When I talk to people about my job as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, I always get asked “where do you get your ideas from”. That’s a complicated question with a lot of answers that can go in several directions so I never know exactly how to answer it but i’ve been thinking about it and here’s a short version of my answer. 

Creativity seems to be the simple answer but it's not that simple. Creativity comes from within and flows through each individual differently. For some it’s music, for others it’s gardening and for me it’s the art I make digitally and on paper. If you ask any master of their craft, they’ll tell you in these words or others, creativity cannot flow without being fostered. Creativity often starts out as a wild horse in serious need of training. When I was a kid, I had a strong desire to draw but most of the time all that will come out were eyeballs. By the time I was in high school, I was really good at drawing eyeballs! Beyond eyeballs I was lost and that feeling of not being able to take it further was very frustrating. 

I went to college and got my degree in Illustration thinking it would help me get things flowing but even with a degree in hand I still felt blocked. Feeling blocked was agonizing. Then something happened that completely changed everything for me. 

I came across an online course website called CreativeBug that has daily art challenges. There’s a free trial and then a low monthly subscription fee. I signed up for one of their Daily Drawing Challenges and every day for 30 days was given a prompt. One day it was lamps, another it was fish and so on. I would draw a page full of fish, paint them, color them in, bring them into the computer and vectorize them- I tried new things whenever I could with each prompt. At the end of each day I would upload them to Instagram as encouraged by the class. By the end of the 30 days I felt inspired and found it much easier to draw new things. 

Around the same time I found an Instagram challenge called The 100 Day project. By now I had discovered pattern making and that was a skill I wanted to improve so using the next 30 day challenge for inspiration, I decided I would use my drawings to make a pattern a day for 100 days. What a commitment! But I did it. I learned so much.

While working my way through the 100 Day project I had lots of questions about pattern making so I signed up for Skillshare. I took the Skillshare classes by surface pattern designers Elizabeth Olwen and Bonnie Christine . I found both of their classes to be extremely helpful and inspiring. While on Skillshare I found a few classes on Linocuts and dove head first into it after buying and reading Andrea Lauren’s beautiful book, Block Print. 

At this point I was drawing something new every day, turning it into patterns and practicing linocuts. Without knowing it, I had put myself into my own training plan and formed an unbreakable habit of practicing every day. In less than a year the wild horse that was my creativity became a beautiful well behaved horse that now does exactly what I need it to do- flow.