One of my goals for this year is to complete a bunch of smaller creative projects with defined beginnings and endings (as opposed to a habit like “paint every day”). My thought is that I’ll be able to experience a big variety of things, and none of them will take so long that it feels like torture waiting for it to wrap up before bouncing to something new. And experience has taught me that there will be something new, lol. It feels good to have this first one completed! There were some moments of frustration when things just weren’t going…

For the final set in this series of lettering illustrations, I chose the letter R with a mouse theme. Mice have been on my mind lately because it appears we have some living in the attic and I hear them scratching around. Plus, they’re just very cute. I created a color palette based on a mix of warm and cool neutrals. The goal was a blend of soft, gentle, and whimsy — without being cartoonish. The gouache brushes from Bardot Brushes was awesome for this group. I played around with layering over color-filled backgrounds for more depth and interest, which…

This group of lettering illustrations is based on the theme of garden. It was just a coincidence that I had selected the letter G before choosing the theme! I did a lot more exploring of my new Procreate brushes with these, and incorporated more color strategies. To me, each one was like doing a mini painting because I was really thinking about the concepts I’ve learned during my landscape painting studies. Some of the things I was focusing on were: utilizing neutrals and greys with higher chroma colors as accents incorporating violet and orange as a counterpart to green creating…

For this set in my Procreate hand lettering project, I chose “W” and the theme of gentle. This time I brainstormed a list of words that I felt related to the idea of gentle, which helped me focus the styles to pursue. I tried a few new things with this part of the project. One was drawing inspiration from a photo I took of a Robert Blum painting at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I originally took the photo because I was fascinated by the layering of colors in the grasses. It looks to me like the canvas was…

I’m starting a new creative challenge this month to expand my creativity with hand lettering. The project is based on choosing 4 different letters and drawing each one in 5 different styles. For each letter, I’ll choose a theme to help provide some focus. Along the way, I hope to develop my hand lettering skills and get more comfortable working in Procreate. For my first letter, I chose “A” because I’m bored with the way my name looks when I write it out, and I figured some quality time with the character would help me feel the love for it….