A finally finished Illustration for my March promotions

My next promotional Illustration. It’s digital, it’s colorful and it’s cute.

First I finalized the drawing. I scanned it in…

And now I am painting it digitally in Photoshop. This is my progress so far. It’s almost done.

Today I attended my very first Networking Mixer in San Fernando. For 3 hrs I shook hands, introduced myself and my business, handed out business cards and collected business cards from other attendees. It was interesting to say the least. Slightly overwhelming. At first I was a little intimidated by all those people I didn’t know, especially the ones wearing suites. But after warming up a little bit with a few shaky introductions, I realized that it wasn’t too bad and definitely something I could handle. I met some cool people and had a good a time. I would definitely do it again.

I am looking into joining more  networking groups and hanging out with new people. Someone suggested I try Meetup.com as well as other groups in the area. I am going to give it try!

Nature Spiral

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on pencil illustrations for a book about Heaven and Spirituality.

I will talk more about it once the book comes out. Meanwhile, here are some of the drawings that I have done.

I have been feeling a little guilty that I have not been consistent about posting on my blog.  It occurred to me that I have a lot to share. So this month I have done a few pretty awesome things…

Attended my Landmark Forum in Action Seminar

Finally met up with my artsy girlfriends and had a great time

Got to hang out with a good friend from high school who I have not seen in 5 years

Got to illustrate a book

Cleaned out and de-cluttered my studio room–it was about time

Bought a new bike and and now I go bike riding at least once a week– introducing something new and fun to my workout routine

Applied for a temporary census job–to get out of the house more often and replenish my bank account

Sent out postcards to art directors in New York

Signed up a bunch more people for my newsletter

Life has been good and it only gets better.

I recently heard this great quote. Unfortunately I cannot take credit for it.

“Life is 99 percent B.S, and 1 percent Roses.”

Here is my sketch for this weeks Illustration Friday’s topic, “Muddy.”

It’s quick and not painted too well but I’m still proud of it.

Honoring my word.

It has come to my attention that language plays a big part in how we experience anything. Certain words carry power, making us think and feel certain ways. Last night as I set down to type out my business plans for the week, I realized that the word “Marketing” came up quite often in my text. I became present to how that word automatically shows up for me, with associations like, “hard”, “boring”, “repetitive”, and the list goes on and on.

When I think of “marketing”, a stack of postcards comes to mind, long lists of contacts and shipping labels. I think of being persistent, working hard and getting very little reward, cold calling and sacrificing more then half of my time doing stuff I don’t like so that I can have that little bit of time at the end of the day to play. And that is never enough time.

And that’s when it hit me. “Marketing” is an icky word for me. It limits my access to possibilities for creative promotion and satisfaction. It stops me in my tracks.

I have decided to toss out this word and replace it with a question “How do I show my artwork to people who would use it and buy it?” and suddenly a whole new realm of possibilities emerged. I don’t need “marketing” when I can have fun “creating space for my business to flourish.”

To get excited about this particular aspect of my business, I used something as simple as language to shift my perception of what I am actually facing. I created for myself a whole new game called, “Have fun showing people what I can do.”