My Art Goals for 2024 – Did I Achieve Them?

At the start of this year I made set some vague goals with the hope of moving my art forwards. I knew my aim was to exhibit more, so I wanted to make my artwork stand out, or at least stand up to the amazing art that’s out there! I had three main goals:

• Work from my own reference photos;

• Add backgrounds to my work;

• Make larger drawings.

Here’s a reflection on how I think I did!

Working From My Own Reference Photos

I had been working from photos purchased from the Wildlife Reference Photos website, which has thousands of stunning photos to choose from. Even so, there was one image I’d selected, and I was about to start when I saw two other artist create lovely versions of this image within a couple of weeks of each other!

I’ve always enjoyed photography, so I treated myself to a super duper Nikon Coolpix P950 superzoom camera, which has a phenomenal 83x zoom lens, making it a great choice for wildlife photography. Several trips to Bristol Zoo Project, along with other trips to places that might provide easy opportunities to photograph animals, and I have lots of photos to keep me busy, and the last five drawings of the year were from my own original photos, so I’m counting that as a win! It’s also very satisfying to be in total control of the whole creative process.

"Timeless Soul" is drawn from two of my photos, one for the wolf and one for the moon.

Adding Backgrounds

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with drawing animal portraits with white or neutral backgrounds, I love the pop of colour PanPastels bring, and it’s so quick and easy to do, it seems rude not to! I do like to experiment though, and I’ve been trying to find ways to do something different. I’ve tried watercolour with some success, but then I discovered Art Graf Watercolour Graphite, so decided to give it a go! Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as successful as I’d hoped, the masking fluid damaged the paper slightly and the watercolour graphite didn’t behave as I’d expected. I won’t give up though and I’ll do some more experimenting as I think it could produce some interesting effects. I also think I can improve my PanPastel techniques. Verdict – the goal has partly been met, but I can push it much further next year!

Experimental giraffe drawing with a watercolour graphite background, my own reference photo.

Working Larger

This is the one goal that I don’t think was as successful. Both coloured pencil and graphite are slow mediums and so bigger drawings take a long time to do! I also don’t have much space to work in, which limits the size of paper I can work on. I did manage a couple of slightly larger artworks, but I might even go the other way and try some smaller pieces in 2025 – watch this space!

"Hanging out" was my biggest drawing of the year, nearly A3. I was lucky to photograph this bear in a tree, but drawing all that bark nearly drove me mad!

For prints and greetings cards of my coloured pencil drawings, please visit my Folksy shop.