Week 5 of doing The Artists way

Break-Through and finding my own style

Me on my artist date

Wow! What can I say honestly this week has been amazing like insanely good and this is the moment I have been searching for. Throughout the 5 weeks I’ve delved into my negativity, found my jealousy in other artists, and stepped away from viewing other illustrators work and now my own unique light is beginning to shine.

This was the week my mom left and I began illustrating my childrens book again after taking about a 10 day break to show her around and travel to Amsterdam with her and that break really inspired me to the point of when I put my pen to paper what came out felt different it felt more….me.

Redrawing all 32 pages of my character

Big realization & change to my book

Now this was something I did keep in the back of my head for about a month of so, I was thinking of somehow changing my characters to make them more diverse and relatable to multiple ethnicities. My current character was based on anime characters such as Sailor Moon so she had a thin, white girl look and I never thought it was a bad thing at all until I began looking into book trends. One of the top trends in Childresn Book illustration is diversity and hearing from characters of different backgrounds.

From this I thought of making my character a chinese girl since that is probably what I relate to the most but as a mix raced asian, hawaiian, english, irish person I also thought maybe a mix race character would be cute but couldn’t figure out how to convey that since my official layout, sketches, and environments were almost completed.

It’s crazy how having the morning pages really helped me open my mind and let my emotions out to allow new thoughts to come in and it just came to me; make this girl an alien with a weird skin tone and something just clicked.

It felt so right I just knew in my heart this is exactly what I need to do, I’m not copying any artists, most of my past illustrations are honestly fairies, or aliens so it feels like something coming from my heart so I took this week to redraw all of my characters for all 32 pages. 

Allowing the new ideas to come in

Something strange also happened, while redrawing my characters I really didn’t look at any reference images like I usually do, I just let the thought of the character poses come from my mind and I actually think that ended up making it a lot better.

I ended up drawing all 32 pages of the characters during this week as well as finishing up a few environment images. I have about 7 more pages till I’m done then I just have to illustrate the characters on each page then do a pass through on each page.

It wasn’t just the drawing of the characters that felt more like my voice is was also the texturing and the color choices. Now that I’m drawing alien characters, I can make their world more unique with strange colors like purple trees, or pink skies and this also just felt more aligned. I even found a specific texturing style that I feel like I have been trying to do over the past 6 months and now I figured it out.

There’s no doubt The artists way has played a huge role in this and I would say a major change that has helped is recognizing what I am saying to myself and just being kinder and more understanding.

I did the artists way about a year ago and I think I stopped around week 8 but I know this time I’m going to make it to the end because as much work and time I need to put into this I truly believe it’s worth it and I’m already seeinng the change halfway in.

Artist Date

For my artist date this week I realized I needed to do things with people since I pretty much just work alone and don’t socialize at all so I went to the Vivienne Westwood exhibit with a few friends and it felt so inspiring. It was also nice to get their opinions on the fashion and what were their favorites. I think moving forward I’m going to make my artist dates more social because I think it works best for me especially since I work so much alone.

Problems I need to work on

Something I’ve realized I need to work on this week is trying to balance time for friends. When I’m on a roll and feeling creatively inspired I don’t want to socialize AT ALL. I just want to keep drawing and making art because everything is looking so good but I know I need my social time with friends to be able to make the art because it’s what makes me happy so I’m going to try to do more things with people.