I am a “seasoned” maker. In my young days my activities included crafting with my mom, doing girl scout badge projects, embroidering my jeans, crosstitch, just to name a few. In my early working days, I was an orthodontic lab technician bending wire and working with plaster and wax. Once I moved into more administrative duties, I needed a creative outlet so I began knitting, paper making, book binding, scrapbooking, card making and working with polymer clay. I went back to my lab tech skills and began making wire jewelry which lead me into lamp work glass. Lampwork glass is where I have focused for the past 10 years but starting to crave something else. During the pandemic, I was wondering around the internet and saw a class on how to be a Surface Pattern Designer. This really intrigued me because I was always drawn to the patterns on fabric and those scrapbooking papers. This class opened up a world that I had not known existed and pushed me to learn new skills, like Illustrator. Before, I had always made things with my hands and some sort of material, never really using pencils or paint because I felt that only "artists" did those things, and I was not an artist. (we will talk about that some other time!)
Over the past 2 years, I have been playing with digital drawings and having lots of fun. I felt like I was starting to figure out my style but not quite yet. A very good friend who was an amazing watercolor artist & teacher encouraged me to paint. She showed me some techniques and was very supportive of my attempts. Sadly she passed suddenly but I still hear her words in my head - "just try and see what happens, it is never wrong". So taking a cue from another artist friend of mine, I decided to start a personal 100 day art project. Every day I am making marks on a page of my sketchbook, whatever I feel like doing. I am on Day 35 and am already realizing so many things.
First of all - I love pen & ink and watercolor. I enjoy how you can get a more realistic & dimensional look with various sizes of black pens on white paper. In contrast, I adore the play of colors that watercolors create when they are allowed to mix and mingle in a freeform way. It is very abstract and speaks to another part of me. I have also realized things I am not interested in creating. Much of my glass work is cute and cartoonish. I find that I don’t like that style in my 2D art. Very interesting. So we shall see what other insights I gain as this sketchbook journey continues! Stay tuned!
If you are interested in seeing my entire sketchbook as I create it, you can find it on IG at AnnTudorDesign in the highlight section.
