30 Days of Fruit Illustration - Part Two

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I'm back with the second installment of the illustrations I've created for the 30 days of art "fruit" themed challenge by Sealemon. Here is my Part One post which shows days 1-10 in case you missed it. In terms of how Im doing with the challenge now, 20 days in, it's interesting (well, to me, it might not be for you, but humor me for a minute). I thought I would feel really overwhelmed with the commitment of having to draw something every day, something I might not want to draw (I suffer from an anxiety disorder, specifically linked to cleithrophobia - which is a fear of being trapped), but actually, I'm dealing fine with this, I'm not feeling overwhelmed by the challenge at all - even by the posting on Instagram part which is something I normally suck at. What I am starting to experience though, is a bit of fruit fatigue - especially as I see several melons on the horizon - I'm starting to feel like I'm being repetitive in what I'm producing, and maybe part of these challenges is breaking through that feeling, but right now, I sort of feel a bit "done" with fruit - not with the idea of producing everyday, but yeah, not fruit. Nevertheless, I will finish this challenge, but going forward, I think I would maybe look for a more varied prompt list to work from, just for me personally.

Day 11 - Lime 

For lime, I wanted to do something distinctly different from what I did with lemon - which was a palette knife acrylic painting - and since the response to my continuous line strawberry drawings had been good, I decided to go that route again and make some lime slices.  So the slice was drawn on paper with a Sharpie Marker and then scanned into Photoshop to be made into this simple repeating pattern.

I liked the colour combination because it felt really fresh and Summer-y, and so I actually made a few other citrus inspired variants and uploaded them to my Redbubble and Society6 stores.

Day 12 Cherries

I struggled to pick a style with cherries - I feel like there's so many ways to interpret them! In the end I painted them in acrylic, and I wanted to create quite a rich, deep palette, and then to pair that with a kinda unexpected, more modern background. Did it work? I have no idea. Did I have fun making this one? Yes

While I do really, really want to make acrylic painted Digital Paper Packs, I still haven't yet, so at the moment, this design is just available in my Redbubble and Society6 stores on a wide range of products, and on a few different background colours.

Day 13 - Pears

Pears are quite possibly, no, quite probably my least favourite fruit (except for pear flavoured Fruitella sweets, does anyone remember those? Those were heaven). So I wasn't really sure how I wanted to draw one, having never really looked much at them! In the end I brought out my inks (which I have almost no idea how to use) and thought I'd give it a shot. Honestly, I actually kind of love how this came out! I went in without any plan, but I like where I ended up!

Unfortunately, I accidentally closed the design in Photoshop without having saved any stage of it (I know, such a rookie mistake), and I haven't actually yet gone back in to re-create it to upload it anywhere, but I think I will!

Day 14 - Grapes

So, mixed results on this one, I feel. I wanted to paint them in acrylic, but I really wanted to try and capture the finish that red grapes have on their skin - that almost white, or matte vibe to them. I think that challenge might have been a step to far for my skillset, as I do feel these kinda just came out looking chalky. For creating the pattern, I wanted to try and do something a bit different and take advantage of the fact that grapes work on stalks, as well as as individual grapes. I feel like I ended up with more alien trees than fruit, but that could be kind of cool I guess! I haven't developed this idea any further, but that's not to say I won't in the future.

Day 15 - Peaches 

Typical me, I spent ages looking forward to drawing peaches, with their super cute bum shapes and delicious colour palette, only to promptle produce a line-only drawing showing them in a non bum-shaped way?! Oh well, best laid plans and all that. So yes, these were line drawn with Sharpie Marker and scanned in to be coloured digitally and made into a pattern. I had this idea of this almost neon gradient and thought, why not, but I'm still not sure about it. It does definitely scream SUMMER though!

I uploaded this design, on the bright gradient, as well as on several more muted colours to my Redbubble and Society6 stores.

Day 16 - Mango

I very much had it in my head that I wanted to draw my mango with oil pastels, I wanted to get the intensity of the fruit, the colours mashing into one another. In retrospect, I think I forgot that I hadn't used oil pastels in years, so my skill wasn't where I thought it was and I wasn't really able to get the full effect of what I was going for. Still, I had a lot of fun and I will definitely keep playing with oil pastels. I haven't developed this idea any further.

Day 17 - Grapefruit

This was by far the day I came closest to skipping so far in this challenge. I've been having some hand pain - which I think it just me injuring it slightly through a combination of repetitive strain and general tension - but on this particular day I really couldn't hold a pen or a paint brush for any length of time. I sat down to do a detailed, ballpoint pen drawing and after about 10 minutes I had to pack it in. There may or may not have been a few tears of frustration. So, I fell back onto a quick sketch and to make up for the lack of drawing involved, I took time to put my quickie pattern onto this mockup from Creatsy.

