January was a busy month, and now that it’s over I just wanted to quickly recap the achievements and share my favorite works for each media used this month. I will also share my plans for February.

Soft Pastel: I made 10 paintings over the month of January. I am happy with the most of them. I feel like I improved my technique a little bit. I certainly felt inspired and challenged myself too.

My absolute favorite is the hummingbird. It was pure extasy drawing it, and the way the colors blended. I love it.

Biggest challenge was capturing a bird in flight

Biggest improvement is my final painting of January- snowy scene. I finally felt that I did captured the snow exactly how I wanted, especially on the trees.

Plans: I am hoping to experiment more with landscapes, draw more using my own references. I am hoping to do larger paintings as well.

Colored Pencils: I did only 4 drawings, approximately 1 every week. I strongly feel that it is not enough. My absolute favorite of this month is the deer.

 

Plans: I am hoping to do my perspective studies using mostly colored pencils. Probably more animal drawings as I love rendering fur and feathers in colored pencil

Watercolor was not my principal medium of choice this month. It was very much my intention, as I felt I should focus on my weakest point, which is pastel. But I missed very much.

Including gouache drawings in my art journal, I made about 10 watercolor drawings.

My favorite is the rooster

Plans: I am hoping to do another doodlewashed watercolor challenge. It is a series of daily watercolor sketches, I’ve been doing it for the last third of 2016 and loved it. So, hopefully I’ll do that. Also most of my color theory studies will be in watercolor.

Markers: I fell out of practice and getting back to it was challenging. But I feel more confident now, especially with a travel sketch challenge going on. Including art journal entries, I made 14 drawings.

My absolute favorite is my Morocco travel sketch

My final sketch for January and one more addition to the travel illustration collection is a travel illustration for Mexico

Plans: I am going to finish travel sketch challenge, there is also another “Goodbye Winter” challenge coming up. I want to purchase some extra colors and practice more with gradients.

Papercutting: This was a wild ride this month as it is a totally new medium for me, but what a joy! And so meditative. Hopefully I will progress even more in the following months. Including tiny ones for my illustrated journal I made about 8 papercuts during this month.

My absolute favorite this time is a simple fox and owl cutout. Perhaps because children enjoyed playing with it.

 

Plans: Make more of those! I am hoping to improve my technique and get on making more intricate cuts. I need to work on designing these better, so this is something I am hoping to learn. And cutting words out too!

Digital drawing: Just like with watercolor I took a step back this month and was doing 1 digital drawings per week. I still enjoy drawing with Apple Pencil a lot. I felt I drew too little this month, so hopefully, I will increase the amount of my digital art next month. I did about 4 drawings on the ipad. My favorite is this winter house.

 

Plans: Increasing quantity and hopefully quality too.

Art Journal: I had so much fun with it. I find it a welcome part of my day to sit down for 5-10 minutes and create a small drawing. I especially enjoy painting with gouache, although the pages are quite thin. Collage works well too.

If I had to pick my top 4 favorite ones it will be these:

I had fun doing 52-weeks illustration challenge too, and hopefully, like with the Illustrated Journal it will be a successful year-long project.

My favorite out of 4 themes was whimsy and this ladybug illustration

 Other Plans:

• I have one more “draw from life” challenge I want to participate in (another year-long project lead by Natalie Ratkovski)
• I want to do at least one acrylic painting. I have a few wooden panels bought forever ago and begging to be used.
• I want to have at least one drawing on location outing , weather permitting.

 

Not a bad month overall. I feel like I did  a lot, to be specific my total is 70 works so far, including art journal drawings. My schedule was pretty full and I found that even making a schedule helps so much with making sure I use a specific media at least once a week.   Sales were good for the first month of the year too, with two batches put into the coffee shop and a couple of individual orders. I did not update my etsy after all, and this is something I need to work on more next month.

Posts week by week:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

 

Here’s to awesome February!

 

Love,

Anya

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