This week I made some legit progress! Maybe I'm finally turning the corner after weeks of little to no art. Catch up with last week here.
I really, really hate ironing, so I tried to flatten my MIL's piece by lightly misting the back with water & putting heavy paper cutter on it for over a day. It's better...but still not great. I also realized that, once again, it's an irregular size and won't fit a standard mat/ frame. Grrr!! Why do all paper manufacturers make pre-cut paper that doesn't fit standard sizes!?!? It's so infuriating! 7x10, 10x14, etc are worthless for trying to frame! You lose so much of the long side if you try to fit it in a standard size mat to keep framing costs down, or you can custom mat it for more time, effort, and money.
Speaking of custom mats, one of my goals for the year is to learn to use the mat cutter I received over 6 months ago. I've read there's a bit of a learning & set up curve, so I've been avoiding it. I finally bought some full mat board sheets to try it this year though. I do have some experience with them, although it's been nearly 20 years. We used a mat cutter in my photography class in high school.
My other goal is to frame some of my larger works. Right now the largest painting I have is on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper. A full sheet is 22x30 inches, so a quarter is 11x15. I have a set of 16x20" frames and I put some of those larger works in them earlier this week.
If you've been following along, you might recognize some of those from my 2021 calendar! (I still have one available for purchase!)
Finally, I am now 4 days through the 100 Days Project. This is a trend I see going around social media every year--the goal is to do a small creative activity for 100 days. Ideally it would be an unbroken stretch, but life happens, so just keep going. Even though I have really disliked painting every day to participate in July's World Watercolor Month, for some reason this had been calling to me. My project is 100 days of watercolor monochrome paintings. It's a big enough deal that I'll write a detailed separate post on it soon!
Finally finally, this week marked the start of art competitions. I applied for a few juried art exhibitions, and got my first email about NKC's Art in the Park 2021. I was accepted last year, but it was cancelled due to the pandemic. It's happening this June though, and I'm automatically juried in! It finally seems like I'm going to do art fairs this year!
This past week was busy with lots of progress--finally!--so I'm feeling good for the first time in weeks about art!
