2020 Art In Review

I created only ten pieces of art in 2020 (a far lower number than the 98 I did in 2019!). This year's art was also all on a small scale, with all ten measuring 8"x10" in size. Nine were colored pencil drawings that were a part of my "floral attributes" series, and one was a watercolor I painted as a gift for a friend. I knew I wouldn't be nearly as productive as I had been the previous year (and indeed, the reason I made SO much art in 2019 was because I knew I would be busier in 2020, and I wanted to save back some 2019 artwork to fill in the gaps for this blog this year) - but looking at that number ten is still rather shocking at first glance. Ten? Only ten? Sure I was busy, but I definitely had time to do more than 10. Right? 

But when I look at previous years that saw me make only ten (or fewer) pieces of art in the year, it starts to make more sense. 2011, 2012, and 2013 were all also low-output years. These were the three years immediately after I graduated with my BFA from EMU. I was 1) recovering from a bit of an art burnout, 2) focusing much more on graphic design (trying to find a local graphic design job, and also trying to start an invitation design company), and 3) planning for my wedding and our first househunting/home-purchasing/moving adventure.

2020 ticks a lot of those boxes as well. I went really hardcore in 2019 to pump out lots of art, so a bit of art burnout was likely there. 2020 also just had a lot of LIFE burnout. It was hard for ALL of us to be productive this year, with all the anxiety-spiking news making headlines. When you're weighing heavy pros and cons of everyday decisions (Is it safe to go to the grocery store? Is it too risky to visit family?) day in and day out, and your adrenaline is kicked into higher gear - and stays there for months on end - it's hard to focus on ways to channel creativity into productivity. Add to all that becoming a parent for the very first time, and prioritizing caring for our newborn daughter and trying to figure out what to do with her every day in a world where a lot of usual options were suddenly unfeasible... and then also deciding to move, and thus embarking on another househunting/home-purchasing/moving adventure (this time all in the midst of a pandemic no less) - and it's easy to see why my art output was a bit on the skimpy side this year.

I don't bring all this up to self-shame. In 2011-2013 I absolutely shamed myself for my lack of productivity - but I've grown since then, and I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist, and less hard on myself. I'm actually quite proud of my 2020. I accomplished a lot, especially all things considered; it's just that most of those accomplishments weren't art-related. And that's ok. That's the way it is sometimes, when your work is in a creative field. There will be ebbs and flows to your commissions and opportunities, and also ebbs and flows to your work habits and priorities. After 2013, I really prioritized art again, and I turned around those low-output years, coming up with plans for entire series of artworks - one of which I'm still working hard and seeing through. And after this year, I can turn around that low-output again. I have no doubt I will create more art in 2021, after we finish moving in to our new house and I get my new studio set up.

And the art I did work on this year? I'm really proud of it all. Here are 8 of the colored pencil drawings I finished this year (the 9th one I haven't posted on this blog yet - something to look forward to for a 2021 post!):

I also had a lot of success at Rochester Art Market at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts and on Etsy this year, selling notecard sets. My Great Lakes notecards continue to be most popular - but I've sold other notecards as well, especially those in my floral and rainbow alphabet series.

Head over to my Etsy shop to see all the notecard varieties I have to offer! And keep an eye out for some changes coming next year - I have a lot of new notecards on the way soon, featuring drawings from my floral attributes series!

Turning 32

My 32nd year was not exactly what I pictured... but I think that was the case for all of us. 2020 has been a wild ride, y'all. But I'm really hoping things are looking up (or will be soon) where the pandemic is concerned, and we'll finally start feeling safe enough in 2021 to start venturing farther outside our homes again.

Here are some of my hopes/goals for my 33rd year, leading up to turning 33 on December 20, 2021:

• Stay healthy while we all ride out the end of this pandemic.
• Successfully move in to our new house, organize and unpack everything, and make it feel like home for us, our daughter, and our dog.
• Prepare our old house for the housing market and sell it.
• Find a groove again with creating artwork - I was doing well for awhile, and making sure to prioritize working on colored pencil drawings while our daughter was sleeping... but then we decided to move, and in the process of packing everything and planning for the new house, my art fell by the wayside again for this last part of 2020. Once we're all moved into the new house, with a new art studio, art will begin again!
• Submit my artwork to be shown in various local art exhibitions or art shows. I had grand plans to do this in 2020 (after I settled in to motherhood a bit) - but then the pandemic hit, and what few art exhibitions were still happening in-person were not things I felt safe participating in. Here's hoping 2021 will be better!
• Start working part-time as a graphic designer again, too. I had planned to continue working from home for Temple Israel as a contract designer after our daughter was born - but then with the pandemic, they were hosting a lot fewer events and had much lower needs for graphic designers this past year than anticipated. I'd love to start designing graphics again - if not for Temple Israel, then for others. My new studio in the new house is going to be big enough to fit my easel and tables for watercolors and colored pencil drawings AND my computer desk, and I'm so stoked to be able to work on all aspects of my creative work from a single room in the house.
• And of course - watch our daughter continue to amaze as she grows every day! She'll turn one in less than two weeks, and I'm so excited to see what her 2nd year brings!

