Pen to Vector, a Tutorial

There’s so much more you can do with a doodle once it’s turned into a vector!

All of my art starts with a doodle, it’s that simple. I sketch out a page full of doodles, outline them with a good fine tipped inky pen, and then convert everything to vectors. Then I use Adobe Illustrator to work the individual vector elements into illustrations and patterns. If you would like to learn more about my process and try it out, I’ve published my first Skillshare class and it’s all about converting doodles to vectors. Please have a watch and share my tutorial with anyone who could use this skill, Skillshare offers a free trial if you aren't already a subscriber. Converting doodles to vectors is a useful skill for those who are interested surface pattern design, children's book illustration, illustrating for home decor and more. 

Take my class today!

Redbubble Featured Artist- ME!!!!

I'm a little late in sharing this but two week's ago I was RedBubble's featured artist, complete with an interview and pictures :) The thing I've come to love the most about Redbubble is that they work really hard to recognize the hard working and dedicated artists who contribute to their online store/ community and I am very flattered that of the thousands of artists on their site that they can choose from for their once a week Featured Artist blog post, they chose me. 

"...if I could give my younger self some advice I would say 'just do it, draw something everyday no matter what it is and if you want to learn how to do something, stop wishing and take the initiative to learn it.'"

Visit their website to read the full interview. 

Bees and Flowers, the story behind this design

From a young age most of us are taught to be afraid of honey bees and for a good reason, they sting and those stings hurt. Not only do the stings hurt but for a few unlucky people those stings can cause a severe allergic reaction. But sting aside, if you take closer look at the honey bee you'll see that the role they play in our ecosystem makes them a pretty valuable insect.

Thanks to Pinterest somehow deciding I was into honey bees, lots of bee related posts started popping up in my Pinterest feed. When viewed on my phone screen I could safely see that these little 6 legged honey making critters were actually beautiful up close and when I'd click on the pictures, the articles I'd be led to were full of information, I was stunned to learn that honey bees are in serious danger due to mass usage of pesticides by commercial agriculture. Big deal right? Actually, it is a big deal, without bees, flowers don't get pollinated and plants don't reproduce. If plants can't reproduce, how will vegetables grow? How will animals get fed? Where will our food come from? And what about honey? What would tea be without honey? So you see, from what I've learned, the world needs bees. Before I knew it I found that my fear of bees had evolved into concern as well as a deep appreciation for what they do. I also found creative inspiration as I learned more about honey bees which led to lots of bee doodles and from those doodles I created a series of patterns called "Let them Bee" in hopes that at least through my art I could raise some awareness about the goodness of bees.

To my surprise, there are a lot of other people who like bees too! My two most popular designs on Redbubble happen to be from my Let them Bee Collection. Honey Makers and Bees and Flowers. 

While I'm not quite ready for my own beehive, it's something I'm considering as a someday thing... lots to learn first! I do know one thing for sure, you won't catch me swatting a honey bee. 

I'm no expert on honey bees so if anyone reading this has anything to add or a website with valuable information, feel free to leave a note in the comments section. 

Artist Advice

I woke up yesterday to more Instagram notifications and followers than usual. I checked my twitter account which I am barely active on and noticed I had new followers on there as well. Then my Facebook page, messages from other artists thanking me for sharing my advice. What was going on? Finally I figured it out, Redbubble published some advice I had shared in their latest blog post along side the advice of a few other extremely talented artists. How flattering!!! I am so glad that I was given the opportunity to share advice that has helped me with other artists.  Here's what I said:

"In the beginning I was undercharging and taking any job that would come my way, as a result I was getting clients who didn't appreciate my time. Overworked and underpaid, I was frustrated and decided to raise my prices. I set my prices according to the industry standard for my experience level and set some boundaries. I lost a few clients but to my surprise it wasn't long before I ended up with better paying clients who valued my time, opinion and skill. I learned that people who genuinely care about their brand are willing to invest in good design." -JMHurd

I encourage you to read the rest of the article, Advice from RB Freelance Artists, so you can read the great advice from artists Ben Kwok, Hector Mansilla and Mike Koubou and definitely check out their work! Lots of talent on Redbubble! 

Winter School and Art Snacks

Two things happened this month that have turned January into a month of creative exploration for me, Art Snacks and Winter School. 

