Waiting for Godzilla

Update: This print is now available in my etsy shop! Here's the link :)

I hustled pretty hard over the weekend and got a lot of work done.
After some struggles with printing the second colour Godzilla is officially all done!
Vince suggested the title of my autobiography would be Waiting for Godzilla.
So that's the title of this print.
I'm always expecting Godzilla to walk out of a giant dust cloud, or burst out of the mountains, or stroll up out of a forest.
This will be for sale at my booth at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience coming up this April 17th.
Coming up next:
The Marauders

Day 17 in the 30 Days of Hustle

Today is about creating a mantra.
Here are three things your mantra should be:

1. Personal. The mantra has to be yours. It has to mean something unique to you, not just a series of motivational words.
2. Short. No one can quote a long mantra. Will yours be as short as Henry’s? Maybe not, but don’t write a paragraph. Aim for 5-10 words at most.
3. Memorable. Die Empty works in part because it’s easy to remember. Yours has to have some degree of catchiness.

Mine for now is this:
Keep digging for the dinosaur.

I always tell myself that sometimes, you have to draw a lot of crappy sketches and get through many ideas and scribbles
before you hit gold: the sketch or design you were searching for.
You can't always expect to draw, sketch, or design the most amazing thing the first go around. Or with the first line you make.

Here are some scribbles I did at work today. And some WIPs of the Harry Potter book cover illustration, and new print design for SLCC. :)

  

30 Days of Hustle Ketchup, Catch Up: Part 2

I broke this post up into two just because it's SO much content.


Day 15: Day 15's goal was to simply be honest about the good things I'm no longer doing and to rescue just one.
I think the one thing that I was doing good on, that I quit at was scheduling time to work.
I hand-wrote out a schedule and priority list of things to get done and it really helped. But now, I've pretty much stopped doing it because it was always school work. I felt like I never had time to work on my personal work.

Day 16: Day 16 was about how to deal with the shame that creeps up on us, and haunts us, when we don't accomplish a goal, or even when we ignore a goal.

Here's a check-up for myself:

10 days for two more print designs.
8 days left for #1.

30 Days of Hustle Ketchup, Catch Up: Part 1

Man, I'm having a difficult time keeping up with this. I shouldn't, to be honest. But I think the thing I'm struggling with is reading the challenges, making the time to do them, and really thinking about them.
I need to stop having my eyes quickly glaze over as I open the emails.
On top of that, life just kind of shakes things up a bit.
There's going to be a big change. But a very good change.
It's kind of like getting a letter to Hogwarts: It's scary, life-changing, but you know you're in for a magical ride.

Day 12: Day 12 was about naming each hour of your day to try and schedule your time better. The majority of my time is taken up by work and school, but remaining hours are used for exercising, eating, napping, and working.
I need to schedule at least 2 hours of work into my day and so:
Monday, Wednesday: 2 - 4pm = work time.
Tuesday, Thursday: 11:30 - 1:30pm = work time.
Friday: 3 - 5pm = work time.
Saturday: 7am -1pm = work time.
Sunday: 2 - 4pm = work time.

Day 13: Day 13 was about getting out of your comfort zone. For my Design Theoury class I started illustrating the first Harry Potter book cover. My goal for the end of the year is to illustrate the entire book series. The way I've chosen to illustrate these covers is through digital painting instead of my usual screenprint poster design style.
I've kind of gotten a start on digital painting, but it's still difficult and different for me because I haven't had so much practice. I've also incorporated Harry himself (a person), a background environment, and NO animals which is...very different for me.

Another thing I'm going to do to get outside of my comfort zone is to begin sharing my work through social media. More on that later!

Day 14: Day 14 was about taking your WHY to another level and asking your goal difficult questions.
My why that I wrote originally was:
Why do I want to make an illustration by digital painting?
Answer: I want a future as a successful freelance illustrator.
I want to improve my illustrations and beef up my portfolio.
I want to be able to live the dream, and buy a house.

A question that's always in the back of my head is:
Is being a freelance illustrator the right path? Wouldn't it just be easier to make it a part-time job, or even a hobby, and work full-time somewhere more stable?
My answer to that is yes. I know some people think I'm crazy, but I truly believe that this is the right road I'm meant to walk. I don't want to take the easy or comfortable route, because I know I won't be truly happy in the end.
My goal with my work is to share sunshine and happiness with others. I want their heart guts to explode with sparkles and joy when they see my prints and work. I'm so sick and tired of seeing negative work out in the world. I want to help people reconnect with their imaginations, and to know that not everything out there is so bad and dark.

Day 7-11 in the 30 Days of Hustle

Yowza, I really fell off of this horse the past week!
I feel that hand-pulling 400 prints after not printing for more than three months and being extremely sore afterwards is a form of justification. :)

The wedding prints are done! More on that later.
Here are the challenges I missed:

Day 7: Day 7's challenge is about interruptions and how to keep moving forward when interruptions arise.
I think my main interruptions are school and work. I really love my job and school. But there are times where I'd rather be working on a personal project with my time instead of working on homework.

Day 8: Day 8's challenge is about fighting distractions. This one is crucial to me because I get distracted VERY easily especially when it comes to having several things I want to make, create, do, etc. His tip for that was the "Not Now Note" or the NNN.
Here's an example:
I've been wearing tights a lot lately instead of jeans and I got to thinking about screenprinting my own designs onto tights for fun. Instead of getting distracted by DIY's and the rabbit trails of the internet I wrote it down as a NNN to refer back to later when I've got more time.

Day 9: Day 9's challenge is about one of the biggest reasons why people fail at their goals is they forget their why. So the challenge for day 9 is to remember your why and see if your why has changed.
My why I originally wrote down was this:

I want a FUTURE as a freelance illustrator.
I want to IMPROVE my illustrations and beef up my portfolio.
I want to be able to LIVE the dream.

