Making art regularly is a habit. Stopping for a while meant that I had to figure out something simple to work on to build the “habit muscle.” I chose water colors (because of easy clean-up) painted on an inexpensive water color pad with 12 pages that I picked up before Christmas. Then I decided to play with grid journaling. I didn’t know what I wanted to do except become more familiar with some new water colors I’d recently purchased. That was it.

My excuses for not making art were myriad!

About a year and a half ago I decided I need to figure out a way to sell some of my art. The cupboards in my studio space aka garage were getting fuller, the shelves were crammed and as I learned to use oil and cold wax, I was accumulating pages of new work and many small panels. It soon became obvious. I needed to do something.

I signed up for a service to help me make an art website. At first I thought all I needed to do was a little bit of work trying to set up the website. They said it could be done in 14 days …. 

Easier said than done!

I spent the better part of last year learning how to upload photos, and found out the resolution was not high enough equality for good prints. I did not understand aspect ratios and what they had to do with my art work. I bought a new camera because I needed to be able to take my own photos…I really don’t know how to use the camera properly yet.

My rationale was… 

I didn’t want to pay to have someone else put a website together in two weeks or so—because I wanted to understand how to fix and make the changes myself.

I could not have done this alone…I attended zoom calls for help five days a week! My gratitude for the tech guys from ASF who help with tech support cannot be measured. They are my buddies.  Their patience and help were beyond belief. Now, when I drop in for a quick question and hear the questions of the newbies, I can tell exactly where they are on the journey.

And then there was marketing…

Once I felt confident that I could take care of the website, I moved over to learn about marketing. That involved a lot of facing my fears and doing things afraid. Growing an email list is just hard. 

I realized that the balancebetween admin and creating art needed to shift and I would love creating art to take about 80% of my time and energy, while the business stuff should take about 20%. Two weeks into 2023 I think 50/50 is more realistic.

I have promised myself to create more often. So far, as of Dec 31, I’m committed to working on my art practice daily. I started with little water color grids to keep myself moving forward—sideways—picking up a brush and making marks.

The important thing is to stop thinking so much and JUST START!!

I have goals for this year that include making larger art work on panels, teaching some workshops, traveling to a destination and hope some artists will join me, and doing more commissions, to name a few. 

What are some of your goals? Let’s support each other in our creative pursuits.