A little something I’m giving a whirl recently. I’ve long wanted to scan some of my sketches and make new ones that incorporated word art and simple doodles. It’s good to shake it up and try new ways of approaching ideas in art, and the process of putting pen to paper to color in is very meditative and relaxing. Here’s a recent one I made and scanned this week.
To me, next means: not perfect, but moving forward nonetheless. Next is a place of hope and discovery. Next is a no-pressure zone; it’s taking what you have and seeing what good you can make of it.
I made the first letter lowercase to show how shaky and tentative some first efforts can be, and then as we gain our strength and clarify our vision, the rest of the letters (and steps) get easier and surer. I also left the slightly askew bottom bar on the X and the slightly shorter bar across the right of the T as I’d first penciled them before tracing with my felt pen. Plus, it’s drawn by a human hand, so there’s a kind of nice authenticity to these quirks.
Next also means a contentment in each moment, because bigger things are on the horizon. The cherry blossoms matched nicely with that thought and were super relaxing to draw—I could feel myself get into a writer-like zone where time felt slowed with each blossom, petal, and branch.
Truthfully, I know I’m not at all the best or even a good sketcher. I have a long way to grow. I have a horrible time drawing figures of animals and people who look like themselves (I’m not great at drawing anything to scale), although I like drawing a caricature of myself waving on cards and in signed copies of my books sometimes. Flowers, I can sometimes do, and I’m going to give people a whirl again, maybe as silhouettes or stick outlines or in my own way, because why not? These are for the joy of making them and, perhaps, sharing some, too.
After scanning and uploading this word art, I headed off to my software to begin the computerized portion of the project. So many hues, filters, and options to be had! I’ll include a few of the transformed file options below, too.
