New Art Studio In Progress

There were a lot of things we immediately loved about our new house (which led to us placing an offer on it in the first place). The layout was just wonderful, with a small office (big enough for my husband, still currently working-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic) on the main floor, a roomier kitchen than our old house, and a carpeted family room just off the kitchen, so I could easily see our daughter playing in the playroom from the kitchen. Then there were things we loved the potential of, but which just weren't quite right... yet. And the basement was one of those things.

The basement was already finished (which other houses we were considering did not have), and it had a walk-out to the nice, large, fenced-in backyard. But it was a completely open floor plan, and we wanted to divide the space into an art studio/office for me, a guest room, an additional playroom for our 1-year-old, and a "pantry"/storage space with room for the extra fridge/freezer the previous owners left behind. It took some doing to figure out how best to orient those rooms in the space, but we settled on a layout that worked well for us, and over the course of several weeks, we were able to see our vision realized with the help of a local contractor.

Here are some pictures of what the basement looked like before we had it sectioned off with more walls:

The previous owners had a couch in the space where my new studio would go (which we paid for them to leave behind for us, and which we moved upstairs into the family room). There is also an electric fireplace built into the wall, and two windows looking out on the backyard, in my new studio. I love the natural light! (Though I admit, so far I've only had a chance to come down here to work after our daughter goes to bed, which is after it's already dark out. Thanks winter!)

And here's the room after the contractor was done building us new walls (but before we moved in all our furniture/stuff):

I was really excited to have a single room that could fit all of my "projects" - both studio art and graphic design. In our old house, I originally had my computer all the way up on the top floor, and my studio in the basement, and packing materials scattered in both places. When an Etsy order came in and I had to print notecards, package them for shipping, and ship them out, I had to walk up and down two flights of stairs to gather everything I needed. I created my art in one space, and scanned the artwork on an entirely different floor of the house; I then stored finished artwork in yet another room/closet. (I wrote a bit about trying to figure out how to organize my artwork/art supplies in this blog post.) Then, once our daughter was born and the COVID-19 pandemic shifted my husband to all-online school and then work, we rearranged the house a bit, moving both his desk and my desk down to the basement. I liked having my computer on the same floor as my studio... so when we decided to move, that was one of the first things I tried to figure out - how to make it work so that I could have a COMBO studio/office, instead of housing my artwork and my computer/desk in two different spaces. My BFA was a double concentration in graphic design and watercolor, and a decade later I continue to do both. I combine "fine art" techniques and digital techniques when I design patterns on my computer, print them out, trace them onto watercolor paper, paint them with traditional methods, scan them back to the computer, and resize them for printable notecards. Or when I draw colored pencil artwork using the computer to help find source material of different types of flowers. Even just creating art and then writing about the art on this blog, or uploading designs to Etsy to sell, requires the use of a "studio" and an "office". The more I thought about it, the less sense it made to physically separate these two sides of my work. I wanted a room that would be both (which I've started to call my "studio" IRL just so it's easier to differentiate in conversation from my husband's "office"). 

I measured all the furniture I wanted to fit into "my studio" and made sure that it would all fit in a to-scale floorplan I made in Adobe Illustrator, before we had the contractor start work on the basement. Once I was sure the room would be big enough and everything would fit (and that it wouldn't detract from other things we wanted to also have in the basement to have my studio so big), we went for it. (Side note: I'm so lucky to have a partner who supports my artwork and my desire to have this big space all just for "my" projects. I felt a little guilty taking up so much of the basement for my studio (especially since, as a new mom, I'm not using it very much these days), but he was always all for it, even when it meant taking the cool electric fireplace/space heater the previous owners had installed in one of the basement walls.)

The room is 21' x 14', and fits 1) my L-shaped computer desk with iMac, HP Officejet printer, and three storage towers of printer paper, photo paper, notecard paper, and envelopes, 2) my easel (which never even fit in the basement of our last house, because it was too tall for the short basement ceiling height), 3) a small desk perfect for colored pencil drawings, 4) five bookcases to organize art supplies and office supplies, as well as extra wall space for organizing gift wrap supplies and other craft supplies, 5) a sewing cabinet (which I don't even use and is so far purely aspirational), and 6) my large folding table in the center of the room, which I use for watercolor paintings and large-scale projects. There is also (hopefully) room for a shelving unit/cabinet for storing large art paper (drawing paper, newsprint, watercolor paper, and unused canvases), but that it yet to be purchased and/or built.