Day 18 - Papaya

My hand was feeling a bit better on this day, but I still didn't want to push it and try and hold something for too long, so I decided to do a quick, kind of expressive acrylic painting. To be honest, although I know I've eaten papaya I've never held one or cut into one, so it was kind of fun and strange to be painting one. I actually completed the painting early in the day, but then completely forgot to photograph it until the evening - and the light then sort of washed out the painting a bit, but still, it's a papaya.

Day 19 - Avocado

 Looking back on this day, I can clearly see my fruit fatigue setting in! Does it meet the brief? Sure. Did I enjoy making it? Nope. I honestly, just wasn't feeling this one at all, which is weird because avocados are a favourite of mine and I was really into doing some sort of pink and green theme, but nope. Not feeling it. I'm struggling to even write about it now because I'm so meh about the whole thing - needless to say, I haven't developed this idea any further!

Day 20 - Pomegranate

Feeling a bit more like myself with this one. I know that pomegranates are all about the stunning interior, but I just wasn't feeling that detail yet (hand problems) and so I decided to - for only the second time in this challenge - crack out the watercolors. Oveall, I'm actually pretty happy with how this one came out - watercolours are way out of my comfort zone but I feel like I did an okay job with this one to be honest. I think the little seeds are a nice touch - although my partner, Kenny, thought they were axolotls at first, so, mixed respons there.

I am going to be making this into a pattern and uploading it onto Print on Demand, but I'm writing this on the morning of the 21st and so I just haven't had the chance yet.

Conclusion 

While I'm still really glad I started on this challenge, I think I am enjoying it less as time goes on - and maybe thats to be expected? Maybe I'll catch a second wind and get really into it again? Who knows. I actually think if I was going to do a challenge like this again, I would do it all in one medium - so acrylic paint probably. I think then at the end it would be fun to see a cohesive sort of "collection" of all the fruits, rather than the sort of mishmash of styles I have floating about just now.

30 Days of Fruit Illustrations - Part One

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Hello all,
At the beginning of May I decided to follow along with the 30 Days of Art "Fruit" Themed Challenge, which was created by SeaLemon - you can find her on Instagram and YouTube.
I'm normally super apprehensive about starting a challenge like this - in TikTok language I'm the CEO of panicking and hiding halfway through a challenge. I certainly didn't plan on making any sort of commitment at the moment - as well experiencing these strange new times, I also lost a close loved one in the last week of April, and I'm very much on a rollercoaster of emotions at the moment. And yet, here we are, with the first 10 days under my belt and lots of enthusiasm for more designs going forward - how strange?!

I've been posting the designs daily on my Instagram - on my TimorousEclectic account - but I wanted to do a little round up here, for people who don't use Instagram, and also so I could share a bit more about the decisions behind the making, and how I went on to develop the illustration (if at all).

Day 1 - Watermelon

For Day One I, all of a sudden  - as in after a gap of about 10 years - decided I wanted to play with china markers again. Random. I wanted to have a bold, but textured line and I thought this would be a fun way to go. I do like the effect, but I want to definitely expand on it - ideally I'd like the line to be about twice as thick! I also played around with making some of my own brushes for Photoshop, by scanning in watercolor paint marks, and then colouring these digitally in a watercolour style. Again, I like the effect but would like to crank it up a notch.

 I drew the watermelon elements individually, and turned them into a Clipart and Digital Paper Pack on my Digital Etsy Shop, and I also expanded on this type of surface design and uploaded some variations to my Society6 and Redbubble stores - although I think this blue background is my favourite!

Day 2 - Blueberry

Another day of sudden, nostalgic creative drive as I attempted palette knife painting for, again, the first time in about a decade. (As a side note, the fact that I have mad whims like this is the reason I end up hoarding all art supplies, forever.) Because the shape of a blueberry is so simple, I wanted to play with creating texture and "detail" within the basic shape. I feel like I did achieve what I set out to do, and I know things like my colour mixing and understanding of shade and light will come back to me and improve with practice.

I only painted this one, single blueberry but I turned it into a surface pattern and uploaded it to my Society6 and Redbubble stores on a range of backgrounds - I think it looks pretty cool with the really distinct texture and the bold colours!

