Happy New Year! Its Time to Get Started!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great holiday season. Mine was very busy, very fun, and very exhausting but I enjoyed it. I got to spend a lot of time with family in the last 2 weeks. On New Year's Eve we celebrated at home with Mr. Gold and made some homemade pizza.

Homemade pizza - I start with this base crust recipe and we added pizza sauce, provolone, mozzarella, pepperoni, red bell pepper (my green one went bad before I could use it 😕) and some jalapeños. 

In the last week we did a lot of cleaning - the bedroom, the computer/desk station, bookshelf and the patio. The patio hasn't been this clean since we moved in a few years ago! We are going to leave it empty for now since our building is getting painted in a few weeks. We also moved the vanity into the hallway where it will double as my new make up station and paint station.

My sister gifted me this vanity a few years ago. I like that it has a drawer to put stuff away in. It fits perfect in between the bathroom and closet. 

And I finally started working on some of the artwork for the Invitational! This is always the hardest part for me. Getting started. I spent a couple hours drawing and making sure the surfaces were ready to go. I am going to be working on drawings and paintings of food! Juicy, delicious, mouthwatering food. This has been on my art bucket list for many years now... probably since I took my first painting class in 2006!

The two drawings above will be made in mixed media. I will start the underbase with the Prismacolor art markers and layer with color pencil. For the highlights I might use a white gel pen, depending on how white they need to be. 

These two are going to be painted in oils. Its been about 5-6 years since I've painted in oils, but if I recall I really enjoyed it (once I got an understanding of how to use the media). Looking forward to the glossy colors and thick brush strokes.

I'm so happy I finally started! I can work on the fun parts now. I have a portfolio due to the Ontario Museum at the end of this month so I'll probably get started on a few more drawings/paintings this week. Get the hard part out of the way so I won't have blank canvases staring at me. And I'll also have to go buy more bristol board for the first time in 5 years!