2014 in review and resolutions

One of my last sketches from Oman.

This is how I started the year 2014:

1. I wish to be single-minded with my art by which I mean I will be selfish with my art time and not let people nor events cut into it. The obvious exception is Degas. 
2. I still want to move Degas and I to Barcelona, so will continue to organise my finances, whilst helping my parents.

In order for these to be goals rather than wishes, I have an amount to achieve by October. Also, I am setting aside a minimum 8 hours each weekend for art production. Finally, I want to produce a minimum of 6 ink drawings within the year.

As many of you who regularly follow me know, my year did not go to plan neither personally nor professionally. It was also a year full of highs and lows and I am still struggling for the middle ground.

44th WWSketchCrawl, Portobello Road, London.

I made several trips back and forth between Oman and UK following the hospitalisation then death of my father in January. Then I took 3 months unpaid leave through the summer, to pack up my parents' house, whilst trying to keep my mother happy, and finally moved back to the UK full-time in September. A constant throughout the year has been my guardian angel, Degas, who flew to UK with me in June and loves it here.

What                       Result              Positive thought                           .

Finances?               No                    I do have a lot of air miles though!

Barcelona?              No                  I'm in Europe.

8 hours?                  No    

6 ink drawings?      NO

As you can see above, there are only 3 ink drawings, and 1 ink and watercolour experiment. The ink boat I have just had rescanned and am looking to add some colour to it as it is flat and lacks something, so that's 2 I'm pleased with.

As my resolutions didn't go to plan, what did go well this year?

April, I ran my fourth annual charity event and raised £434.50 both through collecting at the event and an online donation site. All the money went to UNICEF UK's Children of Syria appeal.

Mayor of Colchester looking at my drawing at the opening.

July, My drawing Into the Shadows was juried into the Colchester Art Society's Summer Show.

August, I attended the 5th Urban Sketchers Symposium in Paraty, Brazil. I wrote in my first after-trip post:

"... I am jealous of the sketching others have done in that beautiful country. Whilst I had a fabulous time... I am not very happy with my sketches... obviously workshop sketches are experimentations and are not expected to be great yet... it would be nice." 

I may not have been happy with my sketching, but the wonderful people at the symposium made up for it. I re-met sketcher friends and made new ones. One of my happiest memories is sketching with the Brazilians of the sketching group, Croquis Urbanos Curitiba, on the last day.

With Croquis Urbanos Curitiba.

November, I have been taken on as an art tutor for the charity WEA and had the pleasure of teaching a sector of society I normally would not associate with. I summed up the course in this post, Lessons learnt. I really enjoyed teaching the course, and look forward to teaching more soon.

 So that was my year, now what about 2015?

Art resolutions: 

1. Produce a series of illustrations to be sold as greeting cards.
2. Produce a minimum of 1 fine art piece a month (preferably 2/3 per month).
3. Enter 4 open exhibitions throughout the year.
4. Run 4 art workshops.
5. Participate in a group or solo show.

Marketing & networking resolutions:

1. Post daily on FB page, www.facebook.com/suepownallartist
2. Blog every Saturday or Sunday.
3. Attend 6 networking events.
4. Look at feasability of art fairs.

There are a few other goals I have for my art business, but I won't share them here. Let's see what the year brings.

What about you? Have you reviewed your year or set resolutions? You are welcome to leave a comment or share the link to your post here.

A review & resolutions.

My illustrations published for the novel True Vines

  Review of 2012

For 2012, I had 3 words to guide me: Focus, Vision, Produce. From those words I had 3 resolutions of which some were more successful than others.

1. To produce a minimum of one finished piece per month.

Yes. Looking in the folder on FB there are 15 drawings for 2012. I have also produced 6 published illustrations and two commissioned portraits. Yea me - my most productive year to date. Whilst I still prefer to draw buildings and landscapes I have enjoyed working on my portrait series: Festival Faces, of which the first one sold and is now hung in its Australian home.

2. To exhibit at least twice in the year.

hmmm... This didn't exactly work out as I thought as I didn't have any work in exhibitions. However, I did end up with work hung in 2 galleries.

Through the OSFA, I submitted a piece to an exhibition in September, however the exhibition has been delayed and so will be hung sometime in the new year.

 
3. Continue marketing myself.

Yes. Throughout the year I continued to blog, both on my site and blogger, tweet and keep my facebook page up to date. I distributed over 100 business cards throughout the year and I had a stall at a winter fair in order to get publicity here in Oman. Also, I was interviewed on the local radio and had newspaper articles on the of the sketching events I arranged.

 Surprises from 2012.
A lovely surprise was following an email from the author Diana Baur, I produced both the cover illustration and section illustrations for her novel True Vines.

Something else I didn't anticipate was to start illustrating for the online short story site The Story Shack. To date I have had 3 illustrations published with more due in 2013.

With some of the artists of the Ghalya's Museum's Wall Painting project

Finally, a lovely surprise was getting to participate in a 100 artist wall art collaboration, which tested my little used painting skills, and led me to work alongside both Omani and international artists.

*****

Resolutions for 2013

2013 will see my art taking second place throughout the year. Following my month in Barcelona, my love for that city was renewed and my long-term goal is to move there. However, I'm not sure if financially I can do it within 2013. Like many artists I have to work to pay the bills and I also have a flat in Italy which as a partial renovation project needs work and money, so I have just secured a new job here in Oman with a better package. With the higher salary comes longer working hours, a necessary trade in order to reach my goal. The flat is for sale, if anyone is interested in a holiday home in the beautiful Pollino National Park, Calabria. Therefore, throughout 2013 my resolution and goal will be on getting my finances in order, so I can move to Barcelona as soon as possible.

Of course, my sketchbook will remain with me throughout 2013, I already have 2 commissions for drawings and further illustrations to do for The Story Shack. Also, I plan to go to the Urban Sketchers' 4th Symposium in July and... well who knows what other arty things will happen, but obviously my art passion will not be totally neglected. 

On a personal level, I resolve to eliminate but from my vocabulary and only focus on positive aspects. I also need to make sure I exercise throughout the year.

*****

May you fill lots of sketchbooks, produce lots of art, and have many laughs, health & happiness in the forthcoming year.

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.

Abandoned

Abandoned resolution. Pen &  ink 190 x 170 mm.©Sue Pownall 2011

First a note to the poor person looking for Eritrean men: there are none here. This weeks stats show another search result for "eritrean men", without cute this time, sending the poor person here. Oh well, I hope you liked the drawings.

The illustration above was done as an entry into Convozine's January illustration challenge. With only 2 days before the deadline I am not giving myself any chance to get a people's award, nor do I expect to win the competition. However, I entered as I need to increase my body of work and to keep publicising my name as an illustrator.  My Convozine January Challenge is here.   It is working too, as they are promoting my drawing on the site.

A while ago Frank of frankswatercolours asked about my Shropshire hen house drawing-

"I'm wondering how you went about this, a few lines all over and gradually build up or do you work on one small area at a time?". 

To answer, after an initial pencil drawing, I outline the whole picture with a pen. I realised that however carefully I do the initial drawing I do not see until I ink. Really, the pencil lines were virtually ignored as I drew the above. Next I build up in like sections eg. here the soles of both shoes, then shadows on the floor etc. As my drawings are between A4 - A3 in size I find it is important to build up the whole picture. With every drawing there is a point where it looks very amateurish, but I know I have to keep building up. Generally, there is a point where it could be called finished, but experience has shown that it still needs the tones strengthening. My new technique is to stick a drawing on the wall and keep coming back to it as I notice new things. Hope that helps you Frank.