Category: A Day in the Life of an Artist

2011 has been a wonderful year, filled with lots of firsts. I’m so grateful that I get to do what I love every day. So, to celebrate the upcoming year, here are 12 things that occurred this past year:

1) Finished illustrating and writing my first children’s book, Duck & Fish

2) Had my first radio interview

3) Was published for the first time in a national craft magazine – Somerset Studio

4) Had one of my collages published in a major newspaper for the first time – the Washington Post.

5) First time having my artwork appear on a celebrity’s website – Conan O’Brien

6) My artwork was accepted to be published in a book on Flower Art – which will be my first art book publication.

7) Created an education section for my website. Every year, students and teachers contact me to get more information about my artwork and process, so I figured I’d make things easier for them by creating an education section. I made sure to include process pictures, online lesson plans, and even matching games and puzzles for younger kids.

8) First time having my artwork make an appearance on TV – even though it was only shown briefly, and on a local news station in North Carolina, it still counts 🙂

9) Donated a work of art for the first time to a nonprofit called The Cure Starts Now.

10) Created my first series of text collages called “Art for Everyone.”

11) Ran my first day-long collage workshop

12) Lots of traveling for exhibits – solo show in Jasper, IN; group exhibit in Richmond, Kentucky; group exhibit in Lexington, NC

Overall, I’m grateful I had so many opportunities this year. I’m excited to see what 2012 will bring. And I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!

The other week I got my copy of Papirmasse in the mail, which is a publication based in Canada that features prints of artwork alongside writing. I was thrilled to be part of the September postcard edition, and was happy to get ten postcard-sized prints of artwork in the mail. Just look at them all! Looks like I have quite a few more prints to add to my bulletin board.

On each postcard, there’s a print of a work of art on one side (above is a print of my “Snorkeling” collage).

And on the other side is a short piece of writing.

This image says it all – aside from working away on artwork all summer, I spent quite a bit of time drinking cups of coffee to stay awake and alert. I have a tendency of not sleeping very much, mainly because I’m a busy body – I always have something on my plate that I’d like to work on. And oddly enough, the less sleep I get, the more alert I feel in the morning, whereas the more sleep I get, the more tired I feel. Anyway, what were you up to this summer? Any traveling across the country/world? I just made a trek to North Carolina for a long weekend so I could install my artwork in the “Out of the Wild” exhibit. Other than that, my travels have been limited to wandering around DC.

My blog has been a bit quiet this year – I’ve been bogged down with work for Duck & Fish and recently I took on several commissioned projects. I’ll post progress pictures of the commissioned pieces sometime in the future. I’m also going to take a few classes this year in graphic design and web design – I’m always eager to learn more about other creative outlets.

In other news, the “Out of the Wild” exhibit received a bit of press coverage from a local news station. Also, a writer from my college Elon University wrote an article on my work as an artist – “In The Spotlight: Megan Coyle ’08.”

Anyway, I’m off to get started on a commissioned dog portrait. I hope to post a progress picture or two somewhat soon.