- Practice letting go. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
- When it gets hard, take a moment. Use understanding as your default mode not anger.
- You were happy when you were 3. Why was that? Ask more questions!
- No conclusion or accusation is ever correct. Even if you think you know the facts. You don’t.
- Really and truly try not to worry about what others think. See point 3.
- Your parents are human. There’s no rule that says you have to agree with their choices or own their mistakes.
- Work out what makes you tick and how that is influenced by others and how it affects the people you care about.
- Be good and true and give up every part of yourself to the one you love.
- Work hard at what you love doing and be persistent. Don’t give up. Consistency trumps intensity.
- Practice this stuff because sure as shit some day you want to be a great dad to two amazing little girls.
365 Quotes
365 days and 58 notebooks later…
Lettering one quote per day. So many insights from famous folks. So many insights on lettering. So many tests of my patience and persistence.
While lettering these were the things that became obvious, though not always adhered to…
- be in a good frame of mind
- relax your hand, arm, and body
- pause after every letter, word, and line
- use the right writing instrument
- letter only what you care about.
januarysecond – one sketch per day for 365 days
Not being a superstitious person I am not overly concerned with lucky (or unlucky) numbers, however I do not like odd numbers (I do not like them Sam I Am) and 2013 is definitely odd.
This year is massive: we have a baby girl due in March; I’m working on an awesome game-changing project at ansarada; and I have some major gradings for kung fu. Amongst thoughts of all this massive awesomeness, and talk of New Year resolutions on Facebook, I wanted a personal project to challenge and improve myself and turn around the oddness of an odd year.
Always admiring the tenacious persistence of 365 day projects I decided upon one sketch a day for 365 days: the project would make me draw each day and thus improve my skills; sketches meant I could sacrifice some quality when time was poor; with little time and a daily requirement, creativity and imagination become the key to each sketch.
My first month is complete with 31 drawings providing early proof that I can stick with it for the remaining 334 days. The project theme is fictional portraits and I’ll change something key each month: January I used ball-point pens and for February felt-tip markers (and maybe March will be full of baby portraits).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/although/sets/72157632805126429/
But wait there’s (always) more! I’ll transform the favourite or best drawing from each month into a finished illustration and upload to RedBubble as a styling new t-shirt design. So, if you want to see a particular sketch on a t-shirt simply comment or favourite the page for that drawing.
EDIT: Silly me hosted this project on Posterous. I’ve now moved it to Flickr – where I should have hosted the project from the beginning. We live and learn.
Rose is going to be a big sister
We passed the first milestone today and are very excited to be expecting a baby brother or sister for Rose. At present Rose favours a brother though she has switched camps a couple of times.
It’s been a crazy ride of late – within a week I landed a new job, we bought a house and found out Karolina was pregnant. Things surely do happen in threes.
colouring in activity
We have some budding artists in the Boomworks office for the school holidays and so I created some black and white versions of my illustrations. Robots were requested and pictured is the efforts of young Sasha. Great work!
it’s been awesome
First things first – I’ve resigned as UX Team Lead for Boomworks. It’s been (truly) awesome.
By the time I walk out the door it will be exactly a year and a half – fifty percent of that time spent as a Senior Visual Designer. I can’t thank the team enough for taking me on and also taking a chance on letting me run the user experience team. Unfortunately all good things come to an end and I’m moving on to new challenges.
This was one of my most difficult resignations – usually I am full of glee – and my heart was very heavy when I delivered the news. Being who I am I’ll always attempt to lighten the mood however dark the situation. To this end I created a special letterhead for my resignation letter and I’m sharing it with you all to use if needed.
To use the letterhead: open the PDF and print (on nice paper); write your resignation letter (in a nice typeface); pop your letterhead into the manual feed; and print.
calligraphy
Dusted off my tablet over the weekend and spent some time delving back into some calligraphy practice. I’ve always loved calligraphy in all its forms – a passion sparked by my design teacher way back when I was young and impressionable. Using a tablet is an interesting dynamic as it lacks the friction of a brush or pen so the letter forms are dynamic and border on the erratic.
With my interest reignited I’m going to keep playing and will be buying some fresh brushes and ink today. Here’s some of my favourite examples…
although 