Hey guys, hope your week has gone well! This week I wanted to talk about the importance of breaking away from just working on school projects alone.

Creating for yourself can be just as important as creating for an assignment or a customer

Don’t get me wrong, finishing your school work is very important! But I also think it’s important to work on things for yourself. We are currently a month or so into the semester, and we are probably all beginning to get a little overwhelmed. For example, most of my classes this semester are Graphic Design themed. Though they’re good classes, I’m an illustration major, and my hands need to draw. It’s just what comes naturally to me. Without a painting or drawing class, I don’t really know what to do with myself, and I can’t really express myself through designing logos or creating ligatures.

That’s why I like to give myself little tasks or little side projects!

My cats, shown here, are all based on classic fantasy adventurers. I picked a different breed of cat for each, thinking about how that breed would fit to the personality of a warrior, mage, or bard. They were largely inspired by the fact that I love Dungeons and Dragons, as well as cats.

Even little things, like how I made a little series of adventurer cats. They help keep me working on something that I enjoy, and helps me keep an eye on my own progress in terms of drawing. I think it’s important too to take your mind off things you may find stressful, and if you are working solely on art as homework, you may forget the reason why you chose to go into an art major in the first place!

So don’t forget to take a break and draw something that you want to draw, or paint, or doodle. Creating for yourself can be just as important as creating for an assignment or a customer.

That’s all for this week, but have a great week guys, and don’t forget to keep on creating!