23. for auld lang syne, my dear
I started this journal in October. Only three months, but I think I've made some progress from start to finish… maybe?
☙ S e p t e m e b e r ❧
{ one }
I started my journal in Sept. I didn't really know what I wanted to do in terms of making icons. I deleted old fonts, brushes, textures, patterns, etc. For most of Sept. and Oct. I was gathering new resources. I didn't really know what I wanted to icon, so I signed up for a 20in20 and made 20 icons of John Cho (because Star Trek and how badass Sulu is!). These icons were made during that transition period and it shows by how bad they are! :P
☙ O c t o b e r ❧
{ one | two | three | four | five | six | seven }
I got a new obsession in the way of Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries! And I've iconed that quite a bit. I wish more people watched that show because I would love to see more icons of it! Also, I was inspired by the new textures I had gotten and decided to make some textures of my own. This is still transition time as I got rid of old things and started playing with new resources.
{ one & two }
☙ N o v e m b e r ❧
{ one | two | three | four | five | six }
I did an icon battle with some friends were I played around with my new textures and brushes and I liked some of the results. One of the things we talked about after was how light my icons are. I really want to work on contrast in my icons. I dislike the color black and am always trying to tone that down, which is one of my problem areas. Another area I decided to work on this month was text. I am scared of text, but I love fonts. I got rid of about a hundred fonts and got some new ones. Playing around with size, placement, color and angles of text was something I did a lot moving forward. I resolved to have text on at least 1/3 of the icons per batch and I have stuck to that. I was a part of landofart for a while and that sparked some of my creativity. But unfortunately I became overwhelmed by all the activities and needed to leave the comm. D:
{ three & four | five & six | psd.one }
☙ D e c e m b e r ❧
{ one | two | three }
While continuing to playing with new textures and to force myself to not be afraid of text, the other thing I wanted to focus on was composition. While I am not a fan of overly busy composition, I do feel my icons are a bit boring. Crop, color, add brushes/textures/some fonts, done. Same cycle over and over. This was definitely the month I put a stop to that and tried some new things. They didn't always work out, but at least I am trying, lol!
{ seven, eight & nine | holiday set }
☙ 2 0 1 3 ❧
Any ideas or suggestions for improvement, or really any thoughts at all would be most appreciated! TY
ICON RESOLUTIONS FOR 2014:
1. Work even more with text. I have so many fonts... but I am scared of text. Well, not scared exactly, but I add text to an icon, see that it looks lame or forced, delete that layer and end up with a textles icon. AGAIN. Some ideas for fixing the problem: Maybe do a text inspiration praise post? Read more text tutorials? Maybe delete 20 unused fonts every month and add some new ones?
2. Stop being scared of the color yellow. Weird resolution, but yeah, yellow scares me. (And red to some degree.) Some ideas for fixing the problem: ...? Stop adding a Selective Coloring or Color Balance layer when I see some yellow (or red) in my icon?
3. Stop the "crop, color, done" cycle. I don't like overly busy compositions, but I do want to try making more interesting icons. Some ideas for fixing the problem: be more picky about which textures I use? Put my icons aside for a while and come back to them another day?
4. Less 20in20s, more other things. I get bored of making 20 icons. I get to about 11 or 12 and I'm pretty much done with that subject/fandom, so 20in20s do not really work for me. Some ideas for fixing the problem: more icon battles! I don't know what else... I wish theiconquest was still active. Maybe there's something else like that around?