Weirdo Alert!

Something strange is happening.

I have an art degree and my favorite thing to do in art school was draw and paint from observation. But, fast forward to today and I could say that nobody on this earth could ever accuse me of being the most observant person in the world. I am just the opposite…I have tunnel vision. I zone out and focus solely on whatever it is that has my mind occupied. So, these days, I’ve been noticing…letters.

I do a lot of my drawing at night because I have people. Nighttime is the only “me” time I might get over the course of the day because the rest of the time, I’m either at work, or my people are around. The youngest of the people (my daughter) seems to know whenever I’m about to try to draw during the day because she will walk up to me and plant herself on my lap no matter how many pencils, pens or paper pads are currently occupying it. It usually happens about two minutes in and it has happened so often that I’ve just decided to put off much drawing until her bedtime. But, late one afternoon, a couple of my people and I went to the park. We were just walking along when I saw this pole covered in letters and pictures.

We walked a little further, and I saw some on a bench…

A little further, and we saw more on a bulletin board and other structures around the skateboard park.

I would say it was the first time it happened. But, I’d be lying. It happened at the grocery store too. I was only there to pick up a few things. But, I also wound up noticing some nice letters and illo on some Aveeno products.

Weird, right? Fortunately, it just makes me want to see and draw more letters and inspiration is cool.

I do think it’s a peculiar tendency that we want to see our letters out in the world. Whether it’s just hanging out in a park or commercialized and mass-produced as signage in a store, we want our letters and our mark out doing something in the wild. I think it makes it that much more real and tangible…to say that we were here or to be able to say, “Look ma! I did that!”
I recently made a label and some postcards for a friend using her logo and some very clean, basic designs using her brand colors. After I printed her test prints, I was inspired to print my own post cards using the lettering I’ve been doing on the #cmldchallenge, just to see what they’d look like.

I think they’re pretty cute! I think this challenge was mostly for biz owners that letter or are calligraphers. But I’m thinking these would be perfect for my students in the classroom…whenever we go back.

I’ll post them around and let them hang out in my classroom for a while.