Summer & Fall 2020

As I mentioned in my last post, we visited a number of parks and nature trails near our home in Rochester Hills, Michigan this past summer and fall, while the weather was still nice. I took a lot fewer photos of flowers this year than I have in years past (my camera roll is instead naturally full of pictures of our baby) - but I did on occasion take a few shots of some flowers, animals, and scenery as we walked around the parks and nature trails with our baby and dog. Here are some of my favorite pics I took:

I'm going to miss all the nature trails and parks around here when we move to Ann Arbor - but I'm excited to explore all the new nature areas around our new house! (And hopefully finally take our daughter to new places BESIDES just outdoor locations next year... poor girl has never been to a library storytime, or inside a store, or to a restaurant, or an aquarium, or anything besides our house and these local nature spots. Here's hoping 2021 is safer, and we can finally show her more of the world!)

Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving week! Since I have no new art to show you (see my previous post about moving), I thought I'd take some time to list all the things I have to be thankful for this year instead. I know for many 2020 has been a really rough year, in many ways - and I feel very fortunate to have so have so much to be thankful for in such a bleak time.

The year started with the birth of my daughter on January 1st. What a way to start the year! It has been amazing these last ten and a half months watching her grow. From nursing to pureed foods and sippy cups, and now to eating the food off our plates; from barely being able to lift up her head to learning how to roll and sit and crawl and stand; from sleeping constantly to never wanting to sleep at all (why sleep when there's so many things to learn, so many rooms to explore, so many ways to play!) - she has been a constant source of wonder and joy throughout 2020.

On a similar note, I am also so thankful for my husband, who is the best dad to our daughter. The pandemic meant all of his classes for his master's program went fully online in the spring; once he found a job and started working full-time again, that was also remote. I love having him home so much, especially while our daughter is so young; even if he's working, he's still close enough that he can join us for walks around the neighborhood or a bit of playtime during his lunch break. He has gotten to watch her grow just as intimately as I have, and they have a wonderful bond. It's also been amazing for me, to have someone around to help get her down for naps and bedtimes when she just refuses to sleep, and to share in some of the daily stresses of parenting a baby.

I am thankful to have spent the majority of this year in Rochester Hills, which has so many great outdoor spaces. Over the summer, when we were bored staying inside our house but didn't feel comfortable taking our daughter to all of the places I'd once imagined taking her during her first year (to the library, and to stores, and to the zoo, and to anywhere else fun I could think of), we still had plenty of opportunities of places to go. We visited several nearby parks and took her on walks (in her stroller or in a baby carrier) along the Clinton River Trail, which was a lot of fun for her and our dog, and great fresh air and exercise for all of us.

I'm grateful that my husband was able to find a job he's really excited about, working for a non-profit he's really excited about, and that his new employers value his health and are taking this pandemic seriously. I'm also grateful that we were able to find a house we love in a neighborhood we love in Ann Arbor, and that we have the time to move there more gradually than we otherwise probably would if my husband wasn't working remotely and was already in the Ann Arbor office.

I'm thankful for our families - those who have been able to visit (once the stay-home order was lifted), entertain the baby, and help us move; and those who live farther away but still made time for countless Skype and Zoom calls to visit with our daughter safely (and virtually). They say it takes a village to raise a child, and this pandemic has isolated many from their villages; I'm so appreciative of the efforts made to make sure that wasn't our fate.

2020 Gift Giving Season

I have several notecard sets available on Etsy, and they have proved even more popular than usual this year, from alphabet stationery to my colorful Great Lakes designs! I assume everyone being stuck at home during the pandemic and being unable to visit family and friends may have something to do with a sudden interest in stationery and sending snail mail... One customer bought an entire alphabet's worth of cards and told me she planned to send one notecard a week to her friend, listing inside affirmations and positive adjectives their friend embodied that started with that letter. What a wonderful idea - a great way to keep in touch, and lift someone's spirits during what has been for many a very trying year.

