Club High Castle Pre-Pandemic

Get your red pens out. It's time to edit! Part Three of my series on the creative process Missed the previous posts? Here they are:  Intro | Part One | Part Two This is the most time consuming stage of the creative process. This is when you’ll grab your grammar police badge and mark up your first draft with a red pen. Be ruthless to yourself. This is when you’ll step back from your drawing and fix any stray shadows or messy lines you missed. For graphic design, this is when you’ll make sure your image's attributes are correct (aspect ratio, for instance). Is something stretched too far? Is it squished too thin? Is everything spelled correctly? Once you get that next draft going, it is time to consider getting a second pair of eyes. Word to the wise, keep your battered rag-doll of a first draft buried within the confines of your hard drive. I learned this the hard way. A first draft is something that only a mother can love. Why hide it from the world? There are m...

Plan, Practice, and Patience! Plan  Something amazing is buzzing through your head, and you are compelled to create it. This is the part where you jot your awesome idea down. Here are a few suggestions that have always worked for me in the past: Art/Crafts - make a few quick sketches Writing - make an outline of the basic premise Graphic Design -  piece together a diagram. Now is the time to figure out what your idea’s purpose is. This is the most important stage because everything that comes after it builds up to your project's meaning. How will the story end? What feeling do you want your painting to evoke? What message is your graphic design ad/cover/logo getting across? Asking those basic questions opens your mind to a huge flow of new ideas. Let them come. They will improve upon your initial idea. Sure, there'll be some doozies that fall flat, but they will only help you sharpen and forge your idea. Practice  This stage is straightforward and d...

Stop and look both ways before crossing the street! You’ve got this great idea. It might be the most awesome thing since instant coffee, and you want to rush your fabulous thing so that the world can see it! We're talking ASAP. You scramble faster than a NASCAR driver at the Daytona 500 and zoom through that final lap. You post it on the Internet. ...Aaaaannnnnd you wait for the likes. The Internet is dead silent. You ask yourself, "Why?" Your thing has all the fabulousness of Thranduil, King of Mirkwood riding his beautiful elk into battle, right? This is a pitfall everyone has fallen into at one point or another, myself included. You're giddy, and you feel young again! You have all the excitement of a 10 year old kid who just finished stringing a macaroni necklace. The teacher loved it. You show it off to your parents. DAD LOOK WHAT I MADE! LOOK HOW AWESOME! You got that instant thumbs up back then. It was a sure deal. Posting your stuff on the internet...

I’ve been thinking about the creative process a lot lately, so I decided to do a seven part series on it--helpful ways you can tap into your inner creative genius to produce something awesome. Whether you're an artist, a writer, a graphic designer, or into arts and crafts, I hope you'll find this series useful. Why am I doing this all of a sudden? Let's just say that I recently had a run in with reality. I jumped headfirst into a tub of ice and got a painful reminder of how rough blindly leaping into unknown waters can be. Yes, I should have known better. I should have done my homework, and I shouldn't have laid a first draft bare like that. My feelings = ouch. Lesson learned. Image originally found on Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain But it wasn't for nothing. It jolted me awake as if I had just guzzled down a giant can of Monster before pulling an all nighter. I am the typical, excitable American. We have a grave weakness for letting that hot rus...