Here I am, starting another blog. This time, my main goal is transparency. I want to write honestly. I want to show you - whoever you are - who I am and what I am working on.
I am an artist. I design patterns on my computer, I design digital compositions for watercolor paintings, weaving patterns and photographs together in Photoshop or Illustrator, and I use those designs as a basis to create watercolor paintings. I take photographs, especially photographs of flowers. I also turn these photographs into colored pencil drawings: lines of vibrant color cutting through harsh black paper, a mask of something decorative or feminine or pretty over something mysterious and brooding. I love layers - layers of imagery, multiple steps of process, layers of meaning. I think a lot. I get stuck in my head. I procrastinate a lot. I get scared.
I am also a writer. I come up with incredible fictions - whole worlds, whole families, whole characters - and they dance in my head while I sleep, while I lay in bed trying to sleep, while I'm wide awake, walking through my day. I plot. I organize. I outline. I reorganize. I reoutline. And once and a while, I write. I string words into phrases, into sentences, into paragraphs, into chapters, into novels. And I edit those novels, and reread them, and re-edit them, and send them to a select few to read and offer commentary on. I delete entire pages. I move entire chapters around. I start over from scratch from another character's point of view. I debate sending queries out to literary agents, to publishing houses. I search for self-confidence. I haven't quite found it yet.
I am a woman, a human, a Caucasian-American, a Michigander, a feminist. I am a wife, and - as of about a month ago - a puppy parent. (More on our new puppy Ginny in another post, I'm sure.)
I am (occasionally, temporarily) a substitute teacher. (It's not fun, but it helps pay the bills. A little.) I graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 2010, and, five years later, still have almost no idea what I want to "do" for a job, for a career. I earned a BFA degree with a double major - Watercolor and Graphic Design - and a minor in art history. I earned university and art department honors. My cumulative GPA was 3.97 (my one B+ was in a Jewelry studio class). I graduated when I was 21 years old, in four years - although I had enough credits to graduate after three years, if I'd wanted to stop. (I had a full tuition scholarship. I hadn't wanted to stop.) I loved school. I always have. I love to learn. I taught myself to read before I entered Kindergarten. I still read a lot - my goal this year is to read 85 books in 2015, and I'm currently on track/ahead of that goal. I have a Goodreads account, where I post reviews of everything I read.
I have a store on Etsy, where you can purchase some of my artwork. I also had a website, until a year or so ago, for a custom stationery design company I called "Invites by Andrea." The website is down now - I felt like I wasn't reaching anyone with it, that it wasn't worth the annual cost of $100 to maintain it, to pay for the domain name, to pay for web hosting - but I'll still design stationery for you if you want. I have several hundred brochures all made up listing prices for invitation designs and printing out save-the-dates. I passed a lot out - at bridal shows, mostly - but I still have two boxes that never left my house. Brochures collecting dust, waiting for me to figure out how to be entrepreneurial enough to properly use them. Most of my business was (and continues to be) word of mouth. My customers are family members, and friends, and friends of friends. It's fun work, it's a little extra cash, but it never turned into what I'd imagined it might when I first started out, when I first signed up for that website, when I paid money to set up a table at a bridal show, when I got all those brochures printed.
I had a blog I was using for a while - "Ideas by Andrea" - which was set up as a compliment to my invitation design business. There, I posted images of stationery projects, and DIY ideas, and color combinations. I got a surprising number of hits - 58,000 total pageviews - but no one ever commented on my posts, or followed the bread crumbs to my stationery website to contact me, to commission invitations for their event. They took my ideas and left. I made no money.
And that's fine. Life isn't all about money. I like the idea that someone found something useful on that blog, that my thought of pairing jade green with coral - which I did for my own wedding, in 2011 - was a thought shared, or absorbed, or repeated by others because of pictures I posted, because of words I wrote. I suspect that's all this blog will do, too. Strangers will stumble onto it, stay for a page, make note of something I say, and move on, without me ever knowing the extent of my impact, without me ever making a buck.
