No 1 Repeat

Here is what I have done with the doodle from yesterday. I am liking this pinkish with grey colour scheme.

Doodle Discipline begins

I have been inspired by two amazing designer friends of mine to start an art discipline exercise. This exercise will kick my creative process into higher gear. Every day, I will set aside one hour to do this. I will open up a 20" x 20" canvas in PS and start doodling in different layers. I will select the doodles I like and arrange them into a repeating pattern. I like that it is very gestural and intuitive exercise. This will help me create a unified series of pattern. Here is my first doodle of the day. I don't know how long I will do this, but I will do it until I feel that I have a collection of patterns I am happy with.

Game Plan

Now that I have gotten the impulsive obsessiveness of producing one finished pattern every night, I am writing a realistic plan of how to divide my time up between my family life and art life. 

So with a cup of Cream Earl Grey sitting beside, I am writing my long term game plan for success in the art world.

I will allow myself to work on my process step by step, without digging into my necessary sleep time. For weeks, I was working frantically every night after the kids are in bed, I was afraid the creative juices will run dry if I don't do it now, or that I will not have time because I needed to take care of the kids. Then my body will break down and I will get sick.  I got burnt out.

Figuring out what works for me

The kitchen island is still my best doodling space, it's high enough to keep away the kids' grabbing paws and I can supervise them as I draw. I do retreat to my computer, mostly after they are in bed, to do the actual designing and playing with colours. I found a fantastic website about colours, it's called Design Seeds. It has given me great inspirations. 

Army of Me

Yes it is title of a Bjork song, but I think it is best way of describing this part of my plan. 

I remember when I started getting into Children's Illustrations, I worked on building an image library. I started doodling and worked on developing characters and use as reference later, like a boy standing or sitting. It will be a great asset to do the same for my patterns. I will doodle and build resources that can be turned into motifs or elements that can be used later. So I am building an "army of me ( my own doodles and art)" that will be around to back me up when I maybe feeling a bit dry on the inspirations department.

Sit up straight

Sounds cliche and simply right? But I really need to focus on good posture while designing at the computer, as my shoulders and upper back can really tighten up after my long sessions of being in my world of colours, shapes and lines. I also lie on my yoga block position in between my shoulder blades to stretch things out especially if I want to be able to sleep after sitting at the computer.

Surface Pattern Design

Oooooo.... I think I found my calling. Surface Pattern design. I have always had the dream of designing pattern since I learned about the Arts and Craft movement. I never pursued it because I didn't know where to go or how to find out more. I recently met a stay at home quilt pattern designer mom and she reminded me of the site Spoonflower.

China Marker

My Husband has the day off tomorrow, when he asked me what I need to do tomorrow, I really wanted to art geek out and say ' I just want to draw with my newly bought CHINA MARKER'. But I didn't. I did steal away a couple of minutes and doodled on my favourite work area - my kitchen island.

In my last post, I talked about revising my online presence. I have been working hard on it and have made some progress. I have linked almost everything together now, and have started another tumblr as my portfolio site. I love the easy to use themes. Is it wrong to be glorifying about tumblr on blogger? I still don't have my drive back so I am only uploading older work onto my portfolio tumblr. I like the theme ( template) I chose, it suits my scatter brain.

All is not lost

So the good news is my major storage drive is not fried. The data is intact. I still don't have it back yet, my tech genius has ordered me a new adapter ( which did get fried from the power outage) and then we should be up and running again. After the thought of having to start all over from scratch, I decided it is time to streamline all my online presences. I am very excited about it and need to sit down and draw out a bit of a plan; a flow chart of sort. I want to have a master page with my own astridfox.com address that will link out to my tumbler, my blogger and all will repost on facebook and twitter. Let me look into it...

My world is crumbling

The power outage two nights ago left our server storage unmountable. Does that mean all my work is gone? At first all I could think of was my more recent work; my children's illustrations, my surface pattern designs. Then I realized I have work from 10 years ago in that storage. I tried to convince myself that this is an opportunity for me to let it go, start FRESH. On top of that, one of the sites I have posted many of my work up has closed. One less place I could have an archive of my work online.  Then I thought about the photos, photos of my younger days, of children, my memories. I tried to convince myself the most important things, people, is in front of me. I don't need photos to remind me of my past. I have my lovely family right in front of me. But. I am sad, so sad that I couldn't even work on my art in my sketchbook without thinking of all the stuff in that storage, let along start another new on the computer. I have the fear that everything in the storage is really all gone, then I got even a bit more sad when I heard Etta James died today.  Hoping for a better tomorrow.