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‘What’s in my bag’ videos are absolute staples in the YouTube and blogging worlds, and a weird (not so) guilty pleasure of mine. So, as I’ve now been at this game for a well over a year I thought it was about time I did my own, illustrated version.

So, get prepared for the thrills of what’s in my work bag.

Bag

I use a yellow kanken as my everyday bag, and have done for the last 6 years. It’s the perfect size for everything I need and it’s as sturdy as you like. I love it so much, I’ve written a whole blog post on its design story.

Laptop & charger

The modern-day work essentials. I really do need to get a case for my work laptop though, if anyone has any aesthetically pleasing suggestions please let me know!

iPhone

The other modern-day essential.

Pencil case

I carry a pretty small pencil case with me for day-to-day use. It’s just about got enough space for a few colours of my favourite Pilot V-Ball pens, 2 pentel sign markers, 2 mechanical pencils, and an eraser. If it’s a good day there should be a Cubitts glasses cloth in there too, but I’ve lost so many. 

Journal

I don’t go anywhere without my bullet journal. I’ve written a whole post on how it’s set up, but as a quick overview it’s a Rhodia A5 Webby, which contains everything I have to do. ***LINK***

Notebook

As well as my bullet journal, I also have a work notebook. I find I remember things better if I’ve physically written them down. This one is another dot grid layout, but it’s the largest size of moleskine to give me extra space to sketch my ideas out.

Head phones

I have written many times about my love for my headphones. They’re almost always on my head, so not technically in my bag, but they are with me when I have my bag so that counts right?

S’well

Earlier this year I picked up a S’Well bottle in the sales. It felt like a real indulgence, but it has proven to be such a good purchase, because I’ve got so much use out of it. Mine either contains water (for commute survival) or tea (for when I’m visiting a new office and I don’t know if there will be tea/non-dairy milk) and reminds me to stay hydrated in style.

Cool bag w/lunch

I am a big meal prepper so I bring my lunch to work. I keep everything in a (pretty ugly) floral cool bag. I normally have some kind of salad and a selection of fruit which always includes a banana. Again, if anyone has any suggestions of attractive cool bags that are lunch sized please let me know (yes, I am using this post as an open forum to source your recommendations)

Jumper

I take the tube to work, so I go from the cold and grey of outside into the sweaty armpit of hell that is the underground and then back out again every morning. So, I normally keep my a jumper in my bag to allow me to take off as many layers as possible when facing down the Victoria line at rush hour so as to avoid fainting again.

Umbrella

My duckhead umbrella is one of my favourite things in my bag. I got it as a birthday gift last year and it brings me great joy whenever I get to use it, even though that means it’s raining. He sits in the side pocket of my bag when its dry, just peeking out.

Wallet

Penultimate but not pen-ulti-least (is that a thing?) my wallet is always somewhere at the bottom of my bag. It’s always at the bottom. Always hidden under something. Always an absolute pain to get out when I have to pay for something. The wallet itself is a square leather number from &Other Stories and was a grown-up-upgrade/treat-yo-self purchase when I started my job and it has worn so well.

The pocket of wonder

The front pocket of my bag, is essentially Mary Poppins’ carpet bag shrunken down. It contains a multitude of odds, ends, and necessities. We’re talking everything from plasters and paracetamol, to perfume and paw paw balm, tampons, disinfectant, emergency snacks, glasses cloths (for when I lose the one in my pencil case), lose change as well as a pair of back up headphones.

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Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, is another book I didn’t actually pick up myself, and I’m not sure I would have if I hadn’t been loaned it. Despite being part of a genre I tend to turn to, it’s not a book I’d heard of before it was being snuck into my bag.

The New Yorker read Conversations with Friends “a new kind of adultery novel”. Faber says “you can read Conversations with Friends as a romantic comedy, or you can read it as a feminist text. You can read it as a book about infidelity, about the pleasures and difficulties of intimacy, or about how our minds think about our bodies.” Personally, I read it as a coming of age for the time we actually live in.

The actual plot of the novel follows Frances a 21-year-old university student and poet who finds herself entangled in a complex ménage-à-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man, all whilst she tries to work out who she really is on her own.

Frances was a character I really felt a connection too, read into that what you will about my personality. Rooney’s writing does at times fall into the trap of self-indulgence which is always a threat in first person bildungsroman’s especially those written in the last couple of decades. But as a student, as someone still navigating my sense of self in relation to those around me I found the way she tested the boundaries of her personality really well written and relatable. You can tell that this a novel about being a young woman right now, written by someone who knows what it’s like.

