Beginning of February: Gosh it's cold!

Hello again! How did January treat you this year? I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but for me January was a blur! I'm really hoping that February settles down more and I'm taking steps to helping make that happen. This post has a lot of updates: new extra-curricular activities, a completed certificate, mental health, and of course paintings!

Free Time?

A lot of changes have happened this year already in my family, a lot of which you already know about, but my husband and I, in our infinite wisdom and vast storage of free time (wait, what?),  have decided to put our girls into Girl Guides this year. Oh man, what am I thinking?!

I'm actually really pleased with the group, my husband's family grew up with it and his mom is still very active, so there's a lot to say about it. And I'm sure my girls are going to get a lot out of it (and maybe even me too). But when I consider the time commitment for this thing - let's just say there's a great big red hand-print mark on my face from epic face-palm I self-delivered. However...I do think it will be an amazing adventure for the kids and as a mom I really want to give that to them, so...yeah.

Certificate Complete!

In other news! I completed my first Learning Path certificate through Lynda.com (woohoo!)! I just want to say for the record that the courses on Lynda.com are incredible. They took longer to complete than I expected but I was trying to get as much out of them as possible. If you are thinking of signing up for any reason, I recommend giving it a try for a month if you can, I don't think you'll regret it!

So, since I've completed that course-set I'm onto my next set which is all about logo design. I'm very excited about this! I hope to have this course done this week and if everything goes the way I'm thinking it will, then I will start applying for freelance work by mid-February! Very exciting!! Oh, if you have a need for a logo and you're on a tight budget, send me a message. This isn't my first course in logo design, I just want to be better at it.

Gaining Focus

Do you meditate at all? I've come to it off and on over the course of my life so far and I've always enjoyed it. I usually find that when I'm really stressed (when I need it most) is when it drops off my routine and then it takes awhile to get back to it. But now with smart phones and tablets having access to apps galore there's so many more options for guided meditations and just sound meditations!

Just last night I downloaded a meditation with Tibetan bowl chimes. I tried it out this morning and while it isn't perfect, I can't complain for the price (free) and I did feel much calmer and more focused afterward, which was the goal. I truly need the days to stop whooshing past me and I'm thinking that 5 min/day should definitely help!

Painting Practice

I want you to know that I haven't neglected my art at all during all this hurley-burley either. I've been practicing my negative painting as promised and I'm not too dis-satisfied with my results so far. I'm not sure if I will reach my goal of having one finished painting by March, but we'll see. I'm trying to be methodical about this learning because I really want to learn as much as I can about painting in this way. I'm drawn to the way it looks and feels and it's important to me to feel like I've mastered something for once!

Here's my progress so far:

After some online research of other artists and how they
approach negative painting in watercolour, this is what I did.

I wanted to play around with the idea a little so I tried
out this concept. Not entirely sure I pulled it off.

Then I went through my photos and found a tropical fruit tree that
looked promising so I setup a composition and tried out my
knowledge so far. This is a step or two beyond an
underpainting (with some detail starting to take shape).

And this is where I decided to stop for this experiment. I could
have gone further but I didn't want this to be a finished
piece, more of a lesson. I like a lot of what happened here though!

And this is what's on my desk right now. This is an underpainting, with
only a vague placement of colour to give some idea of where I
want to go with the piece. The subject is the same as above, but I
switched out the violet paint for blue and I'm adding more
textural effects with alcohol and water drops.

I'm not sure how this experiment will turn out, but that's part of the fun of it! After I posted my last piece there were a lot of requests for a video tutorial or some sort of demonstration - I'm not sure I'm ready for that just yet but I will keep the idea in mind for the future. For now I will make an effort to post pictures of each stage as I do it so you can get a better idea of what's happening.

And that's all for this post! Thank you for taking the time to sit with me. I hope your next few weeks go well. My birthday is this Friday so I have that to look forward to too!

Have a good one my friend!