Day 3 - Pineapple

This was one of the days I struggled with! There are so many options with a pineapple and so many styles that I wanted to try out - colours, lines, shapes, textures - that I just sort of froze for the majority of the day. In the end, I really wanted to keep going with the challenge but I'd left it a little late in the day for getting the paints out, so I decided to go back to my old faithful: ballpoint pen drawings. Definitely not my strongest drawing, but it actually ended up being kind of a fun interpretation when usually pineapples are so bold and colourful!

I didn't scan in or develop this days illustration any further - you beat me this time pineapples, but I will return!

Day 4 - Lemon

Back at it with the palette knife again! I just couldn't resist having another shot at trying to create some movement and life on what is usually quite a flat, even surface. I did have to make myself promise not to do this with every other round/citrus fruit on the list though!

 I feel like the painting of the actual fruit is a step forward with this one, but I really, really don't like that streak of white on the leaves. Shudder. I scanned this - and the other lemon I painted - in to Photoshop (tried to dull that white a bit) and then uploaded the pattern to my Redbubble and Society6 stores - again I really like how it looks with the very textured fruit against the solid, saturated background.

Day 5 - Banana

For this day, I went a little fancy with my post and shared a few of my banana patterns on this fabric mockup (which is from Creatsy). These are digitally drawn and coloured in, pretty simple banana shapes that are quite striking in their own way. They are for sale in my Etsy shop as a Digital Paper Pack, and I liked a couple of the patterns so much that they're up on my Redbubble store - because, seriously, who isn't in the marked for a bright yellow, banana covered shower curtain?

Day 6 - Strawberry

Cracked out the Sharpie Marker (nothing like the smell of an alcohol based marker pen at 8 in the morning, yikes) for this one today and drew some, not quite continuous line, but I guess expressive line shapes? I drew probably around 6-8 strawberries, quickly and instinctively and at the end I felt one was a lot stronger than the others so voila, scanned it in and made it into this seamless, repeating pattern. 

I wanted colours that felt true to the strawberry, but also matched the more modern, simple feel of the drawing and I feel I nailed that. I would really like to explore making a Digital Paper Pack with this kind of drawing - but for now, I uploaded this colouring and a more rose gold palette to both my Society6 and Redbubble stores.

Day 7 - Orange

I'll be honest, I think this illustration has gotten by far the least love on my Instagram of all the fruits so far, but it's easily in my personal top 3?! I really wanted a simple graphic feel, not too detailed, and with lots of contrast - and I feel like I did that. I drew and coloured these elements indiviually in Photoshop, so that I could combine them to make this design, but also turn them into a Clipart Set and Digital Paper Pack for my Etsy Store. 

Given the lack of response to these designs so far, I haven't made any patterns to put up on Print or Demand, but down the road I might come back to it if I have a bit of free time of an afternoon or something.

Day 8 - Apple

The closes I came to just missing a day altogether - I was just not feeling this. Again, it's not so much that I couldn't get inspired, but as with the pineapple, it's more like I was overwhelmed with ideas and just couldn't settle to anything, so I basically did nothing. 

In the end, the best I could do was these pencil sketches in my Moleskine sketchbook, a little page of "studies", or really more like doodles. On one hand, I'm proud of myself for playing with a different medium (for this challenge) and still making something, but on the other hand, I don't feel this is my best work and I don't love that it's on my grid.

I didn't develop this idea any further, but I did jot down a bunch of the other apple ideas I had and hopefully I'll circle back around to them.

Day 9 - Kiwi

Day 9 started innocently enough with me deciding to crack out my watercolours and have a little go at painting a kiwi slice, only to spend a frustrating hour remembering that I am in fact very bad at watercolours. Rather than scrap what I'd painted and start again with something I'm more comfortable with, I decided to bring in some felt tip pens and fineliners and see if there was a way to resuce the kiwi a bit. I mean, it helped a bit I guess.

Once finished it was scanned and made into a simple repeating pattern in Photoshop, and while I have no plans to upload this to any Print on Demand sites,or do anything further with it at all one thing I do really like is the colour scheme, so I'm calling that a win at least.

Day 10 - Dragonfruit

As soon as I saw what this day was I knew I wanted to crack out the acrylic paint - this was such an insanely fun palette to paint with! I wanted to go for a more layered, translucent wash style than I usually do to try and capture the way these beautiful hues merge into one another and while this is far from perfect, I think it's a pretty nice little study and has a lot of strengths going for it. Plus, did I mention how fun it was to paint?

While the colours definitely make me want to produce a dragonfruit Digital Paper Pack in the future (frankly whether anyone else would want it or not!), for now this dragonfruit was made into a repeating pattern and uploaded to my Redbubble and Society6 stores - on quite a few background colours actually, I just couldn't choose!

