Updates and my favourite organizing tools coming right up.

In the coming weeks there will be some new upgrades coming up. Not only am I redesigning my resume and updating my PDF portfolio but I will also be updating the design of my webpage. It will have a similar theme to the current one but it will be simplified and more streamlined and centered the way I would like it to be. I also might have another freelancing project coming up soon too. 

And now onto the 5 organization tools I employ in my work space. 

1) The in/out box. This consists of two wire shelf boxes stacked on top of each other. This box has been great in making sure that bills that need to be taken care of are being paid. I put the mail in the in box on the top and then as I pay them I put them in the bottom. When there is a lot there then I file the papers in my filing cabinet. This leads to number 2.

2) The filing cabinet. My filing cabinet is where I store all my files in tidy and neat categories. So whenever I need to find something I can find it.

3) Canvas boxes with zip lid. These boxes are great for storing hats and extra blankets and keeping the dust off. I currently have three tan and pink zippered lid canvas boxes. I keep my extra blankets and hats in them to keep the dust off so when I need them they still look good. These I keep on top of the newest addition to my space. That is:

4) The 9 cube shelf with 5 canvas bins. I recently bought this at Giant Tiger and it was a great price. It came with the 9 cube shelf (in black) and 5 canvas bins (also in black). This is perfect for extra envelopes and electronics and you can hide the clutter away. 

5) My art kit. I have two art kits. One is a wooden box with one shelf in it and this is where I keep all my paint and paint brushes. My other one is much or mobile and is my prime graphic design kit. It has two pull out shelves and then there is a lot of space in the bottom. I keep all my tape, pencil crayons, pens and markers in here. I also keep my exact-o knives and other materials used for mounting work into portfolios. If you are going into school to be a graphic designer. I highly suggest getting a tackle box with multiple shelves and small enough that you can carry it.

Those are my top organizing tools and they work very well for me and keeps me very organized. 

Tired of your work space looking like a disaster zone? Read on.

Does your work space look like a tornado just blew through it? Or is your space more chaos than organized? If the answer is yes here is a blog post for you. 

As an artist I wasn't always the most clean person on the planet when it came to keeping my space organized. It eventually got to the point where I could not stand to work in the space and when that happens your productivity goes way down. Here are a few of my tried and true tips for taking a huge mess and turning it into a productive work space. 

To begin your organizing journey you are going to need a few things. Whether you have a mess the size Mount Everest or your space is minor chaos, you should follow these steps to keep your mess to a minimum.

To get started you are going to need a small clear space, some garbage bags and of course some boxes. Place them in this clear space and categorize them as follows.

1. Stuff you intend to keep. This is stuff you use all the time or on occasion or sentimental items you don't want to part with. You can use several boxes for this as well.

2. Garbage, recycling, and shredding. These will likely be what you use your garbage bags for. Garbage is pretty much anything that is broken or no longer usable by anyone. Shredding is for documents that might have sensitive information on them that you no longer need. These items should never be put in recycling or garbage unless shredded before hand. The last is recycling for any papers and boxes you no longer have any use for but can be recycled.

3. The giveaway box. This is for anything you don't need or really use but someone else can get some use out of. What you do with it is up to you but here are a few suggestions. Goodwill/Salvation Army or other organizations like Habitat for Humanity. These organizations will take your donated items clean them up and put them on sale in their stores for other people to buy and the proceeds usually go to organizations in your community. 

If you think you can make money on these item you can auction them off at the auction fairs or you can host a garage sale. Or you can simply give things away to friends or family that might be able to make use of them. 


Okay now that you are set up, the hard part begins of sorting through all your stuff. To keep it simple in your first round just sort your stuff into the above 3 piles I mentioned. Once you have completed this task (this may take several hours or days to do). When you are done throw out the garbage, recycling and shredded materials and get them out of your space. For the items you are not keeping, put them in a safe location but away from your space. 

For your second round you are going to organize into piles or boxes based on the use. This can vary depending on what you have in your space. For the purposes of this journal post, we'll go with the standard artist's lair. So for my space since I am a graphic designer, I separated into the following piles.

1. Art supplies (all my paints, paint brushes, sketch pads etc.).

2. Office supplies (envelopes, pens, pencils, printer paper etc.).

3. Media (cds, dvds, techy devices etc.)

4. Keepsakes and knickknacks

5. Board games and other gaming materials

My office space is in my bedroom so I did have other piles for personal items but I will not get into details with those items in this posting.

Once those piles have been sorted out and any of your own choosing, you can now work towards organizing the space. As you do this be sure to take a vacuum cleaner and other cleaners and clean the space as you organize. 

The key to a clean space is to keep like items in close proximity. So your office supplies go in one place and your art supplies go in another. Once you have done your initial organizing go back and organize your stuff every 5 or 6 months and make sure your not holding onto stuff that you are never going to use or should be in the garbage. I hope this posting will give people some help with cleaning up a huge mess.

In my next post I will go over some of the cool organizing devices I use in my space to keep me organized (like shelving units, pen holders, bins, and my filing system etc). If you are interested stayed tuned for that post coming within the next few days.

Portfolio Update and my favourite mediums

Well first right off the bat I will get the brief update out of the way. The portfolio page redesign has been completed and it better matches the style of the website and it is close to how my PDF portfolio was designed with a few images switched around. As I said before the works I removed from the page can still be viewed on DeviantArt and Flickr. My next task is my physical portfolio which will mirror the PDF and website versions.

The next topic I wish to mention is my favourite mediums that I have worked with a lot in my career. Without further ado here are my top 5 favourite design mediums. This does not include any digital mediums (photos, digital, animated etc.)

