Koality work and new Koalifications

Sorry for the puns...but only a little

Old struggles; new outlets!

It’s no secret that my biggest opportunity for improvement in my work is my creativity. (Funny enough, my boyfriend told me yesterday that his favorite thing about me is my creativity…so it’s interesting how we can see ourselves so differently than those around us, but I digress.)

In my personal life, I love to crochet, paint with watercolors and acrylics, pick up a cross-stitch or two…and even recently I started looking into one-line drawing because that caught my eye as well! So all these creative hobbies, why don’t I consider myself creative?

Good Question, honestly —

In each of those endeavors, I’m almost always working from a pattern or doing what the instructor is telling me to do in a video. Sometimes I will put my own spin on it, but it is still just a copy of what someone else has already done. It’s not new.

And that’s okay!

I just consider myself good at following directions rather than being creative. I struggle to sit in front of a blank canvas (or text editor) and envision some grand new thing.

Starting…at the end?

Part of my problem is that I try to start from the end. I want to get out the final draft from the beginning. I want to build a website and need to put up the perfect layout of it RIGHT AWAY.

That doesn’t seem to work. So why do I think that will change??

New Koala-fications

Here’s a good example from a recent, random creative burst.

In my web design program, we had a lesson about black and white/grayscale. We were told to hop into our design program and do some simple stuff in black and white and then something in grayscale. I was excited about it and actually felt like I could get creative, but as soon as I was looking at a blank canvas it’s like my mind was mirroring that white expanse! I got a few things churned out, but I wasn’t excited about them.

Later that evening, I was watching Izzy’s Koala World with my son (it’s seriously the cutest show and you should go watch it if you haven’t — it’s on Netflix) and realized…koalas are mostly grayscale. I can make a koala in Affinity! Their face is really just a few basic shapes! Circle face, two ovals for the ears, two circles for the eyes, some sort of rounded shape for the nose…so I got to work!

It had the basic idea of the koala there, right? I was happy enough to share it with the rest of the students in my program. Got some compliments even.

But as I kept seeing those cute little faces on my TV I knew it wasn’t quite there. Their fluffy ears are one of my favorite things…so I wanted to enhance that. A paintbrush stroke is better than a solid, boring line, but it’s still not fluffy.

So with my beginner knowledge, the best I could come up with was a few multi-pointed stars, then I added paintbrush stroke to that and got to this point. Better! But it still looked off and I could tell that it still wasn’t there. I watched the TV show again and realized…the proportions! I had adjusted them some, but they still needed some work. So I set off on that project, and added the ear-fluff-technique to the whole head so now everything is fluffy!

This was the end result of my koala for the day. An assignment that was strictly just for grayscale. But I saw a grayscale animal and decided to jump in and try it out! Using my surroundings and personal life as an inspiration to put into my learning.

An Interesting Realization

As I looked back over the different versions I had created (and laughing at the clown-like appearance of the first one) I realized it was a good analogy for learning and creating things.

First version -
Got the basics out in front of me. I had all the right pieces and I can see how they look together.

Update #1 -
Add some more details and adjust the proportions

Update #2 -
Really finetune the proportions and rearrange or resize or reshape the pieces that I had.

If I can do that with one drawing of an animal, I can do that with everything I do. Specifically, I thought about building a website.
#1 - What needs to be there? What are the absolute basics that this specific website could not function without? (Images, explanations, contact, etc.)
#2 - How does it look? Does anything need to be added? Should anything be added? Or moved? Do it! Nothing is stopping you.
#3 - Keep repeating #2…that’s it. That’s the story.

Nothing needs to be perfect on the first attempt

I mean…that doesn’t apply to flying an airplane or brain surgery. Some things need that kind of perfection.

— But building a website is a process! And can (and will) constantly be changed!

So it’s time to let loose and have some fun!