Hi Danny ~
I guess I am in a fairly creative profession (design consulting with an interior design/furniture & accessories store) although I am working past the age when I expected to be retired....only because I need the health insurance. And while part of me resents having to work fulltime, another part of me is glad for the opportunity to still put all my experience to use, and to watch the look in customer's eyes when I show them exciting combinations of color and texture. Yes, the drawing I did as a child was the first step to creativity for me. Long ago, my first grade teacher sent me home with a note saying I should be taking classes at the local art center. My Mom promptly put me on a bus (in safer times) every Saturday morning, and I entered the intoxicating world of paint, paper,and the freedom to meet other kids like me. I was the child who designed her own paper doll clothing and who drew the faces in the movie star magazines, and later on I remember several friends asking me if I would come to their homes and coordinate their clothing to wear to school. I was reserved and shy, yet this ability I had was my own little piece of self-confidence.....my "insurance" so to speak. I instinctively knew that I had something special and that it was a gift that other people wished they had. After years of sporadically making art of many kinds (posters, banners, fiber hangings) my dear supportive Mother gave me the gift of finishing a partially completed Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and I took two years off work to attend college fulltime. I look back at this as one of the most ecstatically fulfilling times of my life. This was 12 years ago, and since then I have made it a priority to always have a creative project in the works. To answer another of your questions, I ALWAYS am more likely to work on paper than just go straight to the computer. I don't ever want to lose the tactile experience of putting the ink, watercolor, or pastel directly on a lovely sheet of good paper. Your journal is an inspiration to me to keep going, and I harbor a silent resolution to someday join you in a NYC sketch crawl. Thank you, and my best to you and your family.

I restore vintage poster art. I have not had the experience of 'getting back into drawing' because I never left it. Restoring posters has impacted my drawing skills, compositional skills, color, you name it. I love to assess (sp?) the drawing style, think about the era it was drawn in and how that affected the message the poster is conveying. I also like to 'read' the visual imagery, which is how/why many of the older pieces were created. When I took my figure drawing classes there were some days that I would decide to draw in a specific style that I has seen that day in the shop. It has been fun.

I'm a mixed media artist and instructor. My job is art. I live, sleep, eat and breathe art 24/7. I travel across the U.S. and teach a variety of mixed media classes including LOTS of them on art journaling.
I've kept a journal off and on all throughout my 31 years. I drew often (a LOT) as a child and a teenager. I kept a 'written' journal (several of them) and basically doodled on everything I could get my hands on (including the Bible during my years at a Catholic Girls' School-hey, my teachers encouraged us to be comfortable with the Bible so I drew in it...).
For the past 9 years now I've kept an "art journal"-collages, written word, drawings, paintings, snippets of my daily life, etc... The most interesting thing is that it is VERY true that the more you keep a journal you learn a LOT about your self. You learn how to develop your sense of style, the things you like, the colors you like, little gems that you might not recognize if you didn't keep a journal of your own. I can look back and have a record of my past-both as a human, as a woman and as an artist. It's very interesting to see how I've grown in so many ways-not just creatively as an artist but as a person, a Wife and a Mom.
I find that (for the most part) the creative process flows a whole lot easier for me if I can turn to my journal and just pour out onto the page...It's so cool that it doesn't always have to be writing-some days it's collage, some days drawing, some days painting, some days writing and most days a hodge podge of everything. I don't know where I'd be without it!

I teach creativity, specifically in advertising courses at the university level, but I find general journaling is the key to get people ready to form concepts for any genre. They get hooked on making their brain come out on the page. Plus there is the simple satisfaction of seeing what we think and imagine become real to us.

Your site, by the way, is absolutely wonderful.

Does being an accountant in a creative field count? I don't, however, perform creative accounting. Pinky swear!

P.S. I took your advice and ordered your recent book. Enjoying it immensely along with this site. Still waiting on the older one though. Any ideas?

The managing editor for our journal turned me on to your work and I was finally challenged, during a recent visit with him, to pick up a Moleskin journal and start drawing again. So much of my work, both with the magazine, and in the workaday world that pays my bills, is in the head, right-brained asembling of words on a page, measuring my success in terms of dollars raised and pages of precise language.

I needed to get into the left-brain (I probably have these lobes reversed, but you get my drift) and let new synapses connect. I haven't got your book yet, but I set the personal goal of a new drawing every day. So far so good, one week into it.

We did an issue on "Craft" recently and left one page in the issue blank as a challenge to our readers. We meant (and offered instruction) for them to use the page to do origami, but they could have drawn on it just as easily. You can't believe how many people didn't "get it" and wrote that there was a misprint in their issue!

To my eye there is nothing as challenging as the expanse of white page in front of me and a good pen in my hand. Oh the places you can go! And, alas, like with my writing, I am constantly in search of the "perfect" line to express what I am seeing. One of the more challenging ideas for me is being able to turn the page on a drawing that isn't going so well and just leaving it. Sometimes I've even been able to go back and look at it in a new way. Sometimes I've started just making marks on the page and letting the drawing take me where it wants to go.

And I'm in love with my Moleskin.

OK. I just reread your request for feedback and I realize I didn't respond to some of the questions you pose.

I loved drawing as a child. I actually sold a drawing to a local store when I was in first grade as I recall. And I remember wanting to write a book on "art" and planning to illustrate it myself.

Like you, I think I was taught and learned that unless I could make a living doing this, there was no point in pursuing it further. So my creativity was channeled into writing. Now that I publish a quarterly journal on spirituality and culture for gay men, I have found an opportunity to offer an outlet for pen and ink artists (working within the limits of our printing capablities and making those limitations work for us and those artists.)

