Week of September 26, 2016

Hello my friend, I am happy to see that you made it through another week! It is officially October - where did September go? I don't know about you but I think I could've used at least a few more days before the month ended. This last week of September was more difficult for me than usual. I spent a lot of time struggling with fears and anxiety, a common issue among creatives, or so I've been told. I touched up my logo, was asked to make a logo for another small business, worked on some sketching, and made a huge dent in my map for MATS B! I also did some work enlarging my creative community and learning to grow my business.

Updated logo:

I'd been looking at my logo lately and I realized that I couldn't handle how poorly the image looked from a distance. Even up close the lettering was difficult to read and the pattern of the wreaths were overly distracting. I still adored the colouring and the watercolour background effect, but I needed to make the wreaths fall into the background more and find a way to darken up the letters and make them more visible. Here's the result:

My new logo. I've updated all my social media and stores to this design.

I think this works so much better! Shortly after I posted this on my Facebook page, I got a request from a small business owner to put together her logo too. She makes small (and sometimes large) crocheted dolls and figures and sells them. She already had an avatar that she wanted to stand front and centre, and she wanted her business name in a circle around it in beautiful lettering. This is what I made for her:

Logo I designed for a small hand crochet figure business.

I created the entire thing in Illustrator. She had given me the image of the girl, but I had to draw it out to vectorize and colour it. She also requested that I make an effort to seasonalize it with a Santa hat and bunny ears so that's my next job. So much fun!!

Sketching:

It was a frustrating week for me. Fear and anxiety kept nagging at me and draining my creative energies so I made an effort to keep things fun and light by doing a little sketching to take my mind off things.

Pencil sketch of hair. I can get very zen going into detail like this.

Cute little forest creatures. I had an idea for an illustration that I may still go forward with but I needed some critters first.

I do love to sketch and it frequently takes a backseat with my eagerness to move to the finished piece. Exploring ideas and training the hand and brain are really a lot of fun and frequently quite relaxing, but there's also the guilt of doing something I enjoy instead of something more serious (another typical creative personality trait).

MATS B Map:

With all of the frustration of the week I am quite proud of myself for moving forward with my map! I had a long talk with myself and came to the realization that fear was what was stopping me from moving forward. I've always loved looking at illustrated maps and have been very impressed at what others in my class have been creating, and I had a fear of screwing it up. This was also well outside my comfort zone! I tend to like to illustrate real things, things I can see and touch, in a realistic way. While you can do a map that way, that wasn't what the brief wanted. It specifically said that the map was not to be exact or precise, but a representation of the feel of the location. To me, this meant a much looser style and I struggled with trying to understand how to get my little corner of the world onto paper in this way. 

After my long talk I decided to go ahead with some quick pen sketches of ideas I had had months ago and just see how it went together. This was going to be my first digital piece (because for the life of me I couldn't get it going traditionally). Here's where I left it last week:

My work in progress of a map of Kitchener-Waterloo. 

There's still a fair bit of work to do on it, but I was impressed with how it's looking so far. Enough to keep me working on it this week and get it done!!

Fear and Business Growth:

I've been steadily growing my creative community for the past several weeks by joining several  Facebook groups and following a few more creative business newsletters. At first this was an awesome source of information and support for me, but it didn't take long to be overwhelming. It's wonderful to see all these amazing people and their incredible artwork, and to realize that there are people out there that can help you fulfill your dream of a creative business and creative life, to answer your questions and to help guide you where you want to go. But in a short time I found myself having to quickly skim through images as opposed to reading them thoroughly and commenting to support others. I was finding myself comparing my skill level to others and not measuring up. It can be very difficult, especially at my stage of juggling family priorities with a dream that was late in coming, to not get lost in the ocean of options and lose sight of what I want to do and where I want to go.

So, this week I am going back to limiting my time online (especially Facebook), I still want to be giving support to others and contribute to my community but I will be more selective about how I do that. I am returning to my use of a daily schedule to help me juggle my competing priorities, and I will write out my goal so I can stay on track. I also need to keep in mind how much I've accomplished in the last year. There's always this pressure to be further ahead, to be successful and skilled now regardless of how new you are to the business and I need to remember that I am moving forward every day, that each thing I do is another step up the mountain to achieve my dream.

Well, that's it for this week. If you have any questions about anything I've written today please comment below or contact me via my social media sites and I will be happy to answer them! I hope you have a great week and that you and yours are happy and safe.

Until next week!

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)