And January comes around again

(Some pretty pink flowers to help combat the grey January day.)

I’m still not doing New Year’s resolutions — I’m sure there must be some people they work for, but in my experience, they’re just a way to set myself up for failure, which is not the best way to start the year.

I also don’t do the “word of the year” thing. If you do and it works for you then that is brilliant and it strikes me as way more sensible than making specific resolutions. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the intent behind choosing a word, it’s more that my words would be the same every year: explore, play, learn.

Inevitably though, January is a fresh start, even ignoring the whole new year, new calendar thing. For one thing, we can stop thinking about and making Christmas cards now, which was the main focus of the last quarter of last year — unless you’re one of those people who make Christmas cards all year round, which is all very practical and sensible, but I really need a few months without any Christmassy thoughts — so you can’t really avoid the “what do I do next?” pondering.

And, of course, lots of new classes and plans start in January. And one of those is Wanderlust 2019.

It took me quite a while to decide to actually sign up for this, mainly because I don’t really do art journalling. But in the end, I went for it because it seemed like a way of formalising what I already do: find different artists with different styles and see what I can learn from them. The only difference with this is that I fully intend (exceptions may be made) to actually create something with each lesson rather than just scribble myself a note…

I do plan to blog the pieces I create in class, but because it’s a commercial class, I shan’t be going into a lot of detail about the process, though, as usual, I’m always happy to answer any questions. I’ve already done the first lesson, as well as the bonus lesson on creating backgrounds and I’ll do a couple of quick blogs on those when I’ve managed to get some decent photographs — that may require a sunny day though, a couple of the backgrounds really don’t photograph well under the artificial light here…