Happy New Year! 🎉
WHAT I MADE IN DECEMBER:
a new BFF video with Kim
11 house commissions
the logo and art for my friend’s therapy website
28 live shows
BONUS: got meticulously profiled in my high school paper
HOUSE COMMISSIONS
Most of my creative free time this month was spent drawing and painting people’s houses. In November and December, I drew 19 houses. I also bought shipping supplies, made a spreadsheet, started a business email, figured out pricing, and invested in some new watercolors that I’ve been eyeing for over a year.
I scanned and uploaded the finished pieces to my website, but here’s a sampler:
As I drew, I liked knowing who I was making them for– grandpas, aunts, parents, friends who were renovating, friends who had moved, sisters who bought houses– and on Christmas I felt warm thinking about them being opened across the country.
Very sweetly, my talented friend and castmate Dominic sent me a video of his parents unwrapping theirs.
I’ll be taking commissions for the next two months. If you’re interested, please email clairedrawshouses@gmail.com.
THE ANNUAL REVIEW
At the end of each year, I sit down and read through my notebooks.
The primary goal is reflection. To (no pressure) understand who I am and examine the shape of my life.
My secondary goal is scavenging. To skim the cream off the top re: ideas.
Throughout the year, I go through a fleet of smaller notebooks which I fill with ideas, jokes, doodles, notes from meetings, doctor appointments, free writing, etc.
During my years-end read-through, I transfer my favorite jokes, lines, and premises onto notecards.
I add those notecards to a growing deck.
So when I’m looking for some inspiration later on, I can return to the deck rather than trying to sift through all my notebooks from the last 8 years.
Since I write a lot in a year, this review process takes a long time. It’s the first day of the new year and I’m only a third of the way through 2023. I don’t like that a beautiful thing (reflection) has become somewhat of a chore, but it also feels imperative. Like fertilizing a field. Churning up the good stuff from the last year to inspire and inform what I plant next year.
I hope you have a wonderful 2024. If you are in need of a resolution, perhaps you’d like this statement-slash-question that I found in my notebook from July:
How indeed? Let’s find out.
Love,
Claire
what a joy to read, TRULY
WoW FEELING INSPIRED!!! The captured thoughts of Claire McFadden are gold. You're just mining for the extra shiny gold pieces.