Here are some pictures of the room thus far, as I've started to unpack and organize everything:

It's not done yet - obviously some things are still in boxes, unpacked. I have to figure out what exactly I'm going to do to store my art paper and other art supplies that are too large for the bookcases. My husband and his sister want to build me a cabinet, thinking that would be easier than purchasing one (they are quite expensive, and quite heavy, and we aren't sure how we'd get it down there if we didn't... build one in the room or near the room). So right now the going plan is to wait until the weather warms up, and then hopefully we can build some shelves or a cabinet, cutting the wood to size in the garage or on the back patio right outside my studio, and then bringing the pieces inside and assembling it in the room. But we will see what the warmer weather brings (assuming we ever get any... February in Michigan always has one feeling a bit pessimistic). :)

I'm so happy I got everything to fit. I just know having everything in the same room will really streamline my creativity/productivity - which is, as any parent will tell you, so important when your time to get not-parenting things done is so much less than it used to be before kids! :)

5 Months of Motherhood

When I planned making a blog post after a few months of motherhood, I didn't expect it to be quite like this one. I envisioned a quick check-in where I would reflect back on how things have been going, and how much (or how little) art and writing I've been able to do compared to what I thought I'd be able to squeeze in, now that baby duty is taking up so much of my time. I counted on sleepless nights and long days, crying jags and learning curves, as I learned what my daughter needed from me - and when. But I didn't anticipate a global pandemic casting a shadow over these first several months, and how that might factor into my art and writing plans.

Michigan was under stay-at-home orders from mid-March until the end of May - 2.5 months altogether. Or, to put another way, half of my daughter's life to date (she turns 5 months old today). In many ways, our lives were not upended by this nearly as much as other people's lives were. We were already basically social distancing while our baby was young - limiting visitors to those who had received flu shots, and avoiding taking her out into any crowded public spaces. Furthermore, I was already planning to be home with her full time (ramping up to working from home part-time around the 3 month mark), and my husband was finishing the last bit of his master's degree by driving the one-hour commute to campus twice a week for classes. We had already restructured our lives to being home with the baby as much as possible - so when the pandemic altered our work and schooling, it was only "in our favor," letting us be available to our baby even more. My working from home was pushed back (with no events happening, there's little to design flyers and emails for, so I haven't been needed); and instead of going to Ann Arbor, my husband's classes moved online, letting him be home with us all 7 days a week. It's never a good time for tens of thousands of deaths - but from our standpoint, being granted even more time at home with our baby has actually been really nice.

Still, if you thought both of us being home all the time meant I had even more time to do all that art and writing I'd planned on doing, you'd be wrong. I did manage to complete two 8"x10" colored pencil drawings since our daughter was born - but these were both done in January/February, before the pandemic hit our state, and before the stay-at-home orders began. I've done very little art (and no writing) since.

It's not that I don't have time for it - after all, I managed to squeeze in some time in January/February. It's just that it hasn't been a priority for me lately. For one thing, as our daughter got a little older, and staying awake longer, it's been so fun and rewarding to spend that awake time with her every day, playing and taking pictures and videos of her. Even when my husband is available to watch her and I could take a break, I often choose not to, just because I don't want to leave her side. I'd probably feel this way regardless, but I'm guessing that the pandemic has exacerbated this feeling. When we can't leave the house, and no one but my husband and I can see her every day, it seems more important to witness and document all of those moments, and to share daily photos and videos with the grandparents, who haven't been able to visit during all this.

Another aspect is that I feel obligated to make the most of our time at home with her, since she's "missing out" on other experiences outside the home. It's true we wouldn't have been doing much with her yet anyway, but I had wanted to start taking her to storytimes at the library, or just to different stores to let her look around and experience new things. Now, if I want her to see something new, I have to try to find a corner of the house we haven't spent much time in yet. Expanding her horizons is not as "easy" as packing up the diaper bag and heading out somewhere (though that is never easy either, I'm sure!). We're lucky that she's still so small, and that so many things are new to her. I feel so bad for parents stuck at home with toddlers or kids, whose worlds had already opened up a little past their own houses, only to have this situation shrink their worlds smaller again. Our daughter doesn't yet know what she's missing out on.

