"Cookie the Pug" - Colourful Pug Painting in Acrylic by Renee Dillon

Black and white lineart of a pug called Cookie waiting for a tasty treat.

This is of course going to be a colourful pug painting, but I found that I absolutely loved the graphic, black and white quality of the lineart. I'd love a picture of this pug on a tote bag. I need to fix the settings on my camera so I can get higher resolution images for printing. They come out looking fine at the moment, but they need to be larger to be accepted on Society 6 and Fine Art America. Duvet covers (or quilt covers) in particular require a very large resolution.

So for now, this image is just a preview of the delightful pugliness to come.

"Amy" - Symmetrical Tiling Abstract in Acrylic Paint

So I've been keeping at my plan to create for an hour a day during February. I'm already a little bit ahead for tomorrow. I find it interesting that sketching and lineart seems to go by so fast, I finish a drawing and I've hardly used up any of my time, yet when I sit down to paint it feels like the time flies by. Maybe I'm focusing harder when I have the paints out because painting is still so strange and different for me. I've been drawing for years, but I'm still quite new to paints, in a way.

Blogger is refusing to justify my text for some reason. It's annoying me to no end.

Paintings in the Works: "Sargent Peanutbutter" the Horse, "Cookie" the Pug, "Fizzy" the Pug, "Lesley" the Cow, Other Misc Art

"Milo the Red Heeler" - Acrylic Painted Pet Portrait

I follow a Buy Swap and Sell page for pets on Facebook, because I like the cute animals that pop up in my news feed. Mostly it's things like rabbits and birds, but occasionally cute puppies come up and I have to draw them. This one was a red heeler, a different colour variation of a blue heeler. It was actually a pretty difficult colour and texture to emulate in paint, but I like it the way it is anyway.

I love the way the colourful hills and bright blue sky came out. I'll have to do backgrounds like this more often. If you want to buy prints of this image, including items such as throw cushions, greeting cards and phone cases, you can check out my account on Fine Art America.

Taking the Plunge

Now that I'm not pushing myself to post everyday to my blog, I find that I'm trying to come up with blog posts that contain more substance. If I only post once or twice a week, I feel like I should be able to come up with something relevant or profound to say to accompany my art or my process. Which is all well and good. But the pressure of creating fewer, better quality blog posts is leading me to avoid posting at all. I've still been painting and drawing this past couple of weeks, of course. But the idea of the deadline that spurred me along is gone. I've been second guessing the things that I want to say and the work-in-progress paintings that I could have posted over the last few days.

I find that this happens a lot with my art. I'm getting better at the concept of just creating something, without worrying whether it will be right or good enough. But when it comes to things like taking print quality images of my finished art, connecting with other artists and bloggers, writing tutorials and useful guest posts to share my art around and developing blog traffic, I put it off. I think there's a part of myself that puts these things off because they make it too real. If I haven't done them yet, I can still consider myself to be at the beginning of my journey. I haven't made the attempt yet, so I can't consider that it hasn't worked.

It's not even the fact that I believe it won't work. I'm almost positive that if I do the things on my to-do list, it will increase traffic to my blog, followers on my Facebook page, sales of my prints and original paintings. But the nagging feeling is still there that it won't happen straight away, or at all. As long as these concepts are in the future, I don't have to deal with them just yet.

Now is the time to let go of that mentality, and move forward. It's time to start really trying to advance my artistic career and see where it takes me. One day I'd really like to be able to work as an artist full time, both teaching art and selling my work. The only way I'll ever get there is to do what any other successful artist has done - plunge in and start working towards it. It won't happen all by itself. There won't ever be a better time than now.

After writing this blog post and psyching myself up, I finally got a decent quality photograph and uploaded my artwork Austin to Fine Art America. Judging by my previous blog posts, I've been meaning to do this since about August last year. Better late than never. You can now buy prints of this image as well as throw cushions, phone cases etc. The original is also still available for sale for $1800.

"Austin", 29x39, Acrylic on Canvas, $1800

Amy Work in Progress - Symmetrical Tiling Abstract by Renee Dillon

Here is my offering for the 1st of February, my very first hour of the month, as mentioned in my previous post. The first image was actually from January, and doesn't count as time spent in today's hour, but I thought I'd post it anyway. It's a digital draft or colour palette test that I whipped up by colouring over my sketch in Photoshop. I think I should do these colour tests more often, but I think I should stick to them rather than choosing random colours for the digital version and then choosing random colours again for the painting. The digital also tiles at a smaller scale than the original, which makes it harder to see the detail.

As usual, my photo of the painting is a little crooked, so please forgive that. Also, the colours didn't photograph very well. The grayish colour you're seeing is supposed to be metallic purple paint, which looks quite nice in real life. The yellow and green were markers, because I thought I'd go a bit more mixed media with this one and see how it turned out. The markers definitely give a lot more control in small spaces, which I like. Bic Mark-Its also seem to be fairly streak-free in small spaces as well, which I love.

I won't necessarily be trying to post daily in February, but I'll try to stay on the wagon as far as actually creating art goes. Wish me luck!

Total Time Spent Making Art in February: 1 Hour

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Final Thoughts

So, Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge is finally over for the month of January. I might not have completed 30 finished paintings, as was my original plan, but I did make 22 blog posts, as well as some other art experiments or unfinished pieces that didn't get posted at all. So overall, I'm happy with my effort, and want to compound upon it in future. 

My next rather ambitious goal is to see if I can work on art for at least one hour per day for the whole month of February. That's 28 hours total. I wonder how much I'll actually be able to create in that time. More than if I wasn't pushing myself, that's for sure. My main aim is to set aside a period of time in which I'm not allowed to get distracted by other things. Hopefully it will also encourage me to work faster so I have something to blog about at the end of each session, rather than sit there pondering colour palettes or mediums.

Here are some of the things I didn't get around to posting this month.

Digital Layout of Abstract

Digital Layout of Abstract

Work in Progress of Flower Painting, Need to Add Detail with Pens, Pencils etc.

You might see more of these in future. Or I might get distracted and work on other things. But I thought they belonged here as part of the record of the month anyway.