Just like the year before, 2017 flew by! But I was surprised to see that, artwise, 2017 was pretty productive for me! For years my medium of choice was oil paints. The downside to this was that I moved extremely slowly in completing any painting. I like to work in layers and the week-long dry time was sometimes too much. Of course sometimes this isn’t really an issue because life gets busy. But I discovered watercolors this year and as a result I’ve gotten way more efficient with my time! I won’t thank our current President for much, but his stance on immigration angered me so much it inspired me to do my first watercolor painting- Lady Liberty’s torch. I even wrote a post about this back in February. Since then, I’ve enjoyed working with watercolors, not just for their dry time, but for the different effect they have. So this is something I plan to continue in the new year. I have also realized that I enjoy painting people…. as long as I don’t have to include their faces haha. So I may keep this up 😉

One thing I might try to experiment with this year are acrylic paints. I used to dislike them because of how quickly they dry but… I’ve come full circle apparently. I do miss the precision I can’t quite get with water, so I’m thinking acrylic might be a good compromise. TBD on how this goes.

And now for my goal for the the New Year. Drumroll please… I’m going to attempt the 365 Days of Art challenge where I do a drawing or painting everyday. I’m terrified to commit to this and I’m scared just writing this down! But I’m setting low expectations for myself and figure that on my busiest days, I should still be able to sit down for 5 minutes and doodle something small. Or I can make progress on a bigger painting I have ongoing. (Like my oil painting of Mia I have yet to finish.) And on days when I don’t have energy to even think, my go-to will be fruit. See, I have a plan 🙂

Happy 2018 to all of you and thank you for taking the time to follow me on my art journey!