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Kootenay Trees Sketched by the fire after a hike around my husband’s old stomping grounds growing up. I understand now why people paint this sort of thing. This experience in nature was nothing short of magical.

Hi there!   I just wanted to pop in and say hello, blog!  Been awhile.  2017 now lies behind us and what a year for me and DBSL!  Unbelievable.

As we speak my artwork is up on display in Cafe Rosso down on Stephen Ave – my first official showing ever.  The timing of that opportunity in particular is striking to me.  November of last year I was shortlisted along with 20 other artists for the chance to paint a window in the downtown core over December.  The catch was you had to paint outside to get it up, using a medium I was not familiar with – and the average size window we were painting would be 80 square feet – which is huge!  We entered a cold snap in Calgary, I got sick, and I wasn’t initially contacted.  To summarize, it didn’t work out.  But, that same week my sister told me about Cafe Rosso putting out an expression of interest to feature one artist a month in their cafes.  I sent an email to put my hat in the ring and was one of the 12 artists selected.  From there we had a meeting and artists could choose which month they wanted.  It only took me a few seconds to choose January.  I have a ton of work to choose from already.  I could stay frozen with decisions and the desire to paint all new pieces for my month, or I could just commit, get it done and keep moving forward.  Felt damn good to choose action, I must say.  It’s great to start the new year with this month in front of me.

Live illustration was the other crazy opportunity to come up for me in 2017 – twice!  I now have a Services Page right here on the site for anyone interested in working with me for live illustration in the future.  Full disclosure: when I was initially contacted on behalf of Philosophy Skincare, I did not even understand what they were asking.  I’ve seen girls doing live illustration before.  I just…thought they were wildly more successful than I was.  Funny what our minds can do to us.

And then there is Etsy.  I put about 60+ hours into my Etsy store over the course of last year.  And then in September, something happened.  A slow but steady creep of sales began to occur for me.  This first week of 2018 has been my best week yet – 9 sales in seven days!  I would be over the moon to keep that up this year.

All recapping aside, I did want to post a few sketches from our visit back to Rossland this year over Christmas.  It’s my last day of my holiday break – just over two weeks.  It felt like so much longer!  Life had different plans for me than what I was counting on for this time off, but I can say that I’ve both enjoyed the time off, and I am ready to get back to work!

I make no promises to increase my output of blog posts for 2018.  In fact, I’ve finally made peace with this.  Instagram is an excellent platform for sharing my work, and Etsy is it’s own beast to learn from.

What are my goals in 2018?  Well…more of the same, but better might be the easiest way to put it.  I want to keep creating.  I feel as though I’m losing my fear of people’s reaction to my work.  I’d like to reach out to some of our local publications to see if there are opportunities for me to do some editorial illustration, as it would be amazing to see my work in print.  I want to keep up these Etsy sales.  I have new goals for calendar production for 2019.  I would LOVE to do more live illustration.  I cannot describe the state of mind it put me in to illustrate in front of people.  Peak state, I suppose.  What else…we were in the mall the other day and there was this enormous cut out in front of the soon to be Sak’s store in Chinook.  It was an illustration of a storefront with cars and people outside, and it had to be 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall at least.  I want to do something like that!  All this to say, I am ready to get outside of my comfort zone with DBSL.  We’ve had a great time building this backstory on the internet together since 2012.  Now,  I really want to show my work to the masses.  Worst they can say to me is no.  I’m ready for this.  Are you hearing me 2018?  Let’s do this.

To anyone out there reading this, Happy New Year!  Some believe it’s old hat but I LOVE fresh starts.  A new year is a new gift.  Push yourself and you might just be amazed at where you end up.

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