If I could only find the balance like the statue of the Scales of Justice...

I’ve been spending time looking to the future this past week – have you, too? It’s the beginning of the year, time to resolve what it is that we’ll do in the new year.  I think I’ve shared with you before that I’m not too good at that.  But this year, I’m going to take it on faith that all those people who say you can’t accomplish something unless write it down are right, and I’m going to put my goals in writing.  I’ve even started the journal page that will be the repository…and trying not to be TOO critical about what it looks like!

Life seems to be about the balance, between all that we do and enjoy and all that we have to do.  I’m still looking for that balance, and am hoping that I can find more of it if I quit the day job!  But I don’t want to do that in vane, because what I say I want to do is take my art past the hobby and dabbling phase and into the working artist phase.  I’d like to sell some of my art on Etsy, which of course means that I need to focus on making some art.  And I’d like to get published in a magazine which of course means, you guessed it, I have to SUBMIT something to a magazine.  So there is work that I need to do in order to meet my goals – but isn’t that always the case?

I enjoy drawing the faces – practicing an art I did not know was in my hands.  But I’m not sure what to do with them all.  When I first started to collage, the art was all about the background layers and how the colors moved in and out of those – with the actual drawings being less of the point sometimes.  But now I’ve learned to draw better, I can’t quite get these faces to be part of the pieces – they want to be the ONLY part of the pieces!  Such Divas!  So I find myself compartmentalizing the art that I’m doing, doing the drawing work, and doing some collage work.  But they should be able to live together!

So for the next few weeks, I’m going to work on taking these drawings that seem too precious and making them work well with others – as I did here, take one of the drawings and then sketch it with graphite (I used Generals Sketch and Wash below, which allows you to sketch, and then use a wet brush to move the graphite around just like paint) or use paints or crayons, like I’ve done in pieces I’ve shown you here in the past.  I still have the two pieces I started at Christmas and showed you on December 30th – the journal drawn piece is almost done, but the collage first piece is not.  It has a ways to go before I can share it here.

What about you – what are you doing this month? Have you found your groove this year, a nice balance between the what you musts and what you wants?  I’d love to know how you find your balance so feel free to share with all of us!

 

 

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