Two things happened this month that have turned January into a month of creative exploration for me, Art Snacks and Winter School. 

Art Snacks!

For Christmas my husband gave me the gift of an Art Snacks subscription. Art Snacks is a box containing new art supplies delivered to my door every month. From Christmas day until the first week of January I waited anxiously for my first box to arrive and when it did I dug into it right away, it contained supplies I'd never actually think to buy and wasn't sure how I'd use them but I sat down with a piece of watercolor paper and using only the supplies that came in the box along with one outside supply, a white gel pen, I created this mystical fish bird thing (below). I had a lot of fun exploring the different mediums and I liked the Golden High Flow Acrylics that came in the box so much that I went out and purchased an entire box of them. Shortly after, itching to use the high flow acrylics again, I created a second piece- Purple flowers which I originally created for Winter School, more to come on that. Since I'll be getting an Art Snacks box every month it looks like this creative exploring thing is going to continue and I certainly welcome that, it's exactly what I need to keep things fresh!

Winter School

Make it in Design is an online learning resource for Surface Pattern Designers. They have a free online magazine and they host an array of courses for learning, growing and basically, making it in design. The name of their school containing the courses is actually The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design. Anyway, I decided to give them a try with one of their short courses, Winter School. So here I am, I am in the second week of Winter School with several other designers from around the world, some who I've known for a while through Facebook and Instagram and some who I am just getting to know through the class. It's an awesome experience to be able to meet all of these other talented artists and I have to say, that is my favorite part about taking courses like this. I just finished up my first project with Winter School, the topic of the brief was Glam Boho Rock and it was a real challenge for me. I started with the flowers (above) because I wanted to take a mixed media approach but I just didn't feel that this piece accurately fit my interpretation of the brief so I started over and came up with something I am much happier with, it's called Shoot for the Stars and it is what I ended up submitting for the first assignment. I'm looking forward to the release of the next brief, I'm sure it will be a challenge but I hope I wont have such a hard time picking the path I want to take in creating the art for it!