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.

Sharpie Pen Love

As previously mentioned, Kevin was nice enough to give me some new Sharpies for Christmas. One pack was of these colored Sharpie pens. Sharpie pens are like the chocolate-covered-pretzel-marshmallow-chocolate of pens. That's how much I love them. A lot.

They are great for doodling during staff meetings... :o) But they aren't as expensive as the Micron pens I usually use for drawing and have pretty similar results. Here's what I drew last night:

Smaaarch Flowers

I love when the grass starts turning green and the daffodils start popping out of the ground. It makes me want to be productive. I have big weekend plans for sewing some baby gifts, some minor gardening and of course lots of relaxing. Oh yeah, and not writing a blog post for class. I'll let you know how that all goes...

Crayola Blues

Ok this is dorky, but do you know how many shades of blue are in my 120 box of Crayola Crayons? 

A lot is the answer. I didn't actually count, but a lot is the most accurate I'm going to get right now. So I colored this tribute. I know, you are wishing you had a 120 box of crayons. I know.

The Telephone Game

My life is frequently like a bad game of "The Telephone Game." Sometimes I just don't get the message. I made this with Sharpies and an old CD I don't listen to anymore.

Note cards!

Last week I started making these Snarky Beagle note cards. I love how the designs look on the cards because, obviously, I have to shrink them down. I also forgot to mention that this particular design was really unfinished because Bailey chowed down on yet another of my Sharpies.

It's my party

Path

R.I.P Pink Sharpie

Last night I spent several hours working on my first color Sharpie-enhanced design while watching the Westminster Dog Show. Naturally Bailey and I were cheering for Uno, the beagle who eventually took Best In Show. However when I got out of the shower this morning I discovered this sad carcass of my bubblegum pink Sharpie. Apparently it smelled very very interesting to Bailey who decided to dismember it.

So that, in addition to a brown Sharpie that was dead on arrival (Seriously, I took it out of the box and the ink was already dried up), leaves me two Sharpies down. I'm kind of a sad panda. Hopefully the rest will serve me faithfully in my design endeavors.

Sharpie Mania

Hi, my name is Liz and I'm a Sharpie addict. Today I bought a 24 pack of Sharpie Ultra Fine Point markers. That's 24 amazing colors of Sharpie goodness. I just decided I'm getting a little tired of the black and white so I might try and see what I can do with these 24 color options.

Wish me luck!