Happy New Year!

Hurrah, it's the New Year! Here's a sneak peek of a brand new thing ^

I have always found it difficult to really understand why people dislike January so much. I love the fresh start a new year brings, and it's always a month in which I'm filled with inspiration and optimism. I love making plans and thinking about what lies ahead.  To counter-balance this however, I'm not a great believer in New Year's resolutions, and to be honest I get a bit tired of people saying every January how amazing the year ahead will be. Instead of making grand plans to do things I know I'll never do, I enjoy the start of the year for its new-ness and sense of anticipation it affords, and prefer to think about smaller things I can continue to do well. Whatever lies ahead, good, bad or just mediocre, I'm still looking forward to it all. I like to think of myself as a realistic optimist.

In 2012, I feel like I got onto the right tracks with everything, finally, and I'd like 2013 to be all about continuing along these tracks. I think I need to just do more of what I have been doing, and naturally I will improve and develop everything along the way. I've got a load of new ideas in my head, and I am going to try my hardest to draw more. And by draw more I mean actually going out somewhere to draw, just for drawing's sake. Whenever I come to creating new designs I find it really difficult to get to that stage where everything starts to flow naturally, and actually look good. I've become far too lazy with actually going out and drawing from real things and I think if I tried to do it more it'd really help my ideas (and good drawings) to flow more easily. So I guess that's a resolution isn't it.. but a realistic one, at least.

Anyway, I have a busy January ahead with a little trip to London next weekend, and then my next trade show starting on the 20th. More on both of those later...