My last two MATS Bootcamp assignments were in June and July. These are two very busy months in my household. My four kids ages 5-11 all have many end of school activities and summer begins. I am still finding a balance between parenting and following my career dreams. MATS Bootcamp was an awesome way to surround myself with artists, mentors, fellow moms who have many of the same challenges. As I am typing this I had to break up an argument between two of my kids. In MATS, I found a supportive community and a new process for approaching creative projects. I have learned to develop and hone my style and I am constantly learning and improving upon skills.
June’s assignment was to create a children’s book character who was a vicuna. Children’s books are in a long creative bucket list of things “I would love to do”. As I was happily drawing my vicunas, I asked my daughter for ideas on story and she came up with a plot line and name that I loved. Her name is Moonya, and she finds a balloon. The rest of her adventures you will have to read if/when I finish. I learned so much in this assignment, but the most important thing I learned, was how much more there is to know. Faces and expressions are the key to a good character. My biggest challenges were “painting” her digitally. As I said before the community and support in these classes are amazing. I discovered a Photoshop tutorial by Stephanie Fizer Coleman on Atly. I have been using Photoshop for years, but this tutorial was a real eye opener. Our assignment for May was a tarot card. Unfortunately, I had another project and didn’t allow enough time. The final result was in multimedia in marker and pencil. After I finished I wished I had colored it digitally. This led me to Stephanie Fizer Coleman‘s class. I’m so happy to be able to improve upon my skills and I was really happy with the final result.
In July, we were given a flower to illustrate, and encouraged to work on hand lettering. I have been drawing letters since I was a kid, but never considered myself a hand letterer. I loved it! It has been so much fun exploring lettering that it will definitely be something I incorporate into client work and my own. My flower was Forget Me Not and I can’t stop drawing them. Forget Me Not represents true love and memories. Our current state in the world is so troubling that I kept coming back to this quote from Mother Theresa, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.” I drew elephants and wrote “Never forget we belong to each other.” Eventually I dropped the words and kept the elephants to represent long memories.
MATS Bootcamp had just ended when MATS Global Talent Search began. Just as like last year, the assignment was SO much fun! I did not make in through to the 2nd round with the top 50, but I can’t wait to see what they submitted. I will post about my process and submission in my next post. Have a great day!
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