My Commonplace Notebook and February
Originally Published on my Patreon Page…
February 13, 2025
Tomorrow is Valentines day. Happy Valentines Day!
I love the month of February! I’m a late subscriber to the illustration world of social media. I see so many art challenges, so many draw this in your style prompts, etc. The beauty of this month is that wherever you look the color pallet used is some beautiful variation of pinks and reds. I’m still not motivated enough to put something together quick for a prompt or a challenge. Also, I’m not that fast, and as I already shared ideas come to me in a very different way. This time, I knew I wanted to expand on the illustration that I made last year, of my niece, staring or almost willing an old fashioned telephone to ring. Inspired by a Skillshare class (that I never finished but where I had downloaded a stamp mockup), I decided to test my photoshop skills and patience and come up with 3 quick digital illustrations to accompany the main illustration to then turn it into pattern block. Upon opening up the stamp mockup file I was surprised about how complex it was. And it wasn’t in a size that would suit my needs. Google to the rescue! I found a quick and simple tutorial to make my own stamps plus simple heart shaped patterns to be used as background. The attached is photo is what I came up with in 2 days, which I uploaded to Spoonflower. I had a new personal discovery. I’m beginning to fall in love with photoshop! especially the eye dropper icon/ function because for goodness sake I could’n come up with a pink that I liked on my own. I’m falling in love with the process of imagining and then seeing it on a product. I like the tea towels best, I will buy them for myself. February…
Valentines Stamps Pattern
Does anyone else write as an escape? I ask because I also have one more piece of art waiting for me to finish it. Why am I putting it off? It's so close to complete. I know…because I just love looking at it from a short distance, from my desk. I love seeing how it’s turning out. I love seeing it as a pencil drawing coming alive in color, layer by layer. This time I took pictures of the illustration at the end of each session. I will be sharing all the images and quick overview of my process on a post within my Bloom Tier, which is where I keep process notes and posts.
I also wanted to touch on how I use my common place notebook. First sharing that if I had followed my daily journaling process, I would have avoided 2 very frustrating days. In the end, or the solution to my frustration resulted in a fresh start, a reset and a refocus. I’ve come up with my own marketing strategy, not the same as an expert marketing strategy, but as Patricia, with my own approach to this endeavor type of strategy. I want to be proud of work that I produce and that includes how I share it and market it. I want to be proud of how I lead and live my life. And unfortunately everything that is recommended by the experts takes me away from creating, takes me from joyful and peaceful to frustrated and defeated. And happy that this realization comes from a place of peace which tells me it is the right direction for me or the best next step for me.
My common place journal is my companion. It is a specific brand, in a specific color, which costs me $20. I love the paper, the size of the journal, the size of the lines and how smooth my cheap pens feel against the paper when I write. I go through many pens! When I first adopted the practice of keeping a common place notebook, I used it as “the experts” recommended (I seem to have a thing for following experts advice before I decide to follow my own heart). But then I naturally fell into a flow of no fuzz, no restrictions, use as needed way of keeping this notebook. To quickly list the type of things I write, and in no specific order:
One full page of rants every now and then, and only when its very hard for me to focus, or when I’m mentally dispersed, or when I’m stuck on an issue but the issue hides from me 🙂 Immediately after I write, I sort myself out, and see what I consider a pearl of wisdom. I get to the pearl quicker and faster each time. I write one full page at most.
Lists of to dos that never make it to my Notion because these are smaller to dos that for some reason tend to hide and only come out when I’m in the middle of doing something like washing dishes, vacuuming, etc. Also by capturing these lists and not taking action, I get to review them and see that some items that seemed so urgent, were NOT even important at all.
Plans. To me planning is better on paper, no delete button and there is an actual hand to brain connection that happens when writing.
Lately, drawing thumbnails of ideas that just hit me all of the sudden.
A mental download (very different than my first bullet point). It turns out there is so much that I’m interested in that I have long paragraphs dedicated to these mental downloads of what I’m calling possible future projects. I may have to clone myself to do them all.
The obvious, note-taking when listening to a podcast, watching a video that I want to learn something from. There is the immediacy of what my brain considers important to notate and what my hand can quickly capture. Bonus, I allow myself to be sloppy but the writing has to at least be legible. I have a learning journal, but the practice of repetition by hand writing these same notes later in my learning journal allows me to reflect on the key points and decide what learning I want to apply to my life.
Research. Too long to explain. Goes back to “I’m interested in so much.”
There have been many, many times I’ve ignored my common place notebook. The results are not the best because I find that I think very fast and if I do not go through my process of reviewing, discerning, curating and/or prioritizing, I end up taking action on things that maybe should have waited. There are happy mistakes, but mostly wasted energy.
This notebook would not be called a common place notebook if it did not have an index and for that some sort of coding to track or differentiate among the type of notes or writing that I do. This I will expand on maybe later. It includes a weekly review. Do you keep your own common place notebook?