Hello everyone and happy December! The countdown to Christmas has begun in our house. No tree yet but my not terribly secret hiding places are filling up with presents… In the spirit of consistency I thought it would be nice to introduce a weekly round up of my life and posts and projects on Sundays. I did a little redesigning on Saturday night to make the blog posts more prominently featured on my homepage and added separate pages for galleries of my personal and commission art work and also a page for my soon to grow video collection. If you missed it, you can check out Pardon Me? here. 

Speaking of videos I filmed my first full length time-lapse video this week which you can watch here (look at me learning to set up links, lol). I find it really addictive when other artists post videos of themselves painting and I wanted to give it a try. I think it’s a really cool way to let you in on my process and also for me to get in more quick freestyle painting time. Consistency (in painting, blogging, life in general) is the key. I’d like to make this a weekly feature on Tuesday’s – so come back for more of the “What I Painted” series to be updated weekly. 

Now I know that special gadgets exist for clipping your phone to your easel or desk and positioning it up above you with lights and lots of cool bells and whistles (and stability, safety) but I’ve been able to MacGyer a pretty good set up for the time being (yes those are children’s letter blocks and my acrylic palette propped on top – that’s where my phone goes so it can hang above me as I paint)… Christmas is coming… but in the meantime it works. 

And speaking of Christmas – I finished up the last of my Christmas commissions this weekend. They will get a few more coats of varnish and will be shipped this week to their new homes. Since these projects are secret right now I haven’t been able to share. I’ve been photographing and cataloguing every thing since September and will write a post about my experiences and update my commissions after Christmas. Like, immediately after. I can’t wait. 

• 

• 

This week was a mixed bag.  Kickboxing is a big part of my life, and has been for many years now. We’ve been trying to make it out to more training sessions so I was happy for that but pretty sore and rundown by the end of the week. It’s been dry here and the snow has melted for the most part so I was able to make it out for a few runs with the little monsters – I always found it so pointless to watch them run around a field and just do nothing myself – I run, they run, we all run and it’s good for all of us and I feel real out of sorts when we can’t go due to weather (mainly ice is a huge problem when running with three dogs). We finished our Christmas shopping and I was gifted a new surprise Dyson Animal (for all the animals in our family zoo that shed constantly) – to know me is to know my love of vacuuming, and this vacuum is a life-changer. We took Teelo for a Teelo tune-up at the vet and he got his teeth cleaned and some bumps removed. Nothing serious but I still cried. Some weeks I feel full of energy but this week was pretty low key. I felt pretty tired most of the week and no surprise I got a cold by the weekend – the couch and a blanket were much more appealing than sitting upright to paint but I’m hoping I’ll feel back on track and ready to tackle the world next week. 

Lastly, speaking of next week – The plan is to start working on my Wiggis painting (which I’m not entirely thrilled with yet but sometimes that’s how I feel right at the start). I’ll also transfer another Beesa sketch over to a larger canvas that I prepped weeks ago. Once done that will complete my cat trifecta. My schedule has opened up a bit with commissions done and some other projects finishing up so I’ll be focusing on my personal work for the next little while and sharing it with all of you.

The good and the bad lol.