It’s been a while since I’ve posted my weekly blog. I’ve been busy with my whole family catching the plague all of December. Or rather, we’ve been hit over and over again this cold and flu season since my oldest started Kindergarten in September. December seemed to hit us particularly hard though. Between that and the holidays I just decided to put my art on the back burner for a month.
2022 brought a lot of changes in my personal life. In December 2021 I gave birth to our second daughter and in 2022 we watched her grow into an exploring little one year old. My husband quit his job of 17 years and changed careers to where he’s working 10 + hours a day. It’s a huge change for our family and has been a big adjustment, especially as we battle a harsh flu season. This hasn’t left me a lot of time to focus on my artwork. Despite that, when I reflect on 2022 I realize just how much I accomplished after having a baby (and adjusting to a crazy new schedule with my husband’s work and my oldest daughter heading to school). I’m proud of how many of my goals I reached.
I made 21 bookmarks (which is 9 more than I made the year before) including starting a large series (all of the Doctors from Doctor Who) that I do intend to finish this year. This was my 3rd year creating the Classic Horror Crew annual bookmark and I think it’s my best one yet. I’m so grateful for Paul’s trust in me to make a bookmark every year that reflects their book club. I also helped spearhead Art For Ukraine which brought many artists together to raise money for the citizens of Ukraine. I personally donated $100 worth of bookmarks sold and together we raised $2,480 CAD. All proceeds went to the Canadian-Ukraine Foundation and it went towards providing necessary items for those affected by the war.
When COVID started in 2020 I had to completely revamp the way I sold my artwork. I could no longer do local markets and fairs, could no longer do in-person gallery shows and I found myself at a loss on how to share my art. This is when I started focusing on smaller works of art that I could easily ship across the country and around the world. Now that everything has opened back up and we can do in-person events again I find myself once again trying to decide what the best way to share my art should be. I need to find a middle ground where I can both share online and in-person. 2022 was my introduction back to selling my art locally. In October I did the Artisan Fall Fair at Pope Mountain Arts (my first event at the local arts space since 2019) and then in November I did the local Craft Fair which was always annually but the last Craft Fair was in 2019 as well. I was also the featured artist at PMA for the month of November. I spent two mornings out of the month hanging out at the building working on some bookmarks while people came and viewed my art. I had one class stop by which is always enjoyable. I love the honesty of children and they have the best questions.
For 2023 I want to focus again on selling locally while simultaneously selling online. I’d love to create a dynamic shop within my webpage and drop Etsy forever. The Art For Ukraine fundraiser made me really want to do something like that again. I’d love to run an “Art For…” campaign every year specifically focusing on local groups that could benefit from it. It’s something I need to spend some more time planning and talking to other artists about.
I don’t know if I’m ready to get back into painting canvases and doing gallery shows again. Having my work featured at PMA in November was fun but also reminded me of the headaches that come with doing a gallery. My preferred method right now is using a combination of Tombow Dual Brush Pens, inks and sometimes pastels on watercolour paper. It’s very portable and easy to quickly set up and clean up which is important when you’re going by the schedule of young kids.
My in-laws got me a Square reader and a locking cash box (goodbye cardboard box with an elastic band around it) after I spent a lot of time humming and hawing about the things I need if I want to keep doing markets. I’m excited to have ticked two of the things off that list now and so grateful for this really thoughtful gift. I’ve been considering doing the Farmer’s Market this year and those two items really helps towards that goal. I also need a tent to protect my work from the weather. I’m not sure if doing the Farmer’s Market would be worth it for me to do week-to-week. There is a yearly membership fee and a weekly fee for a spot at the Spirit Square on top of that. My artwork is very niche and that niche isn’t exactly the majority of the patrons in my small town. To make it worth my time I’d have to consistently sell enough week-to-week. I have some ideas to make that more likely and if I can figure out to pull it all off I think joining the Farmer’s Market every week would be a good avenue of sales to add to my repertoire. I would likely need to bring my kids with me but that hiccup is the least of my concerns.
Another exciting thing for 2023 is the opening of an artisan shop! The lovely Nikita of So Divine Crochet is working on opening an artisan shop called So Divine Artisan Boutique. I’m really excited about this and feel it’s something our town could really use. There’s a few local businesses that have space for local makers things but it’s not a lot and they’re usually looking for a certain small northern community aesthetic. This will be a storefront with a good mixture and variety of things crafted by local makers. I applied but asked her to put my application on the bottom of the pile, for now. My family being sick for so long has turned my life into hell and I really need time to recover and get my life back on track before taking on anything like this. I will also have to reassess my prices as well as my content. I have enough experience to know which things sell well to most people in my community. Like I’ve said, my stuff is very niche and the people in my community largely aren’t within that niche. This is something I’ve been fine with in the past but if I’m going to take a gamble where I have to pay to have my items in a shop then I need to reassess how much of it is likely to actually sell. Her prices are totally reasonable, I just don’t have confidence that what I am currently creating will sell to our local demographic. Super exciting to have someone with the experience she does as well as the enthusiasm and passion in our corner. To quote Nikita herself; our success is her success! One thing I’ve really struggled with is promotion (especially on a local level) and the legwork involved in putting my stuff out there. Nikita is willing to do that legwork and to me that’s 100% worth it. As a mum of two small children I just don’t have time to do this all on my own. To have that kind of support available in my town means the world to me.
