One year later...

I realised this week that my blog would be one year old today. Happy birthday Painting Mhor. Where did a year go?

It would have been good to mark the occasion by posting a new painting, but I'm currently working on the flamenco dancer commission so I'll just have to be content with a few words. Mind you, it's the 'words' bit that I usually find difficult when it comes to doing these posts, so I'll try not to ramble on too much in this one.

Looking back, I'm pleased I managed to keep the blog going through it's first year, and with fairly regular updates, except for a couple of quieter months. I didn't exactly take the internet or the art world by storm, but then again I was pleasantly surprised in other ways: more visitors than I expected, a handful of subscribers and followers, a few generous comments and, encouragingly, some very welcome sales and commissions along the way.

I'm pleased, too, with the number of paintings I've done in the past 12 months. Admittedly these have been quite small works, but all in all it's still far more than I've done in any previous year, and that was really the motivation behind starting the blog - to get me painting more.

But quantity counts for nothing if there's no quality to it, and so I suppose the real motivation behind me wanting to paint more is me wanting to paint better. I want to paint, but I want to paint well. I can see I've improved in the past year, and I can feel my confidence has grown, even though it's still shaky at times. Artists can be a horribly self-doubting bunch and I'm no exception. Yet there have been a decent number of paintings that I dared to be pleased with; just as there were others where I know I could and should have done better with. The main thing at the end of it is whether or not I'm making steady progress, and I think I am.

It's for that reason that I feel excited about what I might be able to achieve. If I have a plan for the next year then it is simply be to speed up that progress. And when I say speed it up I mean speed it up a lot! There's a huge distance to cover if I have any chance of being the painter I want to be. Put simply, I can't afford to hang about. If the last 12 months have been a brisk walk, then the next 12 will be an all out sprint. It could be a bumpy road but I'm sure good things lie at the end of it. I hope you'll keep visiting to see if that's true.

Cheers,

Kevin