A New Year With A New Plan

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, there has been changes in my life. Some scary and some exciting. We are determined to deal with the scary stuff together so it is feeling less worrisome each day. The exciting stuff is my own personal journey. Bob has a creative streak but he isn't the artist in the family. He is the builder. I have always been the one drawn to the arts, originally in verse, which has mutated into various forms of digital art over the years. Now I am venturing into a whole new realm of digital art. It is closer to actual art than I have ever gone. It's all starting with the purchase of my first ipad. I specifically went for an ipad this time around rather than an android because I like the larger size and I was curious about one specific program, which I have been hearing so much about through the past few years. Procreate.

I have tried numerous times to create hand drawn art in different programs to varying degrees of success but it was never a comfortable fit for me even though I am very profficient at Photoshop and quite a few other artists programs. Maybe I was just getting too complacent about taking the easiest route. Maybe it was because I simply liked the art I was creating and I also enjoyed the process I had already perfected. Whatever the reason for not being able to transition into physical art, I have always appreciated other's work.

My father in-law was an artist and a pretty good one too so he taught me a lot about the nuances of oil and acryllic painting and we spent many an hour pouring over the history books of the great artists. He was very much a historian and I was always his eager student. Neither Bob or his sister were ever that interested although they were quite proud of their father's art. I was the one who was anxious to learn what he knew about both art and music so we had that in common and it probably eased the burden on his own kids a bit so it was a win for all.

So as you can tell I find it quite thrilling to finally be able to replicate the techniques that he taught me in a manner he might actually appreciate. I know he wasn't thrilled with the coming of the computer age and although he tried, he just couldn't grasp it so it sort of morphed our shared interests into splinters of the past. Change happens and the older we get, the less motivated we are to change with the times. I am just happy to know I am not yet at that point where I don't want to learn and advance anymore. It turned out that Bob's stroke was the event that motivated me to move forward. I bought the ipad back in the summer but with the garden, my digital art, my beading projects and quality time with Bob it was hard to fit the time in to learn Procreate. Although I knew this was a powerful program I was beginning to doubt if I would ever be able to learn it to the point where I could actually create on it. That became a moot point when Bob was first rushed to the hospital. I never left his side from the moment they put him in the ambulance. I asked them to get the permission need for me to ride in the ambulance with him and I slept by his bed at night. I was determined he would not experience this alone and I followed through on that. I think he appreciated it knowing that he could lean on me emotionally and physically.

He spent a lot of that time in the hospital sleeping and going for tests so I was sitting and fretting most of the time till the neighbor came to the hospital with a change of clothes for me and he brought my ipad. I decided it was a perfect time to explore Procreate and I found some tutorials. The program has a web site with it's own tutorials that I started on and as I felt more comfortable knowing the little tips and tricks I branched out into other tutorials on the web. So many creative people out there! I started finding the tuts through Pinterest and eventually creating a new Instagram account so I could follow more there.

The more I learned, the easier it was to put my visions to pen, or I should say apple pen. ;) I particularily loved learning to make seamless patterns and I incorperated my new love of AI art to create inspirations for things to draw. Mostly florals. I create it on AI and then copied it on my ipad. I don't trace anything though. I copy it and add my own style to it. Most times the finished product doesn't look the same as the original but even if it did, it is just my own work I am copying. I hate when people steal from me so I am not about to copy and risk taking from others.

You are probably wondering where this is all going into my online sales. Well, it is opening up a whole new world for me. It has me rethinking and restructuring my plans for future sales. I still want to upload and sell my AI art because it has brought me some great sales this past winter. It seems I am not the only one who likes my AI art. I really appreciate the sales from this. It is telling me I need to keep it going. Particularily in Redbubble. That is where the sales are coming from. In FineArtAmerica or Pixels, not so much. I think I had one sale there this winter and that happened to be AI art too. Zazzle was becoming a mess for me. I don't know if they were running out of stock or there was a problem with my uploads but the products I was offering for sale would always come up as unavailable. I put a lot of work into that store so I was not impressed and decided to shut it down so no more Zazzle for me. With Zazzle gone from my portfolio and FineArtAmerica about to be a thing of the past for me I will be able to add another venue to my sales. I plan on adding two. I did some homework and discovered Spoonflower is a good place for hand drawn patterns that repeat because they sell a lot of sewing material, curtains and furnishing. So I will open a storefront with Spoonflower sometime either January or February. I need to have more stock to put in there to do so. By the summer's end I am hoping to open an Etsy shop so I can sell digital downloads of calanders and affirmation cards and such. This will be a slow proccess but an exciting one for me.

In the meantime I will keep my FAA account open till the end of spring when it is time to renew. I think it is time to cut my ties with them. I have my own theories as to why it is failing me but I won't mention them now. Maybe one day I will though. Now you see with much change coming to me in 2026 it will be an exciting year for me because I will make it so. As for my personal life, 2026 will be a good year for that too. Now Bob is done with the surgery and mending well I have us both on a strict diet and exercise program. I did ease up a bit for Christmas. I thought he deserved a treat now and then after the year he had just been through. Besides, the man hasn't had a beer since September and he used to drink a can or two a day. So I made him some muffins and date squares and them immediately froze them so I could ration him. There is still lots of that in the freezer cause I only allow him 1 treat every other day. It might sound rough but I am not making him do anything I am not doing to myself too and he knows we are in this together because as much as he has loved his beer, I have always enjoyed my snacks. Now it is just 3 light meals a day for both of us. We both feel better for it too and the doctor is impressed with his blood pressure evening out on it's own.

As for me, I am thrilled to think about all those summer dresses I will finally be able to fit in once again this year. While learning on Procreate I found myself getting into the brushes. The stamp brushes mostly but the textures are the more practical and useable I find. I find them lots of fun but the ones you find online are the creations of others so I decided early on that I would not use any of them. It doesn't stop me from making my own though. I might not find myself in need of them but I find creating them not only helps me to understand how the program works but it helps me to train my hand at the drawing process. So far I have a bunch of stamps of various bows I created myself and a few flourishes. I am thinking of offering them as free downloads here in my own web site. I really don't understand why anyone would charge for them although I see many people do. Mostly though, I couldn't see myself buying anything like that although I am sure many do too. I would, however find them useful if I weren't involved in creating everything as I go. So I have no qualms in sharing them along with some color swatches I have also created. I would be tickled to learn if they are of help to anyone. Besides, they might be instrumental to bringing traffic to this site. So with that I am thinking of offering free downloads too. I think this will be my first expansion which will probably take place in a week or so. No promises right now though. Not sure if I am able to do that with the free website.

I have started uploading my patterns to my POD stores. It might take a couple of days to get them uploaded and I also want to add a few AI pieces I made this Christmas too. In the meantime here is a sneak peek at my new art form that will start me on this new journey. As I progress I will let you know. In the meantime please do enjoy my art and if you should want to buy something in either Redbubble or Pixels I would like to thank you in advance for the encoragement. Remember that my Pixels store will only stay open till late spring unless a miracle happens and I make a large sale or two with them. At least something to justify the fee.

I hope till my next post that you are all enjoying the new year and that you might also see some hope of your own in the upcoming days and months. I mean 2025 kind of set a low bar for that so anywhere any of us can go from here can only be up. God help this world if it continues to slide down! I don't even want to entertain that notion in any way.

All my best Leslie :)