But see, last time, I made the blog for other people. I offered suggestions for what kinds of parties they might throw, what sorts of decor they might employ, what cool invitations they might like. I didn't know who was reading it, but I wrote it for them anyway, those anonymous people Google tracked for me, those numbers that showed up on my stats page. This time, I'm going to write for myself. I'm going to explain things that are important to me - things that might not even be art related, political things, maybe, or social justice things. So that other people might understand me or the artwork I create or the stories I write, if they wished to, but also just for my own records, so I remember how I saw the world and my place in it back when I was twenty-six years old. I'm also going to show current projects I'm working on - and be totally transparent about the emotional struggles that go along with them. I'm going to show you who I am; I'm going to show myself who I am.
I think this will translate into fewer pageviews, but - hopefully - deeper connections. Maybe my readers will want to follow my blog because they relate to my struggles or appreciate who I am. Maybe they'll want to purchase a watercolor painting from my Etsy store if they've seen on this blog the steps it took for me to create it, the blocks I had to overcome, the time and effort that went into it. Maybe they'll still just read one post (or skim one post - let's be honest, I'm verbose and the average Internet peruser does not care for verbose), and move on, just like they did on my other blog. But if my main goal is to write for me, to be authentic and transparent because my most important reader is myself, the myself of the future that will come back to reread these entries to remember my life, the myself of the present who is reading them now, as she writes them - than any other positives that come out of this blog will be icing on the proverbial cake; not the cake itself.
(Although, I always did like the icing the best.)
I am an artist. I design patterns on my computer, I design digital compositions for watercolor paintings, weaving patterns and photographs together in Photoshop or Illustrator, and I use those designs as a basis to create watercolor paintings. I take photographs, especially photographs of flowers. I also turn these photographs into colored pencil drawings: lines of vibrant color cutting through harsh black paper, a mask of something decorative or feminine or pretty over something mysterious and brooding. I love layers - layers of imagery, multiple steps of process, layers of meaning. I think a lot. I get stuck in my head. I procrastinate a lot. I get scared.
 |
| "When Fear Gets in the Way" 15"x11", watercolor on paper I started this in 2013. Originally, it was supposed to have a lot more layers of paint, so that the dahlias would look like real dahlias and less like "dahlia abstractions." But I could never bring myself to finish. I was too worried that I would mess up the parts that were looking good so far, that I couldn't make it look any better than it already did, in its half-finished state. So I called it "done," stuck a title on it, and signed the corner. In Victorian Flower Symbolism, dahlias stand for dignity. This painting is my dignity: half-naked, half-exposed. Fear stopped me from bringing it to the level I wanted it to reach. (It's available for purchase, half-finished, as-is, if you're interested. I'm doing a great job selling this, right? Contact me: afrownfe-at-gmail-dot-com.) |
I am also a writer. I come up with incredible fictions - whole worlds, whole families, whole characters - and they dance in my head while I sleep, while I lay in bed trying to sleep, while I'm wide awake, walking through my day. I plot. I organize. I outline. I reorganize. I reoutline. And once and a while, I write. I string words into phrases, into sentences, into paragraphs, into chapters, into novels. And I edit those novels, and reread them, and re-edit them, and send them to a select few to read and offer commentary on. I delete entire pages. I move entire chapters around. I start over from scratch from another character's point of view. I debate sending queries out to literary agents, to publishing houses. I search for self-confidence. I haven't quite found it yet.
I am a woman, a human, a Caucasian-American, a Michigander, a feminist. I am a wife, and - as of about a month ago - a puppy parent. (More on our new puppy Ginny in another post, I'm sure.)
 |
| Ginny, at about 3.5 months old |
I am (occasionally, temporarily) a substitute teacher. (It's not fun, but it helps pay the bills. A little.) I graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 2010, and, five years later, still have almost no idea what I want to "do" for a job, for a career. I earned a BFA degree with a double major - Watercolor and Graphic Design - and a minor in art history. I earned university and art department honors. My cumulative GPA was 3.97 (my one B+ was in a Jewelry studio class). I graduated when I was 21 years old, in four years - although I had enough credits to graduate after three years, if I'd wanted to stop. (I had a full tuition scholarship. I hadn't wanted to stop.) I loved school. I always have. I love to learn. I taught myself to read before I entered Kindergarten. I still read a lot - my goal this year is to read 85 books in 2015, and I'm currently on track/ahead of that goal. I have a Goodreads account, where I post reviews of everything I read.
