Friday Thoughts (Ep. 44)

Hey everybody, hello! Happy Friday to you! How's it going, what's up?

It's a cloudy day in Seattle, kinda cool and kinda warming up. We're moving in to normal spring weather after the unusually warm days last week. And therefore I can't wear the super spring-y clothes I feel like wearing BECAUSE it's so cold in our little cave apartment during the day! But that's spring, isn't it?

So, you guys! You know how I've been saying the last two months that I so badly want to get back in to making new products? Well I finally dove in this week and made SO MUCH ART! 

A big new set of my very first block prints! I shared the first pass at these last week. This week, I went in and cleaned up a few spots on the block, bought a few new colors of ink, took a pane of glass from a picture frame to roll out that ink (instead of a scrap piece of foam core), and printed the refreshed image!

I think they look gorgeous, and I'm so excited to sell them at markets and online. I hope people like them as much as I do!

I also thought I'd share a little failure, I tried mixing a green to make a print. Above you can see a poorly mixed color (too much red I think) and too much ink on the print making it all gloopy. Oh well!

By the way, I tried offering the first red test prints as free gifts for Etsy sellers, but got no bites. I was thinking of offering them to patrons as a gift, would any of you be interested in a test block print?

I impulse bought a couple sets of mini canvas blocks a few months ago, and decided to finally make a new little illustration series. Since my next market is at a vegan mac and cheese competition, I thought it would be fun to dive in to the vegan side of my interest more with this folk-art inspired farmed animal series!

They're not perfect, but it felt good to push through and churn out all of these illustrations in a day. Through this series I'm starting to see the value in just pushing yourself to make a lot of art, rather than obsessing about making each piece perfect. Hmm.

I'm so excited about this!! I snagged a couple of way too cheap pencil bags from Jo-Anns, and finally tried my hand at block printing on fabric goods! And my friends, I am HOOKED! I want to print on EVERYTHING!

I also am so excited to be working with bees as a theme again! When I was in college I found a tiny bee necklace on the floor of the computer lab, and I wore it almost every day for a year. Bees are one of my favorite creatures, I just haven't incorporated them in to my art until now. And, probably unrelated, but my college mascot was technically a bee. 

(I say technically because art school kids were too cool to be in to their own college and college mascot, so no one talked about it. If you wore a shirt with SCAD on it, other students would assume you were a freshman. No one was saying 'Go bees!')

Still in progress, but I am also finally working on TOTE BAGS! I agonized for a minute over what I should do for my first totebags, but duh of course its fruitsnveggies. 

The block printing process is perfect for this product, because I don't have to put in large amounts of money before I'm ready. I could just make 10 at first, rather than dropping a couple hundred on bulk screen printed tote bags.

I also had two very fun live streams on Instagram this week, while I continued to re-work my year-old Confidence Witch stickers! The more live streams I do, the less nervous I get. Practice makes perfect! Or... not so nervous I'm shaking and can barely hold my pencil haha.

I loved theater and improv when I was in high school, and teaching swing dance classes in college, so I should have expected I would enjoy this version of performance as an adult!

Speaking of live-streams, I tried something new this week. Rather than spur of the moment live-streaming, I announced the time a couple hours early, and then asked for questions ahead of time as well. That way I had something to talk about as I worked, which I think people really enjoy. I ended up feeling a lot more confident and goofy, which are two feelings that I love.

One last little doodle to round out this awesome, productive week! I have ideas for goofy/happy/inspirational artist themed products in the future, and this is me starting to play around with it!

So that's the result of my week! What a good one! I hope I didn't burn myself out, because I would love for this creativity train to keep rollin.

Non-Art Life:

I barely left the house this week, I was so focused on making as much art as possible. I went outside to buy produce and my eyes starting watering from the light. Oh no.

Zach and I have been watching all of the James Bond movies from the beginning, the silly Sean Connery 007's. It's fun to see where the spy tropes came from originally, and to see the delightful 'high-tech' gear, the awesome 60's version of luxury, and not so fun to see the cringey sexism.

Art is life, this week! What can I say!

That's all for this last week of March, and what a good one it was. 

I hope you had an amazing week as well! Did you have any exciting successes or steps forward this week? Let me know if the comments, so we can celebrate together.

Thank you so much for supporting me here on Patreon, it means absolutely so much to me, and I'm thrilled to get to share my artist story with you!

xoxo

Ragon