Draw With Me in Photoshop!

With the wild, uncertain times we’re living in, we’re all certainly spending more time at home. Studies have shown that learning a new skill like drawing can help with stress, so I thought I’d share videos from my time with Adobe Live earlier this year. These two videos cover the basics of how I set up the artwork that I do digitally – both hand-lettering (as seen in the video above) and character based illustrations, like the one below.

Hope you enjoy these and find them helpful during this time to learn how to draw and paint in Photoshop!

A Very Pastel Christmas

I’m very excited to join Treetopia’s Design Council 2019: Holiday Style Stars campaign this year! I selected a tall, 7’ white Christmas tree because I think gold and white are the most festive of colors together. For my ornaments, I love pastel colors and a mix of vintage ornaments (like the elf head and soft angels) with ornaments from our travels together throughout the years. Ryan and I also give each other an ornament each year in our stocking, which you can spy on the tree are things like the pancakes (for him) and clamshell pearl (for me). Before the presents come out, I set up a pastel Christmas village on our tree skirt to be more festive!

I also got this lovely wreath that I decorated with berries and pink poinsettia because I just love pink poinsettia (but they’re toxic for animals so I don’t keep real ones around). It feels festive but light, which helps during these days where it gets dark early. I also added a tiny Christmas cottage to go with our Christmas village below.

You can find my white tree here on Treetopia.

The wreath here.

And the white garland here!

Scroll all the way to the bottom for a way to enter to win a Treetopia tree for you and a friend!

Check out all the set ups from these wonderful creatives below!

And FINALLY: here’s a chance to win 1 Treetopia of your choice for you and a friend! Just head over to this link here to enter! Good luck and happy holidays!

A Very Pink Halloween

Halloween is possibly my very favorite holiday, and I love celebrating it with all thing spooky cute. It ushers in fall, which is my favorite season as the summer cools and apples ripen and leaves crisp. So when Treetopia and the Queen of Halloween herself, Jennifer Perkins, asked me to participate in their Scary Room Series, I jumped at the chance!

They sent me this dreamy pastel pink tree and a white iridescent garland to put my own creative spin on for Halloween. I love the idea of a tree you leave up and change out the decorations for Halloween and Christmas.

I went with a very vintage-inspired black, white, orange, and pink Halloween. Kept it spooky with a black raven tree topper (just watching you, always), and black bats along the walls, natch. I found vintage Halloween illustrations online and swapped them into my existing art frames. I also cut out little masks for my Sabrina poster so that the corner would be all themed out.

In addition to Halloween Shiny Brites (!!!) that I found at HomeGoods and glittery spiders from Michaels, I took a stab at making my own Halloween ornaments! It was my first time experimenting with air dry clay so they definitely turned out more homemade than couture, but I kind of love the handmade feel for achieving that kind of creepy, off-kilter vintage Halloween charm. I really enjoyed using all my creative skills to take on this Scary Room challenge!

Now here’s the exciting part…you have TWO chances to win a colorful tree of your own!

FIRST CHANCE TO WIN:
Treetopia and I are giving away ONE 6’ Pretty in Pink Christmas Tree so that you can have one just like mine! To enter for a chance to win, follow these steps:

1) Follow both me @anndanger and @treetopia on Instagram.
2) Leave a comment on my Instagram post of this tree telling me your favorite Halloween costume ever.
3) Share my Instagram photo of this contest in your IG Stories.

That’s it! A winner will be selected on October 2, 2019.

SECOND CHANCE TO WIN:
As I mentioned earlier, Treetopia is hosting a blog hop with 12 awesome creatives putting their own spin on Halloween. We all hid the Treetopia logo in our set-ups, and you can go on an online scavenger hunt to find them in every blog post. THREE winners will go home with a tree from Treetopia! Contest runs from September 24 to October 10, 2019.

Thank you so much to Treetopia and Jennifer Perkins for inviting me to join them on their Scary Room Series this year! I had so much fun styling and shooting for my favorite holiday, and I hope you enjoy these photos too.

Tokyo Treasures Puzzle

I’m excited to share my first PUZZLE, published by Galison! They licensed one of my photographs from my trip to Tokyo and I’m so jazzed. I love puzzles and Tokyo, so this is basically my dream come true.

You can get your own here on the Galison website!

Women's March 2019: Free Downloadable Protest Sign!

Are you marching on January 19, 2019 with fellow resistance members? Then treat yourself to this FREE DOWNLOADABLE protest sign I made just for you!

Click here to download.

The sign is meant to be printed at 18 x 24" cardstock, which can be printed at places like Staples or FedEx. You can also DIY it by tiling the image on your home printer!

Here are also some helpful tips I gathered from Emily McDowell Studios & Knock Knock Stuff about printing protest signs (and they offer some great ones for free here and here too):

• Staples: Start with their Poster printing here.

• FedEx: Go here for their poster printing page to start your order. Here’s the link for their mounted poster sign printing.

Check their respective sites for pricing options.

The downloadable artwork is for PERSONAL USE ONLY. Do not use this for commercial use or put it on any products – if you do this, my lawyer will be in contact with you and he is a shark. If you’re interested in licensing the image for such purposes, please email me.

If you do use it in the march OR share it on social media, please tag me in a photo of it on social media! @anndanger for all platforms.