 

My alternative cover design for this month’s pick

As much as Rooney’s first novel is described as “literary” (whatever that may or may not mean) and intelligent it’s never hard to read or overly pretentious in a way that’s serious. It is intelligent. It does deal with big ideas. But conversation, as you would expect from the novel’s title, flows easily and quickly and in and out of emails, messages, phone calls and asides at parties. Frances and Bobbi show off, but they show off in the way you would expect of university students and poets. There is never a hard transition into serious topics, as is often the case when authors try to shoe horn academic discussion into their prose.

So, if you’re after a side of engaging and intelligent conversation with your next bed time read this one’s as good as any you’re going to find.

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU READ

  • What impact do you think the location of the novel has on the story?
  • Conversations is driven by women, to what extent did you think this was a distinctly female story?
  • Frances has a tumultuous relationship with her body, and pain in particular, how does that impact your reading of her character? Was it something you were able to relate to? 
  • How reliable a narrator is Frances?

 

IF YOU WANT SOME FURTHER READING TRY…

  • You know I almost always kick these lists off with a Guardian review, and this month is no different
  • This New Yorker review offers a really clear and insightful look at Rooney’s writing
  • As someone who doesn’t know all that much about the Irish canon (although I have been reading a fair few Irish novels recently) the focus on the Irishness of Conversations with Friends in this New Statesman review was super interesting
  • Succinct and easy to read this Vulture review is a great intro to the novel

 

IF YOU WANT MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS HAVE A LOOK AT…

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We’ve all been there, the creative rut. In fact, I’d been stuck feeling pretty unenthused about my work quite recently, I didn’t have any ideas I liked, I was procrastinating hard and everything I was making felt subpar. I still feel a bit like that. I know I’ll feel like that again.

So here are a few ways you can engage with your creative rut and make it seem a little less overwhelming.

 

Embrace it

Okay, so you’re human. You’re not a machine, you’re a living being. That means you’re going to have to take breaks, you’re going to have periods of slower or no growth. Trees lose their leaves in winter, bears hibernate, people have creative ruts. So, embrace whatever’s going on, whether you have no ideas or no motivation and take it as a sign that you need to listen to what your body is telling you and accept you might need a little break.

Let it breathe

Linked to the point above, is the fact that sometimes we misinterpret impatience as a creative block. Cut yourself a little slack. Take the time to play around, and to find inspiration. Being bored and lazing around can be a good thing. Sometimes all you need is an extra day.

Run away from it

Generally, we’re not meant to run away from our problems. We get told over and over to face up to them and just get on with it. Sometimes that does work with a creative block, but sometimes you do need to run away from it, quite literally. Go on a run. Leave the house, the office, the country. Go do something different, be somewhere different. A change in scenery can sometimes give you a change in perspective.

Step back from it

In that time away from your desk, take a step back from yourself as well and have a think about why you’re feeling blocked. Have you been working on a load of client projects and not had the chance to work on something you love? Are you overwhelmed by a blank page? Are you over tired? Have you been stuck in a routine? Are you not doing work you’re interested in? Are you facing something else in your life? Sometimes, a creative rut is a symptom rather than the problem. Take the time to work out if there’s something else contributing to how you’re feeling, and if there’s something you can do about it.

 

Put it back in a box

Give yourself some constraints. Sometimes limiting yourself (time, subject matter, materials, style, colours etc.) can force you to be more creative. For example, I love Kevin Townsend’s  timed pieces, which then seemed to create a whole new style and way of working for him. Putting yourself in a box, is sometimes the best way to get out of it – what’s more terrifying than a completely blank page when you have no ideas?

Do you have any tips for people struggling with a creative rut?

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If you follow me on Instagram (if you’re not, I would highly recommend it) you’ll know that I create a pattern (almost) every week. They’re something I really enjoy making, because they’re a fun little challenge. Plus, they seem to be something you enjoy too – so much so that I’ve started selling phone cases with a few of them on.

In the spirit of sharing today, I wanted to show you how I put my patterns together, and give you some top tips in case you want to make your own.As with my last how to I’m using Affinity Designer and a Wacom Bamboo tablet to draw with.

