It’s a New Year… which means it is time for me to write my one blog post for the year! It’s kind of nice to sit back and reflect on the year, to recap the goals I had for myself, and to take a moment to figure out what I actually spent the year doing.

Most of you know that my full-time job is not art. Because of this, I generally set pretty modest goals for myself. (There’s no need to stress myself out unnecessarily!) In 2019 I had set the goal of participating in local art exhibitions. And by the end of 2019 I had participated in THREE! There was such a large gap between the first exhibit in January, and the last two exhibits at the end of the year, that I almost forgot that they all happened in the same year. These shows have been satisfying in that it’s just nice to see my art hanging on a wall, along with a lot of other talented artists. It’s a humbling experience and I’m always grateful for the opportunity. 

 

 

I also participated in my first ever art fair… and actually sold art in person to people… like away from behind a computer 🙂 As my first one, this took a lot of pre-planning and preparation to make sure I’d have everything necessary to make the day successful… things I didn’t use regularly or have on hand, like a method for accepting credit cards, a pop-up tent, display tables and a display set-up, shopping bags, etc. These are the types of things that I stress about. My biggest success of the day was that I didn’t forget anything major! It was such a treat to interact with people in person. I definitely want to do this again!

My Etsy shop also continued to chug along. I hit my goal of achieving over 100 sales in my shop, which was very exciting! There’s a quote I see on social media occasionally: “When you buy from a small business, an actual person does a little happy dance.” I can confirm that this is true!

Also via Etsy I completed my largest watercolor commission/painting to date:

 

One personal goal I had for myself in 2019 was to improve in painting/ drawing portraits so I set out to complete the 100 Heads portrait challenge. I haven’t finished this challenge yet, but continue to work on it. I’m up to head #32 (or 34, if you count the Grinch and Baby Yoda) and I definitely see an improvement. My anxiety in painting portraits has also diminished which is probably the greatest benefit. I plan to continue working towards completely my heads in 2020. 

I’d say those are the major highlights. I’m probably forgetting something…. but if I am, I’ll edit this later! Thanks again to all of you who follow along and keep up with my work. And Happy New Year!