Happy Marching & let’s keep up the resistance to this unacceptable reign of hate and fear.

FAQ: Advice for Beginners

Hi there. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted on my blog, and like with all new years, I’m starting this year armed with a list of optimistic goals for the year and one of them includes updating my blog more regularly. I plan for it to be a place where I can share more in-depth looks on work I’ve done, special announcement details, answer FAQs, and more!

I’m kicking it off today with a new FAQ column. And if you have a question you’d like me to answer in this column, feel free to leave it in the comments underneath the post. You know how a blog post works.

Q: What are some tips for beginner artists?

The main advice I always give to people starting out is: Do good work and be good to work with. This should take you far in your career, even far beyond being a beginner. Work on your skills so much that you are making work you’re proud of, and then be easy to work with. That doesn’t mean be a pushover or taking less money (or even worse, “exposure”) as payment – it means being a good communicator, respectful, bringing your ideas to the table, and making the designer/art director/hiring contractor’s job easier. You’re on the same team, so come as a team player to solve the design problems at hand together. We’re all better together!

Two: Be on time. Respect a deadline. Always turn work in on time and you’re already far and above the rest.

And a third piece of advice for the road: Draw as much as you can. Get that 10,000 hours of mileage underneath you so that execution and skill is not a hurdle for you. Draw from life, draw from reference, draw from the masters, draw from your favorite artists. Study line, gesture, color, design. You’ll need it for everything you’re about to create down the road.

And that’s it! If you have any more specific questions, again, please leave them in the comments below!

Grow Wild Workshop!

I'm so excited to announce that I'll be speaking as part of a line up of wildly talented and creative business folks at the Grow Wild Workshop hosted by Violet Tinder Studios! To be honest, public speaking is not my favorite but I'm warming up to it because I realized how important it is for me to stand up, tell my story, and be seen as a woman of color artist & entrepreneur. While I never think of myself as a woman of color first, I know how important it is to be out here representing. As Marian Edelman Wright said, "You can't be what you can't see." 

That being said, it's not something I'm planning on doing a lot (after all, if you're out there talking the talk, you don't have time to be in the studio walking the walk, and I have a lot more work to make!) – but I am very excited for this opportunity to speak to a small group for this very inspiring and beautiful event!

So if you've ever wanted to hear me talk about my career, answer your very specific questions, and talk shop in general – please come! Tickets are on sale TODAY, space is VERY limited, and the prices go up to their full price in a week!

Here are the event details:
Grow Wild Workshop
Sunday, March 11, 2018
10 AM - 4 PM
San Juan Capistrano, CA
Includes food, goodie bags, champagne toast, and more to come!
Get tickets, speaker info, and more here!
 

January Favorites

I thought it'd be nice to keep track of the things that I've read, watched, listened to, bought, and loved each month – the things that I can't stop thinking about and recommending to friends – in a new column. It's nice to look back and remember what I was into each month, since this world moves so fast and we evolve even faster with it.

So, for January, here's what I loved:

1. Daring Greatly, by Brené Brown
2. Oprah's Golden Globe speech. (I made this above artwork inspired by it, you may get the print in my shop – I'm donating 50% of the proceeds to the TimesUp Legal Defense Fund).
3. And of course, Oprah's Super Soul Conversations podcast, especially the episodes with Brené Brown, Shawn Achor, Shonda Rhimes, and RuPaul.
4. Body Love, by Kelly Leveque
5. Ingrid Goes West 
6. The Post
7. Testing out this Watermelon Glow Sleep Mask from Glow Recipe.
8. Yoga with Adriene! I love this 5 minute morning video for when I just gotta get going.
9. These high-waisted Madewell jeans changed my life.

What are some things you discovered and loved in January?
 

My Favorite Packaging & Shipping Sources

I've switched my shipping suppliers this year due to some very disturbing news that came to public light about my original supplier, and I wanted to share my new favorite places to get supplies so that you could also make the switch. Sourcing requires a huge amount of time and resources to research and try out different products (in corporations, it's someone's entire job!), so I don't often share my suppliers but I wanted to make it easier in this special case to support and build better businesses and in turn, a better world. It's important to vote with your dollars, especially when you're running a business and you get to make these decisions. Resistance and change starts with small steps, even these.

Here are my favorite packaging & shipping suppliers:

• PaperMart - I get my flat shippers for prints and boxes for pins and larger items from here.

• ClearBags - all my sleeves and backing boards come from here, they also have eco-friendly packaging too that I'll be checking out with my next order!

• Amazon - when I need things in a pinch (Prime shipping!), more hit or miss so read the reviews!

• EcoEnclose - this one was recommended to me on IG so I haven't tried them out yet, but I'm switching to more eco-friendly packaging as I move forward with my business in 2018 because I think it's important to be conscientious of the trash we're creating in this world. It's gonna be a major issue if we don't!

• RoyalMailers - recommended by my friend Robin of Scotch & Cream

• GT Bag - recommended by my friend Liz of Lionheart Prints

• Kelly Paper - recommended by my friend Jian of Bearo, I also have gone to Kelly Paper before to pick up plastic sleeves. It's best to go in store, so they're good if you're in a pinch!

Please let me know if you have any favorite shipping/packaging supply places in the comments!