Sunday Thoughts (Ep.43)

Hello hello hello buddies, friends and pals! How's it going? What's up? Did you have a nice week? I'm so happy to see you again!

I hope it was a nice first week of spring for you! It was an interesting week for me, returning from the busy weekend of Emerald City Comic Con. I felt very inspired and excited to return to work this week, partially because I knew I was finishing up the majority of my projects and had some free space to work on new personal art. Which is important because most of that personal art becomes new 'merch' to sell at markets and conventions!

But... I kind of fizzled for a day or two in the creativity department. Disappointing, but sometimes that's kind of the nature of the beast. Luckily, there's always LOTS to do when you're self-employed, so even when your creativity isn't poppin you still have social media to manage, emails and messages to respond to, websites to maintain, materials to order, etc etc.

I started the week by finishing up a project that I'd been working on for almost two months, a final portrait for a bride and her bridesmaids! This woman ordered four total portraits to display at her wedding and to give as bridesmaid gifts. It was a delightful project with a lovely client, and I'm so happy with how it turned out.

Part of this week was also researching sticker printing companies. I've landed on Sticker App as my bulk sticker company for the future. That way if there's a sticker that's been selling really well, I won't have to print and cut every one by hand! Before I order my most popular sticker in bulk (the gardening witch sticker) I wanted to revamp the illustration! Above you can see the work in progress of my re-work of the illustration. 

There's almost a year's difference between the two illustrations!

Trying to work through a my mini art block I did a good amount of loosey-goosey self-indulgent sketching. Did it help? A tiny bit. The most helpful things that got me back in to creating without fear were:

1.Research on Pinterest, and

2. Deleting my instagram apps for a day.

Speaking of which! This week, after deleting my instagram apps temporarily I finally dove in to trying block printing for the first time! I started my process as I always do, with RESEARCH! I found a block printing tutorial on Skill Share, watched that while I ate lunch, then jumped on to Pinterest for some good old fashioned inspirational research.

Next step was back in to the loosiest goosiest sketching. I kept having to simplify and remind myself not to make my first time too complicated.

Next step, hopping on to Procreate and drawing out my concept. So much neater than the final result! But... that's part of the point of this process, it's so much more organic and well, blocky than a digital piece. 

Next up, printing my design and transferring to my soft linoleum block. Then carving my design out! All of those little dots were the hardest part. And the rounded leaves/vines! It was hard, but SO satisfying to make by hand!

Next was printing, and as you can see I kind of got carried away! I didn't have a piece of glass to roll the ink out on, so I had to use an old scrap of foam core. I printed some on some  scraps of paper, and some on the greeting card paper I bought from Jo-Ann's back in December.

The final result of my first attempt! Messy, clunky, and honestly delightful in my opinion. I want to go over the linoleum a second time to clean up some parts, so I don't think I'm going to outright sell this batch. However, I'm thinking of offering these as free gifts for orders of $30+ in my store. But what do you all think, should I sell these as is? I like things pretty messy, but what are your thoughts?

Non-Art Life:

This week Seattle had three of the warmest March days in Seattle history. We had three days that reached 79 degrees, which is 20 degrees above March average, and is about the average high in August. The unexpected warmth definitely gave me a bit of an adventurous spirit. I had to go walk to a few different parks this week. I had to.

Yesterday Zach and I met up with our friend Kelsey and walked through the Washington Park Arboretum, across the water, up through the University District to visit Warby Parker (Zach bought new glasses!) and the vegan grocery store, and then across Greenlake and back to Ballard.

We ended up walking at least 8 miles, not counting our wanderings in the Arboretum, over lots of big big hills (check out the Elevation graph above!) One of my absolute favorite hikes in Seattle.

I hope I don't stop doing these super long city hikes once we have a car in May. It makes me feel powerful, healthy, alive, and closely connected with this city.

Me and Zach on the floating bridge, one of my favorite spots in Seattle! The last time we came here was in November, for our 5 year anniversary.

Sunset in Greenlake park! One of those gorgeous kind of days that calls for spontaneous head stands in the grass.

And of course the daffodils are blooming all over the city! Spring is officially here!

So that's been my week! How was yours? Has spring settled in your city? What's this season like where you live?

Maybe I'll start sharing a goal for my upcoming week, or something I want to focus on! And you're welcome to comment with your own focus below, I'd love to hear!

My focus for this coming week is creation. I want to experiment, make new art, use new materials. I want to end next week with a few new pieces of art to bring to future shows and sell online. 

That's all for now! Thank you so much for supporting me here on Patreon! You fill me with life, joy, and inspiration!

xoxo, Ragon

P.S. Happy birthday to Diane! I hope you have an extra special day on this big amazing birthday! I love you!