Advice I Have Not Taken: My Thoughts on Picking a Style

A few weeks ago as I was ruminating over my place in the world, I mentioned that my latest, biggest fear was that everything I’m doing is NOT GOOD ENOUGH (crazy talk, right?... right?) and I’m progressively trying to improve and DO MORE BETTER. 

One area that’s pretty clear to me where I could be doing better is in having a defined style. I think if you read basically any design blog or book, the #1 piece of advice from artists/business owners/everyone is to have a clear, distinct, unique voice and style.

 And as a habitually distracted creative-type… this poses a pretty big challenge for me. Challenge #1: I love experimenting. Experimenting and learning new things is basically all I’ve been doing lately. 

Challenge #2: When you are learning new techniques, or when you are researching, or when you are just following other designers on social media… it’s tough not to be influenced. In my mind it works this way, “oh look, I love this style and it is super popular right now, I should do something like that.”

 Neither of these are necessarily BAD in my mind, and let me be clear, I’m not talking about COPYING someone else’s style (because, let’s be honest, I don’t have the attention span or talent to even go there). 

But when you are reading day-in-and-day-out that you need a refined style… that you need to pick one thing to be good at... it makes you think a lot (and possibly worry some more about being not good enough). 

And to me, there’s at least one style that I think is clearly “me.” And if you have known me for any period of time… this will not surprise you in any way whatsoever. And those are the doodles.

I started this blog to share my cover-the-page-with-weird-shapes doodles, like the ones throughout this post. It’s probably the only kind of drawing that comes naturally to me and that isn’t really influenced by other things I see. 

I just get obsessed with a shape, develop that shape, and then go nuts with that shape. I have done this since I could hold a pen in my hand. I just love, hand-drawn, tiny, repetitive patterns. Like this:

 Now the challenge is: how do I embrace that? How do I develop that in to something? How do I take what else I’ve learned to do and incorporate those things?

The answer: I don’t know. And as I’ve said before… I’m trying to share and embrace the process and worry less about not being there yet. So stay tuned and we’ll find out what happens together. Needless to say, there will definitely still be experimenting.

Drawing & Illustration for Dummies

Continuing with my spate of recent online classes, I recently finished watching Heather Ross' Drawing & Illustration Basics on Creative Bug. In the next week or so I'm going to be posting a REALLY BIG round-up of all the online classes I've taken, but I wanted to share some of my attempts from Heather's class in particular.

Heather really focuses on drawing everyday objects so we started out with some little things little clothespins and push pins.

Next we moved on to some more complex sketches of things like flowers.

Up to this point in the class, I basically was just drawing whatever she drew, but then I diverted and started sketching some things from our backyard (I mean, it IS spring and EVERYTHING is blooming!)

In the second part of the class she focused on filling in the sketches with gouache, which is a type of opaque watercolor paint that is hard to spell. I was immediately very intimidated, because the bulk of my forays in to painting are decidedly abstract, but I soldiered on at her encouragement that "everyone can draw/paint."

SO I gave it my best effort and was mildly impressed/happy with the result! Lots of room or improvement though.

Finally, she talked a lot about making conversational artwork... again, not something I do naturally... but I loved the little painting she taught us to do of a ladybug hiding under a mushroom. Check out #cbugsketchbook on Instagram to see like 15 of my classmates versions of this... pretty freaking adorable in my opinion.

I think this class was really interesting and pushed me to attempt drawing more things that I usually immediately am like... "nope... can't draw flowers, sorry."

Unrelated to what was taught in the class, I also decided to try my hand at some brush lettering which I really loved and hope to do more of in the future. Sort of an easier (for me) way to get a calligraphic style without the frustration of bending metal nibs (curse my heavy hands!).

Stay tuned for another post coming up in which I will share my deep thoughts and general fangirl-ness from a bunch of the online classes I've taken. If you've been thinking about learning some new stuff... this post will be for you!

Out of Context

It seems like the people around me are always saying semi-ridiculous things. I love to write down the strange things people say. Unfortunately for Kevin, I tend to really remember all the silly things he's said and quote them back to him on a regular basis. They are even funnier taken completely out of context. 

So I started a little series of doodles to illustrate some of these quotes that always make me laugh. Here are the first three. 