Art Snacks!

For Christmas my husband gave me the gift of an Art Snacks subscription. Art Snacks is a box containing new art supplies delivered to my door every month. From Christmas day until the first week of January I waited anxiously for my first box to arrive and when it did I dug into it right away, it contained supplies I'd never actually think to buy and wasn't sure how I'd use them but I sat down with a piece of watercolor paper and using only the supplies that came in the box along with one outside supply, a white gel pen, I created this mystical fish bird thing (below). I had a lot of fun exploring the different mediums and I liked the Golden High Flow Acrylics that came in the box so much that I went out and purchased an entire box of them. Shortly after, itching to use the high flow acrylics again, I created a second piece- Purple flowers which I originally created for Winter School, more to come on that. Since I'll be getting an Art Snacks box every month it looks like this creative exploring thing is going to continue and I certainly welcome that, it's exactly what I need to keep things fresh!

Fish bird thing, tell me what you think about it on Instagram!

Created using Golden High Flow Acrylics, see and buy it on products in my Redbubble shop!

Winter School

Make it in Design is an online learning resource for Surface Pattern Designers. They have a free online magazine and they host an array of courses for learning, growing and basically, making it in design. The name of their school containing the courses is actually The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design. Anyway, I decided to give them a try with one of their short courses, Winter School. So here I am, I am in the second week of Winter School with several other designers from around the world, some who I've known for a while through Facebook and Instagram and some who I am just getting to know through the class. It's an awesome experience to be able to meet all of these other talented artists and I have to say, that is my favorite part about taking courses like this. I just finished up my first project with Winter School, the topic of the brief was Glam Boho Rock and it was a real challenge for me. I started with the flowers (above) because I wanted to take a mixed media approach but I just didn't feel that this piece accurately fit my interpretation of the brief so I started over and came up with something I am much happier with, it's called Shoot for the Stars and it is what I ended up submitting for the first assignment. I'm looking forward to the release of the next brief, I'm sure it will be a challenge but I hope I wont have such a hard time picking the path I want to take in creating the art for it!

Shoot for the Stars

Curated from Society6: Unicorns

Click to view these pieces and the rest of the Magical Unicorns collection

My favorite part of selling my art on print on demand (POD) sites like Redbubble and Society6 is that I get to network with other artists and see some pretty awesome work. I find myself not only wanting to share my work, but also wanting to share the work of these other talented artists. Lucky for me, artists on Society6 also have the opportunity to be curators, which makes it easy to curate and share the art I like. Here is one of my recent curated collections, The Magical Unicorn. It just so happens that I illustrated two unicorns last month so I included them in this collection. Not all collections I share on my website will feature my work but I hope anyone visiting will be just as happy to see the works of these other talented artists. If you are a fellow Society6 artist and you've got a Unicorn out there on the Society6 website, feel free to add the link to the comment section of this blog post so others can promote it. 

Visit the Magical Unicorn :) 

Post Holiday Reflections

It's January 3rd and most of my kids have gone back to school. My youngest, Miles goes back tomorrow. For the most part, my house is quiet and in-between his demands for snacks and entertainment I'm managing to get a little done like writing a blog post. 

I start looking forward to the holidays every year around August. As they approach there's so much excitement and anticipation of gathering, gifts and generally just a really good time. And this year I wasn't disappointed. But now that the holidays are over my Christmas decorations can't be packed away fast enough. I'm done with it all until next year... with the exception of the cookies, i'm not ready to part with those yet. 

In addition to everything else I see in the holidays, I also see them as a solid end to the year, a time to reset so that the new year starts off on the right foot and with momentum. So while most people spent their holidays vacationing from work, I think I did more work than ever. I don't mean work for anyone else, I mean work for myself. I spent the holidays deep in practice, looking through my old sketchbooks, making new art, studying trends, networking with other artists, reflecting on my progress, and thinking of the future. I'm glad I took the time I needed over the holidays to get all of that done and tomorrow when I can get back to uninterrupted work, I've got some very exciting things to work on for both myself and my clients.  It's going to be a good year and I will be doing my best to live creatively and make as much art as I possibly can so check back frequently for new art and new products available in my online shops. 

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. My son is covered in chocolate and just ran out of my office with a tube of gauche after shooting me with a nerf gun.

My Dandi Ducks are on Display!

