Happy New Year! January is always a fun month for me as I start the year off with a new planner and I set time aside to plan paintings for the new year. Do you do any type of planning in January?

I begin the process with a review of the paintings I created the year before. I always ;earn from this and am often surprised at how much and what I have created. Reflecting on why I chose to create certain pieces always inspires me, too. I do some commissions every year, but I created the rest of my art based on what inspires and interests me. I was surprised by the amount of paintings I created, 2020 was very productive! It seems being at home so much this past year did have one benefit! 🙂

I usually start this process by going through my pictures on my phone. I try to take professional photographs of each painting with my Canon 20D, but sometimes I am rushing to get the piece to my collector, so I only get a quick photo on my phone. I have also started using an art inventory system to better track my artwork.

Here are a few grids I made from the 2020 paintings.

These are some of my paintings on my recycled tea bags. I am really enjoying this memory series and I’ve recently started exploring collaging multiple teabags into one painting and increasing my canvas size. I love texture and the tea bags mixed with heavy body acrylics is giving me some interesting backgrounds.

These are some sweet animal paintings I created for an exhibit I had in February, before the pandemic. It was the only in-person exhibit I was able to have in 2020.

This grouping is a mix of floral commissions and other paintings I sold last year.

I am off to plan what painting I want to create this year. I hope you are off to a great start for the new year and I would love to hear about your planning process.

Have a wonderful, creative, and joyful day, Janell