Full wings for trained guides – different colours for different experience levels.

one wing for all other staff

Its rather fun. I am looking forward to sewing mine on!!

The original “Wave Rider” series has proved to be quite popular, so I have decided to do a couple of new ones to add to the collection. All my T-shirts can be seen and purchaced here.

After the journey of self discovery of the last month or so…. Of finally realizing that I just love textures and abstract…. I decided to start a new website that is part gallery for all the fun textures I come up with & part freebies site.

I have received a lot of inspiration and advice over the years from various sources on the internet, and this is partly a chance to give something back…. I love creating textures, but half of the time I don’t have anything to actually do with them once they are made. So www.ScrabooliTextures will be a place to put them so that others can get a little use out of my homeless daydreams.

They will be free for use in Graphic design projects and personal non-commercial projects (eg. scrapbooking)… So go check them out and have some fun!!

The last couple of days I have been trying to figure out what to focus on next. How to find a focus?

I have mentioned before that I have had trouble focusing on any one thing because there are so many different things that catch my attention…

well there has been more to it than that….

a lot of it is wrapped up in fear. Fear that if I take a part of my art and try to make a ‘business’ out of it, that it will become work and eventually boring…. and that it will make all things creative seem like work. Somehow, in my head, work=nasty/boring. However, my current day job is far from nasty/boring. I am still loving it after more than a year and a half. So why should art+work=nasty/boring? At risk of sounding Vulcan, its just not logical.

The other roadblock has been too many ideas and a general lack of focus. New ideas have displaced the last idea and then the next soon comes along…  and any focus I had is all washed away in the flood of ideas and  focusing only on the now and the new and the intensely immediate. Balancing against this has been the idea that lack of a signeture ’style’ leads to lack of exposure. What I am trying to get at there, is the idea that ’successful’ artists/creators are the ones that get known for a particular style (see post: Branding & ’success’). Which is not a bad thing…. its just that there is then the possibility of getting trapped in that style by the demand of your audience.

So I have had the crazy mix of ‘knowing’ that to be successful I should have a recognizable style, yet not wanting that because I don’t want to give up all my other ideas – and which one should I pick anyway? And then there was knowing that to create a recognizable style I would have to treat it like ‘work’ and in comes  the fear that it would become boring…

essentially it all boils down to the fear that success = boredom!!

…………………………………

After a gook chat with my mother today I have realized that it doesn’t have to be that way. So I have come to the following conclusions.

• As long as you are still coming up with new ideas and finding new inspiration in other peoples work, art will never be boring.
• Art as work needs to be put in a different mental space and time needs to be set aside for it that is different time from general fun art. Art created in fun however, might move over into the ‘work’ area.
• ‘Success’ is not going to happen overnight and definitely won’t happen if you don’t get your work ‘out there’ into the public eye.
• Art should be whatever you fancy at the time and be as varied or as focused as you want. However, you might take one aspect/style to develop, create a focus for, and maybe a separate website from your other work.
• For the purposes of display of work it is probably better to keep different ’styles’ on separate websites / in different galleries / in different exhibitions.

…………………………………….

Despite all that, Scrabooli Studio is probably going to remain a mixing pot of everything I do. There is a new website in the pipeline though. . . . . so watch this space!

Well!

I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking in the last little while and have finally come to the conclusion that you can be an artist and not like those ways of creating art.

What really got the idea sunk into my heart though was a little walk with the sketch book a couple of weeks back…..
I decided one day that it was about time that I ‘got down to it’ and started developing my sketching skills further. So I took a walk down town to the mall and sat down, pen ready to sketch whatever caught my eye.

I managed a potted plant (It looked ok) and a kid busking on the corner (that looked ok too)…. But it was so tedious. Not boring, but not interesting either. I lasted about 20 minuets and gave up. 20 minuets and I was totally over it…. However I can spend hours drawing intricate doodles or fiddling with photos and creating textures in Photoshop.

So I have finally come to the conclusion that It doesn’t matter.
I am an artist anyway.

What makes my heart sing and my creative juices flow is textures and patterns and abstract art.

And its all OK.

2 versions of the winter special for Hollybank. The 1st created as an independent ad, the second intended to match the current style of Forestry Tasmania’s ads.

Another bit of fun For the DBH comp. This one has been a bit of a bomber. I like it…. But it seems that it is not generaly liked as a t-shirt design. Such is life!! I’ts fun though and that is the main point to art in my opinion!!

Another Design for DBH. This one is quite popular so far…. Which is fun!!

Like it? Vote here!

Another design for DBH that I had a little fun with yesterday. Vote for it here!

This is another one that I would like to have printed for myself… gotta keep dreaming