2023 Recap

Here we are!

The first blog of the New Year. I thought that it would be a good idea to write about last year.

So, let’s throw it all the way back to last January. I began my last semester of community college. In that last semester, I took Life Drawing. It was a challenging class, there’s no doubt about that. However, even though it challenged my skill and learning ability, it was one of my favorite classes because it pushed me to be better. The previous semester saw me taking Drawing I. The professor of that class was a tough-love professor. I have to admit that I didn’t love that aspect. But, once I made it to the other side of that class, I saw how much good that professor did for the class (and for me). She was tough, but she genuinely wanted us to succeed. Because of her, I became a better artist. Switches flipped in my brain. Things started making more sense. Even still, I think of her as one of my most favorite art teachers I ever had.

  

Back to Life Drawing. That class was the first time I truly studied the human form. We started from base of the human form and worked outward. At the beginning of the semester, we did gesture drawings of the skeleton. Gesture drawings are helpful in ensuring that the proportions are correct. Our professor started us with the skeleton and then moved to the musculature. These are truly the building blocks for drawing an anatomically correct human figure. Learning the muscle structure is vital in drawing the human figure. The muscles are what the skin stretches over. In most cases, you can see the muscles under the skin. The muscles are fully defined with the skin stretched over them but knowing the shape and location of the muscles helps you to draw the outermost shape of the human form.

At the end of the semester, I finished my Associate of Art degree and started Piper Louisa Arts. Simultaneously, I completed work for, and participated in, my first art fair, the Highland Village Art Festival (May 2023). You could say that May was a busy month…

For the months of June and July, I took a bit of a break after finishing school. During that time, though, I did work a bit on what I wanted Piper Louisa Arts to be. In August, I did my second art fair. It is a small street fair that happens once a month on Fridays. It is the City of Lewisville (TX) Main and Mill First Friday Event. Then, later in August, I moved with my sister to Atchison, Kansas, as she was finishing her college career (shout-out to my sister for graduating with three degrees, B.S. Mechanical Engineering, B.S. Astronomy, B.A. Physics.) While in Kansas, I ramped up Piper Louisa Arts as I began selling prints. Then, I made a kind of split-second decision to design, produce, and sell stickers. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to print and cut the stickers myself. Let’s just say that it could have been worse… I learned a lot! The first run of stickers (Fall Collection) had some bumps in the road in terms of production, but I am happy with the end result and by the time the Holiday Collection came around, I considered myself to be a seasoned professional.

It’s too bad sarcasm doesn’t quite translate in writing. I am in no way a sticker-making expert but I have definitely learned a few things in making them.

Simultaneously, I began posting regularly on Instagram. For 31 days (not consecutively), I posted reels about filling my sketchbooks. When I left for Kansas, I took four unfinished sketchbooks and I returned to Dallas with four finished sketchbooks.

 

I returned to Dallas in mid-December and plan to remain here for the foreseeable future. I have big plans for the coming year, many of which I will talk about in the next journal entry! So, stay tuned…

~Piper Louisa