Until next time,

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 or working with me for graphic work, 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 :)

November 16-30, 2016

Hello again and "Happy end of November" to you (is that a thing? it should totally be a thing!)! How's it going? Are you knee-deep in Christmas/holiday preparations or have you been done for ages? Me, I haven't even started yet. Honestly everything's been in such a whirlwind of activities that I've had trouble finding time to breathe, let alone plan my holidays! But I finally have a break for a few days and my plans include catching up on some familial responsibilities (I have to help Santa for my girls after all).

The past two weeks have been a little nuts, the store I'm working at did a week long sale for Black Friday so I worked more shifts than normal (yay extra money, boo less time), which means I didn't make much progress on the art front. Here's what I managed:

NHIllustration Course:

For the course I'm taking we were assigned to draw a flower/plant detailing the plant anatomy by showing the geometric shape and arrangement of the petals in the flowers, arrangement and orientation of the leaves and the basic plant anatomy. My biggest criticism for my final illustration is that there needed to be more information written, things like height, depth, maybe some colour swatches, that sort of thing. Otherwise I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out.

My NHI plant assignment: Snowdrops

A Christmas Project:

For Christmas this year I thought it would be nice to stretch my illustrative skills a little and make something personal for the members of my family. For the girls, I want to make pillow dolls (hopefully that will make more sense in the next post) with illustrated images of them printed onto the fabric. I started by sketching out some ideas for their faces.

Illustrations of my girls' faces for their Christmas present.

For my husband I have something special planned. A few years ago I got him some t-shirts with "Trust me I'm a Doctor", "Trust me I'm a Scientist" and "Trust me I'm a Paleolimnologist" written on them. He loved them and has worn them so much that they are pretty much done, so this year I thought I'd make him up a set of shirts with illustrated logos on them, so a step up from the last ones. One of his favourite games to play is Fallout so I thought that I'd draw my husband's face in a manner similar to the character in the game and arrange a few other illustrations that are specific to his field, then have the lettering surrounding it. Here's where I'm at with that:

My husband as the main character for his t-shirt design.

I'm going to print it onto an iron-on and put that on the shirt. If it turns out, I might redo it next time with a more permanent transfer/inking method.

Plans for December:

I'm a little behind in my NHI course, this week we are supposed to submit a drawing of a bird - nothing too complex - and I hope to finish that today. Next week is the final assignment for the course and I believe we'll be drawing a furry creature for that. For this week I hope to get pretty far in my Christmas projects, practically to the printed stage if at all possible, plus I have a lot of shopping to do still. My girls are very excited about the upcoming holidays and are pushing to have the tree up this weekend.

And that's it for this post my friend. I hope your first weeks of December are smooth, and if not relaxing then at least not too anxiety-ridden. Don't forget to add a little creativity to your days this month!

Until next time,

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 :)

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 :)

Second week of August

Hello, hello! How is August treating you so far? The last few days here have been very nice, not too hot during the day and just a touch of chill at night. I have a few things to report to you this week, an updated logo and website, my second published illustration, and I applied for a job!!

New Logo!

I've been wanting to make my own logo for some time now. I finally have the skills, the only thing holding me back was all the options available to me. And I've noticed that when it comes to my own projects, deadlines are flexible. I've discovered that a flexible deadline does not make for a very creative output. It turns out, for me at least, that a deadline helps to narrow down the options taking it from "oh, wouldn't it be amazing if I did that?!" to "yes, that would be awesome, but it would take more time than I have, and I'm not 100% sure how to do it right now, so instead let's do this which is also awesome and something I know I can do!". Okay, I realize the second sentence is what I should be thinking anyway but somehow it doesn't work that way, at least not at this stage in my development. I'm hoping that with more hard deadlines I will create a habit of thinking and then meet my own deadlines in the same way.

So what finally prompted me to create a logo? I decided to look for work and I felt that my social media would look more professional with a cohesive look and consistent logo. I also wanted to showcase my skills a little more. If you've been keeping up with me on Facebook or Instagram you will have already seen it, albeit in a small format, so here it is:

MWiklund Studio: Illustration & Design, logo

I really like how it turned out. I love the colours, the watercolour effect background, the illustrated wreath pattern and the hand lettered feel of the text. The only negative I have about it is that it's not the easiest read. Because the background is mid-tone light, it's actually quite difficult to make the lettering stand out without being harsh. I'm happy with this first attempt for now. I'm sure I will come up with a redesign in the future, but for now this works for me.

