koukla carolyn

Self Portrait with Smile, graphite in kraft paper sketchbook, 2008

At work, I just wrote my mid year review, where I updated my progress on all my development goals. I thought this would be a good opportunity to review my art goals as well, because the year is half over. My first goal was to practice daily sketching. Although I can say that I’ve been doing more sketching than ever before, it has hardly been daily. I have been tracking my activities and I’m lucky if I do artwork on half the days in the month. June was especially bad because of all the upheaval from my vacation. So I’ll try to do better in the last half of the year.

My second goal was to continue working in watercolor. I have been awful at this and I think I did more watercolor in 2007 than this year. I just bought a bunch of M. Graham watercolors as well and I really want to try them out. I think I am nervous because they were so expensive but I need to get over it.

Lastly, I wanted to take some sort of art class or workshop. I have been looking for something near where I live, but I have not been able to find anything. I am limited to weekends unless I find something really local, but I might have to go into Massachusetts if I can’t find anything. In any case, I will have to wait until the fall until anything is available.

All in all, I’ve been pretty awful at keeping my art resolutions but I have done some really nice things this year regardless. Even though I have these nice development goals for myself, I have a ton of things I want to get done for Christmas so I had better get busy if I want to get them done in time.