2019 Art Year in Review

I finished a LOT of art in 2019 - first as a way to distract myself/give myself other goals to work toward other than trying to get pregnant, and then, once I was pregnant, to finish as much new artwork as I could. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of recent art to sell and make notecard prints of in 2020, even if creating more new artwork was less feasible once I had the baby - and therefore less time (at least temporarily, until I settled into parenthood) to devote to art.

Below are some of my art and social media highlights from 2019:

• I was commissioned to create a Great Lakes watercolor, with colors to match an old watercolor painting I completed in college (and which the commissioner also purchased). It was a lot of fun to create a new piece of artwork with the same color scheme I'd used a decade earlier! (Read the blog post about the process here.)

• I had three large colored pencil drawings - Race Bouquet (Stronger Together), Gender Bouquet (Stronger Together), and Sexuality Bouquet (Stronger Together) - shown at the Northville Art House's Fine Point Colored Pencil Exhibition in May. Even better? The set was awarded an honorable mention - which is that green ribbon hanging on the wall next to them! (Read the blog post about the exhibition here.)

• I completed two sets of alphabet watercolors - a floral set and a rainbow/paint splatter set - totaling 52 small watercolors altogether. I then scanned in each painting and created initial notecards, which have been selling well in my Etsy shop (you can find the listing for the floral letters here, and the rainbow letters here), and at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts in downtown Rochester, MI. (I made several blog posts about the process of painting the originals and creating notecards, but you can read the posts about the finished notecard sets here, and here.)

• I finished thirteen 8x10 colored pencil drawings of flowers. Though I like them all, my five favorites would probably have to be Strength (on tan paper), Transformation (on green paper), Fame (on red paper), Immortality (on blue paper), and Balance (on gray paper). (I haven't posted the in-progress pictures of Balance on this blog yet - but look for that post coming in 2020!)

• I completed some watercolors for our nursery (more on those to come in blog posts scheduled for Jan-Feb 2020, but here's a sneak peak, above).

• I also painted several patterned watercolors, ranging in size from 4x6 to 8x10. My hope is to frame a lot of these patterned sets and find a gallery to show my entire pattern watercolor collection soon. (More on these in future blog posts scheduled for 2020 as well!)

• And of course, I wrote several vulnerable blog posts about my journey trying to conceive, being pregnant again after my 2018 miscarriage, the problems with people refusing to acknowledge that my first pregnancy ended in loss, quotes I've turned to for inspiration in the last year, and dealing with diabetes management during my first trimester and second trimester. Many of these posts got several views, bringing my total pageviews for this blog past 19,400. It warms my heart to know that so many people have taken the time to read about my experiences and opinions, and that I'm surrounded by such a loving, supportive community!

(Want to know what I was up to in 2018 as well? Check out this post.)

I'm proud of myself for how much artwork I churned out in 2019, and I'm excited to see what 2020 will bring!

As always, if you want to purchase some of my artwork, you can check out my Etsy shop here, or you can contact me to commission a piece at afrownfe@gmail.com.

2019 Media Year in Review

In 2018, I read 30 books and decided to make it a priority to read at least 50 books in 2019 - and I'm proud to say I surpassed that goal, reading 60 books! - though admittedly some of those were re-reads of old favorites. Here were some of my new favorites, read for the first time in 2019:

Non-fiction:

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• Act Natural: A Cultural History of the Misadventures of Parenting by Jennifer Traig
• Everything Happens For a Reason - And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
• Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - And What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
• Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution by Jennifer Block
• Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacobs

Fiction:

• The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
• Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• When Elephants Fly by Nancy Richardson Fischer
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
• The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zghei
• Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan
• Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

I also saw 10 theater productions (in Detroit, Flint, and local community theaters), 35 new movies (in theaters, borrowed from the library, or on Netflix), and 15 TV series (on various streaming services) over the course of 2019, also totaling 60. Here were some of my favorites in those categories:

Theater productions:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ the Capitol in Flint (2/15)
• The Play that Goes Wrong @ the Fisher Theater (2/17)
• Hamilton @ the Fisher Theater (3/17)
• Waitress @ the Fisher Theater (5/12)
• Anastasia @ the Fisher Theater (6/16)

Movies:

• Mary Poppins Returns
• Crazy Rich Asians
• Captain Marvel
• Spiderman into the Spider-verse
• Avengers: End Game
• Wine Country
• Toy Story 4
• Booksmart
• Always Be My Maybe
• Rocketman
• Yesterday
• Harriet
• Frozen 2

TV shows:

• Derry Girls
• Russian Doll
• Pen15
• Schitt’s Creek
• The Great British Bake-Off
• The Good Place
• Bojack Horseman

(Not enough recommendations for you? If you want to read my 2018 favorites, you can visit this post.)

Turning 31

It's crazy to think I've already lived through the first year of my 30s! It was an eventful year, too - trying to get pregnant, and then *being* pregnant. One of my goals this year was to practice resilience (despite whatever challenges I might face) regarding my dream of becoming a mother, and to remain hopeful and make decisions based on those hopes (and not my fears or anxieties) - and I'm happy to say both that I achieved that goal, and that it turned out to be easier than I worried it might be. Thankfully, I faced most of my challenges when I was 29, and the universe gave me a bit of a break when I was 30. :)

I made non-pregnancy goals for myself as well, to try to ensure that I accomplished things I could be proud of, even if getting pregnant didn't pan out. I submitted my artwork to local exhibitions and created lots of new art (more on all that in a coming post). I read 60 books and watched 60 movies, TV series, or theater productions (more on all that in another coming post, too). I also continued to prioritize my mental health, answering "positive thinking" questions every day to remind myself what I'm looking forward to, what I have to be thankful for, and what matters to me most.

