This was a stressful year with lots of moves, losses, disappointments, regrets, and complications. Though I didn’t expect to, I’m glad to be ending the year in the same general geographical locale where I began it, and I’m hoping to have a simpler 2025. 

Art was a lifeline for me this year, providing a calm meditative activity and a point of focus other than the stresses of life. The first thing I did when going to any new home was to set up an art area.

In 2024…

I immersed myself in earth pigments.

I’m usually a bright color enthusiast, so it was interesting to explore color mixes using blues and browns only. Gold Ochre and Venetian Red emerged as hero earth pigments with a surprising pop in otherwise desaturated images. 

I took some tutorials with Poppy Balser.

Poppy Balser’s careful process involves painting the scene in monochrome in order to plan values before starting over in color. Did I see a benefit when I did it? Absolutely. Do I do it when it’s not a tutorial? Absolutely not. I simultaneously learned that it’s worth doing and that I will never, ever do it. 

I painted directly.

Ah, now direct painting – painting without a sketch – is more up my alley. In June, I joined a challenge called 30×30 Direct Watercolor, where you’re supposed to do a painting a day for 30 days (I only did 5, because life). I loved it because I find sketching a chore, and I felt this gave me license to work in an intuitive, unplanned way. I felt like giving the technique a name felt like a justification for doing something I enjoyed, rather than feeling slightly bad about not sketching because you’re “supposed to.”

I experimented with acrylic gouache. 

I had given away my traditional gouache before I moved, correctly concluding that watercolor is my preferred medium. But during the summer I found myself wishing for a second medium anyway, just because it’s fun to do something different now and again. Since I was rebuilding from scratch, I decided to go for something a little different and explored acrylic gouache instead of traditional. It was sort of stepping stone for me; you can work with acrylic gouache pretty much as you would traditional, but my mind was blown when I realized acrylic gouache is just matte acrylic paint, and you can use any technique from acrylic painting. This opens up tons of doors in terms of the tutorials and books I can explore. I still do watercolor most of the time, but I’m looking forward trying new things the next time I get on an acrylic tear. 

I redid Kolbie Blume’s 10-Day Challenge.

Kolbie Blume’s 10-Day #PaintingtheWilderness Challenge was the first challenge I ever did and got me really into watercolor the first time I did it in in late 2021. Together with my Discord, I did it again!

I explored limited palettes.

I read Hazel Soan’s The Art of the Limited Palette and became intrigued. It made me rethink basics, like what is a color anyway, and what types of triads make good limited palettes. I did some experiments (Limited Palette Study: Choosing a limited palette feels like an interesting brain-teaser: I don’t always have the energy (when I’m tired I tend to just begin painting and add colors as needed), but it’s a great way to challenge the part of my brain that naturally gravitates toward palette-building as a fun exercise. 

I rejoined Claire Giordano’s Adventure Art Academy.

I was a member of Claire Giordano’s subscription tutorial service, Adventure Art Academy, in 2022, but it became a casualty of my mass cancellation of all subscription services in early 2023. Almost two years later, I realized I don’t miss Skillshare or anything else (which mostly just stressed me out), but I do miss Claire’s easygoing teaching style. She os so supportive and emphasizes making shortcuts and doing your best with limited time on location – techniques I employ even though I’m mostly working at home because I like to work fast. Plus, her tutorials start with video montage of hiking the area, giving you a better sense of place than single fixed location. I got back on the train in October, just in time for her November Alpenglow class.

I made myself an advent calendar.

Together with my Discord, I set aside some supplies I wanted to explore more and painted with one per day for 3 weeks in December. It was a fun way to randomize and dedicate some time to supplies I hadn’t given enough attention to. I reaffirmed that my most enjoyed supplies are still watercolor paints! 

Checking in on my 2024 resolutions

By the time the New Year rolls around, I never remember my past-year resolutions; I had to look these up in my last year’s annual retrospective, and I found them surprising!

