Resolution review and revision 2012

Reviewing 2011

Last year my art was pinned on three words: focus, creativity, happiness, with 3 resolutions.

  
The 1st was: To focus my life, my thoughts, my dreams on my art and market myself as much as I can. 

One of the first steps within this was to set up a facebook page "to get my finished work out there", which I did and I now have 217 who follow my page, suepownallartist. Also, I set up a twitter account @suepownall to tweet about my art with, as I write, 200 followers. The biggest two marketing things were to establish a website suepownallartist.co.uk , which went live in October, and a quarterly newsletter, which has 37 subscribers. Of course, I continued to blog and post my sketches here as normal. 

Surprising marketing successes came from a 3 page newspaper article on me and my sketching and, for me even better, a magazine article on my art with my name on the front cover.

Within this 1st resolution I also wrote "I am thinking about printing postcards and/or gift cards". I went a step further as well as printing gift cards of 2 of my pieces of work, I also had limited edition Giclée prints of 6 drawings made. I have sold several to date, which I'm very pleased with.

I also wrote that "I may develop and deliver some workshops", but due to a lot of changes I have not done that.

The 2nd was: to continue working in pen and ink with regular sketching, which I did. I planned a "minimum of 1 finished piece a month ready to try to get hung in a gallery or exhibition and to update the facebook page." Life was a bit crazy in 2011, nothing new there, so the monthly goal was not achieved per se, however I finished 9 pieces over the year, selling 3 and donating 2 others to charity. Plus I got a commission for 3 illustrations from Qatar Museum Authority, so I completed 12 pieces, they were just not done monthly. 

Trees For Life Charity Exhibtion. Photo by John Need

Surprisingly, without a body of work I had work hung in the Trans-Siberian Train exhibition, Trees for Life Charity Exhibition, and had 2 drawings juried into the CAS Winter Exhibtion. Also held in Doha was an Art event: private view of my original drawings and prints.

The 3rd was: Happiness will come from following my dreams and continuing to interact with wonderful artistic people, which it did.

Resolutions for 2012

As last year, here are my three words to guide my life throughout the year:

Yes, I kept focus as it's important to keep my focus on my art, in this year, which already is a bit crazy. Vision is my 2nd word as I need to keep myself open to opportunities, as I did in 2011. Finally, produce is the 3rd as without actually producing finished artwork, I cannot achieve anything.

Resolutions:
1. To produce a minimum of one finished piece per month.
2. To exhibit at least twice in the year.
3. Continue marketing myself.

Thank you to all of you who follow my work, take the time to comment, and who have encouraged and inspired me throughout the past year.