2023 is also going to bring new ventures in design for me. I don’t want to go into too many details because it is very much still in the planning phase but my sister is playing around with design transfers and is currently waiting on ink for a sublimation printer her and her partner bought. They want to create designs that reflect who they are, what they enjoy about our community and the northern playground we live in. She’s asked that I help come up with designs and this is an opportunity I would fully love to be a part of. Like I said though, still the early planing stage and we will see where this idea takes us.
Now I just have to get my family healthy again so I can get my life back.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were wonderful and I hope the new year brings lots of happiness and opportunity for you. Let’s put the last few years in the rear-view mirror and move forward with hope, optimism and creativity.
DISCLAIMER: This is going to be really long; I did a lot this year. So get a cup of tea or coffee, get comfy and settle in for this novel (don’t worry, this novel has pictures!).
I can’t believe we’re in December now. This year has absolutely flown by! When I take a moment to breathe and look back on the year I realize just how many of my goals I accomplished this year and how much I have to be proud of.
Looking back at Last Years’ Reflections and Resolutions I see how many goals I actually completed and the rest I basically forgot about.
Finish Celestial Secrets*done!
Publish an art book of the series *I attempted this but could not find a cost-effective way and decided I would need to run a fundraising campaign to launch this project
My first solo show (Spring date)*done, sort of… it was a duo exhibition rather than a solo
Add shipping and expand online shop *I actually had to close my online shop and request that people contact me about pieces they want to buy because I couldn’t afford to pay for the shop anymore
Attend more business markets *I attended a LOT of markets this year!
Open more Pet Portrait commissions*I launched a whole new style of portrait this year; allowing a more cost-effective option for my followers and raised the price on the pastel portraits which helps cover the extra work that they require
Add to my stock on hand*This year I focused on creating originals at low prices
Help PMA with their newsletter publication *I actually totally forgot about this one… it’s something I should bring up with the new coordinator!
Write more, paint more, draw more!*I am fairly certain that I did, indeed, accomplish this goal!
Another art vault auction *My second vault auction happened in July and was fairly successful
Buy a new laptop*I bought my new laptop after the vault auction, and it has certainly gained a lot of mileage on it’s keyboard since then!
2020 Calendar *Another goal I forgot about!
My biggest accomplishment happened early in the year when I launched my Celestial Secrets series in June (I spent the first 5 months of the year working on finishing the series and putting together this show). This is a series I spent over 3 years on and kept pushing the gallery date back (even by a whole year) in order to get enough pieces to fill the gallery. In the end I still didn’t have enough to do a solo show and opened it up to my sisters boyfriend Keenan Traczyk as his style sat very nicely next to my own, and I wanted to encourage him to share his work with the community because it is so unique and beautiful. Between the two of us we were able to fill the space quite nicely! I had 27 pieces in the show and it was the largest collection I’ve ever had in exhibition. Six months later and I only have a handful of the larger pieces left. I’ve worked at selling most of those pieces (The Big Guy I decided to keep for a while because it looks so nicely on the wall outside my studio!) and have decided to retire the rest to my studio. However, just because these pieces don’t see the light of day on a regular basis, doesn’t mean they’re not available. If you see a piece listed from Celestial Secrets that you wish to purchase, please CONTACT ME! All of the remaining Celestial Secrets pieces are on sale at 30% off until January 1st 2020.
It was during my show in June that I discovered how to create vibrant, creative pet portraits using mixed media. Mixed media is a piece created using a multitude of different tools. I most often mix watercolour paints with charcoal, pastel, and inks. It creates a very dynamic picture but I also have a monetary motive for creating these portraits. Before coming up with the mixed media portraits I offered two styles; black and white pastel/charcoal and coloured pastel. Pastel pencils are expensive and break easily. I found I was getting frustrated with my lead breaking no matter how carefully I sharpened it. This meant going through pencils quickly and having to order more. The most cost-effective way to order pastel pencils is of course in a set, but when you use mostly earth tones to do pet portraits you don’t need any more bright pinks, blues, purples etc. so I started to find the best way to order was single pencils. Like most products today, going cheap meant a cheap product that broke even faster. So it was necessary to purchase better quality supplies (which I now more and more feel it’s important to buy quality art supplies). Mixed media meant if I didn’t have a colour in my pastel collection I could borrow that colour from a different medium. It means I can use more of my supplies on-hand than I would otherwise use with just producing pastel portraits. So I raised the price on my coloured pastel pet portraits and slid the mixed media portraits into the previous price range for the coloured pastels. I personally like the look of the mixed media portraits better anyway. They are more vibrant in colour and more creative in style.
