New Years Resolutions!

I am getting a bit ambitious!

• I’m having a baby this year
• I’m completing a business course this year
• I’m writing a book this year
• I’m entering art shows this year (which I need to paint a lot of paintings for)
• And, I’m beginning a challenge to draw every day this year

Who would like to join me? With that last challenge on the list I mean!!

I have done drawing every day challenges in the past; the longest one was about 2oo days. I have been looking back on the drawings I did during the challenge and remembering how worth while the experience was and seeing how much my drawing improved over those 200 days, though on most of the drawings I spent no more than a half hour on. The drawings in this post are from the Inktober challenge I completed last year.

So, why?

• Because regular practice is good practice and every day is pretty regular.
• Because when I have to draw I can’t consider how I feel. I can’t decide that I will feel more like drawing tomorrow because today is the only day. That is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t get better at drawing, because they will do it tomorrow.
• Because drawing every day will help with any creative blocks that do come up now and then. It will keep me creating, at least something, while I may feel totally uninspired.
• Because sometimes I don’t think I have the time to just ‘draw for fun’ (as important as that is) and this will give me a time to be creative and explore different drawing ideas and also feel like I am achieving something bigger.
• Because at the end of the year I will have a collection of drawings I can look back on and see how much I will have improved over the year. That is a really inspiring thing to be able to do!
• Because the discipline of consistency and drawing a lot will help me to keep putting my ideas on paper. I have always identified with Da Vinci in this quote: “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

That is the idea and the reasons and making it public now must only harden my resolve. So! Who would like to join me? Beginning 1st January 2017 to draw in any medium every day for 365 days!

I will share the best of my work on this blog from the challenge, but on my facebook page I will upload an image of every drawing I do throughout the year. Even if it is a total disaster, it is still a drawing.

Let 2017 begin!

What gets an Artist Excited

Lots of things get an artist excited! But when it comes to selling work we aren’t excited about it until something happens. The thought of approaching galleries or advertising work is scary and we fear rejection. But if we are accepted, get into the gallery, or sell a piece, we get really excited. I might really be a real artist after all!

A few weeks ago, after a lot of egging on from my Dad, I rang a gallery and was welcomed to take in some work to show them. I chose four large paintings to take it, loaded them up in our dusty little car (gravel roads!), and took them into Masterpiece Gallery in Kerikeri.

The owner happened to have just gone out when I arrived, but the lady working there sat me down and took my details and helped me with pricing the pieces. Then said I would have to wait for Ian’s decision and warned me that they already have too much artwork for the walls in their new gallery space. So I left my work their leaning up against the counter and tried not to be too hopeful.

Not long after I left I got a call from the gallery owner, Ian, who asked if I was still in town, would love to meet me, and my paintings were already on the wall. Now I got excited! When I walked back in two of my paintings were hanging facing the doorway. I chatted to Ian for a bit, a lovely and enthusiastic man who said positive things about my art and seemed hopeful that he could sell it! He likes to price the work in their quite low (from an artist’s point of view) so that work keeps moving and the strategy seems to be working for the gallery is doing well and there is always new work in there to enjoy.

Currently two of my largest hut paintings are in the gallery. Murderer’s Hut and Rock’s Ahead Hut (above). So if you find yourself in the town of Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, be sure to go into the Masterpiece Gallery under the clock tower in the town center and check out my paintings, and all the other brilliant work in there.