Still, she isn't playing or feeding ALL the time - she's a baby, and she also naps. And that was when I'd planned to do any art or writing I wanted to do - while the baby was sleeping. But she isn't the best at napping during the day, and I suspect that's because she hasn't had to be. Instead of trying to make her conform to our schedules, we didn't really have a schedule anymore - and so were able to let her dictate her own routine however she wanted. Plus, we're both always home to hold her or pick her up if she cries, or rock her to sleep so she doesn't have to self-soothe. For a long time, she wouldn't nap in her crib at all - only in our arms (though she's starting to finally get a little better at that). Part of me wonders also if she'd be a better napper if her world was more "exciting" during the day. If we could pack her up and take her out somewhere, to show her a totally new place she hasn't seen before, would that extra bit of stimulation tire her out more, and help her sleep better?

She still often naps for only 30-45 minutes at a time, which means she ends up taking 4 short naps like that throughout the day. In the last month or so, I've been trying to rectify that - trying to encourage her to sleep longer, so she can also go longer between naps, so that we're only down to 3 naps a day. It's hard to get anything done when I only have a 30-minute window. It's not impossible, but it's harder. And when I don't have the motivation to prioritize squeezing in 30 minutes of work on a colored pencil drawing... it doesn't get done. I was able to do it early on, in January/February. But now it's harder. For the first part of the stay-at-home order, I was on my phone a LOT, reading news articles and keeping track of how many new cases and deaths there were - in the world, in the U.S., in Michigan, in our area. It burned me out a little - it left little time to work on any of my creative pursuits, and with little motivation to do so. I've also been doing more planning - planning dinners several days in advance, looking up new recipes to try to be creative with what ingredients we already have on hand in the pantry (and yes - hopping on the quarantine baking train), and those things also take up time I might otherwise spend on art or writing.

All of this is to say... I am very "behind" on the plans I'd made for creating art this year. All of the posts you've seen these past few months, and many of the ones I have scheduled for later in the year, are all things I made in 2019 (though the next two posts will be of the colored pencil drawings I did in January/February). I kind of figured I was overestimating how much time I'd have, and that I'd fall behind on my plans for 2020 artwork - but I didn't think it would be because of a pandemic. I hope to start making more art again in June, and getting back to my plans. Once our baby starts napping a little better (more consistently, for longer time spans, and actually IN her crib), that will help; so too will the grandparents being able to visit again, and the weather (finally!) getting nice enough to go out to parks, etc. I think that the more time we're able to spend with other people, or out of the house, the less pressure I'll feel to be present with her for ALL of the time spent at home with just us and her - I'll allow myself to sneak away and steal 30 minutes here or there for some art projects, knowing that I already did a lot to stimulate her at other times of day.

Or, you know, I'm just kidding myself again, and when I reevaluate in another few months, I'll find that I'm still super behind on all my artwork plans. :)

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.

Organizing Art Closets

In the spirit of celebrating the New Year, I thought I'd share a recent organization project I completed for my finished artwork, invitation samples, frames and mats, and shipping and packing supplies.

Over the summer, my husband and I worked on organizing our second floor. We needed to clear out the "future nursery" bedroom - which we'd been using as an office/random storage room for the last six years - before we could paint it (a task I wrote about in this previous blog post). This entailed organizing our other extra bedroom-cum-office into a space that could house both our desks and computers, which in turn necessitated reorganizing all of my "art stuff" - something I'd truthfully been meaning to do anyway, so that I knew where to easily find finished artworks when something sold on Etsy.

I use a room in our basement as my in-home studio space - but the humidity levels are uncontrollable down there, which makes me worry that any artwork down there will warp a bit with time. I do still store all of my art supplies and artwork-in-progress in my basement studio, but I prefer to at least move my finished pieces up to the second floor, where the art will be safer. So over the course of several weeks last summer, I came up with a way to better organize my finished artwork, my supplies for framing and matting finished artwork, and my supplies for shipping finished artwork, utilizing our main hall closet upstairs as well as part of the closet in our guest bedroom.

Our guest room is occupied right now by my sister-in-law (and many of her things), who is in the process of moving back to Michigan and buying furniture so she can live in her newly purchased house - so I didn't grab a photo of the whole guest room closet, since she's using the closet rod to hang up her clothes. But there are two small sections of the closet that my finished artwork is living in - my larger pieces (many of them framed) in the right corner, leaning against the wall; and my mid-sized framed pieces (the pattern watercolors I grouped and installed into multi-opening frames) stacked in protective boxes horizontally in the left corner, coupled with smaller unframed pieces stacked in a box on a shelf above them (not pictured).

Then in our main hallway closet, we installed some new shelves, leaving an opening in the middle so that the attic hatch can still be accessed when needed. The floor has our suitcases and carry-on bags for travel, but the eight shelves above that hold items I use for my "art business" or graphic design business - including bubble mailers and envelopes, air bubble bags, bubble wrap, and packing paper on the top four shelves, which I use for shipping Etsy purchases domestically and internationally.