Shown here as a gallery board.

Once again I woke up to exciting news, my Dandi Ducks design has been found and featured on Redbubble. Out of thousands of other amazing artists, they chose me! I can't believe it! Twice in one month. I am completely honored and very excited because it means they really like the work I am producing. 

There's actually a bit of a story behind this design and the other designs in the Dandy Ducks collection. Over the summer my husband decided he wanted ducks so our friend gave him three lady ducks.  I wasn't thrilled about the mess the ducks made and neither were our chickens. The ducks were complete divas and took the best spot on the roost. They also demanded two large kiddie pools of fresh water everyday that they constantly slashed in, the coop was always soaked. The ducks also dipped their food in the drinking water, filling it with chunks of food and and mud. My poor chickens who really like fresh clean water were so annoyed. My husband quickly found another home for the ducks where they had a nice big pond without chickens to squawk about their messes, but in the month they were with us, I did love to watch them and was very inspired by their hilarious antics. From this experience my Dandy Ducks collection was born. 

If you'd like to purchase a product featuring my Dandi Ducks, visit my Redbubble shop. Be sure to check out the rest of the collection while you're there! 

Smug Llama makes the front page!

I woke up this morning to an email from Redbubble informing me that my artwork has been found and featured!!!

Buy it now on Redbubble, available on a variety of products. 

My Smug Llama design was chosen out of thousands of other designs submitted by artists around the world to be featured on Redbubble's front page. To be featured on Redbubble means my work is on the front page and visible to everyone visiting the Redbubble website. The result of my last front page feature, Bees and Flowers was lots of sales, sales that are still rolling in and that was almost a month ago. Now with my Smug Llama design being featured I have two pieces of artwork steadily selling and I couldn't be more grateful.

Creating art is a full time endeavor for me, I work on it around the clock and it is a very important part of who I am so to think that people like it enough to buy it in various available formats is incredibly satisfying and encouraging. 

This is where I'm at

I haven't published a blog post since August 5th, but I promise, I've been thinking about it. That sort of counts doesn't it? :) In all honesty I've had a lot going on around here. The good thing however is that I've still managed to find the time I needed to produce new works of art on an almost daily basis and I have been sharing them with the world, just not on my website. So as I work to update my very neglected website, I wanted to let everyone know where I am the most active right now. 

Instagram

I try to post at least 3 times a day on Instagram when I have an active project going on (which is almost daily). If you follow me on Instagram, in addition to my finished work, you'll also be able to see my process as I post progress as I work. My Instagram user name is @jmhurd

By the way, I am currently participating in a fun 12 days of Christmas portfolio project on Instagram so if you follow along you'll see a cheerful new Christmas themed illustration every other day until Christmas. 

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Redbubble

I only started actively using Redbubble about a month ago. A few days before Thanksgiving one of my designs landed on their front page and I've been getting consistent sales ever since so currently I am devoting the majority of my marketing towards my Redbubble shop.  What I really love about Redbubble is that I sell my designs as stickers. This is perfect for the little characters I've been coming up with. My most popular design so far has been  Let them Bee, I've sold over 100 stickers alone of my little honey bee in the last two weeks. 

Society6

Society6 is a lot like Redbubble but they offer a few different products like metal travel mugs, shower curtains and comforters so I upload what I can to their site and hope that maybe someone will order something with my design on it and so far a few people have. 

Spoonflower

Spoonflower is not only a massive online fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap shop, but it's also a community for surface pattern designers. I upload new work and approve it for sale monthly. When I get the sewing bug I order fabric featuring my own designs and as an artist I think that being able to make a throw pillow with my own design is just the coolest thing ever. Anyway, you can find a lot of my work in my Spoonflower shop, ready to purchase and use for your next big sewing project. 

In the backyard with my chickens

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Raven, a little bantam I hatched out in August.

Not exactly an art site but if I'm not working or hanging out with my family, I'm most likely in the back yard spending time with my chickens. Being around them makes me happy and I get a lot of creative inspiration from them. Anyone who knows me personally might find this a little shocking because up until a few years ago I was a major germaphobe and was never really into chickens or any kind of farm animal for that matter, but this summer we moved into a house that came with chickens, then we hatched out a few more in August and now I'm in love. I don't know what it is about these birds... they are just a lot of fun.