Another year almost over...

It's been a year that has been frustrating through much of it, and then turned very satisfying towards the end. I consider myself extremely lucky that you have all stuck me with me (or joined me!) throughout this year. Here's to 2018! 

I'd like to share with you some wonderful thoughts of Neil Gaiman, which I came across yesterday, and which I'll print out and hang over my desk (to join those of Ian McCaig and Ira Glass).

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself and to forgive others. It's too easy to be outraged these days, so much hard to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin. 

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love. 

-Neil Gaiman

 I don't typically make New Years' Resolutions, but I'm usually full of ideas at the beginning of a new year. Yesterday, I had a good one - I've stayed true to my resolution to draw or paint every day (will hit day 100 on January 7!), even though almost none of it was worth showing (much of it was extremely messy studies for some of the paintings of the last three months). One of the few worth showing was a nutcracker I painted at my parents' (the very same nutcracker, incidentally, of which I was so mortally afraid when I was young that he spent the years between 1977 and 1982 with his face to the wall in the glass cupboard in my parents' home). 

I painted him with Viviva colour sheets (one of those kickstarters I backed and then flatly forgot about until they showed up on my doorstep). It's a little booklet with watercolours that come on coated paper, so they're incredibly flat and easy to pocket. It's a fun little gimmick, but mixing is a hassle, so most of the colours here are totally undiluted. (I couldn't have painted anything but a Christmas ornament with them, haha.) 

My idea for next year was: Since I'm doing one piece of art a day and have accepted that most of them don't look like much anyway, why not try to get the hang of gouache while I'm at it? So I got myself a nice little mid-tone sketchbook and made myself a gouache to go kit of an old tin box, and we'll see how that goes. 

Have a wonderful New Year's Eve, and a great 2018! <3