News — beginners

In the interest of "work smarter, not harder" & "done is better than perfect" in 2023, I'm resurrecting some blog posts I started months (or even years) ago and posting them in whatever state they're in.    There are only 2 techniques in watercolor.You read that right. There are only two (2) techniques in watercolor: wet on wet, and wet on dry. Everything else is just icing.Now, getting these two things right (especially the wet on wet part) takes YEARS to master. I still consider myself a watercolor beginner, and I've been working with watercolor for almost 3 years. 3...

I found out I was nominated as a Small Business Superstar with the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce over the weekend!Like...whaaaaat?!?!?! I never would have expected something like this at this point in my art business! I feel like I am still getting started and there's always so much more to do. But that's also just life, I suppose.Anyway, thank you thank you thank you to whoever nominated me for this. It's incredibly encouraging and motivating.

Now that I've been painting for a few years, and I've started to create art that I like and think is good enough to sell, I've started to accumulate a lot of paintings I have to keep track of. It's important to keep note of when they were painted, what size they are, how much the framing supplies cost, and so on. In the interest of organization I created a spreadsheet to track all this info in one place. I add columns from time to time as I discover additional info I'd like to track. If you haven't started tracking...

My goal at the beginning of 2020 was to get out and show my work at events. Well...Covid had other plans and we we all know how that year went! So 2021 was the first year I really got to participate in art shows and events. I have done 11 events over the spring and summer, and as I wind down for the year I figured I'd write up some notes here, both for myself and others who may be looking to get into the KC art scene next year! I had a goal to do on average 1 event a...

I may have to eat my words: I have loudly protested that sketchbooks simply weren't for me, but over the course of a little over a year, I completed 5 sketchbooks!  It seems sketchbooks are a thing for me, as long as they have a theme; I completed 3 of these because they were used for a very specific purpose. Two of them were used solely for my 100 Days Project to keep it all together. The third was used to paint skies and sunsets.  Having multiple books available also seems to help. My palette knife painting process is very...