I don't think my why has changed even though my goal has. My goal for the month is to get prepared for Salt Lake Comic Con with five new prints to sell which I feel is still congruent with my why.

Day 10: Day 10's challenge is about breaking your goals into smaller bite size pieces (which I also learned in my Time Lord Time Management workshop!) His tip was to divide your goal but then double the timeline.
So for my goal I need to get 5 new print designs by the end of the month.
I technically already have 3 and so that leaves me with 2 more to do.
If I have 20 days left I can take 10 days on each new print.
Within the 10 days I can work on each print for an hour, twice every day.

Day 11: Day 11's challenge was about doing something simple which helps you get closer to your goal (also mentioned in the TLTM workshop!) The example used was watching less T.V.
For me, I'm going to nap less. The past weekend I was so exhausted and sore from printing and school that I was the laziest cat during the whole weekend. Thankfully, it's spring break so I've got time to play catch up.
But I think after work and after the bf and I go running I'm going to NOT enable cat-mode and I'm going to work for an hour even if I don't feel like I'm in the mood for it.

Here are some previews of WIPs I'm currently working on. The first one is a book cover I'm doing for my Design Theoury class. The second is one of the prints I'm working on.

Day 6 in the 30 Days of Hustle

After much contemplation I've decided to change the focus of my 30 day hustle.
Instead of focusing on digital painting I decided I should focus on getting ready for my booth at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience this April.
I want to have at least 5 new prints ready for sale and so my new 30 day hustle challenge is to do so.
It's not exactly conventional in this adventure, but sometimes you have to take a different route mid-course for a better journey.

For today's challenge it's about learning how to say no. Because when you say yes to certain things it prevents you from moving forward towards your end goal.
I think the person I need to say no to the most is myself. I have so many projects I focus on and want to do. And I feel like I end up not getting one thing done because I've got so many other things I'm working on at the same time.

So stop it Shirley. Just say no to that project until you finish that other one.
And say no to drugs too. Because those are really bad for you.

Days 4 and 5 in the 30 Days of Hustle

I was so busy I wasn't able to post yesterday's challenge so I'm combining it with today's.
Yesterday was about saying goodbye to the month of February and letting March shine.

And today's challenge is how are you going to find more positive peer positive?
I think posting this blog helps me out. I'm not sure who's reading this but  thinking that one pair of eyeballs is kind of helps.
I think even sharing what I'm doing with offline people that will hold me accountable will also help.
I think this is one challenge I struggle with because I know posting on illustration and graphic designer forums will definitely help. However, I'm too shy to do so.

Here's some updated progress/work I've been doing this week. :)
First image: Sherlock-Hobbit progress. My Bilbo looks nothing like Martin Freeman :(
Second image: One of my original characters named Alaskia.
Third image: Hand drawn typography of a Harry Potter spell (possible screen print!)

Day 3 in the 30 Days of Hustle

Today's challenge was to find out, and be honest, about what didn't work for you with your goal.

I think what didn't work for me was having such a vague goal. My goal was to "create an illustration by digital painting". But I think if I would have gotten more specific I would have carried through the whole month.
I feel like another thing that didn't work for me was showing only a few people my work.
This time, I want to try and find a larger group of support instead of a few people.

Not very much work done today in the painting realm. However, I finally got prep work done on the wedding poster commission I've been working on. After I've gotten them all printed and shipped I'll be making a post about the entire process from start to finish. :)

Day 2 in the 30 Days of Hustle v.2//

The challenge for today is finding out what worked for me last month.

1. Being flexible with myself//
Originally, I had set up a schedule of working at least 2 hours for 6 days a week. However, with my school schedule it would have been extremely difficult to accomplish this Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I decided to change my schedule down to working Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for 2 hours per day.

2. Tutorials//
Instead of winging it and pretending I knew what I was doing I decided to find people who are already doing what I was wanting to do. I stumbled across this tutorial and went from there with baby steps.

3. Scheduling + Time Management//
As mentioned above, I gave myself a schedule. Having a WRITTEN schedule down and attending a time management workshop definitely helped me carve out the crucial 2 hours I needed specific days to get work done.
Also, having the written schedule helped me to focus and not derp around and get distracted.

4. Taking Small Bites out of the Pie//
I think it was good that I hesitated and chose not to work on this painting originally. I feel that by jumping head first into the lake without knowing how to swim would have killed my motivation to work on this large piece.
And so by watching tutorials and doing smaller paintings to practice/start with I feel that it really helped prepare me to take on the bigger painting.

5. Support//
The support from the boyfriend really helped. There are days where I feel like I really suck at this and I'm not going to be as good as my favourite illustrators. But with his encouragement it really helped me to persevere and to keep learning and growing.



And so for today I worked for about two hours and I got the image digitally sketched, did a rough shading layer to understand lighting, and began roughing the colours. I also decided to re-position Bilbo way lower than Sherlock-Smaug because well...he is a hobbit after all. :)

Day 1 in the 30 Days of Hustle v.2//

Last month I started something that the writer Jon Acuff started doing this year.
The challenge is to have a small goal and try accomplishing it in 30 days.
The month of February my goal was to make an illustration by digital painting. Deep down, I wanted to paint my Sherlock/The Hobbit piece. But I chickened out and just took the month to practice digital painting.
Before the first 30 Days of Hustle I had no clue how to digitally paint. But by the end of the month I feel more confident than I was on February 1st to be able to paint what I really wanted to paint.

And so, for my Day 1 in the second 30 Days of Hustle is going to be digital painting my Sherlock-Hobbit piece! :)
To start with, here's a scan of the sketch I'll be working from: