Blog

1. Get Fit

Today I'm 177 lbs. Not bad considering all the sweets I've had, so little exercise, and not fasting. But I think I've fully recovered from my injury. This past week I've been waiting for June 1st to roll around so I can start another 30 days of yoga on day 1. So we'll see tonight or tomorrow if the injury has healed.

The whole family has been vegetarian for May. It wasn't a struggle, but don't feel much different either. Perhaps because ice cream and cookies were full on? Did feel a little sluggish, perhaps anemic. Probably needed more dark greens to make up for the lack of meat.

Now that I intend to resume yoga, hopefully I can stop the sweets and start fasting as well, and make a big weight loss.

2. Paint Daily

Almost done the commission piece, so I'll feel more like painting when that's complete. I have been sketching quite regularly though. And watching quite a few drawing lessons on YouTube. Feeling better about drawing and confident that will help my paintings.

3. Increase followers on Pixel.

- Not concerned at the moment

4. Get a table for next Christmas craft sale.

- Not concerned at the moment

5. Create a website

- Not concerned at the moment. When I'm happier with my portfolio, I'll think about it.

6. Print sales

- Not concerned at the moment. I'm in student mode rather than sales.

1. Get Fit

Today I’m 179 lbs, so I haven’t loss any weight. April was a tough month for the fitness journey due to an oblique injury on day 5. Don’t know when or how the injury occurred. Fuck I’m old! But on day 6, I couldn’t even bend over to tie my shoelaces. Recovery was super slow, but felt ready to try yoga a couple weeks later. Felt pain again so stopped the daily yoga again. Practiced the first two days of May and it’s been difficult, so not sure if the muscles are weak or still injured?

The whole family is going meatless for May (an Earth Day thing) so I expect that will have some sort of health impact. But perhaps none if I keep having junk food and sweets. So, I need to make sure that bad stuff stops too.

And I’m going to drink water like a fiend.

2. Paint Daily

Have not been doing that. I started doing sketches during breaks from work. That doesn’t involve all the set up of a painting session and I feel like it’s truly improving. So chuffed about that. Sketching daily is probably a better goal. Anyhow I’ve got to finish my portrait painting commission. That is the priority. Probably on do-over number 5 or 6 now. If I can finish that project in May it will be a major accomplishment and I can experiment daily with smaller paintings thereafter.

3. Increase followers on Pixel

Not even concerned about this today (currently at 42.) I’d rather watch instructional drawing videos on YouTube and practice sketching daily to improve the quality of my work.

4. Get a table for next Christmas craft sale.

Again, I’m not concerned with promotion or sales and want to work on the quality and be happier with my artwork.

5. Create a website

Same boat, not interested in self-promotion right now

6. Print Sales

Not expecting much from this until I can get new and improved artwork uploaded.

I’m really kinda disappointed about my ability to stick to goals. Some goals gotta be ditched or reprioritized along the way, for sure. But I’ve always wanted to drink water and haven’t been able to keep that up. It should be the easiest fucking thing. My whole adult life, I’ve managed to go to work regularly, brush my teeth, and take showers daily. But other stuff like doing a few pushups, or drinking water, I can’t manage. WTF?!

I could not do yoga yesterday and most certainly won't be able to do it tonight either. Somehow I've hurt my lower back, but not sure when. Can barely move. I can't recall ever feeling this immobile. Hope it's just a strain or something that goes away in a couple days. Feeling very mortal, running through lots of worst case sickness scenarios in my mind. Not great self talk.

Anyway, it got me to thinking I don't have many paintings of my youngest son, for him, if I die tonight. In fact, I'd rather have a whole stack of paintings for each kid. I forgot this when making the new year's goals.

So perhaps my goal of doing lot's of paintings this year is still applicable. But the objective of stocking my store and hope for sales, is superseded by gifts for my kids.

See, one of the benefits of being overly dramatic is a higher perspective.

1. 182 lbs today. That's a pretty big slip. But I skipped quite a few days of yoga in March (perhaps a week in total) And I've been evening snacking pretty hard, especially the last few days. Have been waiting until today to start a fresh 30 days of yoga. I hate day 30 in the challenge because she doesn't give audible ques and need to twist my neck to look at the screen to see what she is doing. So I've missed day 30, (and day 31 of March because there isn't one in the 30 days of yoga) as well as day's 28 and 29 for no good reason.

Anyway the plan for April is to intermittent fast as usual, but also cut the snacking between lunch and dinner. Since I wasn't disciplined in March, I intent to be very strict in April. I plan to go hard with the water and tea when I get snacky. Will see if that's helpful.

2. Paint daily. Didn't do that and didn't upload anything in March. That's okay, my day job was nuts but now it's not. Worked on my commission a bit last night. I feel motivated to get it out of the way. Watching hockey has also interfered with painting in the evening, but my team is almost finished, so that will also help clear the decks.

3. Increase followers. 42 followers to date.

4. Christmas craft sale. No progress.

5. Website. No progress

6. No new sales to report.

I've been tempted to make some larger paintings, because that's what appears to sell better on Saatchi. But seriously I should resist that because size doesn't matter on this POD site and I don't even have something in mind to try and scale up. I should really keep experimenting and nail something small before scaling it up. Also need to keep some fresh paint tubes.

