highlighters

From seemingly insignificant doodles to realised designs-reflecting on creative growth

I have been spending some time on my website, working on improving the SEO, so I have found myself delving deep into my OLD blog posts. It’s a bit embarrassing to look back, but ultimately, it has given me perspective and shown me how far I have come in my creative pursuits. It has also been enjoyable to see the origins of some of my current work.

For instance, in 2014 (wow, 10 years ago!), I was drawing highlighters with highlighters and that lead me to paint a sweet gouache painting of a bunch of highlighters in a grid layout.

My original sketch of highlighters drawn with highlighters.

My gouache painting of highlighters. I left off the type saying highlighter and added VERY IMPORTANT-TAKE A LOOK.

This then led me to recreate the idea digitally in Procreate. I kept the type that reads “VERY IMPORTANT-TAKE A LOOK,” but decided to bring back the streaky effect that actually occurs when you draw with a highlighter marker. I did just make this design available in my Spoonflower shop, so check it out if you are interested. :)

My digital illustration created in Procreate.

While I was tempted to delete the Highlighter Blog Post from 2014 because there is absolutely nothing remarkable about that post at all, I decided to keep it as it is a reminder to me that creativity is a process, a journey, and one random little doodle can often lead to bigger and better designs and ideas. It reminds me that I must continue to make those little doodles that mean nothing at the time because you never know where they will lead you.

I have more examples that I can think of, and once I gather up the images, I will be sure to share because I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to TAKE A LOOK and reflect on where you are and where you started.

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