I thought today would be another one of those where I got so caught up in other things, that I end up not having made enough time for my art.

However I remembered a podcast episode by Amie Mcnee from @inspiredtowrite on Instagram, that helped me today.  She was discussing with her husband James Winestock, how Consistency is the Antidote to Hustle  and that really resonated with me.

One of the things they talked about was how just showing up for 5/10 minutes everyday or however much time you have, is so important.  It doesn't matter that your work is going slowly or that its not particularly good, the main thing is that you worked on it.  If you show up and do it again tomorrow, then that consistency should turn into a wonderful positive habit that can only benefit you.  What was great to hear as well was that this advice can be applied to any of the arts, whether you are a writer, painter, actor or musician.  Thinking about it even more, this advice can be applied to anything that you want to do, any passion or hobby or positive change you want to make a habit of, especially if perfectionism often gets in the way.

So today I showed up.  I'm not sure what I'll produce or make progress with, but I'm here and I'm trying to prioritise it despite how late in the day I think it is.  

I have a large pile of unfinished artworks that I need to get through and one of my goals this year is to not start any new works until I've worked my way through some of my unfinished ones and then kind of alternate between the two.  I'm hoping by the end of the year, I'll have more new work than unfinished work.

Above is my current pile of unfinished works that I keep in an old gift box and is about to really overflow.  

Maybe curbing my habit of running after every new idea that pops into my head may be good for me and teach me how to finish what I start more consistently than before.  I do think as artists we need to capture those ideas somewhere before they fade away, but I reckon I could use my sketchbook for capturing until I can revisit those ideas.  

I don't know if this will work or whether having a pile of unfinished work is even a bad thing, but I'm keen to try different ways of working to shake things up a bit in my art practise and keep my well of creativity full.

Lately I've been exploring using gouache paint since it is so similar to watercolours and I can pretty much use it in exactly the same way.

I've started a portrait project where I've been using gouache to paint them and plan to do 100 of them by the end of 2022.  It is a bit ambitious since we are already past halfway through the year and I've only done about 6!  Even so, I'm pretty optimistic about my ability to achieve this goal since I do love to paint faces.  You can read more about my project and see the portraits I've painted so far here 100 Gouache Faces in 2022

Other than the portrait project, I've created a few other pieces too, such as 'Botanica' seen below:

'Botanica' has lovely layers created with graphite and coloured pencils as well as the gouache paint.

Another I've created recently is 'Blooms From the Concrete', which features gorgeous visual texture created by using coloured pencils over the gouache as well:

The two pieces of artwork above are available for sale in my shop with the added bonus of being able to pay in interest free installments using Klarna or Paypal.

I'm enjoying my experiments and getting to know this medium.  Gouache paints are more matte and chalky than watercolours, but I love to use them in a saturated way, like I do with the watercolours so this doesn't bother me.  They are also more opaque than watercolours so I can achieve different effects especially when layering.

Maybe I'll do another blog post one day soon showing the differences side by side with watercolour and by painting the same object.  Maybe an apple or an orange?  We will see :-)

Recently, I was getting some artwork ready for an upcoming exhibition and as you may or may not know, this can often involve testing how they look in various frames and mounts.

I had one particular painting that I painted last year, that started bugging me everytime I looked at it.  There were elements I loved such as the colour palette, the line drawings of flower shapes in ink and the metallic watercolour highlights, but it seemed like there was something a bit lacking.  I looked and looked at the painting, as I tried it in various frames, trying to figure out what was bothering me.  This was especially frustrating because before this, I was perfectly happy with it and therefore had even exhibited it before.

In the end I decided to just sit quietly with it, gently play around with it and see if I could figure out what it needed as I went along.

The painting is called 'Enchanted Garden' and this is how it looked before:

It went through various stages as I looked at reference images online and made decisions about which direction to go in: 

I recently finished a little mini series of abstract pieces, which are colourful and full of visual texture.

The mini series is called Speedway and consists of 3 paintings.  I love how they turned out and I'm eager to work this way again and maybe this time do a larger collection of work.  It was fun working on these 3 at the same time and seeing them come together as a collection, whilst still having their own little personalities.  

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you all know about some new artwork I've recently added to my online shop.  I have added some original art that is a mixture of Mixed Media paintings, Watercolour paintings and some fineliner ink drawings.  I'm finding that I'm more and more inspired by the natural properties of watercolour and some of my recent paintings are based on the movement of water and imaginary underwater worlds.  I also really enjoy drawing patterns and abstract shapes.

The painting below is called 'Enchanted Garden' and features lovely watercolours and black fineliner details.  I've also include metallic watercolour highlights which gives certain areas of the painting lovely sparkling quality: