Some New Things

New Water Tower Painting.

It's been months since I posted some new originals in my shop, but I finally did just that today. There are two new pieces in my shop right now.

Inspired by a Dog Mountain Hike

I was looking through my Flikr page yesterday, trying to come up with a couple of images to draw and paint. I forget how many photos I have over there. I found these two images and I knew I wanted to recreate them with pencil and paint.

While I was looking through those photos I came across a number of pictures that I took while I lived in Michigan. They brought back a lot of memories. This photo in particular reminded me how much I used to love selling on Etsy and getting so many orders everyday.

So many!

 It's hard to believe that I used to send out a stack of orders like that almost everyday! I don't get that many orders in a month these days. I'm okay with though. My wholesale/consignment business has been growing steadily and I feel like it's just going to keep growing. I'm going to surpass the sales I made last year, and the two years before that!

It's hard not to miss those days sometimes. It was such an immediate transaction and it made me feel so validated. I also really loved packing all those orders. Really!

Ah well. I'm going to mention television again because I remember this clip, from The Office, whenever I start to think about "The Good Ol' Days."



 Oh Andy, you really summed that one up nicely.

Sad Blog

My blog has been so sad and neglected these days.

Forest Park and some sunshine.

I'm sorry blog. It's been a crazy busy 2 months. Things like blogs tend to fall by the wayside when things in life get crazy busy.

I'm here, typing away, right now though!

It's the beginning of a new year. A year that ends in 13. 2012 was a great year for me, and I was sad to see it end. But, maybe 2012 will be even better!

It's off to a great start so far. Nate and I stayed in and kept it simple last night. We rang in the new year, snuggled on the couch with Chloe, of course. The first day of the year was pretty fantastic. We got together with a couple of our friends and headed to Forest Park for a short hike with our dogs. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out and although it was a bit chilly, we managed to keep really warm.

Hiking with Chloe and friends.

We went out for a nice lunch and headed home. I started two new illustrations and now I'm catching up with some work.

I don't know what the new year has in store for me, but so far it's off to a good start. I'm really, really, hoping to switch jobs this year. I'm not sure if that means working on my art full time (which would be amazing and awesome!!), or finding another means for making money. Either way, I will be working hard towards a new job. An artist's assistant maybe? Working in a smaller retail environment? I'm not really sure, but I would like something different.


Well, I hope 2012 was a great year for you, and I hope that 2013 is even better!

Commissions

Whew! 6 hours of painting under my belt today!
It felt really great!

I started working on a pug commission today. Her name is Lucy. I was able to get all of what you see in the painting done in one hour! I'm getting fast. It's also a lot easier to paint the pug after fussing with the faces in the American Gothic painting for 4 and a half hours...

Hopefully the guy's face comes to me quickly. I feel like I'm almost there...

I just can't seem to get the brush and my brain to connect.

Hopefully I can get the faces resovled soon so I can move on to detailing the house and the lady's smock!