On the Path

January is coming to a close today, and I feel like it's the beginning of a huge kick-off for me. Likely, I would have felt this way if I had gotten my act together and sketched out my goals and broken them down in December like I was supposed to!

With February starting tomorrow, that brings with it the need to complete two abstract works, one Alice series work, and two paintings for my calendar I am planning to release for 2014. After thinking it over, and my recent leanings towards fairies, I think I am going to combine my 6-8 fairy painting goal with my calendar and do 12 fairies instead for it. It actually reduces the painting goal I set for me to produce this year, but I think it may very well lead to more.

I've been drawn (pun intended) to fairy and fantasy work since I was in high school, but I always sort of played with it in the background. After doing some research, I realize that there is interest in this sort of thing, and since I enjoy it, I'm going to allow myself to play with the idea of doing a lot more with the fantasy realm in general. I am still a series worker, but I'm already committed (happily) to doing the fairytale series, and preferably only one per year. Last year got muddled and Alice ended up extending over this year as well, but I believe I'll be able to finish it out and then keep it to one fairytale per year in a complete series for that aspect of my work.

The fairies and mermaids and such are just fun right now. But they're fun with possibly a point, and I'm going to explore that now! As a matter of fact, today my goal it to sketch out a new, larger watercolor of a fairy and her peacock that I wanted to do since I started on that commission from my last post. I'm very excited to finally be getting to it, and if it turns out, it will be one of the pages in my calendar! I'm hoping to have the sketch to share with you tomorrow, and I'm actually going to start sharing in  progress pictures too.

It's a dark, rainy, windy day here and I fully intent to spend it with my pencils and watercolors!

In other news, I finished the contest winner's little 5x7 custom painting:

Little Path, 5x7 Acrylic on canvas panel

The request was a red headed boy from behind (approximately seven years old) running into an enchanted forest. I admit, I had to think that one over for a while, because my head just couldn't come up with anything. Finally, I just sketched out the boy running, and laid in whatever came to mind after that. I was worried that the effect was jumbled (owed to the lack of planning on my part and just randomly putting things in) but I think it works. I was a little worried it was too "girly" but hopefully it turned out OK. It's missing my swirls, but they just didn't seem to fit anywhere in the painting. Maybe boys just don't have swirls, and that would have put it way into girl-territory?