1. Find an idea

So, this is the starting point of any work really, but I thought it was worth mentioning here because there are some parameters I work within to help guide me on these patterns. The subject has to be something that either comes in a few different kinds (like with my fishes or my dinosaur patterns), is interesting to draw from a number of angles (like with my bananas pattern), or is part of a group of things (like in my stationery pattern). I keep a list of ideas in my journal so I can keep a track of them, and then just draw when I feel like it. 

For this example, I’ve gone with crystals, because they give me the option to draw lots of versions, shapes and colours, of the same thing.

2.Collect reference images

Once I’ve chosen my subject matter I collect up a whole bunch of reference photos to guide my illustrations.

3. Outline and refine

Now we’re at the fun part – drawing. I create vector outlines of whatever I’m illustrating. I always tend to do my initial outlines in a bright colour, I’m not sure why, but I just find it easier to see how something is going to come together that way. Once I’m happy I then change the outlines to black. Through trial and error, I’ve found that between 5 and 7 different objects is normally around the right number, to provide the right time to variation ratio. But feel free to change it up however you see fit!

4. Arrange

I then take all of my outlines and arrange them. You can see here I decided to lose one of the sketches I didn’t like. I usually try to vary shape and size of objects that are together. When it comes to my Wednesday patterns I don’t usually put together my patterns “properly” (I have a post all about the best ways to make repeating patterns) instead I try to arrange my outlines into a format that can easily be repeated, more often than not a parallelogram (slanted rectangle).

5. Choose a colour palette

This stage could come a lot sooner in the process if you wanted, but I usually wait until I’ve got the outlines sorted before I decide on any colours. I like to pick out 3-4 main colours, including one that’s a little brighter, as well as a few tonal variations as shown above

6. Add the colour

Using the colour palette I’ve just created, I colour in my images. I start by adding a broad sweep of colour to each image, trying to vary which colours are next to each other. Then I add in the more detailed bits of colour, whether that’s highlights, shadows or accents. I don’t worry too much about colouring within the lines as you can see.

7. Erase

As I said, I don’t worry too much about colouring in the lines in step 6, that’s because I just clean up everything at the end. I erase around all of the edges of the outlines and make sure everything is looking tip top.

8. Repeat

All that’s left to be done once I’ve cleaned up the colouring is to regroup everything and then repeat the illustrations to make a pattern. Occasionally, I need to do a few tweaks at this stage either to fill in gaps or to vary up the arrangement, but more often than not this is all I do.So, that’s how I make my Wednesday patterns. If you give this a go yourself, please do let me know and share your images I’d love to see some more fun patterns out in the world!

 

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Today I’m not really sharing any advice or tips. Ordinarily, I tell you lessons I’ve learned or I share work I’m really proud of creating. Instead, today, I’m putting a few things I suck at out there, because I think it’s important to un-curate what we share online every once in a while. 

Here are a few things I still suck at drawing

Feet

I have never been able to draw feet. What are toes? Seriously? They’re so weird. And how do you not just make them look like a blob at the end of a calf? Yes, I said a calf because sometimes my issues swallow someone’s ankles as well. Occasionally, although less so recently, shoes also cause me some pain. It’s a perspective thing.

Dogs

This used to include all furry animals, but I think the bear I drew at the start of this year was a real breakthrough. But dogs, dogs I still struggle with. It’s the eyes that always get to me. The worst is trying to draw my own dog, probably because I know and love him, which means I’ll never do his lovely little face justice.

Small hands

I know this is quite specific, but I’m fine with images where the hands are the main focus, where they’re big and detailed and not really in relation to anything else. But small hands as part of full body illustrations have to be drawn over and over and over again until they look less like claws. Or, perhaps worse, until they look less like hands made out of sausages.

Light

This has come from me being super out of practice when it comes to adding colour to my images, but I seem to have lost all ability to add in light to an image. Sure, I can add the occasional highlight, but when it comes to light streaming through a window (something I desperately want to nail) I’m just not there yet. I say yet because I have to trust that it’s only a few more reference images and practice sketches away.

But it’s not all sucky…

It’s not all doom and gloom. I used to think beards (and stereotypically male hair in general) were so hard to draw. I could never get to a middle ground between lego man and whispy straggles. But, thanks to portrait commissions, and a lot of practice, I think I’ve found my beard groove. Similarly, my noses a year and a bit ago were awful. But thanks to drawing them, again and again, I’ve found a way to draw them that works for me.

So, if you, like me, have some stuff you suck at drawing (I think we all do) just keep at it, it does get better. You just have to draw a lot of weird beards.