A few "Odd" things about me
My family has always told me I was odd-- the “odd ball” they called me. I’ve spent some time examining this and it makes me laugh because on the spectrum of normal to strange, I think I fall a lot closer to normal. I’m quiet, reserved, cautious and very particular about certain things. For those who are curious, read on and I’ll share a few!
My family has always told me I was odd-- the “odd ball” they called me. I’ve spent some time examining this and it makes me laugh because on the spectrum of normal to strange, I think I fall a lot closer to normal, maybe even a little boring. I’m quiet, reserved, cautious and very particular about certain things. I’m VERY different from the rest of my family and even my closest friends. But odd, well I don’t know. I say I’m a creative and with that comes intricacies to my day to day. To name a few...
Fat Filled Coffee: I start my day with a cup of coffee filled with fat. It’s not so much the caffeine that I need but the experience. My husband and I brew freshly ground coffee in a French Press to make what is known as Bullet Proof Coffee (BPC) with an added shot of expresso. I’m 5’4” and usually weigh no more than 115lbs but I start almost every day with a delicious cup of high fat coffee every morning and I never add sweeteners. I know I'm not alone in this, look it up, it's a real thing, it's a staple to the Ketogenic way of eating. Consuming lots of (good) fat is apparently a great way to stay skinny. Weird huh?
I LOVE Harry Potter: As of writing this, I’m working my way through the Harry Potter series (all 7 books) on Audible for the 5th time in 2 years. Secrets out… Maybe I’ve got a Harry Potter problem? I just really love listening to the stories! J.K. Rowling is a phenomenal writer and Jim Dale narrates the series with perfection. It's like listening to a good album- never gets old! Anyone else with me on this one?
Stay out of my seat: In my house, I have certain spots where I sit and no one else can sit there. If we’re sitting down to dinner and someone is in my seat I get really antsy. My husband thinks it’s hilarious, especially if the person who’s sitting in my seat is someone new who’s visiting and in an attempt to be polite I don’t ask them to move.
There’s more to add I’m sure, but really, in my opinion, none of these things are that odd, it’s just me and the things I do. I’m a creative, I feel like that gives me a pass to be a little particular.
You- reading this… what’s your thing? I’m sure you’ve got something odd about you too!
Flow, the Wild Horse
When I talk to people about my job as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, I always get asked “where do you get your ideas from”. That’s a complicated question with a lot of answers that can go in several directions so I never know exactly how to answer it. This blog post explains how I feel about creativity and the steps I took to get it to flow.
©2018 Jacqueline Hurd
When I talk to people about my job as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, I always get asked “where do you get your ideas from”. That’s a complicated question with a lot of answers that can go in several directions so I never know exactly how to answer it but i’ve been thinking about it and here’s a short version of my answer.
Creativity seems to be the simple answer but it's not that simple. Creativity comes from within and flows through each individual differently. For some it’s music, for others it’s gardening and for me it’s the art I make digitally and on paper. If you ask any master of their craft, they’ll tell you in these words or others, creativity cannot flow without being fostered. Creativity often starts out as a wild horse in serious need of training. When I was a kid, I had a strong desire to draw but most of the time all that will come out were eyeballs. By the time I was in high school, I was really good at drawing eyeballs! Beyond eyeballs I was lost and that feeling of not being able to take it further was very frustrating.
I went to college and got my degree in Illustration thinking it would help me get things flowing but even with a degree in hand I still felt blocked. Feeling blocked was agonizing. Then something happened that completely changed everything for me.
I came across an online course website called CreativeBug that has daily art challenges. There’s a free trial and then a low monthly subscription fee. I signed up for one of their Daily Drawing Challenges and every day for 30 days was given a prompt. One day it was lamps, another it was fish and so on. I would draw a page full of fish, paint them, color them in, bring them into the computer and vectorize them- I tried new things whenever I could with each prompt. At the end of each day I would upload them to Instagram as encouraged by the class. By the end of the 30 days I felt inspired and found it much easier to draw new things.
Around the same time I found an Instagram challenge called The 100 Day project. By now I had discovered pattern making and that was a skill I wanted to improve so using the next 30 day challenge for inspiration, I decided I would use my drawings to make a pattern a day for 100 days. What a commitment! But I did it. I learned so much.
While working my way through the 100 Day project I had lots of questions about pattern making so I signed up for Skillshare. I took the Skillshare classes by surface pattern designers Elizabeth Olwen and Bonnie Christine . I found both of their classes to be extremely helpful and inspiring. While on Skillshare I found a few classes on Linocuts and dove head first into it after buying and reading Andrea Lauren’s beautiful book, Block Print.
At this point I was drawing something new every day, turning it into patterns and practicing linocuts. Without knowing it, I had put myself into my own training plan and formed an unbreakable habit of practicing every day. In less than a year the wild horse that was my creativity became a beautiful well behaved horse that now does exactly what I need it to do- flow.
Bee Garden
Bees seem to have become a reoccurring theme in the artwork I produce and for a good reason, we need them to pollinate the gardens where our food grows. The more I learn about these fuzzy yellow insects, the more fascinated I become with them. And equal to my fascination is my concern for their well being.
I created this bee a few months ago to use in a pattern and I loved it so much that I turned it into a placement illustration.
Bees seem to have become a reoccurring theme in the artwork I produce and for a good reason, we need them to pollinate the gardens where our food grows. The more I learn about these fuzzy yellow insects, the more fascinated I become with them. And equal to my fascination is my concern for their well being.
As an artist, the easiest way for me to raise honey bee awareness is to draw or paint them and make my artwork available on products. When someone wears or displays my bee art I hope it will spark a conversation about how important these little creatures are and how much danger they are currently in.
There are a few very simple things anyone can do to help bees. If you have a yard, fill it with bee friendly plants. Bees love wildflowers such as cosmos or echinaceas (also known as cone flowers). If you prefer leafy foliage with fewer flowers you can plant hostas, just watch out for the deer and bunnies, they also enjoy hostas!
Another way to help bees is to pay close attention to the use chemicals commonly used in gardens. It may seem harmless to spray your rose bush with that bottle of beetle banishing spray you picked up from the garden store, but a quick glimpse at the long list of ingredients will almost immediately tell you otherwise. We can't immediately change the practices of big agriculture, but we can at least start with our own gardens. Chemicals used in most pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can transfer to the nectar that the bees drink and as a result poison them. Neem Oil is an all natural alternative that won't harm bees. You can also use it to make your own bug spray! Planting a barrier of fragrant plants such as rosemary and lavender will also help with pest control.
If you're interested in learning more from someone who knows way more than me, I recommend picking up a copy of The Bee Friendly Garden by Gretchen LeBuhn, available on Amazon.com. A good website to checkout is The Honey Bee Conservatory, a website that not only educates but also enables you to sponsor a hive or receive a sponsored hive. Pretty neat.
To support my artwork and to provoke honey bee conversations, this piece is available for purchase on different products in my Society6 shop. It's also available in different arrangements and standalone as a bee sticker among other things in my RedBubble shop.
If you've got a bee project of your own, I'd love to hear about it! Leave a note in the comments.
Hens in the Garden
Most of my designs have a story. Read about how my “Hens in the Garden” collection came to be. Post also contains a link where you can buy it as fabric, gift wrap or wallpaper.
Every year when it warms up my husband and I get excited about having a garden. We plant a little bit of EVERYTHING which is always way too much, get excited when things start to grow and then loose interest as the weeds and bugs take over. This year we decided to approach things differently. We bought already started plants and only what we knew we'd eat- lettuce, broccoli and herbs. Everything was doing great and then after getting the back yard fence installed, we decided to let our 6 hens out of their coop. Within minutes, possibly even seconds, they ate every single head of lettuce in the garden. They didn't touch anything else, just the lettuce. Apparently, hens really like lettuce.
We now have an additional fence around the garden to protect our recovering lettuce, but from this experience I was inspired to create this collection of designs called "Hens in the Garden" each design is now available for purchase on Spoonflower as fabric, gift-wrap or wallpaper. Since I'm a seller on Spoonflower but not a sewer, I'm hoping someone will buy a few yards and make something adorable so I can see these designs come to life! I think these chickens would look great on aprons or teatowels!
Buy a few yards from this collection, sew it into something awesome and tag me on Instagram!
100 Days of Pollinators
Every year on April 3rd the 100 Day Project begins. The 100 Day Project is an international art project that anyone can participate in. It's truly an amazing adventure for all involved either by making art or following along. I've found that the 100 day project is an opportunity to grow as an artist and establish a solid routine.
Every year on April 3rd the 100 Day Project begins. The 100 Day Project is an international art project that anyone can participate in. It's truly an amazing adventure for all involved either by making art or following along. I've found that the 100 day project is an opportunity to grow as an artist and establish a solid routine.
I had no idea when I challenged myself to 100 days of pattern making a few years ago that it would be the beginning of what I can now call a career. Now I make patterns on almost a daily basis. 100 days of pattern led to hundreds of days of patterns and I couldn't be happier.
So fast forward to now and I've decided to jump on board with this year's challenge. I'm doing it a little differently this year. I've teamed up with Jill O'Connor who is the other half of Jack and Jillo. I'm one half, she's the other half. We make a great team. Anyway, we'll be working through this challenge together with each of us committing to create 50 pieces of art which will be displayed in our shared Instagram feed, @jack_and_jillo. We chose a theme that will help bring awareness to something we are both passionate about: Pollinators and their favorite flowers. Without pollinating insects our food can't grow and currently one of our most important pollinators, the honey bees, are having a rough time.
Throughout the duration of this challenge I hope to learn more about bees, the flowers they love and what we can do to help bees survive and thrive. I look forward to sharing what I learn with the world through the art that Jill and I create and my hope is that through our art we can make an impact.
Join the fun by following us on Instagram, you are also welcome to join in. We'll be using the hashtag #100daysofpollinatorsandflowers
My simple fix to creative block
Sometimes creative block gets the best of me and spins me into a day, sometimes a string of days of creative despair. Creative block is pretty terrible when it hits and it's a great feeling when it finally floats away. But where does it come from in the first place and why does it have to bother me when I have things to do?
Occasionally creative block gets the best of me and spins me into a day, sometimes a string of days of creative despair. Creative block is pretty terrible when it hits and it's a great feeling when it finally floats away. But where does it come from in the first place and why does it have to bother me when I have things to do? After all, art is how I earn my living.
I can't completely answer my question but this line I stumbled across from Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon makes a lot of sense, "Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities."
Some of my favorite go-to supplies. Tombow brush pens, Draft-Matic Mechanical Pencil, Pigma Micron Pen, Pentel Mechanical Pencil, General's oval eraser.
Too many possibilities... when I look at the days when I encounter creative block, I find it's on the days when my desk is the messiest, covered with paint tubes, markers, colored pencils, fancy new paper or whatever else I've decided to try to bring into my workflow that day. So this line makes a lot of sense, at least for me, and may be my biggest hang up when it comes to making art. There are so many options available. Too many options. It's an overload to my creative flow. I keep trying and wanting to bring in different mediums but I always default back to a pencil, a black pen and a Canson Mix Media sketchbook. Once I have eliminated everything else I feel free again. What works for me is so simple and effective that it almost seems too good to be true and I guess that's why I keep trying to change it up. When I have too many options I'm stuck. When I limit my tools I feel less overwhelmed and the quality of art I produce is what I'm the happiest with.
So if you find yourself stuck, my advice is to clear your workspace and take away everything but the basics. Once things start flowing you can always add things back in as space opens up for them.
Designing for the Future
If you like me are in the position where you've got to add psychic to your artist title and figure out how to be trendy and fast for the sake of selling some of your designs to the wide world of art buyers, here's what I now know.
It's been about 2 years since I've whole heartedly fully committed to surface pattern design and when I create patterns, I am doing so with the intention of licensing my art to buyers who will put my patterns and icons on gift bags, apparel, pillows or whatever.
