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. 

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

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

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.  

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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!

Click here to buy your limited edition Farm to Table Tea Towel! 

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'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. 

Click to take my class on Skillshare!

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 :) 

By Jackie Hurd

By Jill O'Connor

By Jackie Hurd

By Jill O'Connor

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!