The Wonderful Word for Wednesday is “Learning”

Wendell Berry said it best:

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed.”

What’s your attitude towards learning new things?  Do you squirm and fret learning something new?  OR, do you constantly look for classes to take to learn more and more things?

Personally, I LOVE learning new things and always have at least one or two classes that I’m taking in person or on-line.

Story Time

I just spent one week learning the very basic first steps of making a repeat pattern in Adobe Illustrator (Ai).  To say my mind was baffled each day is quite an understatement.

If you, like me, start to hyper ventilate just opening Adobe Illustrator, then you understand this undertaking.  If you don’t even know what it is, that’s okay, read on and it will become clearer.

I did not do this purely to torture myself, it came out of a need to accomplish one of my goals which is to apply some of my floral designs to larger products like sheets, curtains, wrapping paper, etc.   In order to do that, one must create a pattern that is vectorized and can be repeated in a large scale.  The industry standard for creating these types of patterns is Adobe Illustrator.

So, when Anne LaFollette’s $10 ‘Doodles Coaching Week’ came up on my Instagram feed, I jumped at the opportunity.  You see, Anne is a few decades older than me, and I figured if she could do it then I could too!

This was the best $10 I’ve spent in ages!  BUT, I had to work HARD for my success at the end of the week.  Each day, Anne spent one hour live with us on line, teaching us step by step how to bring your doodles into Adobe Illustrator and create a repeat pattern out of them.

Well friends, this program is NOT intuitive for me AT ALL.  Thankfully, Anne also had written step by step guides that we could print for reference.  These guides became my sidekick!

Furthermore, after she taught us all of the steps, she proceeded to have ‘Troubleshooting” sessions with us to help us with all the common mistakes people like me make during this arduous process.  This was invaluable as I pretty much made every one of the common mistakes there was!

Happy Ending

The end of the story is that I achieved my goal!  I am now able to make very simple repeat patterns in Adobe Illustrator!  I cannot tell you how good that feels friends!  Here are the few very simple repeat patterns that I’ve made so far.  You are going to think, “Wow, those look easy, how hard can it be?” but let me assure you, it’s not easy!  There are MANY things that can go wrong at literally every step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I can’t wait to make some more!  Stay tuned for wrapping paper, etc. coming from this girl!

If you would like to follow Anne on instagram, here’s her handle: @annelafolletteart

My Learning Process

I’ve found that my learning process often goes like this:

Excited to learn —-> Starting —->THIS IS HARD —->I don’t know if I can do this —-> I’m doing it! —-> wait, nope, didn’t do it —->I did it for real! —-> I did again! —-> this is in my skillset now.

Can you relate?

There is so much to learn in this world and I am happiest when I’m employing my mind by learning new things.  This is why I take classes and why I offer classes.  Learning together is fun.  Also, when we share our knowledge with each other, we collectively get smarter!  I mean, if I could, I’d choose Professional College Student as my full time job, but alas, that does not seem to be thing.

Here’s hoping your mind is baffled a bit today!

If it’s not, might I suggest you come to the next “Crafty Wine Night” (see below)?  OR head to my friend Belinda’s website for some awesome opportunities to learn a new art form.  I’ll be at the Alcohol Ink class AND the Cold Wax and Oil class just so you know!

Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, signing off

Visit this page for all things related to “Play Art With Kim”

**Next Opportunity to get your creative on is on February 9th.  Click HERE for tickets or scan the QR code below.