Stress and Art

This past week was a very stressful one for me. It started out rough and it finished even harder. I thought it was bad up until Thursday when I got a call from my credit card saying someone was trying to access my information (not make fraud charges, but actually access my information with what the card company assumed is my social security number) and that they felt a case of identity theft was in progress. I spent the rest of the day running around and making phone calls and putting alerts on my credit and all that. Fun.

Then on Friday there were several more big things, and well... Blah! I hope a cruise shows up in my mailbox to make up for all of this! Or a winning lotto ticket! Of course, I'd actually have to make the effort to go out and play, so there's that.

Anyway, with life stress banging down my door and plenty of art stress to go around with the commissions hanging over my head, I did that rainbow picture and I enjoyed it so much that when everything blew up again on Friday, I put down my commission work and made another little one:

"Emmy" 4x6" Watercolor, exclusively in my Etsy Shop

A friend said her hair is like an Andees Mint. So now I'm craving those. Maybe I was when I painted her too?

Anyway, I'm so enjoying the watercolors that I plan on making a painting I had intended to be in acrylic, in watercolors instead. I'm looking forward to it... but I can't do it until I clear out the backlog of commissions I have. I decided I'm taking too many to get my normal work done right now too, so I set a new limit for myself, and I hope that will help me get focused back on my normal work. I haven't completed anything from my Alice series and here we are in the home stretch of January. Unacceptable! Plus I needed to paint one painting per month for a new calendar this year (which needs to be done by October, actually, so that breaks down to almost two paintings a month) and I haven't done either of those.

I think the biggest thing I put off or forgot to do (no, put off... if I'm being honest, I think it's put off) is to make my big goal of what do I want to have completed by December 31st 2013? And then broken that down into monthly increments, and possibly into weekly ones as each month hits in order to make it a weekly goal and move me forward in a way I SHOULD be moving. Willy-nilly leads to disorder and chaos, and while I love a little chaos, this isn't working.

So, today I'm working out what my end-game for this year should be and breaking it down from there! I've decided to do art shows again this year, which will be an older newer experience. It's been a while (several years.) I don't know if it's worth my time or not... but I'll never know if I' don't give it a go!