After the show in June I launched my second Vault Auction in July (to celebrate my birthday!). Between the sales at my show and the sales in my vault auction I was able to purchase a new laptop – which was desperately needed. Getting into the habit of using that laptop on a regular basis was more difficult than I thought it would be. It was a habit I had to make myself get into. I was use to having such poor access to a computer that I got use to doing what I could through my phone and just neglecting the rest. I still don’t stay on top of my online POD (Print On Demand) shops as much as I would like to, but I’ve managed to add a LOT of new works to RedBubble and a few new to Displate this year, as well as launching a whole new POD shop at Society6.
For my birthday in July, my friends and family pooled together to get me a huge set of Tombow Dual Brush pens. (Quick disclaimer; I am in no way sponsored and this is all the result of my own opinion) I am absolutely in love with these markers. It was these markers that really helped me push my mixed media portrait skills. I started experimenting with these markers, adding water (they are water soluble), combining colours, shading etc. and have had a lot of fun creating new styles with them.
In August I watched the Perseids Meteor Shower from my back deck for the first time and was amazed by what I saw in the sky. This one night of star-gazing inspired me and fueled the birth of a new series. With Celestial Secrets I focused on fantastical paintings showcasing brilliant interpretations of deep space and mixing it with the fantasy of animals bringing spirit to the paintings. With this series I wanted to focus closer home in a more realistic manner. Focusing on our solar system; the sun, its 9(ish?) planets and their orbiting moons. The first painting I did was actually of Saturn, which was inspired by a gorgeous Hubble capture of the ringed planet. It was after this first painting I decided I definitely had a series on my hands. Next I painted Mercury and Venus (wanting to paint the series in order from closest to the sun to farthest away) and decided I would do each planet in acrylic on canvas and their orbiting moons in watercolour (later I learned that Jupiter actually has 63 moons… uhhhmmm…). I wanted to not only share the beauty of our solar system but also to educate people about it. A lot of people have a disconnection with the universe theses days. People focus on their daily lives and forget just how small we are, how immense and strange the universe is. So with each planet I am sharing a lot of fun facts and a video time-lapse of the painting process. You get a space lesson and an art lesson in one fun blog post!
I finished 3 paintings but the project was put on hold when I decided to join the Fort St. James 45th Annual Craft Fair. I have plans to pick it back up in the new year.
In September I joined the first annual Anonnymous Art Show in Vanderhoof. They are raising money to build their own art facility, and this was the first show of it’s kind to help raise those funds. The entry fee was cheap and like PMA they only took 10% of sales. The show was open to all artists, all ages, all themes. The only consistency was the size of the canvases (6×6), and you received one of these canvases with your entry fee. You could submit more pieces if your provided your own 6×6″ canvases. I planned on submitting more but I ended up not having time and actually painted my canvas the night before it hitched a ride to Vanderhoof. I really loved the passion and idea behind this art show. I loved that it was for a good cause and open to everyone and everything. It offered a wide variety of paintings to view and purchase, but the size still made them consistent and aesthetically pleasing. I found there was just a wee bit of poor communication, but I think I chalk it up to the lady who was putting it together being super busy! Plus with my being in Fort and I don’t drive on the highway often or into Vanderhoof, so I’m sure it would have been a different experience if I were able to be there in person to talk to her. She had a lot of grand ideas about how to communicate to the viewers to honor the artists by putting together a website that introduced you to each artist, and the link would be given to those who purchased art/available after the show (to keep the anonymity until the end). There were over 100 pieces submitted (I’m not sure how many artists, but the limit was 3 pieces per artist). The show also ran a little backwards from what I am use to. It was open for viewing during the week and then there was a “reception” on the following Saturday, and the show was left open for a couple more days. Most gallery exhibitions I’ve been a part of have an opening night reception followed by opening hours to view the show. We headed to Vanderhoof and had dinner first, thinking we still had a couple hours after dinner to catch the exhibition. We were sorely disappointed when we arrived to find at least half of the paintings were already sold and removed from the wall. I have never been to an exhibition that removed the pieces before the show was over. I didn’t even think that was an option! Had we known they would be doing that we would have gone to see them before going for dinner. It was still really neat to see the different works of art that were left though. I also really liked how they tried to make the show interactive by setting up a little “paint station” and photo props on the windows that were hand painted. It was definitely a very creative and original show! I did give feedback to the lady who organized it that it’s customary to leave the pieces up so everyone can view them, and she agreed and said she’d like to do that for the next one. My piece was still there when we left so I assumed it wasn’t going to sell and was trying to arrange pickup, again there was some lack of communication because the second attempt to pick it up we learned it had sold! I received my check in the mail shortly after. I’m so glad it sold! I wish I knew who bought it and I hope they know who I am, as I have no clue if the buyers were told who the artists were and maybe given their contact or anything like that. That was my only hesitation in entering this show was that I prefer to be recognized for my work. But I understand why they wanted it to be anonymous – to keep the integrity of the work without bias about who painted it. My dad and his girlfriend were able to spot my work right away though, so that was fun! It’s neat to know I do have a consistent enough style that my fans can spot my work (as mine wasn’t the only “space themed” one either).
My next focus was on creating original pieces for the upcoming Craft Fair. This is a huge event in our town and it runs for two days. People come from all over the surrounding areas the participate as vendors and shop. This was my first time participating in the Craft Fair. I had been saying for years that I was going to enter the Craft Fair and finally I decided (somewhat last minute) to finally do it. This left me scrambling to make stock. That is when I came up with the original bookmarks, and they really took off with popularity! Especially the animals and they sold out fast! My dad helped me make a display for my canvas paintings and it turned out great! Except I accidentally crunched it in my car as we made it big enough to just fit (with the seats forward). When I shut the car off the seat moved back and compressed the soft wood and bent it. I’m hoping this is something I can fix! (Or rather, that my dad can fix). I won’t get into too much detail about the Craft Fair because you can read more in my blog post linked above, but we ended up having a large power outage that cut the fair down from 2 days to 1.
I had two weeks between the Craft Fair and Moonlight Madness and I ended up coming down with a nasty cold. I had planned on doing another round of animal bookmarks for the Moonlight Madness but I only completed two of them. There was also a last minute art show that came together so beautifully. I’ve never seen a group show planned so quickly with such a fantastic turnout. Over 30 artists participated from Fort St. James and surrounding areas. They took up every square inch they could in the space available and it looked fantastic! The generous volunteers worked hard to make it happen and they didn’t even take a cut of sales – it was all non-profit and all sales went directly to the artists! I even sold a brand new painting that was only a week old! I made more money at that show than I did sitting at the pop up shop for Moonlight Madness! It was still an enjoyable evening though (despite coughing my lungs out all night). My husband brought our daughter to town for the evening. It was bitter cold out but she braved the cold like a champ and collected a Subway bag full of candy from the parade (which was one of the best parades we’d seen in some time in our town!). We had a rush of people come to the pop up shop after the parade but of course by then I was ready to pack up and go home to bed. I made enough to cover the cost of my table and a little extra so it wasn’t a total loss! I really enjoy the comradely of the pop up shop group, everyone understands the struggle and is there together supporting each other.
A couple of weeks ago I painted a creative piece titled “Blood, Sweat and Tendus”. I donated it to En Pointe Dance Studio to hang in their studio and be appreciated by their dancers. My original intentions were to sell it for their fundraising goals (going to Nationals!) but they wanted to keep it and that is entirely up to them. My daughter attends this dance school and it has been such a fantastic thing in her life. The people are kind, caring and dedicated to dance and the youth that attend. I wanted to help them get to nationals so I painted another version of the same painting and am offering it for sale and 50% of proceeds will go to the dance school! Please give me a shout if you’d like to buy it! The price is really quite low for a painting of it’s size, so you’re getting a good deal and helping a great cause!
Blood, Sweat and Tendus (#2) $250 – 50% of proceeds go to En Pointe Dance Studio
2019 was one of my most successful years yet. I reached so many big goals and created over 80 works of art (estimated to be about 90 by the end of the year).
2020 RESOLUTIONS
It’s really hard to imagine how 2020 will be able to top 2019, but I will try! My resolutions for next year are somewhat short this time, but I’m sure my goals will grow as the year develops.
Spring Art Show
Complete Solar System Series
2020 Calendar
2020 Bookmark Collection
Participate in other local art shows
2020 Craft Fair
I take December and the beginning of January off from commissions, exhibitions and markets. I will be spending this time on celebrating the holidays with my family, working on Christmas gifts and practicing my art for the sake of improving my skills. My daughter’s 3rd birthday is at the beginning of January, so I won’t return to the normal swing of things until January 7th.
Happy Holidays to everyone and I will see you in the New Year!
sLs Artistry 