I can't believe it's the end of March already... that rolled around fast! The month of March has been a very enjoyable one on the design-front for me. I was reaching meltdown point a few weeks ago with massive goals and deadlines for projects I didn’t feel inspired by, but after a motivational phone call with my Mum (how great are Mums?!), I decided to take the pressure off with creating work that would definitely be published, and instead return to my trusty sketchbook to paint whatever took my fancy each day.
I’ve been painting all sorts of things I’d normally overthink or not feel I knew how to approach and of course, my brain is now full of new ideas for cards and prints. I’ve been leaning towards full colour, full scene paintings which is a new challenge for me… I’m definitely more the type to paint everything separately and to compose a final design in Photoshop. I’m also really loving a really painterly, analogue vibe with all the brushstrokes visible and minimal editing.
I decided to set myself a 100 day sketchbook challenge… 100 different prompts, 100 days of painting. This has really challenged me so far as my instinct is to worry and procrastinate over ideas. I’m the first to claim that practising practising practising is the only way to improve, but I always expect my first attempt at anything to be perfect (which it rarely is).
I already feeling really inspiring with new ideas for cards and prints after just 2 weeks of the project… I seem to have fixated on painting the Palm House at Kew Gardens that I visited a few years ago, as all the different plant textures and colours are so enjoyable to paint. I think these will definitely make a nice series of prints and maybe blank notecards too!
So, that’s been my main focus this month on the design front… in other news, we celebrated International Women’s Day, Mother’s Day and George’s first birthday! We are finally able to start to get our team back into the studio again with the lockdown restrictions starting to ease, and we’re enjoying all the Brighton sunshine that is hopefully sticking round for the bank holiday weekend too!
I’ll leave you with a very cute photo of little Ethan, our team member, Yasmin’s baby boy who was born last month! Love his little rainbow blanket 😭
Happy Easter 🐣
