I love three day weekends. Especially when we are in town and just taking it easy. Dave is playing a lot of golf and I have been relaxing with my computer and painting with my palette knife. I am ahead with my paintings for the 30 in 30 for the first time this month. That is pretty pathetic. I am usually way more organized than this! 

This painting has a lot of thick knife strokes and is way more muted than the colors I normally use. But I am really loving this new color palette and I think you will see a lot more muted paintings from me in the future.

I don't know if you noticed but my website has a new look. I spent about five hours today changing the "theme" of my website. Since weebly introduced their new weebly4 I haven't had time to update my site. I was so busy redoing my webinarts class (and painting and teaching) that I couldn't justify time to update my own website. It's not that complicated to change the theme but it requires me to check every single page to make sure everything is still in good order. Many of the headings changed when I did the update (and some kind of magically appeared that needed to be deleted) so it did take a lot of time. But it was well worth it!

I also created two special collection pages that feature all of the abstract paintings I created for the 30 in 30 Challenges based on Project Runway and Fixer Upper. They can be found as a drop down option under Abstract Paintings and also on the Abstract Paintings page. 

It's January, which is a great time of the year to give your website or blog a face lift. Why don't you take some time this week to do the same?

Five Days. That's it. OMG.

The January Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days starts in five days. That cannot be possible. And just so you know, I just sent reminders to everyone who signed up for the 2016 September 30 in 30 Challenge so please sign up if you haven't done it already.

I am a bit intimidated by my theme for this year's Challenge. I am painting paintings that fit on the show Fixer Upper (which means I am creating paintings that could hang in any of the renovated homes from the show Fixer Upper). This will be a very different look for me as so many of the Fixer Upper houses are designed in the Industrial Farmhouse decor which means no bright paintings this month. Ugh. (Ok, maybe I will sneak in a few.) But it's about time I pushed myself out of my comfort zone!

If you would like to participate in the January Thirty Paintings in 30 Days Challenge just click here for all of the information on how to participate. It's a lot of fun and a really great thing to do (it changed my life!) so give it a try.

And please remember the only requirement is that you HAVE FUN. If you don't get all thirty paintings done you will be the only person that knows. So enjoy yourself!

So I am curious. What is your theme for the January Challenge?

I know. It seems like we just finished the September Thirty Paintings in 30 Days Challenge. Well, that's because we just did! I wasn't that smart when I picked the two months to host this Challenge. January makes sense. But September? ​

Last time I checked, there are only three months between September and January. Not to mention they are three REALLY BUSY months. Of course on the flip side, there are seven months between January and September which is really good. Somehow this feels a little but like daylight savings time. One good one (more sleep) and one bad one (less sleep). 

This is where I am supposed to say that this is the good one. Because we only had to wait three months to paint thirty paintings in thirty days again. Not.

Actually, to be truthful, I had more fun in the September 2016 Challenge than I can remember. Seriously. My Project Runway theme was a blast. So the bad news? I am completely freaked out trying to come up with a theme for January 2017. I want it to be as good as my last one. But I am not sure that is possible!

Anyway, enough about me. It's time to do some soul searching and decide that you need to do this challenge with me. January is the perfect time! Imagine ... you could have 30 new paintings by February first. That's right. Thirty new paintings! 

Head on over to the Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days page on my website. Read all about it and sign up to join me. If you are already familiar with the Challenge, then you can just sign up here. 

Just do it. (We will pretend that I made up this slogan. Because it totally works here ... and you really should just do it.)

Ugh. September is already two days behind me and I am really bummed. Painting the thirty paintings with my Project Runway theme was a blast and I enjoyed being on auto-pilot all month. I knew what I needed to paint and painted every day. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to stay caught up with all of my projects. 

Uh-oh.

It appears that sh*t has hit the fan. Somehow I hadn't realized I would be home a total of six days in October. That's right, six days! Are you kidding me? How could I possibly have done that? My to-do list is staggering especially since I had to put off everything these last two weeks because I had to re-film my entire 2016 webinARTs course. (My webinARTs 2016 course is an online class that teaches you how to build a website for your art. It also teaches all of you how to upgrade your website if you have an old website.) The fabulous web builder that I use is weebly and they announced a huge update ten days ago. Once I started looking at the update i realized pretty quickly that everything I had filmed for the course was obsolete because the platform and themes were different. So I had to scrap all 24 videos and start over. From the beginning. Oh my goodness! The good news is the new, shiny, totally redone webinARTs 2016 class will be launched this week. But it has been what you might call "twice the work". And stop laughing, this is not funny.

Somehow in the six days I am home this month I also have to finish commissions and finalize my Marketing Boot Camp notebooks. Plus I have a workshop this month, a really big idea and big project that I am launching in November. More about that later. 
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So the "let down" is really a realization that my fun painting days are now a lot more crazy and stressful. Why do I do this to myself? Help!

Thirty dress designs. Thirty abstract paintings. What a month! It's been amazing.

I learned a lot. I know I am on the right path so there is no turning back. That much I am sure.

I have decided I am going to really step up my blog content. A new marketing challenge in which we will all do some really great things to increase our art sales together. And this includes some of my out of the box ideas too. I promise. So make sure you go to the box at the top right of this blog that says "Subscribe to The Every Day Life of a Working Artist" so you don't miss out. Just add your email so you will get my blog post every Monday - Friday.

I am also going to do some more personal challenges like the one I did with Project Runway this month. So stay tuned. Some fun things will be happening here!