The CreativeLife week 1 and 2 - planning my CreativeLife

 Already halfway through January and it was barely yesterday when we started the new year.

Hello creative friend! I trust your 2023 is off to a creative start and that all your creative hours this year will be satisfying and fun!

I am sure like me you have already set your goals for the year and cannot wait to work on them. Did you remember to plan time to rest and time to rellect? I had to remind myself to do that too and deliberately spent the past week focusing on that even though I did do some work too.

The lab is back to work already, but I will only get stuck in this coming week. We have big industrial pieces of equipment coming in for testing and I will probably start on those within the next month. They require more time and energy so it will be a busy time for the safety section for the upcoming three to four months.

My creative goals for this year include the publication of three more books. Two shorter stories, and then the 6th novel in my Nations of Peace series. The book is entitled, Prime Prey, which is the first of the Protector sub-series.

The shorter stories are almost ready for professional editing, and I have already spoken to my friend Vanessa Wright, who is the editor of an award winning children's book. Well done, my friend! You are an awesome editor and soon children in many schools in South Africa will know your name too.

Portrait of a lady in Panpastel
and coloured pencil

Vanessa has edited multiple of my books in the past, so it will be yet another great year to work with her again. More details on release dates in future posts, so keep an eye out!

Goals for my 2023 artistic journey will be a bit different than the past few years. For one, I am not going to take part in Inktober52. The prompts were becoming less inspiring and frustrating. I will say however, that taking part has siginificantly contributed to my drawing skills. Inktober in October? Will see when the time comes.

Since joining the ArtKula community I have been more inclined to rather take part in their monthly challenges, so those will be my focus for this year. I have laso decided to focus more on the oil mediums (oil pastels and oil paint) this year to work on improving my skills in using these mediums. I also plan to continue my study of my favourite artist's work, Wassily Kandinsky. I have a book, but my study will include copying more of his work so that I can learn more about abstract work.

Our art group is already actively busy with our projects this year, starting with experimenting with expressive abstracts (in sketchbooks for now), and a large fantasy style acrylic painting. This coming week we will start work on an ink and watercolour painting of an Irish castle. Definitely a challenge because of all the details. But we need to challenge ourselves as artists too, otherwise how are we going to improve our skills while having fun?

While all these projects may sound like a lot, and they are, I have decided to include one session per month in my creative planning to just do anything I am in the mood for. The group will have the same choice: do something other than a group project, catch up on a project, or just relax. Our Lifebook project will be an excellent choice for this free time. It is our third year doing a Lifebook, and for me it has been worth it on so many levels. My journal is for writing, but my Lifebook has the added element of art with little to no writing, but it is still a record of me and my life, only expressed in a more visual way.

This post is already taking up a lot of your time. Thank you for reading and let me know in the comments what your creative goals are for 2023.

Until next time!

💜🇿🇦 Linzé

Join the creative conversation on Instagram or Twitter.