s annual Fungus Fair every January. This year I have been invited again to be one of their many talented mushroom artists on display for the month.

As always I paint 2-3 new mushroom paintings for this festival. Today is just a sneak peek of one of those new paintings, as they are yet unfinished…

The Fungus Fair is a fascinating event for all ages that includes lectures on identification, arts and crafts for the kids, and even some mushroom cooking classes (YUM!)

The festival once again takes place at the Louden Nelson Center. You can see the artists’ work up after January 9th. The festival it self is January 13th-15th. Click on the little poster below for more info and directions.

Newest Sketchbook

I started a new sketchbook with the purpose of showing it online.  Besides, most of my paintings start with a sketch; sometimes a finished sketch, or sometimes a roughly drawn idea. Of course I have more ideas then time can handle.

I made my own cover for this one out of old magazines and some cool pics printed from the net collaged  together. Not too fancy for this one. I just didn’t want the plain art store cover. This was the first time I did this for a book, but maybe I’ll get a little more into it next time I make a cover.

I had to have my name in there of course…

Here are a couple sketches. I adjusted a background hue a bit to make them easier to see.

Many more to see soon…

Work, Work, Blog or Not Blog

The working on art part is easy, getting to blogging about it, not so easy for me. I know I’m not the only who has trouble keeping up with blogging. So, from here out,  I’m going to set a goal of posting at least once a week, even if its just a pic out of my sketchbook, or a painting in the works.

Ice Blue and Snowy White Untitled Original Oil Painting 12x24 mixed media Abstract

One thing I have managed to get done is posting my work on Etsy. Several of my artist friends have been using this site with success. Especially with the economic downturn and galleries not doing to well, it has been a safe haven for both fine artists and craftspeople. You can check out my store HERE.