Pt. 1 - It's a process

How do you get from point A to point B? Easy, a straight line. But...what about art? Creativity is not a liner process. It's more of a lesson in not giving up, supported with a routine and repetition.

So, what's your artistic process? For every art form (writing, painting, performing...) there are steps that each artist goes through to get to the end "product". I never went to school for illustration, just graphic design. The process shouldn't be THAT different, but I find myself struggling to complete my own personal projects (because I know the person who's making the schedule and they're full of it).

Follow along as I figure out my process for an illustration for a sweatshirt!

Part 1: Brainstorm, mind-mapping, and initial ideas

I would love to draw all the things, so I write down all my thoughts so that I can always go back and use them for another future project. What's that term from agile methodology? Backlog. Create a backlog. This latest bout of sketching has produced demon girls and cats as the themes that are floating to the top. Mermaids are always welcome, though. I found an old inktober drawing that I think I will re-draw later.

Next steps: making lots of thumbnails and exploring MORE ideas!

Studio blog update - May 22

Do you ever want to start something and you feel like you have too many choices so you end up doing nothing? Like...even if you start, you feel like there is something better you could have done/better tools to use/better ideas to focus on? I find it hard to give myself limits for creativity because...who wants to limit that???

BUT. The limits are needed for me to focus my attention and energy. Even if it flops, I have to start somewhere. And if I have limits and directions to follow, I'm way better at getting to the end...

This month I'm focusing on just getting my rough ideas on paper and making tiny sketches of every possible thing that comes into my head. Next week I will go through all of my ideas and group them by theme and then plow through a bunch of pieces that will (hopefully) form a series or work. Or maybe a few series. And maybe this will take a few months or years, but I'm kinda sorta excited about it.

For example: I was at a baseball game a couple weeks ago and the ball park has a rule about bringing in bags. You can bring in a small purse, a hip bag, or one of those draw string backpacks. I dug around my closet for one of the draw string bags because I was sure I had a million of them - they always give them away at running events and stuff. But I only found one. And it was yellow. And had a bunch of Minions on it?? (The yellow worked out because the team colors were brown and yellow) I got it from the Universal Studios running series I did pre-covid. Anyway, my mind immediately went to "I could make some awesome artwork for a draw string bag." Now I have to figure out WHAT artwork. So here we are. My limits for this project are: it has to be colorful (something I would use/wear), it has to be floral or something I could make into a pattern. Draw string bags don't show artwork very well when the string is pulled. I went through my sketchbook and found some color pencil tests I did that I really liked:

So those are my two goals/limits for the rest of this month. Brain-dump uncensored series ideas, make a colorful pattern for a drawstring bag.

Books I'm reading:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger