NannerFuzz

I wrote down a few words in my sketchbook the other day - among these: fluffy, fuzzy, curly. I can never be certain where my head is at any given moment. In that instant I was thinking of long, curly yellow hair. I also thought about dandelions and fluffy white cats.

I created the sketch that became this sticker based on the previous thoughts. Hair is such an interesting, sometimes complicated, often beautiful subject for artwork. The only thing I can be sure of is that I'm not done thinking about hair.

Weird.

Wells and Wheelhouses

Today's work was inspired by The Accidental Creative (the website, the book, and the podcast). Three words: prolific, brilliant, and healthy. They form the essence of creativity. With some practices and discipline, it's possible to find all three and tap into our potential.

I say today's work was inspired by The Accidental Creative - but really, a lot of the work that went into this project since day one was made possible by those ideas. If it weren't for the Accidental Creative, I wouldn't have read Pressfield's "The War of Art" (which forced me to confront my procrastination head-on) or Scalin's "365: A Daily Creative Journal" (which inspired the daily project I'm blogging about). Thanks, Todd!

I used Inkscape's calligraphy brush and my WACOM tablet's pressure-sensitive stylus (and a lot of ctrl+z) to create the lettering. The style and the working method were almost completely foreign to me. I didn't go into this with any idea of what I was going to do (which I wouldn't normally do with the Bezier tool, but it worked out perfectly with the calligraphy brush).

NannerCraft

I've been carrying this one round for a while now. I love having access to a scalable isometric grid (sure beats printing it out and trying to make those nice, exact, shapes from a scan). It was hard to make this shape into a three color thing - I'm still not sure if I even did it correctly.

NannerShyGuy

NannerSpikes

My first time using the isometric grid in Inkscape. I love playing around with perspective systems in drawing. With a little know-how, you can create views and objects directly from your imagination. It makes doodling that much more off-the-wall. This was so much fun to do; I may have to revisit the idea...

NannerHammer

You have no idea how fun it was to type out that title. It's been a while. I put a lot on my plate, and I'm not sure if I was able to handle it all. Eventually, I just had to sit down with a pencil and some paper and just start coming up with ideas.

This hammer was inspired by Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS. That game is awesome - it has stickers, cool puzzles, funny dialogue, turn-based battles, and Mario! In my short time with the game, there have been so many moments of genuine joy - the kind where I suddenly become conscious of my face muscles contracting and...oh, that's smiling. Rad.

NannerPipes

Not much to say about this one. I set out to see if I could make this design using only lines (no enclosed shapes). Success. If you put a heavy stroke on a line, you can give it the illusion of being a shape with a stroked outline. All you have to do is duplicate it, change it's color, adjust the stroke width up a bit, and send it behind the original.