December Monthly Newsletter 🧶🌲☃️

December, to me, is absolutely one of the best months. I may be biased seeing as my birthday is December 3rd, but I just think it a time of unadulterated festivity and coziness. I hope that you have plans to do something hygge this month. There are endless options for cozy activities  such as these if you need any inspiration. December is just an excuse to get extra comfortable, honestly. Since I have finally made a discord (I'll talk about that at the end!) for us we can all share our candle/cold weather/hot drink pictures together. 

Side note: (I didn't know where else to fit this in) I have been trying to limit my closet to neutrals only so that I can own less clothing but mix and match more outfits without having a crazy color that only matches with a few items. I'll keep you posted on what kind of combos I end up putting together, but for now here's a few from last week:

I have already found that doing this is so much easier and pleasing than having a bunch of wild colors to choose from. I took inspiration from people who promote the idea of a capsule wardrobe. Everything I am left with now is comfortable, earth-toned and something that I could wear with any mood. I recommend it!

Today's cozy chat will be very advice/business/art-heavy. I love to talk about life outside of art but I have decided to do more of that in the monthly podcast this month and focus in on sharing some of my illustration and business tips here in the written newsletter . I will also be sharing with you what I have been so occupied with in the last month. 

November was the first month that I have had a "big deadline" in my book illustration career. I spoke about this throughout the month and in my previous newsletters a bit, but I have a structured timeline for the illustrated Anne of Green Gables book. November 23rd was my deadline to have all 30 sketches in for review. How do you feel about deadlines? Personally, they really help me stay on track, but I tend to feel less motivated if the deadline is too long. I am motivated by pressure and I am at my most-focused in those instances. So admittedly...I did wait until the last minute just a wee bit (granted, I know my own capacity and work pace). I did some sketches during the beginning of the month but it took until the week before they were due for me to complete a bulk of what I needed to do. 

In that week, I told myself 4-5 sketches a day until it is finished. Jump around the story, do the pages you feel like drawing that day. If I felt low-energy I would make sure the ones I completed that day weren't big group scenes but simpler images. Having the rule of 4-5 a day no matter what the content of the sketches were really helped me stay on track. 

However, now that the sketches are done, I can't help but sweat when thinking about how much work I have given myself for the final, full-color illustrations. That is...a problem for future Jamie. 

Let's talk a bit about my art weaknesses, since I have definitely discovered some in my sketching process. I was always aware of these but after doing them in succession immediately after working on pages that had what I would consider my "strong points". My art weaknesses are:

-Landscapes

-Large groups of people

-Interiors with objects in perspective (such as desks and cabinets)

-Accurate light sources with shadows

And with a story like the one I have been give, with specific scene call-outs such as "Anne in her bedroom with a cabinet off to the side" or "Church picnic with tons of people, milling around or sitting on blankets" I definitely had to address some of these short-comings. Let me clarify by saying I was actually educated to do these things at Ringling. I had full year-long perspective and lighting classes! I just ended up not practicing these things as much as I maybe should have after those courses. It's almost like riding a bike though--I forget some things but the basics are still in there. I am able to mostly fudge the perspective or use grid tools to help me out. 

I wonder if you think I am completely confident about my art skills. The point of me bringing any of this up is to show you that I absolutely am not. There are so many things that I go to draw and then think "do I have literally any drawing ability at all?" In case you needed to hear this, I am insecure about my art often...but I think that's normal. It wouldn't be any fun if we weren't always learning and improving. 

I had my Sapling and Harvest patrons take a vote and decide what they wanted to learn about from this month's Step-By-Step and the answer was fairly split between color-picking and character stylization. Some folks also mentioned composition, which was something that my friend Danielle Bennet (who is, by the way, the coolest ever) recommended that I talk a bit about! So for this month's step-by-step I ended up talking about both composition and character stylization. Because I left out the color picking in the step-by-step though, I thought we could talk about that here! 

Initially I had trouble putting my color choices into words, because to me, picking my colors has become so ingrained into me that it is almost second nature. Nowadays it's earth tones, always, always. I am drawn to warm earth tones such as burnt sienna, rust orange, or ecru. Equally, I am drawn to cool earth tones such as sage, forest green or slate. I try to stay away from primary or secondary colors without some degree of grey mixed in. You will rarely see me use a straight medium-blue unless the composition calls for something special. The one exception to this no-primary-rule is possible reddish orange. I will use all earth tones but throw an almost-cadmium-red in there for drama and excitement.

Here is a diagram I made with some monochrome palettes (one hue in different values) that I love, and how you can manipulate them from there. 

I try to test out my two favorite neutral background colors (very dark grey/black, or an eggshell-y warm white) behind my favorite color schemes. I started using black or very dark backgrounds about a year ago and fell in love with how striking it can make the subject matter. It makes lighter values almost seem to glow.

Maybe it'll be shocking to hear, but I do not have any palettes saved. I choose my colors individually every time I create something new. My procreate palette box is empty besides the presets it came with! I should probably utilize that in order to have some consistency--that's my tip to you (and reminder to myself). Save palettes that you plan to use a lot if you're looking for a consistent look. 

I use pinterest to choose my colors when I'm looking for some inspiration. I do not look for images of pre-existing palettes however. I am looking primarily at random photographs to grab color from, like below. (once again linking my "brand" board which is where I go for inspiration every single day!) 

I hope that this helps to some degree--please let me know if you have any other questions. I did not go into depth on color theory per say, but I can definitely delve into that some other time. 

It's the last month of 2020, which feels sort of momentous, don't you think? This was quite the year, to say the least. Your company has made the last few months so much more pleasant for me, and I hope I could do the same for you (even just a day if you're new here). In January I will be making some slight adjustments (hopefully improvements) to our little community here. 

And to kick that off I wanted to share the link to Jamie's Treehouse, which is a discord server just for us. It's a place for patrons only to hang out, talk art, talk kombucha-you-brewed-in-your-closet, share photos of your holiday cookies etc etc etc. Please feel free to join and make sure to introduce yourself using the introductions channel.

I'm sending all the love I have into the universe for you, and I can't wait to talk to you soon. Please comment and let me know if you have any special December plans. Stay safe, and stay warm.

-JG