Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’re all on track with your new year’s resolutions, if you made any. I’m making a slower start this year than I’d planned, but for the best of reasons … time spent with family.

I’m taking a flying leap at 2014 by accepting a daily painting challenge … I’m one of the 370 artists who have already signed up to do Leslie Saeta’s 30 paintings in 30 days. I will of course also be posting my painting on here each day, so if you’d like to follow along, click the RSS button to subscribe to my blog.

The painting above is my first one, which I started yesterday, but finished today because I stopped first to catch up with a good friend, and then to spend time with my boys. It involved air-popped popcorn &  an impromptu New Year’s eve “Justice League” cartoon marathon on Netflicks, so you know it was a decision made out of love & it wasn’t easy!

I still have to start the painting I’m going to post tomorrow … every now & then a little head pops up to check on me “Mom, you haven’t started yet? What if you FAIL the challenge?”.

The next painting will be of the same subject, the flower just died but luckily I took several photos I could work from.

My word for 2014 is intuition, and as it applies to this challenge, I’m going to follow my intuition as to what to paint next …. I haven’t planned out the 30 days, and I’m not setting rules, except that I work on something new each day. I actually have loads of ideas that I’d like to try out … so expect a variety of subjects to show up. And I would love it if you’d share this with your friends, and make comments … I look forward to hearing from you!

Also, I will be writing the long “Louvre” blog post I promised soon, once I’ve settled into a comfortable pace … I have sorted through the thousands of photos (the good, the bad & the ugly) already, but still need to whittle my selection down.

Meanwhile, enjoy this video snippet I uploaded to my new youtube channel last night of the Eiffel tower lights blinking.