New Year, Fresh Start
I've been meaning to reengage with my substack for a while now, but I truly needed a break. Plus, beginning again in the new year, it felt like a very nice restart time. And I’m happy to be back as a more engaged and present creative here in this newsletter.
So, what’s been going on? I’ve been extremely busy. I moved into a new flat in June along with my cat, Luna. We’re very much enjoying our new only ladies life. I went home for the summer to enjoy some time with family and in the fall, I jumped back into full time teaching. I’m back as an art and design teacher and it’s honestly been really nice to be in the classroom and spend time with the students and my work colleagues. Along with that, I’ve been pretty busy with client work. I think once I finish this latest round of projects, I am going to give myself a bit of a break to just rest and recover. It’s been a busy time with lots of new beginnings, but in all the best ways.
I’ve been back to enjoying nature and have a nice little collection of photos I’ve picked out from the last month or two. I’ve always been super into fog and how that adds atmosphere to a piece. I was recently at a hot springs and I got a couple of nice photos with some dramatic fog. I thought it might be nice to share with the hopes that some of these photos might spark some inspiration or get you thinking about how some moody fog might add some atmosphere to your next piece.
With the start of the new year, people are usually looking forward, but if you’re feeling a little tapped out on new and fresh, what about trying some art renewals? I’ve been thinking of some old pieces and ideas that I could probably execute better since my skills have improved over the years. It might be fun to have a little look back and see if there’s an idea or two that might benefit from a fresh take.
And a last thought would be a fresh self portrait. It’s always nice to start the year off with something new and a self portrait is a fun way to start. You can even do a start of the year portrait vs an end of the year portrait…looking a little worse for the wear for sure, but also with another year of experiences behind them!
So, on that note, I leave you until February, hopefully with the tiniest influx of inspiration and motivation for some creation this month.
Let me leave you with a little color palette I generated based off of a few color inspiration photos I took while visiting home.