Tiny Paintings and What’s Fueling My Creativity Right Now
Studio Notes Volume 02 | January 29, 2026
Well this year seems to be moving at the speed of light already and it has been a busy couple weeks in the studio. I feel like I have started to figure out a creative routine, but it is always challenging deciding what to focus on when everything seems important. I've got my big goals for the quarter and I'm currently trying to suss out what systems are going to help me balance the different things on my plate.
My creativity wondering how we are going to manage the overwhelming girl boss energy and not burn out by February.
One priority I settled on for the year is really trying to make sure I am getting in solid painting or drawing time each week. It's amazing how quickly this can sometimes fall by the wayside when I am trying to design patterns, write posts for my blog, write newsletters like this one, film and create content for socials, and all of the other things. I tend to spend about 10-15 hours working on my creative business each week and this year (I also work full time), I want to try and spend about 5 hours a week just creating artwork. This is proving challenging, but I am sticking with the goal. In my last post, I chatted about how tiny paintings are a great way for me to get back into painting after a break. Well I'm not sure I mentioned how much I am also absolutely in love with this size. When I am working on minis, I usually have any where from three to five paintings in various stages going at the same time. These are all intuitive paintings, so there is no real plan when I start them. The direction the painting goes usually has to do with what happens with the first layer, where I work wet on wet and then decide how to turn those abstract watercolor marks into more recognizable shapes, such as trees or water.
I'm starting to accumulate so many of these minis (with no end in sight) that I am trying to decide what to do with them. Any thoughts?
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Filling My Creative Cup
This month Vasya and I went and saw the Denver Art Museum's (the DAM) special exhibit The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism, before it closes in a few weeks. This exhibit had over 100 paintings and sketches from international museums and private collections and was one of the first times in many years that so much of his work was in the same place at the same time. I have not been to the DAM in literally years and I forgot how fun it is to wander around and look at art. What I loved most about this exhibit was learning that Pissarro was known for painting every day life and what he saw outside his window, sometimes literally. I loved the rural landscapes as much as I loved the city scenes and how they captured the modernity of the times (steamboats and factories). I was especially drawn to his use of color and how he depicted trees since I am painting so many trees at the moment in my minis. I'm still primarily using my dark and moody graphite watercolors, but I have started returning to my brighter color palette for some of them. I also loved seeing his watercolor studies and charcoal sketches. It was a little bit of a nudge to maybe spend some more time in my sketchbook just playing. If you have not made it to an art museum recently, I would recommend it.
The Studio at Éragny, Pear Trees in Bloom, Denver Art Museum
Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, Rainy Weather, Denver Art Museum
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Audio Book Rec: Audio books have become one of my favorite things to listen to when I am painting in my studio. I picked up Seth Godin's The Practice: Shipping Creative Work when we got back from our East Coast tour and it was a great book to help me find my creative rhythm again in the studio. The biggest takeaway I had was focusing on the process rather than the outcome. This sounds simple, but with my tiny landscapes, I have found that I am often overthinking what and how I want to paint instead of just going with the flow, sometimes literally. Lately, I have just been trying to notice when it happens and it has made it a lot easier to move through the feelings quickly.
Watch List: Ok this is actually a rewatch recommendation. Does anybody else find rewatching things to be more relaxing than watching new things? My go-to way to decompress in the evenings is to watch an hour of TV and work on my cross stitch (Yes, I am 104 years old.) This month, I rewatched Daisy Jones & The Six, which is probably one of my favorite book adaptations ever. If you haven't read the book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, I recommend you start there.
Did you see this Instagram trend?
Did you see that 2016/2026 trend that was making its way around Instagram the last couple weeks. Not going to lie, it was funny to see the contrast between people who were talking about how 10 years was a long time ago with lots of change (younger people) versus people who were like, 10 years ago was like a hot minute ago (older people). One of my goals is to be more experimental and visible on Instagram so I thought, why not, and went down the rabbit hole of social media to see what I was up 10 years ago. And I realized that I had hardly any photos from 2016. It was one of the hardest years of my life (so far anyway).
In 2016, I was well into what would become a year plus of a long distance marriage. My husband was living in Colorado, deciding if a new job and a new state was the right next move for him and by extension for us. I was still in Delaware at a museum job that I loved and unsure how I could leave everything I built, personally and professionally, to move out west. It was hard. But 2016 taught me that I can pretty much figure anything out… eventually. Painting did not enter the equation until 2020. 2016 Jesse could not imagine 2026 Jesse and the business she is starting to build. If you want to see the photos and full post, you can find it here. Sometimes the only way forward is through.