Diamonds in My Creative Sky
Happy New Year and what a wonderfully creative year it will be here at LynnDylan Designs!
I ended 2022 on a great note - completing a year’s worth of monthly blog posts and it has me energized and excited for another year of monthly blog posts and creativity at my fingertips. I learned some lessons about myself through that experience. (I will share more on this later!) I pondered setting creative goals in 2023 while also not overdoing it. This blog is a place of love and fun for me and I am careful to not overstep that line into stressfulness of another thing I need to do each month. Life is busy, but having creative goals just for myself is very fulfilling and that is what this is all about. I am hopeful for things to come in 2023 and putting myself and my work out there just a little farther.
Hannah’s 2023 Creative Goals:
Continue to blog monthly at lynndylan.com
Create an email list and use it. If you would like to join - click here
Each month’s blog posts will have a monthly theme around a shape
Create one video monthly for my youtube channel Hannah Koch's youtube channel
Make more things in clay
My word of the year:
MAKE
Creating a word of the year feels like you are working towards an overarching theme for yourself. I have not had a word of the year in quite some time, but I wanted to try it for 2023.
I got to this word not by my own, but rather playing along on an Instagram post by the amazingly talented Morgan Harper Nichols. Morgan Harper Nichols is a talented and creative visual artist, musician and poet and someone you need to follow. She describes herself as an autistic multidisciplinary artist. Morgan Harper Nichols use of color and just the right wording is so pleasing to the eye. I love how compositionally strong her work is while also looking effortlessly created. Her words are sure to inspire you even on the worst days and her own life story is inspiration alone. She is a must know, so check out her website and instagram:
Website: Morgan Harper Nichols
Instagram: Morgan Harper Nichols
Make sure to find her post on Instagram here where you screenshot as a rolling list of words plays to get your word of the year. Morgan says its just for fun - but when I got the word make on the first try - I felt like it was providence.
Creative Lessons I learned in 2022:
Consistency can be done through staying with an idea even as it ebbs and flows in my mind.
Creating something, even if it is not perfect by my ideals is better than thinking the next idea will be better.
Breaking the over analysis paralysis mindset takes tiny steps and trickery of the mind. It may not always work, just keep trying.
Ideas are plentiful in my mind and I have the ability to hone in and be specific.
I possess the technical abilities to scan in my artwork and use it in a new way.
My imagination is my best resource.
Shape of the month:
DIAMOND
For blogging this year, I made the decision to have a running theme each month. I wanted a simple idea, but one that I could dive into and have fun with each month. Many themes came to mind, but I settled on shapes. This means, each month I will explore with a variety of media the chosen shape and create with them.
Diamond or rhombus is a great first challenging shape to use and work with! I realized I had no templates of diamonds. So I got busy using recycled cereal boxes and card stock to make several different sized diamond shapes.
Below are some photos of a variety of cards, clay earrings and a sketchbook page that I have made all using the diamond shape.
The clay earrings above were a fun pair I actually made last year, long before I decided on the diamond shape for this month’s blog post. I used cloves to press into the clay in a pattern and then glazed in this yummy iron yellow color.
This month’s coloring page:
Make sure to see the artist trading card (ATC) on the right side of the coloring page.
For each month’s coloring page in 2023, I will be drawing a new ATC. So make sure to print, color, cut out and collect all 12!
Watch this time lapse video that shows how I drew this month’s coloring page.
Over the course of this month, I have realized how little I go to the diamond shape in my creative practice. However, I did recall a lovely pair of earrings I made in 2019 from sterling silver tubes that hung nicely as a dangle earring. This pair sold pretty quickly, but I would like to make more of these in this lovely shape.
Thank you for those who signed up to receive my newsletters each month to let you know when my blog post dropped! This has been on my to do list for a very long time and I am excited to gather those interested in my work in one place to let you know when things are happening at Lynndylan Designs.
May your days be filled with small joys and diamonds in your sky.
Stay creative~
Hannah