Reflecting on Project 2020
That's it, I'm calling 2020 - this will be my final blog post until I reflect on my three words for this year just before 31st December. I'm still working through some Skillshare courses and am spending quite a bit of time on creative projects at the moment. But this will be the last post specifically about the project.
As a note, there is a NSFW word included in one of the images in this post.
The last six weeks
I've been doing more courses on hand lettering, a couple of Procreate ones and a number about drawing life comics as well. Out of all of these, I would highly recommend the following ones:
Ian Barnard’s Level-Up Your Script Lettering - helped me identify how to address some consistency issues with my script.
Mary Kate McDevitt’s Designing Hand Lettering Systems - this has inspired a personal project for next year; watch this space.
Sarah Andersen’s Creating Webcomics - I’m really thinking about doing this, I think my illustration style lends itself to this sort of thing quite well.
John McNamee’s Composing Comics and Improvising Comics
Kassandra McMullen’s Writing Slice of Life Comics
Some of the creations
I decided to redevelop the letterpress cards I did a couple of years ago to give me a lettering/design project to develop my skills with. There were 23 cards in the set, which were all black and white - since I was doing simple letterpress. The designs were done with font, not hand lettering. So, I'm now hand lettering them all and allowing for colour. Below are a couple of the revised designs - old and new.
I'm really enjoying applying a range of the skills I've developed from these courses - technical, design and sheer confidence.
Overall reflection of the project
In some ways, it was great that I had this project during the weird year we have just been through. At times it gave me focus when I didn't have a lot for myself, but then it sort of got in the way diverted my attention. What I mean by that is, when we went into lockdown in March all of my facilitation work ceased to exist. As the year went on, some of it moved online but there was still not a lot.
This allowed me to evaluate all the offerings of my business and start shifting more to the illustration and graphic scribing components. Now, this is still going to take me some time to build but it feels a little more secure than some of the things I was doing. And it's also a lot more fun, creative and inspiring for me.
Now, the project was also great for this, because I could focus on skills and knowledge I needed to help understand options and build out my illustration portfolio. But that was never the 'plan' for the project - there were a lot of random creative courses I was planning on doing to bring more creativity into my life. The thing is, I didn't need to try to get more creativity into my life because it was now the significant focus of my days.
So, it was extremely helpful for me to have Skillshare at the time to help fill in those gaps, but those skills became the focus and didn't allow a lot of creative time for other things as the year went on. I'm really glad I did the project for the early focus it gave me, but then it started to become a bit of a secondary thought, and even a chore, in the last couple of months.
What's after 2020?
If you saw my Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook, the image below will look familiar. I've redeveloped the physical drawing into a digital one and added a message that tickled me. I've put the time-lapse of drawing this onto my Facebook page - if you haven't seen it head over to the page here.
Feel free to save this and share it if you would like to - attribution is always appreciated.
In a couple of weeks I will reflect on my three words for 2020, and then early in 2021 list out my three words for next year. I haven't decided on them yet, but I am currently planning out next year and how I continue to expand the illustration and graphic side of my business. There are definitely some creative projects planned, and something a little special since it will be a decade since I started My Year of TED!