I've been sitting here, eating my homemade popsicle, looking over what's to be my new website. (Ohhhhhhhh, just you wait.) I've spent days going through all my old sketchbooks, unearthing old treasures of paintings that I had an issue with at the time but now find new life in - I'm overhauling the whole site, portfolio included.

When I started reviewing and assembling the images, at first I thought - ugh. Too many styles, too many directions to go in. Too many different looks, sizes, concepts. Nothing would match.

But the more time I spent tagging my sketchbooks with pink post-its and scanning in my favorites, the more I found that those - "my favorites" - all really did go together. Similar palettes. Common themes. And hopefully, the same spark that might cause someone to smile or sigh runs through them all as well. Plus, they just make me happy. And isn't that the whole point?

Try it: take a quiet afternoon and go through your old sketchbooks, the paintings you did in school, the ones rolled up in the back of the closet. Look at the ones that frustrated the heck out of you at the time and see if they still do, or if you have the answer in you to complete them now.

Take a favorite picture out - old or new - and hang it up. Celebrate your different styles, your attempts at something new. Give yourself permission to let old artwork go if it doesn't speak to you any more. Enjoy looking at your work as a collection and not just a bunch of separate pictures.

Let your own artwork make you happy.