The last couple of months have been very busy months for me. November and December were filled with lots of holiday commissions for Christmas presents and weddings. Even though I didn’t have the time to work on getting my Etsy shop ready for the holidays and working on some holiday marketing and prep, I ended up having my busiest holiday sales season anyway. The popular items of the season were Colorado themed jewelry.

My favorite commission of the season, would have to be this pencil portrait I drew for a friend of the family. It was a present for his mother in-law depicting her dancing with her daughter, his bride.

Because of being busy with lots of commissions as well as my regular job working at Pinot’s and raising a toddler, I haven’t had time to work on my own artwork. I was able to do a fun watercolor and gouache painting at the very beginning of the year of my interpretation of Kim from the movie Edward Scissorhands. Tim Burton’s art and movies always connected with me growing up (though honestly, what middle/high schooler didn’t connect to his characters). I remember watching Edward Scissorhands at a friend’s house at a sleepover and feeling completely wrecked emotionally at the end of the film. It spoke to feelings I was experiencing being somewhat of a misfit high school student. This movie, as well as his other films, inspired a lot of the kinds of emotionally driven art I was creating during that stage of my life and I wanted to create a piece that honored that.

Since then, all of my artwork has been work related. It’s good to be busy and earning money, but it’s been a little bit creatively draining. However, yesterday I was able to create some art for fun. My friend Conni, has been hosting “Inspiration” art gatherings. These gatherings are opportunities to be surrounded by other artists and art lovers and exercise our creativity. One of the things I miss most about college studio art is being surrounded by people who are constantly creating. These Inspiration get togethers are a way to put aside time to be creative, but in a fun and relaxed environment. It also provides people an opportunity to try new things and get to know new people.

At our get together in February, we had a “Wine Women and Watercolors” night where we had a flower still life and all played with different watercolors and water media while drinking wine. Yesterday, we drove to a natural area and hiked. We took pictures and sketched and then drove back to Conni’s house and created artwork based off of our sketches and photos using the media of our choice.

Conni took this photo showing the view of the natural area we hiked around for our March “Inspiration” get together.

I had no clue what I was going to create, especially since I don’t normally create art that’s nature inspired, so I walked around with my camera phone looking for inspiration. I took a couple photos of some dried up plants by a lake and sketched them in my multimedia sketchbook. I masked off my drawing with a new masking fluid pen I got and filled in each negative space with a variety of bright colors instead of the gloomy grays and blues of the actual sky. After I finished with watercolors, I removed the masking fluid, used pencil to re-draw the plants, and added some light gel pen branches to add more layers.

It was a lot of fun just to be sitting down and creating a project “just because” and reinforced the importance of creating my own art. Sometimes I don’t work in my studio because I don’t have an idea for a project of importance. I forget that the little sketches and doodles are just as important to do because art is just as much about the process as it is the final product.