I'm super excited and pleased to announce the grand reopening of my Etsy shop after a bit of a longer break than I had planned when I was packing up to move to England. Please check it out. Currently I am selling a variety of original painting, a selection of my woodblock relief prints and I am looking forward to having prints from my paintings made as I grow.
As an American living abroad I am resisting the impulse to be filled with anxiety today. Instead I am focusing on work and checking of a number of tasks during the day so I can go to bed early tonight and miss the endless nail biting speculation. My Etsy store reopening is delayed until I get prints sorted. In the meantime I will be offering original artworks up on Instagram at super reasonable prices. They would make fabulous gifts and the sale of them would help me purchase a new printer and scanner.
Good news! I've started selling my mini Altoid watercolor paint kits on Etsy. For a limited time as a special bonus I am offering a free watercolor painted card with the first one purchased on Etsy. I have collected a lot of commercial tins during my watercolor painting adventures, but I always come back to this one for on the go come with me everywhere color.
Drinking tea while listening to the wind and rain while painting in my cozy studio. Sunshine is great but sometimes I need the excuse to stay in and work indoors. Loving this stormy weather.
I traded for a lot of art and jewelry on Etsy back before my eldest daughter was born in 2007. Full sized work but also a number of small artist trading cards or ATC that I framed together and hung in my studio. It is like a little glimpse of artists hanging out together in a small frame. I love it and I want more! A 2014 collection?
I've loved Rania Hassan's sketchbooks for years but never felt that my sketches deserved such beautiful covers. I feel differently now so I might have to treat myself to one of her sketchbooks this summer. I mostly use wirebound multimedia by Strathmore and flip them to make them left handed friendly, but I do like to keep a small soft bound Moleskin around for ideas and doodles. Moleskin does make high quality watercolor sketchbooks, but they are very expensive for very few pages. The biggest downside of using a wirebound sketchbook is storing them once they are full because the wire binding takes up so much space. I haven't had that problem yet since the sketchbook I had been working on for the past two months was stolen last week. But I am hoping that will not happen again and that I will have many sketchbooks to store. I currently have four sketchbooks going. One graph paper moleskin that stays in my (new) messenger bag with a small clip board, one small multi-media sketchbook to replace the one that was stolen, one small watercolor sketchbook, and one large multi-media sketchbook that I just started yesterday. Not exactly minimalist is it? I will probably drop the watercolor sketchbook once the one I have is full. The thicker paper is nice but not all that useful for me in a small format, plus it is harder to find and has fewer pages than the multi-media version. The artist is a natural hoarder yet a more streamlined home is more efficient for life. That is a blog post for another time. Now it is time to get back to my sketchbook(s)!
I love how the tree image works with the craft paper cover. If I got this sketchbook I would probably embellish it with ink drawing.
Every Tuesday I will feature a shop that I find on Etsy. Starting out with a shop I discovered on Facebook awhile back that goes with my current interest in watercolors and nature.
Inspirational watercolors and paintings.
I love these pieces. They are two of my recent favorites and I am thrilled that they are heading to a new home. No matter how much I love a piece I am always thrilled when it is purchased and goes to a new owner. I can always make more but getting my art out in the world is my ultimate goal. Thankful to have Etsy helping make that a reality since 2004.
We are buried in snow here in Boston a week before Christmas and I am trying to enjoy it while deep down I am pining for Autumn and feeling my annual winter Autumn regrets. Regretting that I let myself get so busy that I didn't enjoy glorious fall it it's full potential. The snow is really pretty right now and sledding is fun but winter in the city is a challenge. It gets ugly fast and the ice makes getting around just plain dangerous. At the very least getting around in the winter can be very tricky and require some extra planning and time. And of course it is very cold! But autumn is just lovely! The colors, the crisp air and the food. Just wonderful. Unfortunately that is also when school and activities start and the weekends fill up quickly. Right now I regret that we only went apple picking once, that we never made it to the Arboretum when the leaves were turning, that I didn't go on more bike rides and that we didn't carve a pumpkin for Halloween. The snow is on the ground and there is no going back now. Not until next fall when I will again be busy and partially crippled from anxiety about the impending winter.
This is a question I ask myself a lot as I get back to writing and blogging. After all I am not a writer I am a visual artist. That is the script that I formed for myself long ago and it can be hard to break out of that mold even when doing so is so obviously the right choice. By nature I am insecure about my words. Rather shy and reserved by nature I prefer to let my art speak for me. But writing my morning pages every morning (except once) these past two months and blogging on a regular basis has been changing me. And changing my art as well. It creates feedback with myself and causes me to consider things that I wouldn't necessarily consider if I wasn't forced to write all the time. Seven hundred and fifty words for my Morning Pages every morning is a lot of page filling. But I do it and stuff comes out and I learn how to write while doing it. Blogging is a lot. Instead of just going on with my busy life with my family and making art whenever I can I am forcing myself to stop and think about what I'm doing, why and what's next. I blog because it is changing me and I like it.
Next is an older piece that I never loved or hated. During my printing last week I found it and added one more layer and now it is finally finished.