I have a store on Etsy, where you can purchase some of my artwork. I also had a website, until a year or so ago, for a custom stationery design company I called "Invites by Andrea." The website is down now - I felt like I wasn't reaching anyone with it, that it wasn't worth the annual cost of $100 to maintain it, to pay for the domain name, to pay for web hosting - but I'll still design stationery for you if you want. I have several hundred brochures all made up listing prices for invitation designs and printing out save-the-dates. I passed a lot out - at bridal shows, mostly - but I still have two boxes that never left my house. Brochures collecting dust, waiting for me to figure out how to be entrepreneurial enough to properly use them. Most of my business was (and continues to be) word of mouth. My customers are family members, and friends, and friends of friends. It's fun work, it's a little extra cash, but it never turned into what I'd imagined it might when I first started out, when I first signed up for that website, when I paid money to set up a table at a bridal show, when I got all those brochures printed.
 |
| A watercolor sign I painted to hang at bridal shows to attract traffic to my table. It normally hangs from the wall on three binder clips balanced on nails in my "office" (a spare bedroom in my house). I can see it while I type these blog posts. |
I had a blog I was using for a while - "Ideas by Andrea" - which was set up as a compliment to my invitation design business. There, I posted images of stationery projects, and DIY ideas, and color combinations. I got a surprising number of hits - 58,000 total pageviews - but no one ever commented on my posts, or followed the bread crumbs to my stationery website to contact me, to commission invitations for their event. They took my ideas and left. I made no money.
And that's fine. Life isn't all about money. I like the idea that someone found something useful on that blog, that my thought of pairing jade green with coral - which I did for my own wedding, in 2011 - was a thought shared, or absorbed, or repeated by others because of pictures I posted, because of words I wrote. I suspect that's all this blog will do, too. Strangers will stumble onto it, stay for a page, make note of something I say, and move on, without me ever knowing the extent of my impact, without me ever making a buck.
 |
| Jade green ribbon and coral roses adorning our delicious wedding cake in 2011 |
But see, last time, I made the blog for other people. I offered suggestions for what kinds of parties they might throw, what sorts of decor they might employ, what cool invitations they might like. I didn't know who was reading it, but I wrote it for them anyway, those anonymous people Google tracked for me, those numbers that showed up on my stats page. This time, I'm going to write for myself. I'm going to explain things that are important to me - things that might not even be art related, political things, maybe, or social justice things. So that other people might understand me or the artwork I create or the stories I write, if they wished to, but also just for my own records, so I remember how I saw the world and my place in it back when I was twenty-six years old. I'm also going to show current projects I'm working on - and be totally transparent about the emotional struggles that go along with them. I'm going to show you who I am; I'm going to show myself who I am.
I think this will translate into fewer pageviews, but - hopefully - deeper connections. Maybe my readers will want to follow my blog because they relate to my struggles or appreciate who I am. Maybe they'll want to purchase a watercolor painting from my Etsy store if they've seen on this blog the steps it took for me to create it, the blocks I had to overcome, the time and effort that went into it. Maybe they'll still just read one post (or skim one post - let's be honest, I'm verbose and the average Internet peruser does not care for verbose), and move on, just like they did on my other blog. But if my main goal is to write for me, to be authentic and transparent because my most important reader is myself, the myself of the future that will come back to reread these entries to remember my life, the myself of the present who is reading them now, as she writes them - than any other positives that come out of this blog will be icing on the proverbial cake; not the cake itself.
(Although, I always did like the icing the best.)
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