Well after my last blog entry talking about self sabotage, I’m now plunging into a new challenge. Having a studio and not using it is a little like that gym membership you never use, so I’m giving myself a 30 day induction program!

If you fancy having a go you can join in here https://www.saetastudio.com/30-in-30.html

I signed up happily but now I’m wondering what the hell am I going to paint each day? Should I use photo references or set up still lives? What do I want to achieve?

Goals for me are:

Commitment
Learning to use technology to upload the photos onto the 30in30 blog
Developing my colour mixing
Being more selective with my brushstrokes
Developing a cleaner and more efficient way of working


Process:

I have decided that for the majority of the paintings, I’m going to use a 15cm x 15cm board. It’s a nice size to work with and I should be able to get a finished painting in a day.

I’ve also decided that each day will be a new painting. Any unfinished works will stay that way, a work in progress.

So far I have gessoed half of my boards in preparation. They come with one layer of gesso already but the surface is pretty porous, so I’m going to give them 3 more coats.

Deciding on a theme:

Now this is tricky. There are some things I’d love to achieve, for example I’d like to paint a perfect black cat, I find painting them a real challenge. I have my own black cat, so I have an easy reference right there. So that could be my first weeks theme.

For the second week I’d like to focus on still lives and the relationships between objects and colours, so I’ll get some props and set up some still lives in the studio.

For the third and forth weeks, well I’m hoping by the third week a natural progression will occur and as a result I’ll have more creative ideas, I might create some still lives using specific colour palettes or combine my still lives with my black cat.

I obviously reserve the right to throw all of this out of the window and paint whatever I fancy! But at least it’s a start!!

How to support me!!!!

Follow my instagram, Facebook or twitter pages and follow my blog here.

Buy a painting.

I will be numbering these paintings and selling them on a first come first served basis. Each painting will go up in increments of £5 starting at £30.

The first painting on day one will be £30, the last one on day 30 will be £175 any bought in weeks 3 and 4 will include a hand painted frame.

If you wish to reserve a day please go to my contact page and let me know which day you’d like to reserve and pay for.



Wish me luck as I walk into February armed with my brushes and new tubes of Michael Harding oil paints!

Last year I was a bad blogger. I took part in several exhibitions but my biggest challenge was spending 5 days in The Project Space in NN Contemporary, filming and drawing dogs and owners. Then I got a puppy!

Now I’m not sure if this wasn’t a little bit of self sabotage. The excitement I felt during my time in The Project Space was exhilarating. Drawing dogs and owners, talking about their lives with dogs and having the work transmitted to Kentucky as part of a conference entitled ‘Seeing With Animals’ was my way back into the Contemporary Art world , a place full of challenge and possibilities. I had plans to work with the videos I had taken of the interactions , looking more closely at the coexistence of humans and animals. Why do we allow animals into our homes, what does pet ownership mean? These questions so far are unanswered , mostly due to the puppy I decided to get immediately after the project. There is a Facebook page of my work during The Sitter,The Dog,The Artist. It is very much unfinished work, an idea put on hold. It was still very much the highlight of what I did last year and filled me with fear and excitement.


So why did I self sabotage and not go further with the project? I was at a stage of my life where I had more freedom and lots of hours to create work. Then I know I’ll get a puppy! Having responsibilities is something comfortable for me, there’s always an excuse to not achieving dreams and household and family duties can be part of this , maybe it’s a middle aged thing or maybe it’s fear of change, either way, I would really like to face this issue at some point in my artistic career.

The puppy was a joy but a huge distraction, housetraining seemed to take over my life for months. Socialising him, taking him to training classes, juggling this with normal day to day life meant I had managed to restrict my studio time to about 4 hours a day, split into 2 hour sections. Silly me had allowed my desire for the perfectly trained dog to take over my life and become my new obsession. He even has his own instagram page @obithepapillon.


Now he is a year old, housetrained and happy in a routine, I can now get back to working in a better way. Occasionally both dogs come to work with me but this means not much gets done! So for now they stay at home.

This year has been a steep learning curve in choices. If I really want to make a good career as an artist I need to retain my focus. That’s what I’ll be working on this year. Putting my head down and doing the work. January is a great time to begin again.