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Your Style in Letters
Your Style in Letters I love to make letters stretch beyond verbal meanings into visual impact. In this project, I’ll show you how I incorporate style and personality into a name, my name. As you work through the project, it will impact you most if you use your name and process your own style and personality. Let’s get that left side of your brain mingling with the right side. 1. I like to think before I ink, or thINk, so I started this project with a mind map. I wrote down any word that came to mind that describes me or my style. I jotted my mind map in a…
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Six Barriers to Finding Your Style, Your Voice, Yourself
Six Barriers to Finding Your Style, Your Voice, Yourself When I sat down to think about style and how it affects my life, I couldn’t stop thinking about the barriers that have influenced my search. For many years, these obstacles kept me from pursuing things I enjoyed, but now I realize that only I lose out on life when I don’t do what I enjoy. And really … that enjoyment flows over into the lives of those around me too. When I’m content, they can tell. I’m much more pleasant company. Here are several of the barriers I’ve encountered. Maybe some of them will resonate with you and help you…
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Finding Your Style – Trillium Study
Trillium Style Study You can follow along with my project exactly, if you want to, but I encourage you to step into your own exploration. If you mimic my project, you will still learn techniques and looks to add to your exploration, but you will stimulate your own creativity less along the way. Because exploration is a process, neither method is right or wrong, just learn from what you do. And Make It Yours when the time is right. 1. Gather pieces of your style, make a collage if you like. The pieces can be pictures, colors, works from your favorite artists, stories, movies, and anything else that you feel…
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Journey Toward Finding Your Style
Journey Toward Finding Your Style (Part two of our visual style project is at the bottom) The way I see it, discovering your style compares to a slow simmering pot of chili, an aging wine or cheese (yum! I’m getting hungry), a tree growing or a marathon. Style takes time, even gets better as time passes. If you’re looking for a sprint to the finish, a 10-minute weeknight meal, or a fast food drive through, this isn’t it. Style doesn’t materialize in an instant or overnight. It takes time (the no pressure kind of time), self-discovery, the application of it, and mistakes (the kind that push you to try again).…
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Developing Your Style
Developing Your Style This month, I’m investing in exploring and developing style. Writers call it voice. It’s the part of what you create that identifies it as your work. Take handwriting for an example. We all write differently, and when people we know see our handwriting, they know it’s ours before they read who signed the letter. Developing your style can feel daunting. Defining style and voice in creative works seems impossible at times. Writers, artists, and designers all wrestle with the concept in their work. It’s easy to identify style in someone else, but how do you find it in your own work? Do you need to have…
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Welsh Harlequin Duck with Easter Eggs
March gave us a bonus week just before Easter and April Fools Day, all wrapped up in one. What do you do on April Fools Day? I love pranking my kids. They wake up with marker mustaches, swapped clothing drawers, and switched out cereal boxes. And that’s just the beginning. I don’t care for the mean jokes. They take the fun right out of it for me. No plastic wrapped toilet seats for this girl! I will take wrapping off of chocolate Easter eggs and re-wrap it around grapes to pack inside lunches. To some people that’s real torture … taking away their chocolate. But what should I do…
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Make it Yours
Something happens inside of me when I decide to step out and own something. At that point, I know I’m committed to the idea or project. I decide what that something means to me, how it will impact or change my life and what will become of it. This can happen with art too. As I cultivate curiosity and see things through my perspective of the world. I intentionally see things around me. I invest in seeing. Then, when I put what I see to paper, I move thought to action. I invest in ability, I invest in style and I even invest in you as you see…
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Color Me Curious
How did your design creating go last week? Did you notice and appreciate the designs around you more often than usual? Personally, I’m noticing little things everywhere and wanting to turn everything into a design too! How did it feel to put your designs to paper and add ink? Were you drawn to the page again and again to add just one more design? It can be addicting. I know I’m totally obsessed with it. Each time I thought I was out of ideas, I came up with more. Just wait until you try this next exercise. It will get those creative juices flowing with color and turn that black…
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In the Details
It’s all in the details. Seriously. So many things are overlooked with the details. Sizes Shapes Patterns Colors Textures Close up and far away differences Combinations of the above and more Do you know what’s ironic about details? I tend to breeze past details for the bigger picture. I see recipes as guidelines for the meal instead of individual amounts and I love to throw all kinds of things into my cooking (I guess it helps that I usually come out smelling like roses here. If I botched every meal, I’d probably stop experimenting because I like yum better than yuck.) I look for the bigger picture in conversation…
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Cultivating Curiosity
In March I plan to invest in curiosity and creativity … beware … this may last close to forever. Who says we need to stay inside the confines of March? What can I say? I’m passionately curious and love to make artsy things … a lifetime unofficial student. In fact, curiosity and creativity will be the foundation of the new site I’m working on. Did I forget to mention that? I know I talked about changes coming (and changes have begun), but did I mention, I’m working behind the scenes at moving my blog to a new website? It will focus on exploring meaning and life with watercolor and ink,…
