Jun 42 min read

Spring Newsletter: My artistic journey & development in 18 Years of Greeting Cards

April and May newsletters are merged

here into one.

Follow me through an artistic journey of greeting cards. For the past 18 years I have illustrated a greeting card for my goddaughter and niece every year. Now she just received her 18th one, and the last one as a child. I'm very happy for her, although I'm having trouble getting my head around how quickly time goes bye!

A watercolor illustration on white paper of a redheaded mermaid with a blue fin holding holding one black cat en with two gray and one tabby cat swimming around her. Blue background. All cats are wearing glass diving-helmets. Four pink jellyfish swimming around them.

I used to keep a personal journal as a teenager but stopped in my mid twenties. They had nothing to do with my artistic journey though. I am not sure why and have not started again. I have heard artists say that keeping a journal, an artistic journal, helps them navigate their artistic development, skill building and journey in general. I have never recorded my journey in a journal. I just never felt the need to and although I sometimes think I ought to have, I really don't think it is something that works for everyone. However, maybe this is important. Do sketchbooks count?

When I look over the history my nieces greeting cards and see them together, I understand better how my artistic development has fared and how my craft and skill has developed. During this time of my artistic journey I have learned, stumbled, doubted and kept on going. I have started a family, left a fruitful career outside art, taken on pretty scary challenges and jumped in the deep end. I have experienced many highs and some pretty deep lows. And now I am proud to see that I have actually fulfilled my goal of becoming a capable artist. My aim was always to be "able to draw almost anything" and today I feel I am in that place. I'm still on a journey but now I might have come to a place where I can explore more and not focus so much on skill building.

With this letter I want to say that I'm proud of what I have achieved. I'm proud of the work I've put in and am proud of my artistic development. I'm glad of the choices I've made and also grateful for every opportunity had, and took.

Last I just want to say that opportunities actually have to be SEEN to be TAKEN. They can play hard to get, hide from you and make things difficult. However it is up to YOU to find them and TAKE them. And remember to take YOUR SPACE to do it! No one can do it for you, except you✨️

Here is an 18 year old history of birthday cards (missing two that I haven't documented).