Naturally, I've made some goals for this coming year too - the year I'm 31. Some of the goals are much less (reading 20 books instead of 60, for instance), to try to account for all my time that will be taken up by taking care of my new baby and figuring out my transition to motherhood. Others represent a temporary shift in priorities from one of my passions to the other. This past year I really prioritized working on artwork, so that I would have plenty of recent drawings and watercolors to market, sell, make notecards of, and submit to local exhibitions, even if I didn't have time to create much more in 2020. Next year, my goal is to focus more on my writing instead, returning to various novels I've been writing on and off for the past several years. (I'm hoping it might be easier to sneak in pockets of writing or editing here and there between feedings and diaper changes and playing with my new baby, than it might be to settle down with some paints or colored pencils to produce even a small sized piece of artwork.)

I'm so excited to turn 31 - with a new baby due basically any day now, and one of my lifelong dreams therefore on the cusp of coming true, I just know 31 is going to be my best year yet. :)

"Vitality" Colored Pencil Drawing

Like my previous blog post, this piece of artwork is also an 8"x10" colored pencil drawing on red paper. I used Canson Mi-Teintes paper, and Prismacolor pencils. The flowers in this drawing are zinnia, and the drawing is titled "Vitality," after what zinnia symbolize.

In this first picture, you can see the images I printed off the internet to use as source photos, as well as the blank red paper ready to go.

I started by lightly sketching in the highlights of the zinnia petals. (Because the paper I was drawing on was red, I would mostly be focusing on the highlights and shadows, and letting the red paper work as the mid-tones.) After those were in place, I lightly sketched in some green leaves in the background, as well.

Then I went through petal by petal and added dimension. I used cream and yellow to get a nice, bright highlight, and used black, brown, and dark purple colored pencils for shadows. When needed, I used a red colored pencil (which was almost exactly the same color as the paper) to blend everything together.

I added some leaves in the background (not adding too much detail there, since the zinnia was the focal point), and then another tiny zinnia in the corner.

Here's the finished drawing:

"Fame" Colored Pencil Drawing

This 8"x10" colored pencil drawing on red paper is a continuation of my flower attributes series, where I draw a flower and give the drawing the title of the flower's symbolism. This one is of trumpet flowers, and is called "Fame."

I started with a light sketch of the flowers to stake out where I wanted them to sit on the page.

Then I started working on the leaves. Often I do these drawings the other way around (flowers, then foliage), but because these flowers are red on red paper, I thought it would be easier to do the high-contrast greenery first, so I knew exactly how light or dark to make my flowers in comparison.

I went around the trumpet flowers and, using a few different green colored pencils, gave the background leaves some depth and dimension.

Once the leaves were finished, I started adding depth and dimension and detail to the flowers. I used white and yellow pencils for highlights, black and dark purple for shadows, and pink and red pencils to blend them all together. The red colored pencil I used was almost exactly the same color as the red paper.

Here is the finished drawing:

I love how the red flowers look against the green leaves against the red paper! Red and green are complements on the color wheel, so they always work together.

Expected Due Date Approaching

It's hard to believe it's already December!! Though my official due date is January 12, I think it's likely I'll be induced sooner (maybe even by the end of this month!) given my diabetes. It's crazy to think that this could be the month we meet our new baby and become parents!

And with that in mind, I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a heads up of what to expect on this blog over the next few months...

The last several weeks have been a whirlwind of preparation for me - not only have I been getting everything set up for Baby's arrival (stocking up on diapers and clothes, making sure the nursery is organized, attending childbirth and newborn care classes, finding a pediatrician, making a birthing plan, etc.); I've also been trying to get ahead on holiday art orders and my own holiday shopping and wrapping - just in case Baby shows up earlier than expected!

More than that, I've also been going full steam ahead on creating lots of new artwork - colored pencil drawings and watercolor paintings alike - and planning blog posts waaaay into the future, scheduling them in advance - all so that I can slow down whenever Baby shows up and know that I still have a backlog of recent artwork to scan, make notecards of, sell on Etsy, and post to social media about, even if I'm a bit busy with new parenthood to make any new art for the next several months.

Currently, I have blog posts fully scheduled through February 2020, so that I have time to adjust to my new life as a mother without worrying about blogging. You can look forward to some blog posts wrapping up the end of my artistic year this month, a couple patterned watercolor paintings to appear in blog posts in January - and in February, a look at the artwork I created for my nursery. I will (of course) post some updates about the end of my pregnancy (and how difficult it was to manage my diabetes in the third trimester) and my new baby, but don't expect these blog posts until March.

Custom Name Painting - Meredith

As I mentioned in my last post, I had two cousins recently give birth to a baby girl this year. I made them each a custom watercolor painting with their baby's name. This second painting was created for baby girl Meredith.

I chose a different font for this painting than the last, but used a similar color scheme (though with a bit more red mixed into the pink and purple).

The first photo is the painting with just the letters traced on the paper, before I started painting.

Here is the painting after I carefully went around the letters to build up layers of color. You can see which parts are still wettest by how shiny they look in the light.

Once the painting was dry, I measured how much I would have to trim off to get it to fit into a gray 8x10 frame, marking where I planned to crop it with pencil. Then I cut out the painting and framed it.

Here's the finished, framed piece:

Want a similar painting? I have a listing on my Etsy page for a custom 8x10 name painting just like this. You can pick the font, style, and color(s), and I'll make a painting with the name of your choice! Click here to order one. :)