The two lower shelves on the left side house extra unused frames and mats for future finished artwork, as well as clear bags and boxes for my art print notecards. The clear bags fit one notecard and envelope; I deliver these individually priced notecards to Paint Creek Center for the Arts to add to their art market inventory. For my sets of 4, 6 or 10 notecards, I use the clear boxes. They're laying flat in the cardboard box, but they easily pop into a box shape and then stay closed with a small clear circle sticker when I'm ready to use them.

On the right side of the closet, the lower two shelves hold a plastic bin of past invitation projects and sample invitations, as well as extra brochures and business cards (with plenty more room to spare, as you can see).

Inside the plastic bin, I sorted past projects into their individual clear zip-sleeves. You can see my own personal wedding stationery in the top large sleeve in this first picture here. Keeping them in these individual sleeves helps me keep all the parts of one design together (invitations, save the dates, thank you cards, menus, ceremony programs, table numbers, place cards, etc.) for easy access when I want to refer to a past project or show samples to a future client.

Beneath all the plastic sleeves are stacks of sample invitations I created in 2011, before I had any "real client" projects to show off instead - invitations and other custom stationery with fake names at fake venues for fake events. They show the potential of what could be done to any future clients who want to utilize pocket envelopes.

The hallway closet obviously still has a lot of room to grow - allowing me to easily find space for more shipping or framing materials as I need to, or perhaps add another plastic bin of invitation projects stacked on top of this first one, once I complete more projects.

It's very convenient to have all of my finished artwork upstairs, as well as my "Invites by Andrea" samples and shipping and packing supplies next to my iMac and printer, where I work on graphic design projects and print notecard sets when someone makes an Etsy purchase. It doesn't always look nice (hello dented cardboard boxes, being reused for the third or fourth time) but it's effective, and that's what matters. :)

2018 Art Year in Review

I kind of lost steam in the second half of this year, as life got in the way - but I still managed to accomplish a lot in the first several months of 2018, and I've got a lot more planned for the first months of 2019 as well! Below are just some of my art and blogging highlights from 2018.

• Some of my colored pencil drawings from the Canton Village Theater's GRRRLS Like Us exhibition (Nov-Dec 2017) were featured in a Heaven Spot episode of Detroit area artists. The video premiered at Young Felix Loft on January 19, 2018; you can read about my experience at the premiere party and watch the video here.

• My "Bandaged Duality" 22x30" watercolor painting hung in the Carr Center in Detroit from March 3 to April 26, 2018 as part of their "Nevertheless She Persisted" Women Art Exhibition.

• In the spring, I completed my largest artwork commission to date - an acrylic triptych of the Charlotte, North Carolina skyline, measuring 28x66" in total.

• My colored pencil drawings "30 Days" and "28 Years" were hung at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial from July 12 to August 19, 2018, as part of their "Flower Power" Art Exhibition.

• I was selected to act as an official art juror at the Art and Apples festival in Rochester, Michigan in September 2018.

• My Etsy shop continued to see sales throughout 2018, especially for custom watercolor bouquet commissions, original Great Lakes watercolor paintings, and art print notecards.

• I created more 8x10" colored pencil drawings on colored paper for my ongoing floral symbolism series. ("Flight" on blue paper and "Ambition" on red paper were two of my personal favorites.)

• This blog, "Until the Water Falls," hit 15,000 total views, and two of my posts from this year entered my "Top Three" most viewed posts: Entitlement (which has nearly 230 views) and Missed Miscarriage (which is now my most viewed blog post, with 460+ views).

• I received lots of great comments on several Instagram pics this year, with some posts earning close to 90 "likes." Follow me on Instagram and Twitter to see more posts in 2019!

What I love about looking back at the last twelve months is that even if there were a few months where I felt "not productive enough," I can still look at the year as a whole and marvel at everything I accomplished. Like any year, 2018 had highs and lows; if I focus on the high points, I can see that I really have a lot of positives in my life - which helps me get excited for the plans I have in the works for 2019.

Thank you to everyone who continues to read my blog, follow me on social media, purchase artwork from my Etsy shop and just generally support me in my artistic endeavors and in life!! :) In 2019, you can look forward to more colored pencil drawings, more watercolor paintings, and more personal vulnerability, as I write about my artistic journey and life journey on this blog. Happy new year!!