• Use my drawing sketchbook more/draw more thumbnails. I definitely did not do this. Almost the opposite; I feel like I jumped directly into painting more, as I found it easier and less stressful to just start playing around with paint (in the Direct Watercolor challenge and in general). I do still want to do more planning, but I think I need to acknowledge that the planning that is fun for me isn’t done with pencil in a drawing sketchbook: it’s done with paint on watercolor paper. There’s a reason I’ve run through 6 Canson XL pads this year, but I’m on page 6 of my drawing sketchbooks. I simply don’t enjoy working monochrome, or in pencil: get me a paintbrush and some color and we’ll talk. 

• Use smaller brushes to create more contrast in stroke size. I didn’t really do this either, though I definitely agree it would be helpful. I just like my big brushes and I’m too lazy to switch. Maybe I should get a big brush with a point instead, like a do-it-all quill. 

• Give masking fluid another try. Ha! I didn’t even have masking fluid for most of the year since I gave it away before moving. I find the timing really hard to master for masking fluid: you have to apply it and let it dry before you start painting, and you also have to rub it off within a few hours, or it will become almost impossible. Both of those are hard: I like to jump into painting straight away, but I also like to let layers dry overnight over add layers over the course of several days. With its finicky timing, masking fluid does not feel suited to my particular brand of ADHD impatience / forgetfulness / time blindness.

• Don’t buy paint this year. LOL! I lived near an art supply store for several months, which was dangerous; not only did I buy paint, but an entire new medium (acrylic)! I also feel like watercolor paint is a microcosm of my possessions as a whole, where I reduced drastically before moving with a mindset of “now I will be minimalist” only to learn that being minimalist sucks, and so I bought a bunch of stuff over again.

Obviously my resolutions and goal-setting efforts were not helpful. I think especially in a high-stress year, I needed to just let art take me where it took me, without worrying about what I had previously planned to stretch myself. Seeing this list does prove to me how much I’ve learned about myself and the way I work; I would never set these as resolutions now, and it’s funny that I didn’t know that at the end of 2023. 

I did continue to paint in the collections I had started. I painted in my Canada National Parks collection early in the year, but lost steam after moving to Canada and back. Throughout the year, I added several new birds. I’ve also been painting from my own photos, as well as adding a number of photos to my Unsplash. 

2025 Predictions

Maybr art resolutions just don’t work for me. Resolutions that are designed to make up for my natural deficits or disinclinations are doomed to fail and be unfun, while resolutions that I’m going to do anyway are unnecessary. Anyway, I like being surprised by what happens in my art practice!

Instead of making resolutions, therefore, I will make predictions and see if they come true next year. That way I don’t have to remember them and I won’t be disappointed if they don’t come true. These are just my ideas for where my curiosity may take me – it’s fine if it takes me somewhere different.

• Prediction #1: More limited palettes. I feel like limited palette planning provides an intriguing direction for the palette-building part of my brain to go as my everyday sketching palette becomes more solidified. Exploring limited palettes is also a potential way in to planning for me. I’m not sure if I don’t plan because I dislike planning in general, or because most of the planning techniques I’ve tried are monochrome (e.g. thumbnails and value studies) and therefore of less interest to me as a colorhound. I feel like art teachers can get real snooty about value being more important than color and I don’t disagree necessarily, but I personally am motivated to paint because I love color, so I think I’ll be more successful at techniques that lean into that instead of fighting it.
  
• Prediction #2: More randomizing. The Advent Calendar challenge was fun in part because it was randomized. Earlier in the year I also loosely had the idea to paint from a randomized triad, as Katie Woodward does, but I never got around to doing it. I think this could synergize with limited palette studies.
  
• Prediction #3: More Claire Giordano. I love Claire’s hiking + painting videos, but in the past I’ve struggled with managing attention and motivation because by the time I press “play” I’m ready to paint and there’s a temptation to skip the hiking montages even though I enjoy them. Recently I started using the montage time to play around with color, making “local color” swatches for the areas Clare shows, which is a great use of the time and supports my desire to plan more (in a fun, colorful way).

Okay, one resolution

I will make one traditional resolution, and that is to try to remember to sign my paintings! I gave away some paintings for the holidays and more than one recipient asked “Why isn’t it signed?”

Kolbie Blume stresses that you should start signing your paintings right away to reinforce that Yes You Are An Artist, but I usually don’t because I don’t like writing with a tiny brush. However, if I can do a little symbol or initials I think it will be easier.

Paintings by month

Here are links to my monthly retrospectives from this year.