365 Days of Art

Most of you know me as a writer. Without going into the back story, because hey, I’m a novelist and trust me that could take forever, I discovered I had a talent for art when I was pregnant with my child, Ellie. I actually made more money with my art during that time than I did with royalties. When Ellie gave up her naps at 2 & 1/2, I couldn’t find time to write or blog or continue my YouTube channel without sacrificing my family or my sanity. I turned to art for a creative outlet—specifically watercolor. It’s a whole lot easier than writing. You can draw a picture on 15 minutes. Wanna write a short story? I’ll see you in a month.

Ellie is now 5 years old, and while I have been wishing I could explore art more, I haven’t had much time. Enter, stage left, Covid 19. My back went out for the unpteenth time (thank you scoliosis, pregnancy & emergency c-section), and I knew I needed to do something about it. I started yoga at home, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve done yoga every day since April 2020, except for two Sunday’s, which were my restorative days, and I forgot. The discipline of forcing myself to do yoga fed into other areas of my life, but that is another blog post.

I realized something. If I can do yoga every day for almost a year now, then I can do the same with art, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. I figured I would start January 1st and see where it leads me. Then I figured I would blog about it because you can’t really take the writing out of the writer.

I decided to set a couple of rules down for myself.

• I’m not going to worry about social media. I left social media during the 2016 election, and it’s been wonderful. I like myself, and I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. I’m not putting everyone else’s angst in my mind. I’m also not blogging this to try to increase my likes on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, and what the heck is tiktok? This is for me to see if I can do it, and for anyone who finds me in the blogoverse. I think this thing used to hook up to my Facebook page but that was years ago and I don’t have time to research it. That being said, I’m not going to do too much to try to get this out there. No posting to a page, adding hyperlinks to other blog posts, using hoot suite or whatever to make sure each social media account get the post, copying and pasting key words in the key words section of the post, etc. I’m done with that. That’s why I chose to use my lesser known, more personal blog rather than my official website.
• Art. Visual art. Every day. I’m going to focus on water colors, but sometimes it might be drawing. Some days it might be a really bad drawing of a keychain. But something.
• Days go from when I wake up to when I sleep. If I get something done at 12:01am, it applies to the earlier day.
• I’ll post it no matter how bad it is. As long as I have my phone and wifi access. So yeah, all the awful stuff is going to go out there. (Expect a lot of whining about cheap watercolor paper.)
• I won’t respond to any negative comments.
• I’m using a couple watercolor and drawing books right now, and I will always try my best to give credit to the authors/ artists.
• It’s about producing, not promoting. I think that was the biggest mistake I made with my writing. I focused to much on promotion instead of producing.

I’m hoping that through this I will rekindle a love for the creative process. I’m hoping I can learn a little self discipline as well. I also hope that maybe someone out there, possibly a fellow mom who, like me, has lost herself by pouring everything into her family and job, decides that she can do it too, no matter how old she is. (I need reading glasses now, y’all.)

That is about it. This will be the longest blog post I intend to write for quite a while. Happy creating everyone, and see you January 1st.

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