Keeping the creative fires burning

Morning Ink, patterns and other sketchbook play

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I’m in a bout of (non-illustration and non-design) educational publishing work at the moment. It’s all interesting work, and mostly keeping within normalish working hours (that said, I am going to need to do a bit of work this weekend, but I think I should get to balance it out with a day further into the week), but it’s very thinking heavy work, which means I can’t listen to podcasts or watch TV while doing it. Sometimes I can put music on to give myself an energy boost, as long as it doesn’t have words - if it does, I end up accidentally typing them into the work I’m editing!

Times like this, I need space and time to wind down, and non-focused creative work is almost always a part of that.

Times like this, I find it very hard to plan out new illustration work, because that requires a similar level of deeper thinking.

Times like this, I need to switch off the frowny, concentrating part of my brain and switch on the breathing, calm part of my brain.

And so I have been really, really appreciating the Morning Ink practice that I am still happily going strong with. I am pretty sure it is 60 pages today - and therefore 60 days, which is amazing. And I have no desire whatsoever to stop. In fact, I am holding on very tight this practice.

There have been a few days recently, where it would have been useful, in some ways, to get up early and head straight for my desk, to get some work out of the way before emails start flying in. Or to get a good chunk of thinky work done at the time of day when my brain is most switched on. But I am getting so much from this that I will not let it go. To be honest, I think having had my Morning Ink time means I can get more thinky work done through the day. Because I’m not feeling grumpy that I haven’t drawn yet. And I am drawing again in the evening, most evenings, because the feeling stays for the rest of the day and I usually have something I want to work on in the evening, which is, more often than not, very inspired by the Morning Ink of the day, or of the last few days.

Morning Ink spired by Great Mughal art. Drawn by Tasha Goddard.

Sketches combined and with some additional bits added. Drawn and illustrated by Tasha Goddard.

And the finished (probably – there’s a fairly decent chance I might either add more people, or remove the two people in there, because it feels a bit weird that there are only two people) piece. Drawn and illustrated by Tasha Goddard.

And, here’s a timelapse from Fresco of me colouring it. I’ve been doing a little bit on it most evenings through the month. I could, or would, have been much quicker if it was client work, but I’ve enjoyed taking it slowly. (And, as mentioned in the caption, there’s a decent chance, I might make some more changes, still.)

Having the fortnightly Spoonflower challenges that I have committed to entering all this year has helped give me a small external creative focus, as well. While it’s not quite the same thing, it feels a little like flexing the client work muscles. Giving me something to create that I might not have chosen to, but bringing me and my style into it. And it’s definitely getting me back into pattern creation, which I love so much, but that had slipped away a bit over the last few years.

The Morning Ink often feeds into these, too, or the challenges feed into the Morning Ink, or a bit of both.

My entries to the most recent few challenges. Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

No, I have not been very successful in terms of votes. But I have been successful in terms of enjoying the process, creating lots of new patterns and getting back to the feel of, and to an understanding of, pattern making. Which is a win for me. (Not that I wouldn’t hate an actual win, of course! You can vote here, by the way, not that I am in any way begging for votes, because I hate that so much. But if you enjoy patterns, why not scroll through and vote for the patterns you like the most – whether or not they include mine?)

Here are some examples of Morning Ink that has tied into the patterns…

Paisley patterns appearing in my Morning Ink pages. Drawn by Tasha Goddard.

My entry in the ‘Novelty Paisley’ design challenge – Plant Based Paisley – drawing on Morning Ink, a long-lived love of Paisley and also my love of cooking plant-based food! Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

Some Paisley work that hasn’t become an actual pattern as yet. This will either end up on my Patternbank page, or possibly in a collection of its own, perhaps on Spoonflower and/or perhaps on print on demand products somewhere. Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

Morning Ink pages where I was leaning into symmetry and large flowers and ornate details. The one on the right largely ended up in the final Spoonflower challenge pattern. Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

Multiple colourways. The pink on green one is the one I entered, though I actually feel like I should have entered one of the top two! Ah well. Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

By the way, if you like any of these, you buy fabric, wallpaper or various home décor items with my patterns on from my Spoonflower shop in these patterns.

Next week’s challenge is Bold Florals. Here’s what I may enter, though I am not sure which colourway yet!

Multiple colourways for a ‘Bold Florals’ pattern design. Drawn and designed by Tasha Goddard.

As well as all of this, I’ve also been experimenting more with black and white drawings in Fresco. Since I’ve been enjoying the black and white drawing so much, I would like to add some of it (from the sketchbooks, but also digital drawings, as client work often needs to be digital – or at least easily editable, digitally) into my Portfolio, to widen what I can offer to clients.

Pencil and (blue!) ink sketches and then filtered to be black and white.

And the black and white icons drawn in Fresco.

I am thinking that I could potentially use these as little icons in Substack posts. I need to save them as individual PNG images first. So, maybe, next time you read a post from me (here, or at The Illustrated Plant Kitchen or Authentic Maximalism) you’ll see some of these little drawings appear.

Here’s a timelapse video showing drawing the black and white icons. I did this with the sketchbook in front of me, rather than drawing over the sketch in Fresco. The latter works for quite a lot of things, and I do frequently do that for client work, but sometimes it feels more natural to draw from scratch.

And then I went off on some other tangents in the same file, because I was quite enjoying it.

Black and white icons, drawn in Fresco and overlaid on colourful ‘paper’.

So, there you have it. How I’ve been keeping my creative fires burning while deep in lots of very interested, but very brain-heavy work, this month. And this has been a little reminder to myself, that I am still getting to do lots of creative work, even if I haven’t had new creative client work this month.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate every one of you.