Every year, I create a printable calendar which I tend offer for download. For years I did it via the blog by offering the whole 12 pages in November or December and then release the page of the month at the start of the month.
For the past few years though I have shifted to making it available to my Patreons first and then put the page of the month up as a free download on the first of each month on my website (you can access the page of the month in the freebie zone)
The 2023 edition is no different, it's now live as a tier 2 and 3 reward on Patreon and by January 1st, you'll be able to download the January page and print it by becoming a member on Home Cyn Home and access the freebie page (it's free to join).
Creating the 2023 edition of the calendar has been a HUGE challenge. I normally have a theme and start working on the illustrations around June - July, but this year I blanked completely, so much so that I turned to my audience and asked them for ideas via Instagram stories and very quickly ended up with many good suggestions, but got creatively stuck implementing them.
I had a glimmer of hope doodling in my sketchbook and got this idea of a series of minimalist portraits in a retro color palette, but 2-3 illustrations in and I lost the drive and the project was forgotten. Now said project is truely gone because I never backed up those illustrations and sketches before my iPad crashed last week.
Then in September, inspired by a cute esoteric label to a handbag I bought, I got working on a beautiful esoteric theme, out of which the first art print illustration is available exclusively to my Tier 3 Patreons, and I had a plan. 4-5 illustration into it and I couldn't produce more that met my high standards and I got massively frustrated with it all, hitting another creative block of epic proportions. Then, we reached October and on my monthly planning page in my BuJo I had written "Finish calendar this month"
Finish????? I had not even started yet!!!!! I decided to keep it simple and stop trying to find a super ground breaking theme, because I clearly had no time to pull it off, and with the Christmas shopping season my attention cannot be on creating calendar illustrations so far into the year. So, I looked at all the patterns I have been creating this year, and decided to use my favourites as background patterns for my calendar page. I already had the calendar template ready, because I use the same every year, changed the fonts, and then got to work creating all 12 pages in just a few hours about 3 weeks back. I made it a vow that I would not get out of my desk chair until that was done and dusted, turned my phone on silent, and got to work. A lot of the patterns in it are retro inspired because in the past few weeks I have been on a Mod pattern kick, after all Mod is back and it's one of the trends you do not want to turn a blind eye to. The Gen Z is now deeply into vintage stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
So will you join me on Patreon? Or will you wait for the 1st of every months to download it one page at a time?
Comentários