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My best creative advice for making personal projects less overwhelming:
Underpromise and overdeliver- I live by this! Any ideas I have I scale back to their core element so I deliver a concise and considered smaller thing instead of a sprawling, disorganized larger thing. 1/?
Underpromise and overdeliver- I live by this! Any ideas I have I scale back to their core element so I deliver a concise and considered smaller thing instead of a sprawling, disorganized larger thing. 1/?
2- test your idea privately first. I do test pieces for larger projects in advance to time myself, edit the process to be quicker, or learn it's too much work and scrap the approach entirely. This is an important step at the top of the process, not to figure out as you go! 2/?
3- utilize 'hang' time. When you have 15 minutes where you're just waiting around, use it to do something small for your project. List materials, thumbnail a composition, etc. Using small amounts of time to do small bits adds up and gives you more foundation than you'd think! 3/4
I do a lot of monthly art challenges, small comics etc. and people ask me how I manage to find the time- this is how. It's never too chaotic or stressful because I make sure it's manageable. Hope this is helpful for people embarking on their next project! 4/4
Example of my process: inktober last year
- I wanted to tell a really complicated story at first but realized it would be too much work and that I was overcomplicating.
-I boiled it down to "2 characters go on a journey. We see nice landscapes and a nice friendship. No words."
- I wanted to tell a really complicated story at first but realized it would be too much work and that I was overcomplicating.
-I boiled it down to "2 characters go on a journey. We see nice landscapes and a nice friendship. No words."
I then did a couple of test pieces. I knew I wanted to use a pop of red for this so I needed to test gouache, something I've never used, versus watercolor. I ended up swapping to a higher quality gouache by my third piece. This was one of my tests. I also timed them at 1-2 hours.
Part of any project for me is 'what do I want to get out of it? What is the challenge?'. Because I often do projects w multiple iterations on the same theme, the challenge is making the pieces all look very different. Thumbnails were critical for this. Here's a thumb/final
I did my Inktober thumbnails in September because I needed to know the whole series would work before I really got started. Thumbnailing doesn't take me long but it really helps me ground my thoughts. A lot of utilizing little bits of time to do this.
Finally, the actual doing. Because I sorted out my process, materials, compositions and timing in advance, when October rolled around it was purely about executing. I set aside an hour a day, or a few hours on the weekend all month. Underpromise, overdeliver : )
Also because I did all this prep work, I still had time to do lots of fun spooky stuff in October while doing Inktober! And actually doing Inktober was fun- @DevinElleKurtz and I would order takeout and draw together one night a week. : ) Anyway, hope this is all helpful!