Me neither.

Well, what did you expect?

Nope. I don't

I married a pretty funny guy I guess :o)

The Birth of a Doodle

This is a post about how a doodle is born. I promise it won't be gross or weird like most births are.  Right? I wouldn't actually know. Anyways... yeah sorry about the awkward detour.

I doodle A LOT during meetings, class, while waiting for the pizza guy and pretty much anytime I have a pen and paper in hand (actually paper isn't even required, I used to color the back of my hand pretty elaborately in high school). It's like I literally can't help it.

Most of the time I draw random things like flowers and stars and zigzags that are all pretty boring.

BUT soooometimes, I'll draw a shape or a pattern that I really like. I'm not sure where it comes from. It's pretty much like MAGIC. Then it becomes like "The Doodle of the Week" and I draw and re-draw it. It evolves and at some point I decide it's ready for the big time.

The next step used to be that I'd pull out my Big Black Book of Doodles and carefully draw until it covered a whole page (like this or this). But then I bought a smaller notebook when I started blogging so that maybe I'd have more motivation to draw new doodles (like this). But the thing is, unless the magic happens, I have nothing to draw but zig zags and flowers and stars. Now that I'm starting to use a tablet to draw digitally, it's even worse because the barrier is even lower.

I've sat down almost every day for the past 5-6 days to try and draw a new pattern... but Snarky Beagle designs just don't start on my computer. They have to start when I'm mind-numbingly bored and doodling in the margins of a notebook/meeting agenda. It's frustrating because I want to just spill a bunch of fabulous doodles out on command and I just can't. (I could bring this back to the birth metaphor now... but I'll spare you).

It's a creative process that dependent on boredom... or something. Anyone else have this problem or suggestions for sparking creativity on demand?

It's all mine and you can't have it

It's alllll miiinnneeee. Mwhahahaha. Ok, that was weird. Sorry, this is what happens to my brain on a Friday afternoon when the weather is beautiful and I'm stuck inside a 6'x6' windowless box. Happy Friday!

Response 3: Moms are the BEST

Those of you who know me, know that my mom is literally the hands-down-best mom ever. Not because she does my laundry when I take it all home (though she does that) or because she cooks amazing meals (she also does that), but because she's our in-house therapist. When I was a senior in high school my mom decided to go back to school (sadly she picked Florida State... ew) and get her Master's of Social Work.

Simply put, my mom is a bad-ass therapist. She is widely known (at least in our family) for taking no prisoners when it comes to her clients. She is honest with them even if that means being a little snarky. So when I was reading Candyce's blog about the Teen Mom II finale with Dr. Drew, I thought a lot about how my mom would have handled those girls.

So when it comes to motherly advice, she can't be beat. But while I'm in the midst of listing my laundry list of "things that are turning me into a gooey clump of stress," her favorite thing to say to me is "I'm so sorry about you." I still haven't figured out what this means exactly. She's not sorry FOR me... she's sorry ABOUT me. Hm. She cracks me up every time she says it and I've been trying to remind myself to do a pretty drawing with that statement. The drawing above is not pretty. I did it in about five minutes so I could get this post in for class. Maybe this is why I am a gooey clump of stress... see what I did there?

The Tablet of My Dreams

I feel really lucky that my boyfriend loves creative stuff as much as I do, whether it's suggesting a daytrip to a "barn sale" in Frederick to score some weird old furniture or drawing his comic. One thing I'm really thankful for is that he has some of the tools I don't. I'm talking about this baby. Mmm, a Wacom Bamboo tablet. Something that's sort of been on my list of things-I-would-buy-if-I-had-money. Also on this list is this lovely Nikon and this Dyson... uh... unrelated to design on that last one but oh how I drool over it. Yes, I'm old, but if you had a beagle shedding her winter coat ALL OVER the apartment, you'd be drooling too. 

I finally took the time this evening to install the software on my computer and start practicing. To my dismay, it's going to take a lot of practice. Drawing on the tablet is much different that doodling in the margins of my notebook during meetings. So I started working on a fun signature, see above. If anyone has tips or helpful hints about drawing on tablets... I welcome them. If anyone has $500 for me to buy a Dyson, I'd welcome that too.