To be successful in this venture, I'm supposed to be creating what's forecasted to be coming into trend, not tomorrow or next week but an entire year from now. Wow. I've never been very trendy, I'm an artist so I kind of skip to the beat of my own drum... I wear what's comfortable and fill my house with things that make me happy. Who's with me on that one?
If you like me are in the position where you've got to add psychic to your artist title and figure out how to be trendy and fast for the sake of selling some of your designs to the wide world of art buyers, here's what I now know.
Report by Amber Grant
Forecasting
The weather changes with the seasons and generally there a few solid things you can be sure of depending on where you live. Here in North Carolina it's going to get hot in the summer, then it will cool down in the fall before getting cold in the winter and warming up again in the summer. March is windy, it rains in April and as everyone knows, next comes the May flowers! This happens every year and I know this because I've lived here long enough to recognize the pattern. I wish I could tell you that predicting fashion was just as easy but it's not and it's still a very new topic to me that I am learning more about on a daily basis.
The best advice I can give you right now on this topic is to familiarize yourself with the term Trend Forecast. Open up Pinterest and type in SS19. What pops up is pretty neat. The photo included in this post is example of one of the pins I've found. You can click through for the pin and then click again to be taken to Amber Grant's website where you'll find a whole world of trend forecasts. This is just one example of many. Trend Forecasting, like surface pattern design, illustration or graphic design is a professional service. You may be able to gather enough information based on what's available, especially as you start to see the trends emerge. Your own research may be good enough for you to put together the rest OR you can take it a step further and buy more in-depth trend reports. It also helps to join in on Facebook or Instagram discussions and ask questions. There are plenty of resources out there and now that you are familiar with the word Trend Forecast or Trend Report, use it and hopefully you'll know what to design and wear next summer!
Farm to Table's a winner!
1st place winner in Spoonflower's Farm to Tea Towel contest!
Farm to table is always the best way to go or so it seems for me. Today my Farm to Table tea towel design placed first in Spoonflower's Farm to Tea Towel design competition and now it's available as fabric and a limited edition Tea towel.
Hop over to my other website Jack&Jillo for more details and a recap of the design competition.
New Class & Halloween, I Know i'm Early!
I realize I'm a little early, but I've got Halloween on my mind. Probably from Spoonflower's Vintage Halloween contest... I started doodling for Halloween and then I was inspired to create a Skillshare class about designing Halloween treat bags, so here we are. It's September 12th, my house is decorated for Halloween, my desk is covered with Halloween artwork and my new class is all about designing treat bags for Halloween. Perhaps I am looking forward to Halloween.
I've got a new class on Skillshare!
I realize I'm a little early, but I've got Halloween on my mind. Probably from Spoonflower's Vintage Halloween contest... I started doodling for Halloween and then I was inspired to create a Skillshare class about designing Halloween treat bags, so here we are. It's September 12th, my house is decorated for Halloween, my desk is covered with Halloween artwork and my new class is all about designing treat bags for Halloween. Perhaps I am looking forward to Halloween.
Anyway, if you're into design and looking to sharpen your skills, this is the class for you. It's an introductory level class that teaches a few basic skills that can serve as a great stepping stone to more advanced projects. The class walks students through vectorizing doodles, using them to create brushes and then applying them to the treat bags they will design. Once the bags are designed, students will print them them out, fill them up and enjoy them later.. or right away depending on their impulse control abilities when it comes to candy.
Big News
I haven't written a blog post since March and there's a good reason for it. I've been quietly working on building a brand with fellow artist, Jill O'Connor of the UK. We are planning on attending the trade show, PrintSource together as a collective Duo in August of 2018. I know that's an entire year away, but believe it or not there's a lot that goes into it. We've had to build a brand and a website- it's live, check it out at jackandjillo.com. We've been researching and studying trends- I'm even learning a little about how to trend forecast! More to follow on that someday soon. And of course, most importantly we've been planning and getting a good start on the patterns and collections we'll be taking with us to the trade tradeshow, we'll need at least 100 unseen designs each to take with us.
Now that we've got things rolling, I'll have a little more time to get back to my normal routine with a few extra hours a day devoted to developing patterns :)
