A Fresh Start in a New Year and Old Problems- January 5 (Patreon)

Hey Artnerds!

Happy New Year! I really like New Year's as its a chance to take stock, refresh, and make changes. This year, I want to try some new art forms (maybe I'll actually learn how to use gouache this year) and dedicate more time to making crafts that interest me. I'd love to pick sewing back up, and I hope to use my local library's maker space.

Last year, my goals included finishing up Chapter 9 of 7" Kara and sharing it again, making a line sheet and sending it out to local businesses, and getting a Faire account set up for wholesale. Chapter 9 needs one more round of editing, Joseph is updating my website and then I'll resume updating the webcomic. We created and sent out a line sheet to a couple local businesses, but never heard back. I also set up my Faire and took photos specifically for the site.

It can be really hard to maintain momentum, especially when things aren't going well. I always have a difficult time starting new things (unless the novelty is irresistable) and I often have a hard time finishing things. I thrive when I get a lot of feedback and in an attention economy, everyone is short on time. 10I know the past couple years have been a struggle for many, and this may be something you can relate to as well. I wish I had good tips on finding enough momentum to get you past the finish line- maybe if you have some tips, you can share them with me?

Most of yall are basically finished with your winter holidays, but for me, the Carnival Season is about to begin! Yall know from my art that I like Mardi Gras, and I particularly love King Cake.

I'll need all the sugar and good vibes I can get, as sadly, my desktop computer started having some pretty serious issues. Joseph is on the case with getting it back up and running, but I thought I'd give yall a heads up, as we don't actually know how long it will take to fix it to the point where I can use Premiere and edit video. Right now, I can't even pull video or photos from my phone, making it difficult to share process here on Patreon.

It's a bummer, because I've got some great videos that I'm working on, but it's just a hold up, not a set back, and I've got plenty of backlog.

So that said, if you want to keep up with what I'm doing on a day to day or weekly basis, I recommend you follow me on Bsky or Threads.

I've got a class this week on creating stained glass inspired acrylic bookmarks. I really want to play around with stained glass aesthetics this year and possibly even take a class on glass cutting. Joseph's giving my class presentation a once over and I need to print the templates for my students, but otherwise, the class is ready to teach. Naturally, I recorded the process and will edit and share that with yall when I can.

Sometimes it takes me a really long time to get back to art I started, and since moving back to Louisiana, I've noticed that I have a real issue with watercolor paper spoilage. I have some theories (terrible air quality, since we live in Cancer Alley, the humidity can be a challenge), but I have an inked illustration that I'd like to try to salvage, so I'm going to attempt to resize this illustration and see if I can make something of it.

I'm also using this computer downtime to read through some of my artist art books and write short reviews of the book, for a compilation video covering several books.

And as always, I'm trying to work on my backlog of oh so tempting art supplies so I can get these doompiles out of my studio and living room.