Before I sit down at my desk to do any kind of work in the morning, I drink a hot cup of matcha and do some kind of physical activity like stretching, jump roping, or going for a quick walk. I find that when I skip this step, I feel more easily distracted, less focused, and stiffer at the end of the day. I’m not perfectly consistent, but I’m a big advocate of putting the pencil down regularly and tending to one's physical and mental health.
If I’m working on an editorial project, I'll grab my tablet or a stack of
sticky notes and write down some ideas I may have based on the title alone and
then I read through the brief several times, looking for key words or
paragraphs as “hooks” for the image. If the brief is on a complex topic or
about a person, I’ll do supplemental research, looking up other articles and/or
biographies to get a deeper sense of the subject. I do more writing than
drawing in this initial stage, creating some mind maps or sentences of concepts
I’d want to explore further, as ideas come rapidly and sometimes it’s faster to
briefly describe in words what I’m thinking before doing a few squiggly
thumbnails. The goal is to just get the ideas out as quickly as possible
to sift through later. | |
For the first sketch, I was really intrigued by the idea that, "storytellers shape this world, and our understanding of it." So surrounding a planet within this starburst are various storytellers doing different activities like writing, thinking, speaking, editing, etc. I thought it would still get at the idea of how to craft a story but is more about how storytelling is this dynamic creative event.
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The third one is more simple and
straightforward. I was thinking about how the point of storytelling is about
connection and how a good story can captivate us, so in the middle of an
enthralled crowd is a person energetically sharing a story. |
