Apr 11, 20212 min read

2021 new years resolution - plein air practice

I usually don't make new years resolutions, or more correctly, I've stopped making them. The reason is that I was hopeless in sticking to them. My mind usually is all over the place so schedules often break apart.

This year I did make some new years resolutions and I'm glad to say that I stuck to two of them. The first one was to start writing a daily journal, something I've been trying and wanting to keep doing for many years but mostly failing. It is working, I forget to write somedays but I've kept it up for over three months now, so I am successful!

The second resolution I also stuck to was to do plein air painting practice. I started this one at the end of January, but it still counts as a new years resolution. What is plein air? It is painting outdoors, but as the wind and weather is a bit bothersome in Iceland during all months of the year, I am doing virtual plein air, using mostly online images from a street viewer called mapcrunch.com.

I've listened a lot to online mentors and tutors and one of them is Tyler Edlin, a great teacher (ill link info on his site and classes below) and he talks about that when we set ourselves goals we should make ourselves accountable, write them down and tell someone about them. This way we are more likely to keep our goals. I did just that, I posted my first virtual plein air in the Virtual plein air group on Facebook, and said I'd be doing these 2 times a week. I realized soon that two a week was to much to begin with so, instead of just giving up and thinking I was a failure, I scaled my resolution down to once a week-ish. That has worked and I've done 10 virtual plein air paintings. This has helped me stay on track and also looking at other members work has encouraged me to keep going. It is amazing how useful this practice is and only after doing 10 of these I already feel I'm advancing. Here are all of them in chronological order, newest first.