Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a digital Art Summit hosted by Two Tap (https://twotap.art/).
First off, I cannot stress enough how important it is as a creative professional to regularly submerse oneself into art, other people’s art, new tools, techniques, teachings, blogs, etc. You need to fill your cup in order to produce creations that are not mundane. Second, this summit was anything but ordinary! I highly recommend it.
Admittedly I came into the sessions with a wealth of knowledge of my own so there were points where I naturally shifted into multitasking while partially paying attention. It’s still nice to see how other people use some of the same tools that I do. It’s also nice seeing a different style using the same set of tools. It’s kind of like splashing your face with cold water, you’ve experienced it many times over but still there’s a little bit of a wake up call.
On to the “GOODS”, and spoiler there were many takeaways! I listened to several speakers over the course of 4 days. The biggest personal take away for me is the acknowledgement of THAT many creative speakers/demonstrators/trainers/teachers is TOO many back to back in a single day. I need breaks in between sessions to actually APPLY any learnings. The good news is these were recorded sessions so I could pause and go back through as I needed to.
Key takeaway #2, and this one really hit home for me, as a creative professional you absolutely need a visual, easy-to-recognize identity. Earlier this year I applied to a local Art Gallery, and sadly they declined and echoed an intrusive (yet necessary) thought. Officially there was no statement from this Gallery as to why they declined. Unofficially, I became painfully aware that the sentiment regarding my art was “Spaghetti on the wall.” The idea being throwing everything you have at the wall to see what sticks. The representative who shall remain nameless was an absolute delight to work with, and I may have sweetly pressured to get that sentiment out of them. I can be fairly convincing when I want to be.
Back to the point: they were right. I, too, felt I had a lack of (visual) identity. I can flex across many styles and artistic media. It’s a very handy skill to have, but can often feel disjointed. I think most of us at some point or another feel that way.
Multiple speakers at this summit provided insights into how they start a project, or a new series, or a portfolio. It wasn’t just one speaker who helped me arrive at the highly sought after “Ah ha!” moment, but several over the course of days 2 & 3 primarily. One of the info nuggets they imparted was how to keep a unified visual identity that spans multiple different artists' media. The key for one of the speakers was to keep the same color pallet across your entire body of work.
Example time:
Right now, in my studio, I am working on a full sheet of watercolor paper on a piece that has yet to be finished and titled, but is codenamed “The Big Dang Thing.” Before I started adding color to this piece - which started with ink drawing - I made a color swatch of every single watercolor paint I have on hand that fit the mood I had in mind. This was tedious, and absolutely was live streamed on Twitch. (Twitch.tv/s4ltibusiness). This included every brand of paint, too, so I have multiple swatches of “the same color”; which, if you know anything about water color paint - is a lie. Every brand has their own formula, and each one has a different use in my painted world.
Once I had the color swatches done, I picked a limited palette for the painting. I wanted a warm, mysterious vibe, so I picked the colors which I thought would achieve the best results. I then created a color matrix, badly.
No really, I somehow forgot that watercolors would bleed. So the first column in my matrix is terribly ugly, yet still gave me the results I wanted to see. This tool helped me to see how my colors would interact with one another and the best way to layer them and keep the translucency I wanted. This isn’t something I learned at the summit by the way, this is something I’ve known how to do for 20+ years. It also happens to be something I don’t do very often because I find it tedious and SOMETIMES I find it to be a creativity blocking element. I usually prefer to paint from a messy, well-loved paint palette. For “the Big Dang Thing” I decided the project needed a little more structure to achieve my goals.
Getting back on track to the summit! So now, using my real and tangible paint palette with my matrix, I can, and did identify their digital counterparts. I use a variety of digital art and design software for reference. This summit primarily highlights Procreate, which happens to be one the programs I use. Through tedious and sometimes frustrating trial and error I honed in on my unified palette. What does that mean? It means for 2025 I now have a set of digital colors that will feed my design and illustration portfolio. These same colors will also be the primary and secondary colors I use going forward on my traditional studio art pieces. This, fingers crossed, is how I am going to tie my skills into a unified identity. Stay tuned, I will be covering this process more in depth and plan to also offer tools available for download through S4lti.com.
The third and final final key takeaway for this post is going back to my first point.
As a creative professional, you need time to learn, to think, to wonder, to reflect and allow your ideas to fall into place. Attending this summit and hearing from multiple artists who all started with the same struggles reaffirmed some of my suspicions, provided me with new perspectives, and gave me the space to tie together what I will term as “random thoughts” into a clear action plan with an objective based map.
Those are big scary professional sounding words right?
Well, that’s a life I had a few years ago and one I absolutely understand like the back of my hand –wait what’s that? Nevermind. Combining business theories with art practices is tough, especially if you’re not used to that arena. I am used to that arena, adapting it to my personal art has been the challenge and one I am happy to share. Keep an eye out for future blogs covering the span of businessy things, artistry things, and every other direction 2025 has in store.
Thanks for tuning in, see you next time!
-Kristi