Conclusion

I'm enjoying this project so much more than I've ever enjoyed another challenge like this, but I can't quite put my finger on why? Of course, I still have a long way to go, but I'm excited to see what media I decide to play with and to see people react to my little doodles and scribbles on Instagram. I will of course share the rest of the project in two more, 10 day incremement posts, but in the meantine, I'd love to hear of any other art challeneges you enjoy or would recommend? I think I've caught the bug!

What are my "Creative" Income Streams?

 I've talked on here a few times about my work, what I do for a living. I've loosely mentioned that some of what I do is in the creative field, but I've never actually broken down what that is. I know that there are a lot of people out there who are talented creatively but not sure if/how to try and monetize their skills, and so I wanted to share a little overview of how I'm currently doing that, and what my plans are for the future.

My April 2020 Bullet Journal Spreads - Self Care Theme

Here in the UK, and in a lot of places around the world, April 2020 is shaping up to be a strange month. In Scotland, we'll be in lockdown for at least the first couple of weeks, and beyond that, well, who knows. I don't want to turn this into an entire post about the COVID-19 pandemic, but I would be lying to say that it hasn't influenced my spreads for the month. For example, I haven't made a monthly calendar, because everything is cancelled, there's no plans to have and nowhere to be but at home. But anyway, while this month will certainly be different, I'm still approaching it from a place of gratitude and hope.

The pandemic has also influenced my theme choice for this month - I've chosen to do a Self-Care theme! Trying my best to embrace the hygge vibes of spending time at home, and allow myself time to relax, or to read or really to do whatever I feel I need to do to navigate these difficult times.

COVER PAGE

I've moved away from doing quote pages for every month, but this month, I thought I could use some words of wisdom, so I pulled one of my all time favourite quotes from my all time favourite book - The Lord of the Rings. I like this quote, it helps me stop from spiraling out and reminds me to slow down, to breathe and to just put one foot ahead of the other. Do you have a favourite quote you're turning to just now?

I went for almost a sort of flat-lay inspired layout, featuring some of my favourite activities to do when I'm in the house - and yes, I count wearing fluffy socks as an activity!!

THINGS I CAN DO AT HOME

This is a spread that is probably fairly unique to our current circumstances, but I thought it was a fun one to include. I wanted to make sure that I gave myself lots of ideas for things I can do each day, because while I will still be working away on my businessess, things have slowed down significantly, and I won't always need, or feel up to sitting down and working on SEO or something - so in a way this spread features not only ideas for other activities to-do, but also as a way of giving myself permission to take time off and actually do these things.

GRATITUDE

I took a month off from this spread last month (I swapped to a "one line a day") concept, but definitely felt the need to bring this back around for April. Kenny and I have been making a point each night at dinner to talk about some things that we're grateful for, and I think it's really helping my anxiety, so I wanted to continue that vibe here in my journal. We still have so, so much to be thankful for.

MOOD TRACKER

Given that I suffer from depression, I'm sometimes a bit wary of tracking my mood in a simplistic way like this - is a "sad" day something I could have shaken myself out of, or a bad depression day?  But given that we are going through a lot, as a world, right now, I do want to have some way to keep track of how I'm coping with it all.

HABIT TRACKER

This is a regular spread for me, but again, is probaly even more important than usual. On one hand I want to try and not put too much pressure on myself day to day, but on the other hand, I do think that keeping on top of some routines - like making the bed - will help keep me feeling more stable and "normal". So this month the habits are pretty basic, I know, but I know I'll feel a lot better if I try and do these things as much as I can.

BRAIN DUMP

I thought this might be a fun/useful spread to have in here this month! I don't know about you, but I often find that when I take time away from doing my creative work, and do something like baking or cleaning, I tend to have some of my best creative ideas! Sometimes it's a full idea for a design, sometimes it's words that I want to illustrate and sometimes it's just a vague direction or theme I want to explore - so I thought this sort of open space to work in would be great for jotting down all the ideas I'm sure to have during my extra downtime this month.

MEAL PLANNER

Here in the UK we are currently locked down and only to leave the house basically for essential reasons, so going to the supermarket is a rare, necessary trip, rather than somewhere I nip into a lot. Additionally, stockpiling and panic buying has been a real issue here, so there is currently not always a lot of choice in the shops when you do go. All this to say that I decided I wanted to do a meal planning spread for April, to help me keep on top of what needs eaten when, what recipes I can make with what I've managed to get in etc.
Breakfast isnt in here as we're pretty much just doing toast or cereal at the moment, and our corner shop seems well stocked with those.


