It’s time once again for the ubiquitous Year-In-Review post!
This year was a transformative year for me, and especially for my artwork. Starting in January, I made great strides my career endeavors for art. I made an effort to paint, I set aside hours, and I worked. I started with plans to do some graphic design and licensing, and ended the year with a full-blown fine art career endeavor. My plans were disrupted by loss of work time in the summer and fall, though. We’re still working out the kinks.
I made very few posts online. For the first half of the year, it was because my old laptop just wasn’t working in a usable way. In summer, it was because my kids kept me too busy to get much done. In autumn, we were under quite a bit of financial stress, resulting in my keeping my head down, working.
I spent a good portion of time at the beginning of the year focusing on physical and mental health. I made good progress there, though there is more to be done.
New Acquisition:
Microsoft Surface Pro – Replaced my old, broken laptop in July. This, plus Manga Studio, has been very instrumental in my digital art progress.
ART
5 Finished paintings: Blue and Gold, Green Dancer, Composure, Taking Off the Mask, Pleasant Facade
12 Fine Art Post Cards for subscribers
3 coloring pages completed
“Composure” accepted for the Springville Art Salon
Exhibit proposal accepted for an exhibit at Art Access Gallery (Coming in February 2014!)
“Blue and Gold” received 2nd Place in Professional Painting at the Murray City Juried Art Show
CRAFTS
Finished the hardanger project Grandma left behind when she died; gave it to my sister for her wedding
Finished a quilted case for my Microsoft Surface Pro
Started a new hardanger project sans pattern (which is progressing very nicely!)
Worked on a beehive puff quilt with leftover sock yarn. Total: ~20 puffs
WRITING
1,000 words on “The Unicorn’s Childâ€
7,000 words on the “Songseeker†novel
The biggest news here is that instead of creating Songseeker as a graphic novel, I decided to write the story as a novel instead. Mostly this was a result of my discovering that my art style is not particularly suited to sequential storytelling.
GARDEN
15 radishes
Maybe 6 tomatoes (This year’s weather was rotten for tomatoes. Too hot too soon, and then too dry.)
20 carrots
… I can’t even remember what else I planted this year. I didn’t blog about it, and I can’t see that I tweeted about it either. Suffice to say, the weather was terrible for planting and the entire garden suffered. The beets died, the peas produced maybe three pods before burning up, and the only things that really made it through were the rhubarb (which is newly planted and we can’t harvest for another year) and 20,000 volunteer tomatillos that, yet again, I miscalculated the proper harvesting of, so the fruit that grew fell to the ground before it could be eaten. I need to learn more about tomatillos.