1. Well I'm 177lbs, so that is in the wrong direction. But I completed the 30 days of yoga and feel like my shape is better. So I'm a little surprised my weight is not down. I've been intermittent fasting 16:8 pretty consistently. I'll start another 30 day yoga challenge tonight (YWA) and continue with the fasting. In addition to these two things, I'll focus on increasing the protein portion of my diet, particularly at breakfast, and cut out the sweets between my two meals. Let's see if that makes an impact.

2. Now have 45 works posted. That is not on pace, so need to ramp that up.

3. Now have 38 Pixel followers. That's not on pace either, but i haven't been engaging in the community daily as planned. So need to get that back on the rails.

4. Christmas craft sale. I might replace this one with the Stampede art sale. Di doesn't think the Christmas Craft sale will have art buyers. She didn't see much activity around the artist booths. A Stampede booth would be HUGE! That might be a longer term goal. Maybe a Christmas market would be a nice toe in the pool.

5. Website. yeah need to do still. An interesting thing I've been thinking about is posting art on new platforms. I rarely get views on FAA and Saatchi. But if a new site takes off, I'd have fewer competitors for views.

6. No new sales to report.

1. 177lbs today - gained 2 pounds this year. Still on the yoga train and feel good about that. It looks like I've put on muscle, but the fat parts are still fat. So I'd still like to lose weight. Last month I wanted to eat more protein and less carbs, but that wasn't measuring or anything. Just tried to make different choices breaking the fast. So I'm going to need to make some deeper cuts. Going to stop snacking between lunch and dinner this March.

2. Paint daily. Didn't do that. 45 images uploaded at the moment - behind pace. I got to get these commissions out of my way. I feel guilty about painting without addressing the commissions, but not excited about working on them. Hopefully I'll this pace will increase when these must do's are done.

3. Increase followers. 40 followers. I planned increase this by engaging more on this site, but I've been super busy with my day job, which has to take priority.

4. Christmas craft sale. Haven't thought about it to date.

5. Website. Haven't thought about it to date.

6. No new sales to report

I fully believe I should only be selling artwork I can own. But on the other hand, everyone must have a hierarchy of favourites, and my sequence of favourite to least favourite would certainly be unique. Someone else might love and buy an artwork that I'm kinda "meh" about. The piece might work well in their space or design. Sometimes I'm less critical of an artwork after a long period of time. Perhaps because I've let go of the expectations for that piece and see it for what it is.

What are the various categories on the spectrum between "Awesome/Super Proud" and "Embarrassing/You could not pay me enough money to have my name associated with that"?

So where do you draw the line? Do you put "meh" works in your shop?

1. Get Fit

I'm not happy with my appearance. Perhaps subconsciously I'm turning down opportunities because of it. Of course staying healthy is important for my long term health as well. I plan to do yoga daily and intermittent fasting to achieve this goal, and I intend to be pretty strict using these two daily tools. I could probably stand to lose 20lbs of fat, but if I put on a bit of muscle from yoga perhaps it will be fine to only lose net10lbs. So I'll measure my progress starting from 175lbs.

2. Paint Daily.

I've said before that i should be doing at least a little painting a day. But even if I did half of this it would be a huge achievement. But certainty not all paintings are worthy of sharing with the world. Currently this site has 42 works posted, so I'll set my target at 52 more (94 total.) This isn't too aggressive, but it would a big increase as well.

3. Increase Followers on Pixel

Usually when I engage in discussions, it results in an additional follower. So I'll endeavor to do that daily. Currently I have 31 followers. If I'm active in the community 5 days a week for a year, that's 52x5= 250 followers, but I'll set my target at 2 per week. So 2x50= 100 new followers (131 total). As well as engaging those on discussion boards, I can comment or ask open ended questions to artists I admire here.

4. Get a table for next Christmas's craft sale.

Every year my son sells his crafts at the local community centre on a weekend before Christmas. I should do the same with my artwork. I'll need to invest in frames most likely. But it would help motivate me to get an inventory built up.

5. Create a website.

Most likely SquareSpace. But I think it would look better and potential buyers wouldn't have other options flashing in the wings. This would be an additional investment, but all full-time artists seem to have one, so it's prob the thing to do.

6. Print Sales

This is the objective of all these goals. I'm basically starting from zero, so I don't know what to set my target at. Probably should focus on the things I can control like painting regularly and sharing my work, and this will do as it will.

Well that's all I can think of off the cuff. Happy 2021 to everyone. I hope we all achieve our goals.

Had a great weekend painting. Particularly Friday, when this mountain landscape was completed. I'm very please with it and excited to try some more landscapes with a similar process. I did it all in one day. This quickness has been a goal before but never really realized.

Also worked on the commission piece a little bit. I had to throw out the first attempt, and now I'm more motivated about cracking at it because it's not fixing mistakes (which never really works with watercolor). It's probably a good indicator to start over if a piece isn't working out. I need to be more brutal about trying save wrecks.

Continued to work on the this project last night. Again, I was hoping to finish it in one night but didn't even complete it in night two. I'm pretty pleased with it, but it may be a little overworked. So fixing missteps sucked time and contributed to overworked look. But this is nitpicking. I honestly like where it is now.

I hope to refine it a bit more. The hair could be more brownish and I'll go over the features again.

What I'll do differently next time is completing the sketch with a pink watercolor pencil rather than a yellow one. Or perhaps even blue. There is yellow in the eyes that's bugging me and probably not fixable. I will also try to be more mindful to keep the highlights cool and the shadows warm.