(You can find all these notecards for sale in my Etsy shop here.)

These notecards will continue to be for sale during the upcoming holiday gift giving season - but there may be slight delays I have to deal with, so please give me plenty of time to accommodate your request if you are planning to order notecards from me this holiday season. For one thing, there continue to be frequent shipping delays with the post office, as there has been all year. For another... I have some exciting news to share - we're moving!

It's definitely bittersweet, since we fully intended for our house in Rochester Hills, Michigan to be our forever house and we made lots of updates to it, thinking we'd be here for many more years to come. I think of all the memories we have from living here the last 8 years and can't help tear up a little - bringing our puppy home five and a half years ago and watching her cower under the storage unit in our breakfast nook, installing custom shelves in several closets, picking out several paint colors, having board game nights with friends, hosting Passover seders and Thanksgiving and Easter and Christmas dinners, bringing our newborn daughter home ten months ago, and all the days and nights nursing her and rocking her to sleep, playing with her, watching her learn how to roll and sit on her own and crawl... But our new house is amazing, and I'm also excited to move into it and turn it into our home. It's in a wonderful neighborhood in Ann Arbor, and I love picturing our daughter growing up in our new house and neighborhood.

That being said - it's a HUGE job packing up a house full of stuff and moving it to a new house; that job is even more daunting when you factor in the baby and the pandemic this country is still in the middle of. (I will save all the details for another post - after we've (hopefully) successfully navigated the whole process and I have time to reflect back on it.) And that process unfortunately includes packing up all my art supplies, and then unpacking and reorganizing them in the new house, making it difficult to produce much art for several weeks; similarly, it requires packing up and transporting my computer and printer, and all my notecard paper, making it difficult to print and ship out my popular notecard sets. 

As of the writing of this post (which is a few weeks in advance of it going live), we don't yet know our exact timeline for moving, though we do plan on having some overlap between getting the keys to our new place and fully moving out of, let alone selling, our current home. I will do my best to print out any notecard orders I receive in a timely manner, and will let you know when you place the order how soon to expect your order to be available to be shipped. 

But in the meantime, this also means fewer blog posts - probably for the next few months at least, while we pack everything, make any changes to our new house that may be necessary before moving in, transporting all our stuff (and ourselves!) to our new place, unpacking and reorganizing everything, and getting our current house ready to list for sale... all while also juggling the holiday season and an almost-one-year-old! 

"Attachment" Colored Pencil Drawing

This next colored pencil drawing is also 8"x10" on Strathmore gray paper: delphiniums, a.k.a. larkspur. These tall flower stalks come in blue, purple, or white - or all three! They symbolize "attachment," which is where the title of this drawing comes from.

I started with a sketch just to lay out on the page where I planned to draw each of the flower stalks in this delphinium field:

Then I started the long process of adding detail to each of the flowers on each stalk. It took me several days (though, granted, I only could work on it for 30 minutes - 1 hour at a time, once or twice a day, while my daughter slept). :)

Here is the step by step process:

I just love how this one turned out - such gorgeous colors, and so much detail! Here are some close-up shots of the final drawing:

"Frigidity" Colored Pencil Drawing

This post features another recent 8"x10" colored pencil drawing - this one on Strathmore gray toned paper. These white and blue lithodora flowers symbolize frigidity, thanks to their cool color scheme.

As usual, I started with a sketch (in this case an outline) of where I wanted the flowers to go to fill up the page. Because the flower petals have white edges, I just went ahead and drew the edges to get the whitest whites on the paper; I often like to put down the lightest or darkest colors first (or at least near the beginning of the process), so I can base everything else off of that reference point.

(Ignore the shadows in some of these images - I've been drawing in the spare bedroom upstairs lately, which doesn't have the best ceiling light, and relies a lot on the sunlight coming in the window. If I'm drawing in the evening or on a cloudy/rainy day, it's hard to take a picture of the drawing without my arm causing shadows across the page... I may have to revisit this plan and find a new place in the house to draw before winter hits.)

Here is me beginning this drawing:

Once I had my outline down, I started going through flower by flower and adding dimension and color:

Here is the final drawing:

I really love the colors in this one. In real life, lithodora are pretty small - so the scale of these flowers being so big on the page also helps this drawing feel bold and original. I'm happy with the way it turned out!