Artist Blog #3

I’ve named this collection Illuminance.

Hi and welcome,

Building momentum with my 30 painting portfolio has been slow but I am moving forwards which is exactly where I want to be headed. Take a look at the art supplies I use for all my mixed media artwork.

I’ve named this collection Illuminance.

My intention with all these paintings is to have a commonality throughout them all. One of these common threads is the subject matter. If you’ve been following my work for a while you may have noticed that the majority of all my art that I have ever created right from the beginning have all included a forest, woodland, trees and most of the time streams or a pool of water within a wooded area. There is something that clearly draws me time and time again to paint such scenes. I think it’s because of how I feel when I am in that space…I feel so at peace and an expansion happens within me. So painting such scenes reminds me of this feeling. It speaks to my soul.

What business aspects have I been working on?

This week I took a course via Skillshare to learn how best to use Pinterest for business and how to implement a Pinterest marketing strategy. I know Pinterest is a great platform to drive traffic to your website or wherever you want your customers to end up. For me, I want them to mainly end up at my website and equally to my YouTube channel. A secondary direction for my customers to head to would be to my Instagram account but that is not going to be my main focus. This week I created a variety of Pinterest pins for my art blogs, artwork that is available to purchase and my vlogs. The pin templates were created on Canva. Canva is incredibly useful and I use it for so many things, such as my Youtube thumbnails, end and intro videos, pins for Pinterest and Instagram posts. This week I also signed up to Tailwind which is an app that will schedule these pins to be posted throughout the days, weeks and months. This will save me a lot of time in the end. So after some research on how to best use Pinterest I now have a better understanding of this platform. I have used Pinterest before for my business but I was using it infrequently which doesn’t do much with the traction you get if you were to have a more consistent approach. I am aiming to upload pins daily via Tailwind and I will be keeping an eye on the stats to see which pins or more successful than others and build the pins refinement that way. So watch this space!

Capturing this beautiful day out in Woodbridge.

It’s good to recharge your energy with being outside by the water or amongst the woods.

Work in progress of painting 10 of my portfolio.

I found at this stage the painting looked flat so I ended up lightening the background to create distance which ended up improving the depth immensely. The link above will take you to my vlog with the whole process.

Artist Blog #2

An earlier piece that I created during lockdown. It’s when my focus on building my art business went up a notch

Hello everyone,

Finding something that you’re passionate about can take time to present itself into your life and awareness.

To find a passion in life the majority of people will need to try their hand at many different things before something clicks inside of them and they realise that they do not want to do anything else. It’s like finding a key to your own unique lock and that key will bring with it immense joy, excitement and it will make you feel alive.

Soon after I had my daughter, I felt a shift within my core. My capacity to love blossomed to new heights and so did the need to be creative and the need to find a purpose or a passion.

The pull to be creative took me down many paths but in January 2016 I purchased three small canvases and some acrylic paint and I followed my intuition. I painted a silhouette of an old and crooked tree on each canvas with a beautiful purple and red sky in the background. I was both so happy and surprised with how they turned out. A family member purchased them soon after I had posted them on Instagram and that gave me the confidence I needed to pursue this new interest of mine.

During those earlier years I was learning to paint by watching tutorials online and by simply experimenting and being playful. It was a casual hobby up until 2020.

Lockdown was the catalyst for me wanting to be a full-time artist.

During this period I was able to paint nearly every day and having that time at home also allowed me to build my website from scratch. This was a huge achievement for me as I have always believed that I was not very savvy when it comes to things like that. I had now created half a dozen finished pieces of art, sold some of them via social media and now I had my own website to sell them from. I was now determined to give this my all and create a living from my art because So even though lockdown was difficult and stressful in ways, such as not being able to go to work and earn money, worrying about paying bills and how this pandemic and isolation was affecting my daughter and family, it also changed the course of my life without a doubt, for the better.

Painting I created during lockdown

This piece sold pretty quickly and it cemented the dream of being a full-time artist

It also opened me up to new and powerful realisations including first hand spiritual experiences. Which I will talk about another time.

The following year in June 2021 I enrolled onto an art mastery program for a year. I had come to a point in my painting journey where I needed guidance to improve my skills further. So after much debating I took the plunge and signed up for this intensive art program. Best thing I ever did!

The course ended in June 2022, however I am yet to complete my portfolio of 30 paintings. I am currently on painting 10. Once my portfolio is finished my intention is to showcase my work at my first exhibition. Take a look at the art supplies I use for all my mixed media artwork.

These blogs of my portfolio progress will be a regular thing!