November Chat

What’s in this issue:

• Peachtober Prompt Breakdown

• Photo Reference into Palettes

• Collaborative Art with Friends

• Basic Life Updates

• Ohh Deer Brand Ambassador

Peachtober Prompts

This month, I poured most of my art energy into doing the peachtober prompts and I really enjoyed myself. I’ve never participated in a month long challenge with daily prompts because I was concerned that it might be too much, but this challenge felt low pressure and like a lot of fun. It also helped that I was kind to myself before I even began. I gave myself permission to skip days if I wasn’t feeling it and to create simpler pieces when I felt like it. I think these things also scaled back some of the pressure.

Since I spent so much time on this month’s challenge, I thought it might be fun to dive into the process behind a few of the pieces. The first prompt where I really thought about documenting the process was the boulder piece.

My original idea was something like a huge boulder with a watercolor type texture and lots of swirling cracks and nicks all along it with a person sitting on top. The idea of the boulder being “sentient” was there, but not fixed. I then moved to a kind of boulder as shelter idea. The first pass, I felt like the character was far too sad and forlorn looking so I turned it into a happier scene, but kept with the original idea of a boulder as shelter. Originally, I was going to have the girl roasting a fish on the fire, but I have been struggling with hands lately and I could not get them to look right holding the stick so I just adjusted it so that she didn’t have to do that anymore. Sometimes when something isn’t working, it’s okay to stop punishing yourself and just adjust the pose. I also took a small break on this one. I thought I was finished, but I decided to come back and add a bit of foliage around the front to sort of frame the scene and add a little depth. With this one, I kept questioning if it was too empty with just this big rock dominating the image. I don’t know if I made it “better”, but I felt more comfortable with how it looked, snuggling the image a bit with some plants.

I’ve also included a few more sketches. I like to use a variety of colors, especially if things are overlapping so that I can see what’s what. I usually sketch out the characters really clearly because it is important that that looks correct. Often, I’ll leave the background a bit looser because chances are good that I will not follow those lines exactly. That’s because with the background, I need to be a bit more intuitive to make sure it’s working around the characters and things can change a bit with color. I’ll also be looser if it’s something I am more familiar with. I like to draw forests so I’ve done a lot and have a good idea of how I want that to look. If I am doing a city scene, I’ll probably better detail out what goes into that because I’m less comfortable with how different parts and pieces might look.

Palette Photo Reference

This month, I decided to take my usual palette idea and build it off of the world around me. I’ve done this before by noticing colors and then making selections off of my perceptions. I’ve also tried creating a collage of images and then allowing the Procreate palette creator tool to make a palette for me from my images, but this time, I thought it might be fun to share the palette as a series of little parts and pieces of photographs I’ve taken and then allow you to interpret that in whatever way you like. My real secret hope is that after reading this, you’ll be inspired to go outside and take your own photographs to create your own palettes. If you want to, but are a little nervous, just keep in mind:

• A dominant color

• Some neutrals (desaturated colors, greys, browns)

• A few bright pops that stand out against your dominant color and neutrals (this is often pink, orange or yellow for me)

Collaborative Art with Friends

Last year in October, I reached out to my friend Macha and asked her if she would be willing to make some art with me. We created a collaborative piece together of us trick or treating. This year, I asked if she’d want to do it again. I was so glad the answer was yes because we work really well together and I love how our stuff looks when it comes together! This year, we settled on witches brewing a potion, even though she had some other AMAZING ideas! There’s always next year, right? I think the biggest change this year was we felt a little more confident drawing each other’s sides and I love the result. Like the cauldron for example, we both did it together and I think you could pick us both out if you wanted to, but it merges so well!

I’d encourage you to also find a friend and ask them to make something with you. You can join in with us and do #palloween, drawing you and a friend in a Halloween scene or you can take it and make anything you want! The point is to actually reach out to someone and to work together. Making art is honestly a lot of fun when you’re collaborating with each other and hearing someone else’s views on a piece is really invigorating. I feel such a rush when working with Macha and it’s like magic when you see the piece after all the parts are done!

My top tips for working with someone else are:

• “Yes and” your partner - this keeps you open to their ideas and allows you to feel confident adding something too.

• Don’t take yourself too seriously - we’re all artistes, but if we get too into ourselves it is really hard to be open to working with someone else and it will suck the fun right out of doing something together!

• Have fun!

These are our two final pieces. The trick or treat one is from 2021 and the potion brewing witches is from this year, 2022.

Here’s some of our process working together. The most important parts were getting a scene where we both fit and checking the colors so that we looked like we both belonged there, but also weren’t too matchy matchy in identical outfits. There is a lot of sharing back and forth to make sure it all comes out looking right.

I hope this inspires you to find a friend to draw with this autumn! It’s really something special making a thing together!

Basic Life Updates

I’m back in the US and will be here until mid February. I’m really excited to celebrate Thanksgiving and Birthday with family and Ohio friends for the first time in 13 years. I’m also hoping it’ll be an inspiring time for me, reconnecting with everyone and perhaps getting the chance to relax a bit. It always feels good to be the US version of myself again.

I’ve also been sharing a bit on social media about this lego project without much context. My hometown library put out a call for local artists last year to create pieces of art for the new branch location. I applied to have a piece installed in the library. I didn’t think I would get it because I knew my art probably wasn’t what they were looking for, but I had a lot of feelings about my childhood library being closed and moved to a new location. I really wanted to at least try for the chance to put my mark on a place that means a lot to me. My proposal was rejected and I was a little sad, but happy that I had at least taken the chance to apply. It turns out, it was an excellent move to apply because a few days later someone from the library got in touch about creating a piece of artwork for a giant lego mosaic mural (16’x4’) that they wanted to create for the library’s children’s section. This project was much better suited to me and my style and if I hadn’t applied, they never would have known I existed. I also loved working with everyone on the project. I truly had a lot of fun with it. Currently, there are several different build events happening this fall to allow the community to put together the different pieces that will make up the final mural. I can’t wait to see it all together and hanging up at the new library.

Ohh Deer Ambassador

I’ve recently done something I’ve never done before and I’ve become a brand ambassador. Ohh Deer put out a call for people to apply to their new ambassador program. I’ve been a subscriber to their stationery subscription box for years so I thought it would be very cool to work with them, not thinking anything would come of it, but something did come of it. I always remind myself to try things and put myself out there because you never know what will happen, just like with the lego mural. I will be honest, I am kind of nervous. I don’t know if I’ll be very good at creating genuine content that feels authentic to me around a brand, but I am also excited about the opportunity. Especially since I honestly love their products and the way they promote their artists. Like seriously, I do have a stationery and art supply problem.

I want to say, not to worry, I’m not going to become an all Ohh Deer, all the time account, but I’ll actually talk about it sometimes. I want to be open and honest about collaborating with them, but hope you all wont mind me trying to add a little extra income built on the back of Instagram to help support my artwork. I am a self-employed full time freelancer now, afterall and that comes with a lot of anxiety about will I have enough money to make it?

This also lines up with a comment Andy J. Pizza made on his Creative Pep Talk Podcast about how social media is basically like Netflix, but where they don’t have to pay for any of their programming. This has been stuck with me for a while and even though I’m not going to stop using Instagram, the truth of it really made me angry. I’m hoping that perhaps this will also be a chance for me to benefit from the time and effort I spend on Instagram instead of them just taking from me. We’ll see. The newsletter will be a great place to share if it’s actually going well or if maybe it doesn’t.