The party's over, and 2012 has begun.

I’ve decided to go offline this month, except for emails. But fear not! I’ve prepared a few amuse l’oeils to entertain and inform while I’m away from the digital world. To prevent an overflow of spam, comments on the blog will be turned off January 1-31. Happy New Year, and I look forward to returning to the blog in February.

Once again the immense, empty calendar space of a new year stretches before us. And once again, if you’re like me, you have a long list of all the amazing things you want to achieve this year, yeah, this year for sure.

Researcher Heidi Grant Halvorson offers handy advice on how to set and achieve goals. While she repeats the time-honored tips we’ve all heard from our mothers, fourth-grade teachers and business gurus, she does offer some new, inspiring angles on the classic rules.

Heidi Grant Halvorson wrote “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently” for the Harvard Business Review. She also gives strategic advice on fulfilling goals on her blog, The Science of Success. Halvorson points out that even the most passive underachiever makes good on some commitments, while even the most successful and driven people have their own nagging bête noir. Just think of President Obama and his on-again, off-again smoking habit.

Halvorson differs from many other self-improvement gurus in her bluntness about the degree of effort required to change a habit and reach a milestone. In fact, she explicitly lauds grit and willpower as the the two most necessary virtues that anyone must develop in order to attain one’s dreams.

She describes willpower as a mental muscle. Just like a bicep, willpower gets stronger when forced to work at slightly more than its current capacity. She points out that this high degree of effort can only be maintained for a short period of time, but that strengthening this mental muscle requires frequent repetitions of  training, with a bit more load added each time.

Grit is another mental muscle that must be trained with increasing difficulty levels. She defines grit as perseverance when confronted with setbacks. Halvorson acknowledges the discouragement and even momentary failure that await anyone who is trying to achieve a lofty goal. In fact, she argues that one of the criteria of a worthy goal is that it must challenge you beyond your current skill level, although it should not be unattainable.

Finally, Halvorson suggests that you should look at a goal as a process of doing and learning new skills, rather than achieving a new state of being. In other words, when you set a goal, you should focus on a dynamic process, rather than a static existence.

Halvorson’s essay is not only useful now when writing up those 2012 resolutions: You might want to re-read it in early April when you need a pep talk after you’ve derailed your diet with yet another tiramisu or torpedoed your triathlon training by sleeping in three weekends in a row.

This pencil on paper sketch of a pine tree was made at the W. 11th St. Park

Yesterday, my friend Sharon (Artl8dy of E-14 Studio) and I went sketching at the West 11th Street Park in Houston.

The weather was absolutely glorious, sunny but cold. After walking around the park, we chose a comfortable log and began sketching. The park is full of towering pine trees, so I decided to sketch the branches of one majestic example. So often when I watercolor trees on site, I get overwhelmed and over-excited about all the leaves, and end up with sort of squishy pillows of greenery, without the bones underneath. This pencil sketch reveals the architecture of the tree.

It’s really exciting to show off the results of my first nature sketch outing of the year, and it was very enjoyable to spend the morning with a good art friend. Thanks, Sharon for making it a lovely day!

Maria Brophy has an excellent post about her personal goals for the upcoming year. She also suggests some simple and practical resolutions for people in the creative fields who seek to improve their business habits.

Zen Habits recommends that people should select 6 new habits in a year and give themselves 2 months to learn each habit gradually.

Eric Shafer at Creative Fan lists some reasons why targeted, deadline-limited goals are more achievable than lofty, undefined resolutions.

Alyson B. Stanfield at Art Biz Blog usefully defines the differences between goals, vision, and projects.

And Val Webb has shared her goal for the new year of setting aside 1 day a month in the coming year to get outside and sketch the natural world. I have already committed myself to doing the same thing!

What about you? Have you resolved to change anything about your artistic or art-business practice in the new year? Or are you like me, and find that as soon as you’ve written a list of must-do’s, you get busy working on a different set of tasks?

I’m so inspired by her resolution that I’m going to be a copycat and do the same thing, albeit here in Houston. The next step is finding nature zones to sketch in. We’ve been to Brazos Bend State Park, and I’ve been to the Houston Arboretum quite a few times. The problem is that most of the nature in the Houston area has been groomed and tamed thoroughly. Do you have any good suggestions for state parks and other wilderness locales in the Houston metropolitan area that you’ve enjoyed for sketching and painting?

What comes next? Bromeliad illustration in progress, © Wren M. Allen

This was the state of my current project as of Friday, September 10. The painting rapidly progressed, almost too much so. By Wednesday, September 1, the leaves looked very completed, yet still lacking in modeling, the values were wrong, and the colors seemed off. Suddenly, I didn’t know what should come next. So for a couple of days, I piddled around with other projects.

Then, the next week, I piddled a bit around the edges of the painting (which is also when I blogged about it!). Finally, I stood back, observed carefully, took a deep breath, and just went at it.

It sounds silly to talk about needing courage to paint doesn’t it? Yet, oddly, it’s true. We are stymied by what we have already achieved, and nervous about taking that next step for fear that all our hard work will be wiped out by one misplaced brush stroke. This is especially true in watercolor, where a careless wash can dissolve days of carefully layered glazes. Sometimes it’s important to accept the risk and go forward. Otherwise, the image will remain unfinished. And isn’t that really the greatest failure?

To that end, I went into the Appearance section of the WordPress dashboard and changed all the fonts  in the CSS to Garamond, Times or serif preference, with Optima plugged in for Calibri as a sans-serif. Interesting to see how Optima turns out to be the dominant font in the page design!

Since my company name is Wrenaissance Art, I think the “Wrenaissance” theme should be adhered to pretty closely for branding purposes in all my public presentation materials. This means that the typeface should be an Old Style, or Garalde face, even online, despite the design dictums for sans-serif. After all, in an illustration/design website, the text will be ancillary to the images.

So my next challenge is to go back in and reverse the orders, so that Garamond/Times is dominant and Optima the support font.

Butterfly, © 2010, Wren M. Allen

Every year it’s the same thing—a new calendar with 365 days stretching ahead of me, days I just know will be filled with amazing accomplishments. I busily list all the things I want to achieve, goals I want to meet or exceed.

And then what happens?

Very little.

I am very prone to delusions of grandeur when it comes to setting lofty goals! And very prone to feet of clay when it comes to achieving them.

This year  I’m going to keep it simple and concrete.

I’m going to blog once a day, five days a week (except for vacations).

I’m going to complete and update my portfolio, 40 pieces in all (or 9 each per mini-portfolio, plus 4 extra).

I’m going to re-do my website to highlight those 4 pages, plus one page for graphics work, one about page, one home page, and of course, this blog!