The Value of a Watercolor Sketchbook

Having a little watercolor sketchbook has proven to be very valuable to me, and I bet if you have one you understand!

It's important to have a place to just paint whatever you want, or try out new techniques and colors etc. Sometimes what you paint will be a masterpiece, and sometimes it's just placing blobs of color on the page.

When we go camping, my watercolor sketchbook is what comes with me and often good things come out of this free painting time:

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Take Action: Play art in your sketchbook on a regular basis with no particular outcome in mind and see what magic happens!

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A New Class You Should Check Out

I purchased Michele Frusciano's class, Greeting Card Academy and it's fantastic.

In this class Michele walks her students through greeting card design, creating a few small collections, creating pitch emails (she provides templates), and how to understand licensing and contracts.

Michele speaks from years of experience being an Art Director and now successfully licensing her artwork on greeting cards.

Included in this class are some very valuable assets like a list of greeting card companies who take artists' work, whom to contact for pitching, and where to find the guidelines etc.

What a GREAT resource!

I would highly recommend you check this class out​

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In the first project of this class we had to create one birthday card featuring a birthday treat (see the cake in the section above) and one featuring candles (along with other ones).

I painted the cake in my sketchbook, but designed the birthday candles one on Procreate (iPad drawing app).

In light of so much AI art out there, I am leaning towards hand lettering my sentiments more and more, because AI can't do that authentically!

The "Make a Wish" above is hand lettered to fit over the candles 'just right'.

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Take Action: Try hand lettering in your art wherever possible to stand out in a sea of sameness.

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Purchase: This is the type of card I suggest buying multiples of, a set of 10 or 20 sets you up for success when birthdays come sneaking around the corner too fast!

Be ready with a set of these on hand.

Birthday Tracker Freebie

One of my big problems is that I can't keep track of all the birthdays. Instead of just saying "I'm terrible at remembering birthdays", I created this little Birthday tracker for myself to put on my fridge. Perhaps this will help you, too!

Take Action: Download Birthday Tracker , fill it out, and put it on your fridge!