Assessing the summer, looking ahead

I just finished a wonderful week of teaching a watercolor course to art teachers. It was a fun group and I think that they learned a lot. They certainly accomplished a lot of beautiful work. Here are three of my favorite projects (among many) that the students created.

The first piece is by Shari Fox, who teaches in Shrewsbury, MA:



The next piece is by Sarah Steinberg, who teaches in Wellesley, MA:



And this piece is by Kristin Clark, who teaches in Marlboro, MA:



That was my last teaching week of the summer. Whew, it has been A LOT of work! I taught my last spring semester class on June 27, and then on June 29, I started teaching a five-week watercolor intensive at Framingham State College. As soon as that was over, I taught a week-long fashion illustration course and a week-long pastel drawing course to high-school students, and finally, this past week, the graduate-level watercolor course, all at the Danforth Museum School. As hard as I worked, I loved every minute of it.

My next college class begins on September 2, so not much time to regroup. BUT with all the busy-ness of last week, a thought hit me through the din: I will be 50 years old in three years. That, obviously, is a milestone!

What do I want to have accomplished by age 50? What are my goals for my 50th birthday, that I can start to work on now?

Like almost every other woman in the western world, I would like to lose 30 pounds. And it would definitely be a good idea to have a goal of how much money I'd like to have saved by then.

But I want to come up with some goals as an exhibiting artist that I can aim for, to have reached at the half-century mark. I've had a lot of luck lately with selling my work, but what about artistic goals? I'll keep working on this idea over the next week ...