Sketchtember

A couple of months ago, I bought a sketchbook with the intention of participating to the Inktober challenge this year. It seems like challenges are a great way for me to get things done and keep me focused on the task at hand. 

I haven't been sketching for a while (Too long!), and this is a great opportunity to get back at it and stick with it (fingers crossed). I don't want to wait till October because coming up with a concept, sketching and inking takes time, especially doing every day. And if there's too much to do, it easy to give up. Fortunately, the prompts for the year have recently been posted, so I took it upon myself to start sketching now September and leave the inking for next month in October. 

I have no idea how they are going to end up but let's see where they take me. At least I now have a plan to sketch and draw daily for the next two months. Maybe I'll even colour in November. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves! I even put another constraint on this project for me to stay focused: I need to practice sketching people, so I decided to restrict my subject to people with the prompts. 

Above are my interpretation of the three first prompts: Ring, Mindless and Bait. I'm also posting the thinking behind my illustrations on Instagram: @illustrationsbymj. Feel free to follow along, like and comment.  

Updates

After years of going back and forth, thinking about what's the best way to update my website, I finally stopped thinking and started doing. You'll see some changes throughout the process, as I organize my content. For now there are two new pages: One for my paintings and another one for my illustrations and client work (currently under construction). More soon! 

The book behind the cards

I finally received hard copies of my book and created a short video showing where the visual meditation cards idea came from. It started with original paintings, then a book about them, and now the cards. The great thing about the cards is that they are also a great way to collect artwork without taking a huge amount of space. The campaign is currently going on Kickstarter until March 29, 2019. My goal is to raise $5555 (Canadian) to cover the printing, shipping, and also make a bit of profit along the way to create more things in the future. 

In terms of advertising for the campaign, I have some catching up to do. So far, I've been posting about it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and created updates directly on Kickstarter and sent it to my mailing list as well as added links to my email signature. I'll keep you posted on the results from the various marketing experiments I do. This is what I'm starting with at the moment. $197 out of $5,555 raised thus far and 37 days to go. Challenge accepted! 

IKEA Illustrated

I added another challenge to my list of things to create this year. Since I'd like to improve my digital drawing skills and make good use of my iPad and Apple pencil,  I challenged myself to recreate illustrations from images found in an IKEA catalog. It contains a lot of illustration options so I won't need to spend too much time searching for reference images. I don't have any set number of illustrations to create this year. My goal is to keep producing them and ideally go through the entire catalog. 

These are the first three illustrations I made earlier this year. I'll be posting them on my other Instagram account @illustrationsbymj as they get completed. I noticed that these types of challenges tends to bring new ideas, so it will be interesting to see what comes out of this one. 

Fear the fear and do it anyway

Do you sometimes come up with an idea to do something you've never done before and then quickly find an excuse not to do it? I tend to do this more often than I would like to admit. Then I start to think: What if implementing that idea could make a positive impact on someone’s life? How selfish would it be for me to keep these ideas to myself for fear of what some people would think and completely ignore even if just one person who would benefit from it? This was the motivation that got me to take a chance and write a book to share not only my artwork but my personal experiences along with it.

9 weeks ago, I took a chance. I committed to turn a series of paintings into a zine that I called Mindful Meditations. To keep me accountable, I posted my progress in my Insta Stories (under Book). It took some discipline and a lot of self-compassion to get there. I changed my morning routine to include a 2-hour writing session on a daily basis. I had to remind myself not to be too hard on myself when I missed a day or two and to keep going the next day. But, soon I had a completed book and even a little confirmation that it would help someone in a positive way.

I posted a couple of chapters of my book on Medium and received this wonderful response from a random reader:

The book is not perfect but it is intended to help awaken something inside those who are ready for it. I feel that a lot of people need more time to think for themselves, go within and find out what makes them happy from the inside out. In a sense it follows the principle described by Wayne Dyer's quote: "Don't die with your music still in you. Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul."As I'm discovering that for myself with the help of my artwork and my own experiences, I'd like to share that with others.

If you would like to know more about it, you can read some sample here. And if you'd like to get your copy, it's now available on Amazon as a paperback book and as an e-book.  If you check it out, let me know what you think about it and how I could make it better next time. 

THE EBOOK WILL BE FREE TO DOWNLOAD 
BETWEEN JANUARY 23 AND JANUARY 27.
 I would love it and be very thankful I you leave a review.