Isabel's Blog

Tag: inspiration

Nothing worth having comes easy

July 23, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I haven’t been blogging much lately because I’ve fallen back into my old patterns of definitely not getting things done. Which is bad and needs to change. There are so many things in my life that I want to do before I die, but the change required to accomplish these things terrifies me.

I’m scared I’ll be making a mistake and/or scared that I’ll fail. But even when I think about potential worst-case scenarios, I know rationally that things really aren’t that bad, because so far in my life I’ve been extremely lucky and have had very fortunate circumstances.

One of my biggest work-life hurdles is that I get discouraged easily. When things get hard or don’t turn out the way I want or expect them to, I shut down and give up. Maybe because I am lazy, or maybe because I’m insecure, but either way I need to learn to work harder, because nothing worth having comes easy. Whether it’s a job, career, a project, or an opportunity, if I give up, I definitely will not be successful.

So, this is just a little reminder to myself: work harder, don’t give up!

Free your mind

April 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

IsabelFoo-blog-officedesk

An old coworker from my first real job used to take home dummy books we’d get as paper samples for his kids. I started doing this too, for my niece(s). Tonight the older one was colouring in one of the blank hardbound books. She looked up at me and said “I want to draw something, but I don’t know what to draw!” which was funny because that’s exactly how I feel most days. Being creative is hard! I never really know what to draw. I told her to draw her favourite things, which is sorta what I do myself. I kinda wonder what other people do to get over creative block.

I didn’t go to illustration school. I’ve just always loved drawing (thanks to my sister, mother of the munchkins AKA the nieces). But now with my “goal” of doing “real” illustration work, I’m wondering if I should do something to be more legit? Should I take classes? Or at least read a book? Do I need this, or can I just send out my website when I’m ready? Advice?

Above is a work in progress from this past weekend. It’s very meta, as you can see.