After the 100 Day Project
©️Copyright 2021 Laurel Reynolds
This website’s purpose is to sell work that resulted from taking part in the 100 Day Project, which ended in May of 2021. After receiving encouragement from a fellow artist to participate in the project, she suggested I might benefit from the structure of painting on a daily basis due to my being between jobs and having some free time on my hands. Since trying to find a job online had been exhausting, painting was a refreshing break from being on my phone and computer all day. It was almost like a sabatical. The goal of the website is to get the word out about my work… a culmination of greeting cards that stemmed from illustrations posted to the 100 Day Project, works on paper that were part of the project and paintings that were displayed in my last exhibit “Journeywork.” Today is the first chance I’ve had to work on it in two weeks. Some of today was spent trying to come up with ideas to blog about. The early part of my day involved emailing the people who host my site, asking for answers on how to ship packs of greeting cards and paintings to different regions in the country. I’m forced to make decisions regarding dealing with shipping rates and have landed on selling my work based on weight, since the cards, paintings and works on paper, all vary in weight. Aside from that, I’ve been doing research as to what other artists are blogging about. A designer I follow on Instagram blogs and writes about how to structure your time, since so many of us are working remote from home. She blogs about what you would dream about your first day as a freelancer and how would your day go, from sipping coffee, to scheduling meetings on Zoom, to taking yoga breaks and setting boundaries with friends and family.
© Copyright 2021 Laurel Reynolds
Upon doing research, I did find a lot of artists are sans blog. Another creative that I follow has a library of podcasts containing interviews of other artists. She also writes books about how to get unblocked.
Using my creative muscles has always been a passion and I’m grateful not only for my parents encouragement, but that my mother enrolled me in painting classes, allowing me to be a young artist. I first studied with an artist who taught out of her home in Forest Hills, where I grew up in WIchita. After moving to Oklahoma and attending university, I ran a design business solo, with offerings of graphic design for web and print. I was a web hosting reseller, set up hosting, handled domain transfers and offered administrative services to clients. I’m a strong believer in going on artist’s dates and writing the morning pages. Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way,” has helped me work through times when I was blocked. In 2016, after going through the Artist’s Way, I enrolled in painting classes at Oklahoma Contemporary. I painted with Bert Seabourne who taught at Oklahoma Contemporary. Seabourne, a prominent artist in the state of Oklahoma, taught me how to paint with big brushes. Painting with large brushes helps to free up perfectionism and the need to manipulate every detail when you are using a small brush. Painting with large brushes helps the painting to take care of itself. Which it always seems to do.