New Year! New Plans!
I am excited to share with you my three Art projects which I have planned for this year.
This is Abberton Reservoir, which is just a few miles south of where I live. The Essex Wildlife Trust has a centre there, and it is a place renowned for water birds and wildlife of all sorts. If you read my blog you will be seeing a lot of it in the next twelve months because my BIG painting project this year is . . .
A Year round Abberton Reservoir. There are miles of footpaths around the reservoir and I am looking forward to exploring and painting them, along with the trees, the birds and wildlife, the landscape and villages around the reservoir itself. There are also good views from the two roads which cross the reservoir. I plan to do one large painting a month and other smaller paintings and drawings as ideas suggest themselves. As I will be going back to the same area every month I will be able to observe the seasonal changes in great detail which – as I mentioned in my blog post yesterday – was what made the Field visits so interesting to me, and, I hope, to you.
My second project is a series of Still Life with Flowers. As I hinted yesterday this resulted from the small jam-jar paintings I did from the Field. I enjoyed doing them but realised there was a whole lot more to learn and experiment with in this area. I shall be painting wild flowers and garden flowers – and maybe some florist’s flowers, too! I will be aiming for eight paintings, two from each season, but it may be more – or less! – I shall have to see how I get on.
My third project is learning a new technique. I am going to learn how to use soft pastels! I follow several pastel artists on Instagram and I’m really impressed with the effects they achieve. Last summer when I was doing the #100dayproject, and messing about with different drawing and painting media I enjoyed trying the new techniques in a very small way. Now I’m going to try a new technique in a bigger and much more committed way! Yesterday I ordered a box of Unison soft pastels – half sticks in a range of colours chosen as suitable for landscapes – plus pastel paper and blending tools. I’m looking forward to trying them when they arrive, and being a beginner again!
All of these projects are things that I can do within the restrictions of Tier 4 which is important.
I have not made any plans about exhibitions and galleries as these things are out of my control. I hope I will be able to do a real Open Studio event in late June and late November/early December. I hope we will be able to have our Anglian Arts Project Exhibition at the Naze Centre in September. And I hope I will be able to show everything that makes up the Essex Field project at a new (secret) venue in late April/early May. But these things are all virus permitting so I will just wait to see what is possible when the time comes.
I hope you have made some interesting plans for 2021. Or maybe you are just going to enjoy what is possible and keep doing the days until life can expand again. Whichever it is I wish you all, lovely blog readers, a Happy and Healthy New Year! 🙂