Around July 2016 I picked an interest in coloring books. I’ve always liked coloring, it’s like revisiting the childhood, but with all the new skills and way more control over my hand. Strangely enough, I don’t like drawing, it’s never been an appealing activity for me. (And here I am, studying design!). Filling things with color is a different story though.
In October I got Johanna Basford’s planner, that features selection of her images from three bigger books. Each week there’s a different picture to color, and that’s where it started for real. I’ve been mostly able to keep up until now. I skipped a few weeks here and there, but for the most part pictures have been regularly filled with color. I’m quite surprised I managed. I love it so much.
(The first picture I completed and one of the latest)
About a week or two ago I got an idea to make some League of Legends characters in fuse beads. My friend has been doing a lot of those geeky patterns last year, and I was super skeptical about it back then, I didn’t want to join that silly activity. But now I grabbed some of the leftovers and started working on my own ideas. Without patterns. I was warned that doing those without patterns is difficult, but it’s not. It’s challenging and super fun, when I “agonize” for days whether it should be that or a different way. So satisfying!
(First try and final version on Skarrl [reference pic])
All these activities are so deeply satisfying, and I wish I could do that forever! It’s a very similar feeling I got when I was working on my Halloween costume two years ago, when I was building Officer Vi gauntlet. It was so fun I didn’t see the time going by, ending up in going home at 3 AM.
Officer Vi gauntlet (WIP)
Last week we did a pretty awesome analogue presentation wall for our external tutors. It was so much fun to work on! It wasn’t easy and took a lot of hours, but I’m proud of what we achieved. It looked majestic. I really prefer all this analogue, paper stuff over constantly working on the computer, and also instead of just working on school projects.
Presentation wall for a project checkpoint
My school definitely helped me to come in terms with creativity. Now I feel I’m allowed to call myself a designer. Before that I was only occasionally making scrapbooking-style Christmas/birthday cards, in addition to occasionally working on some simple graphic design stuff. I never thought much of it, but thanks to studying design I started appreciating all these creative side hobbies, some that I developed thanks to the newly-found confidence. But after this long Easter weekend when I dived into all these pleasant creative hobbies and home decor, I don’t want to go to school again. School feels like so much struggle right now. The projects we’re doing are interesting, but they don’t make me get that same spark I get when I work on my solitary activities. I’m socially tired again, being around people all days drains all my energy. Every week is a fight until the weekend when I can just shut my door and focus on my hobbies and activities that really bring out my love for creating things.
I wonder if it all feels good just because it’s a hobby and stuff I want to do for myself, not stuff that I’m required to do.
Reply