And that's all my spreads for April! I had already mentioned that I didn't do a monthly overview because there's no plans to have - and for that same reason, I won't be using weekly spreads this month either! I have a separate Bullet Journal for my work stuff that I still keep daily to-do lists in, so for April, I'm just going to jot down the few personal things in there.

Have you set up your Bullet Journal for April? What theme have you gone for? Is COVID-19 affecting how you use your Bujo at all?

My 5 Creative Goals for 2020

I think this is the first year in a long time that I have set some specifically creativity based goals for myself. I'm a very goal-orientated person, I love the feeling of crossing something off my list, or seeing progress towards a target. The reason I've decided to set creative goals for this year, is that I'm now very lucky to be able to use a lot of my creative energies in my work - which, to be clear, I absolutely love. The downside, however, is that everything I create becomes tied to business goals, rather than simply creating for the sake of enjoyment or curiosity. In 2020, I want to work on separating the things that I make that are marketable and exist to make profit, from the things that I make because I love making them, and sod what anyone else thinks. Yes, it might be a long time before I'm good enough to sell any of my watercolors (except this one manatee design which actually sells quite often...), but that doesn't mean I don't deserve to have time playing with them. So here we are, my 5 creative goals for 2020.

1. Take part in Inktober

I've watched it come and go for a couple of years now, and I've made excuses for myself every time, ranging from "I don't have time" to, "I'd be to shy to post them on Instagram", but honestly, I regret not taking part every year! So this time around I am going to carve out some time and do some variation of this challenge in October.

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

 2. Get back to my roots with some ballpoint pen drawing

At some point when I was studying art in college, I fell in love with ballpoint pens as a drawing medium. I love the flow of it, the fact it can look sketchy or simple and, let's be honest, I love how non-precious I can be about it - I can use a super cheap pen and basically any paper and not worry at all if I "screw it up". I used to do a lot of observational drawing - I'd draw my breakfast, or people on the train and I feel like it really helped my hand eye co-ordination and my ability to observe. These days, I so often draw digitally (which for me is on my PC at home, no iPad here), and I'm starting to notice how rusty I'm getting with a good old pen and paper, as well as how hard drawing quickly from a moving life reference is becoming. I just don't make time for this type of art as much anymore, because, truthfully, it's not directly useful for my business; I can't really turn it into products I'll sell and nobody is ever very interested in the sketches. Still, I feel like this is an important practice that I'm starting to suffer from missing out on, and like I said at the start of this post, I do want to make time for creating just for the sake of it.

3. Study and practice hand lettering

Hand lettering definitely does NOT come naturally to me, it's very much an uphill battle trying to make any progress! But honestly, I am SO drawn to it; it's what will make me stop scrolling on Instagram and I have Pinterest boards full of the stuff. What I tend to do though is try it every once in a while, suck at it and then put it back down again. Given how inspiring I find it, and how many ideas for artwork I have that are text-based, I think it's definitely time to start taking it a bit more seriously and putting in some time and study.

Photo by Tatiana from Pexels

  4. Buy fewer, better art supplies

I know this might seem like it would belong more in a budget or money based goal list, but hear me out. For a long time I've definitely been an avid accumulator of art supplies, you know, I will have like 100 shades of coloured pencil JUST IN CASE, even though, at present, I don't work in full colour like that. I get excited when I see new products or I have an idea and I tend to buy more than I need just because I want it. And yes, there are obvious financial rammifications of this, but it is also damaging to my creativity. It means that my work space is cluttered with supplies I dont really want to use, but sort of have to because I bought them. Or that I can't buy that one really nice pen that would be good for my lettering, because I bought 20 cheap ones - can anyone else relate to this?! So, for 2020, I really want to work on only buying what I need and taking the time to do more research before getting excited and opening my wallet.

5. Enjoy the journey

Back when I used to predominently fill journals with my work, I was very chill about the whole thing, you know, "the only bad page is a blank page", and all that, but these days I am definitely a lot more critical of myself. I can feel myself falling into the trap of thinking my work will "be good" when I can sell it, or when I get X amount of likes on Instagram, and honestly that's just not true. Yes, I make work to sell, and so whether or not it sells is a valid criteria for success, but not all of my work is for other people, not all of it is designed to be commercial - in fact, my most "true" work, really isn't very saleable at all, and that's okay. In 2020 I really want to make time to enjoy the journey.

Do you have any creative goals for 2020?