Lucky 13

You might recall from a previous post (which you can read here) that I was working on an illustration for MAEZA magazines 13th issue. Well that issue is finally out and you can see my work, and the work of many other amazingly talented artists, in all its published glory here. Also, here's the final piece - I'm considering offering it as a print on my Etsy shop, what do you think of that?

My submitted piece for MAEZA issue 13.

Website Updates

I've also done some work on my webpage. I've added a page for my shop information, added an illustration or two, and linked to this blog. I also did some work on my About me page. Click here to take a look. I'd love some feedback on it if you have the time!

My website.

Printable Cat Card

And finally, I want to mention that I have my very first product up on my Etsy shop! It's a printable card with all the design/illustration elements from my Staffordshire-inspired plate assignment for MATS A. I'd love it if you'd take a look and maybe favourite my shop, click here to see it. If you have any thoughts on this card or on any you'd like to see made available, please send me a message, I'd love to hear from you!

My Staffordshire-inspired cat card printable, available in my Etsy shop!

That's it for this week! The girls are home with me this week so work will take a bit of a backseat again. I did manage to get all my icons cut out for my scrapbooking assignment for MATS B, so I'd really like to push through and get that done this week (is this deja vu? I swear I've heard this before!). I also want to get back into my hand lettering practice, I really do miss it.

I hope you have a safe and happy second week of August! 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 have any questions or comments feel free to leave me a message.

Until next time,

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me, click on the Contact Me button at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

Third week of June

Hello! Welcome to another weekly summary of my work. This week is more graphic design and a little less illustration, but they are all my hard work so I hope you enjoy seeing what I've been up to.

Logo re-design

I had been asked by a small business that makes awesome and quirky kids apparel to help with her logo re-design for her upcoming rebranding event. In the end we came up with multiple images and formats for her to use all over her social media and final products for her brand. Here are a few examples of the finished design.

This is the little boy sheep with her business name. I love the missing tooth!

Here you can see the little girl with the little boy sheep. Aren't they adorable?!

I drew each character in pencil, then scanned them into Illustrator and Photoshop to finish them off. The business name is entirely hand-lettered, scanned and polished in Illustrator as well. You can see some of her products here.


DesignCuts Tutorials

Last week I told you that I had been working on some of the free tutorials that you can find on DesignCuts.com and that I would show you the results this week. Well, here they are. I can't take any credit for the final design or layout of these two pieces as I was following the tutorials, but there are some changes like the fonts and some of the word choices are mine.

A beach festival poster. This was a lot of fun because
you had to adjust the white frame to fit within the paint strokes. This was
done in Photoshop.

Oh this was so much fun. There were so many elements that had to be added,
adjusted, layered on, masks were used, etc. A true stretching of my abilities in Illustrator :)

Teacher Gifts

Like for many children, this is the last week of school for my girls and I thought it might be nice to do up one of the lovely monogramed wreaths I've been doing for each teacher. That's when I doubled my workload because each girl has two teachers for which I am both grateful for (who doesn't think classrooms need more teachers?) and non-plussed about because it meant two more wreaths than I had intended. But I accepted the challenge non-the-less :)

I did run into a few problems like a head cold the likes of which I haven't seen in quite some time that completely took me out of commission for a few days, and my lovely 0.25 mm micron pen tip broke halfway through the project. When I had recovered from my cold I thought I'd see how bad the broken tip would work but it was just awful. I really didn't like the result so I went out and bought myself a new one (yay art supply shopping!!).

These are the finished wreaths. I am going to frame them in an inexpensive frame as well.

Someone mentioned that it would be a good idea to include a business card with these so now I have an excuse to do up my own business cards as well! I also want to write up a little blurb about what these are and what makes them special, as well as the thank you card for all the work they've done over the year. I know my family really appreciates the effort they put in :)

That about covers this week. Next week I'd like to show off some of what I did in November when I took MATS A as that course really changed everything I do and I'd love to talk about it to someone, so why not you?

Until next time :)

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me click the Contact Me button up at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions!