Last painting of 2008

Ring of Seasons
6x8 watercolor
Original for sale on etsy





Thank You notes featuring this design are available in my etsy shop.

Year in Review

Since everyone else is doing it. I had to think for a while to come up with anything I accomplished, but maybe there actually is something there. Usually I don't feel as if I have done much.

Accomplishments

• Survived until my 30th birthday (today)

• Finished 12+ paintings for my first book from a major publisher: "Watercolour Made Easy: Fairies And Fantasy" which come out in February.

• Was a vendor at a good size craft show for the first time in years and did surprisingly well considering we had snow in May and no heating.

• Self published my webcomic in an actual professionally printed book form. 

• Finished around 65 paintings total 

• Reached 500 sales on Etsy. 

• Completely my first digital painting since 2003. 

• Learned offering commissions in Artist Alley isn't so bad. • Re-designed my website to the first original design since it's birth. 

• Received an award from an art show 

• Sold an original at Dragon Con 

• Was featured in Art Scene International 

• Fixed some bad licensing choices to the best of my ability. 

• Got a bike and actually used it a bit.

• Realized my art is not good enough if I want to accomplish the illustration goals I'd originally had years ago and future projects I would like to do and determined things I would like to improve. Somewhere I got stuck being a "fairy artist" because it was easier to do things that I knew I could sell rather than work on improving things which were not immediately marketable. I have finally reached a point where I can look at something not completely beautiful and think it might actually be fun to paint.

Goals

• Be more organized. 

• Draw more comics and improve them because I am horribly out of practice. 

• Sketch more often just for the purpose of improving, not only when planning a painting (I've made a good start at this because I filled as many pages in a month as I did all summer).

• Work on sketching expressions, animals, kids, movement, proportions, buildings etc. Remember to sketch from a basic skeleton rather than starting with the head. Try not to center compositions. 

• Paint some ideas from my long list of painting ideas 

• Try to start on one of the themed illustration lists 

• Complete another painting with water soluble oils. 

• Try to get more illustration jobs. 

• Go to Cartoonist Conspiracy meetings.

Winter comes

Personally, I am not a fan of snow. I hate shoveling and scraping the car, and getting the car stuck in it. Plus I think people who go ice fishing have got to be crazy.







In other news, there is a syndication of this blog available on livejournal.

Rose Fairy

Rose Fairy
3x5 watercolor
For sale on Etsy