December 2023 Update

It's the end of December, the end of 2023 and the end of a full year journaling and updating here on the website. Congratulations to me, I'm toasting myself with a non-alcoholic beer. I'm actually updating this a couple of days ahead of the 31st because I plan to spend the next week playing video games and not doing anything even vaguely peripheral to productive.

I started the month doing these four acrylic paintings for Christmas gifts. Good thing about making presents is that people have no choice but to like them, ain't that fun?

Here's my last little gouache paintings of the year, mostly painted with leftovers from the Figure With project. So you can now go here to their gallery and see all my gouache still life practices from the year lined up.

After doing October Eyes and Winter Windows I fancied having more wee A6 paintings going in the background, leading to these! A bunch of mini landscapes based on wanders around Galashiels from throughout the year. I'll probably keep up this new minis habit in 2024, it's a nice background project. I've given them their own gallery here if you want to look at them individually.

Surprising myself, I actually managed to finish Figure With... this month, squeaking it in before the end of the year. I think this last round is my favourite and I'm glad I managed to get in to still life this year. Long may it last! Any way I started with the three A2 studies, a watercolour and a watercolour and an acrylic:

I think they're so pretty! I made the still life mostly out of a art materials and plastic fruit and it gave me plenty to work from. After that I moved on to the final portrait, imperial size, mixed media and gloriously colourful:

I'm really pleased with the overall Figure With... project, which has it's own gallery here. Over the course of it I became more and more confident mixing watercolour, gouache and acrylic together and I'm bursting to do more portraits in 2024.

So Figure With... was my last proper project of 2023 but there's always time for a last self indulgent treat for myself. So I spent the last week on a Christmas present for myself and it's probably my most complex painting yet and I love it! Thanks, me! How did you know?!

It's of my wizard husband from Baldur's Gate 3 (a video game, yeah it's exactly like Fortnite) on my most beloved paper, an imperial sheet of Fabriano Artistico, watercolour and mixed media. This is probably the longest I spent on a single painting this year and it's quite fitting that it's some video game art done in a haze of Christmas tattie coma! But I recorded the stages well enough that I've given it it's own wee gallery here if you want to see more details.

And that's 2023! A year of art making documented right here for you and mostly for me. Rest assured I'll do the same in 2024 because I've already paid ahead for the Squarespace subscription. So I'll see you back here at the end of January to see what I manage to scrape together.