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I am passionate about reducing waste in my life and my art practice. I paint on both sides of paper when I can and keep every terrible painting or scrap to reuse in collage.  Here's a video from Instagram that shows a few more of my recycling & waste reducing techniques that you can steal for yourself!   View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jen Roberts - Artist (@late_blooming_art) I keep meaning to make part 2, and I'll be sure to post it here too when I do.

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 have a love/hate relationship with thrift store shopping. It's always a thrill when you find a great item for a low price. And you can feel good about not contributing to the many (many) problems associated with the fast fashion industry. But if you're looking for something specific, even a certain color, it can be very frustrating. I also dislike how much trash I have to sort through before I find the occasional treasure. But in Kansas City we have one thrift store that's always exciting to visit: ScrapsKC!  ScrapsKC is an art supply thrift store. They also have a...

I realized recently that it's stilly to beat myself up when I mess up a routine or habit I've been working on cultivating, because messing it up gives you perspective. How can you tell if something's working or not otherwise? My light bulb moment came because my coach pushed me to move my meditation to first thing in the morning to make sure it gets done. I was trying to do it around lunch, and I really enjoyed the reset it gave my day, but of course I missed days here and there because things get busy, I don't always...

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...