Thursday, January 31, 2013

Starting something new...

Always exciting, always slightly scary. Tonight is the first class for the winter semester for my Continuing Ed class at Pacific Northwest College of Art. The class is writing and illustrating children's books, and it's one of my favorites. Since the class is about taking nebulous wisps of ideas and turning them into concrete stories- I thought I'd share some of my process!

So, I turned in my graphic novel about 2 weeks ago- and I knew during my month or so "break" I'd need to start thinking about my next project. The only problem- I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WANTED TO DO. I had a few ideas, sure... but I wasn't sure which was the right one to pursue. Cue a week of slight depression, grouchy disposition, and lots of naps. And I mean LOTS OF NAPS. I always feel guilty during this time in the process, because to the untrained eye, napping does not look like working. However! I find that my mind is most free while in that sleepy/half awake phase. Slowly, slowly, one idea began to dominate over the others, and I found myself thinking about those characters more and more as I drifted off and woke up. I started doodling more and more, and after a well-timed trip to the library for inspiration... Bingo! I was on my way.

*Something* just clicked. I don't know what that *something* is, but whatever it is, it made me happy, it made me want to draw instead of nap, and it made me giggle when I thought of something new. My "sketches" during this time tend to look something like this:



Basically, like the ramblings of a crazy person. But that's OK, it doesn't seem crazy to ME. When I needed to take a break from crazy rambling, I did some watercolor sketches of the characters- another one of my tricks to free my mind and think about the story.





So, that's where I am now! What does YOUR creative process look like?

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