1. Watercolour - I really like how the paint blends to make nice colours. It also is a nice soft colour which works well for certain imagery. Clean up is not too bad and paint will wash out of clothes.

2. Chalk pastel - I like how well chalk pastel blends and again makes very nice soft colours. Clean up is also not too bad and usually washing clothes will take out the pigments.

3. Oil paint - Oil paint is good for when I want colours to stand out and I do enjoy the easy of the blending provided I have a decent brand of linseed oil and turpentine. Clean up is slightly more tedious as it usually requires more than soap and water.  Usually paint thinner is used for cleaning paint brushes and the pallet and pallet knife, however for skin and clothing turpentine is usually a little gentler but must be followed up with soap and water and a good hand cream.

4. Pencil crayon - Pencil crayon takes a little more work to blend in but it is definitely an interesting effect that you can get. Clean up is super easy.

5. Oil pastel - Can be a real stark contrast in colours, slightly harder to blend but still looks good when blended. Clean up is fairly easy though you must protect it with a fixative or it will end up transferring.

Other mediums I have worked with are tempera paint, acrylic paint, clay and plaster. Though some of these didn't quite make into my top 5 list, I do enjoy working with some of them.

Acrylic paint is a good alternative to oil paint, that isn't as hard to clean up. The downside is that it does dry faster and may need more coats of paint to get the effect you want.

In contrast I don't like working with tempera paint because I find it is often super runny and thin and doesn't blend quite the way I would like it to.

Clay and plaster are interesting mediums to use. I prefer the clay as I am better able to shape from nothing and add on to the clay as I work. Carving out using plaster can be more complicated. Sadly I cannot work so much in these mediums as I do not have the required materials to adequately work with them. 

As an artist you learn to work with multiple mediums and I am always open to trying new mediums. As much as a camera and the computer are fun to work with sometimes there is just a good feeling getting your hands dirty and just creating.


________________________________________________________________________
I am taking commissions. If you are interested in having something designed/illustrated or drawn please send me an email or contact me through my social media websites. 

I would also like to note that I currently only take payments for commissions through Paypal and Interac E-transfers.

Email: andrea.palmer855@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sereneconceptions
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/alleria855
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealeannepalmer
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SereneConcepts
DeviantArt: http://alleria855.deviantart.com
Flickr: https://www/flickr.com/photos/sereneconcepts

Canada Day Update

Well we are coming into July and Canada Day and Independence Day will soon be upon us. If you have visited my webpage recently you will have noticed a few changes to it and there will be some more on the way with a slight redesign of the portfolio page. In the mean time, i've updated my social media links and I am about to change the entry page. I may also be adding a few more works and removing some of the older ones too. Don't worry though the older ones I will likely keep on Deviantart or on my new flickr account. So you can still view them there. The links to them are below. 


What I have been doing lately is updating my PDF portfolio (which will not be making a debut on my webpage). Now that it is complete I have begun work on my non-digital portfolio and updating the portfolio page on my website. Still working on some personal projects and some of the complete ones will soon make their debut on one of my many webpages.

That is all for now. I hope everyone has a great Canada Day and Independence Day.  

I am taking commissions. If you are interested in having something designed/illustrated or drawn please send me an email or contact me through my social media websites. 


I would also like to note that I currently only take payments for commissions through Paypal and Interac E-transfers.

Email: andrea.palmer855@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sereneconceptions
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/alleria855
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealeannepalmer
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SereneConcepts
DeviantArt: http://alleria855.deviantart.com
Flickr: https://www/flickr.com/photos/sereneconcepts

Welcome to spring

Finally spring is upon us and that of course means a new season of freelance work. Got a few projects in the works and one recently completed and on hiatus indefinitely. This one will not be going up on my portfolio at this time as it has not been released to the public. Perhaps sometime in the future it will be. I am currently making a few updates to my webpage and working on a physical portfolio as well. 

I am taking commissions. If you are interested in having something designed/illustrated or drawn please send me an email or contact me through my social media websites. 

Email: andrea.palmer855@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sereneconceptions
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/alleria855/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrealeannepalmer
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SereneConcepts
DeviantArt: http://alleria855.deviantart.com/

I would also like to note that I currently only take payments for commissions through Paypal and Interac E-transfers.

The Croods

Well hello everyone alas I write to you again. It is of course a new year and so far I hope it is going well for everyone. I have been working on some projects and got some new ones cooking up but I wanted to write about my latest interest (obsession). So I got "the Croods" for Christmas and I guess this is a sort of impromptu review of the movie. 

Quite honestly I thought it was going to be your average guy meets girl, girl runs off with handsome "Guy" falls in love blah blah blah. Well I was WAY off the mark because the movie was darn AWESOME!. Dreamworks I am a fan of your movies. I mean Shrek was great and How to Train your dragon was wicked, but I have to say they out did themselves with the Croods. The characters which at first might seen simplistic are really quite complicated and well done. And the special effects well at times they looked real (if I wasn't watching an animated movie I might think it was real). 

Don't want to give away spoilers here but if you haven't seen it you NEED to! Lastly the music score on this movie was just so moving that I love just about every song in the soundtrack (Going Guy's Way being my favourite of the lot). So i've watched this movie a few times and well I can't get it out of my head lol. So already I did draw a sketch of Eep and Guy. I have a link to it below on my DeviantArt account. And I have ideas for some more drawings and the like. So, anyway if you have not seen the movie please do because it is quite simply amazing.

http://alleria855.deviantart.com/art/Eep-guy-428880945 - Link to my drawing of Eep and Guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrbwgn_kRBo#t=15 - The official Trailer for the movie