And as for paper v computer... I work with a computer screen all day long. The warm blanket of the blank white page...like the physicality of an actual magazine held in my hand over an e-zine...is comforting and has an aesthetic all its own that justifies its existence.

Interesting question. I work as a designer/editor/writer at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.

Since blogging was an extension of a handwritten journal I kept on alternating days with my partner, and since sketching has become more prominent in our blogging, I think I've become more productive at work. I have two sketchbooks and a cheap watercolor set that just sit on my desk at work, because what if a bluebird lands on the tree outside? (This happens about once a month; Cooper's hawks, about once every two months.) I want my tools here, ready and quickly available.

I have tried doing ilustrations on the computer. With the new version of Illustrator, though, tracing is so easy I'd much rather scan sketches and work with those. I'm finding I'm much more willing to consider an illustration rather than a photo to solve a design problem--this is within the past year or so.

Hi Danny, I don't know how creative my job is though it does fall into the graphic design category. I'm hesitant to call my self a graphic designer. I'm a sign builder, so most of what I do deals with layout rather than design. I have to work with alot of criteria and logo requirements. Which deals mostly with hierarcy. I usually have to come up with a layout within a few hours so I go straight to the computer. A few times a year I have more open ended requests & more time, for those I will work out several ideas for composition on paper then work out color on the computer. The more I work in my sketchbook for personal exploration the easier it is for me to come up with ideas. I try to look at designs I like and make notes of them, and really analyze why I like it.
As a child I was very imaginative and creative. My sisters and I would really feed that creativity although none of us were visually creative, we didn't draw or paint, we would make up games and build things out of junk we found in the nieghborhood, we would make up stories and plays to act out & force our family to watch, if no one would watch then we'd break out the video recorder. I actually wasn't that wild about making art as a child. I always felt like I had a natural talent but wasn't creative in that way. I didn't take a genuine interest in art until I was in high school. Art really helped pull things together for me. It made everything else make sense I guess it gave me a context from which to view the world, until then everything was in a box: math, history, liturature ect...We were required to keep a sketchbook in high school but I didn't take to it until college, but as I get older and more experienced The sketch book is what holds everything together, my work, school and life in general. I draw it, I understand it.

Yikes, I could write a book on this subject. Okay, an article. Briefly, I'm a full time artist. Mixed media, watercolor and fabric. I sell my work and also teach, both adults and elementary school kids. I became an artist in 1992. (Much like Danny, it was after a life changing event. My husband suffered a brain anuerysm, he was 46 at the time, and our lives changed forever. He's physically healthy, now, but is permanently disabled because his language (reading and writing and math) was severely affected.) ANYWAY, to find "Jane" again, after 6 months of 24hr caregiving, I signed up for a weekly drawing class. After a semester, the class turned into a watercolor class, so I became a watercolor artist. I do have a background in Graphic Design and Marketing, but hadn't considered myself a 'fine artist' before 1992. In 1998, I got laid off from my full time job, and decided to not worry about money for 6 months, to see if I could make it as a full time artist. Well, I'm still a full time artist! I LOVE my life, and feel I was born to be an artist. (We've downsized and done various financial things, so I could remain an artist--it's not like I make anywhere near what I made in graphics and marketing.
I've always been creative, and it was a course in "the artist way" from the book by julia cameron, that really changed my life and gave the confidence to try being a full time artist.
okay, enough typing.
Jane

I've been a professional artist for over 35 years known mainly for my fine art batik works. I have always had an ability and agility for drawing, an activity growing up in a TV-less family. It was not until 1997, on a four artist only two weeks in Provence. Each and every entire day was spent sketching on location. Up until then, I sketched and drew only to plan a new batik.
After the Provence experience, I got hookd. Came home and organized a weekly art/talk sketch group that is still growing strong. We meet every Monday morning for art discussion over breakfast and then go to some sketch location. The Provence experience turned into an annual adventure, adding Tuscany and other parts of Europe, sometimes traveling with my patient husband but mainly going with three other artists. Last year May saw me in China. What visions to capture with pen and/or pencil. Had to move quickly since the tour was fast-paced. I now have three shelves in my studio library that hold filled sketchbooks. There is room for many more. One fun sideline to sketching and traveling. I did about 40 watercolor postcards which were mailed home from location. Some of these can be viewed in the February 2006 issue of ARTISTS SKETCHBOOK MAGAZINE now available at most bookstores.

Hi Danny,
I am web professional designer -- I came to that world through the graphic design route back before the web. In elementary school I had a group of friends who were the "artists" and the "artistic ones." They were my friends, but I wasn't the creative one, I told myself. I think because they had an early talent for drawing fairly realistically and I didn't, I decided fairly early on that I wasn't an artist in any way.

When I started a graphic design program in the early 90's, the first question I asked: "Do I have to know how to draw to be a designer?" I figured if the instructor said "Yes," that was it; it was over for me. Luckily, he said "It helps, but it isn't essential." What I found in the beginning was that I was really interested in how to draw logos, which is drawing, but in a simplified, only-what's-essential kind of way. Wanting to be a designer, and create logos made me push myself as an artist. I had to get myself to use my eye-hand coordination to explore ideas, thumbnails, quick sketches. I found these facinating and fun.

When I started drawing in a sketch book, it was on a museum trip of Europe: Paris, Nice, Florence and Rome; with one of those girlfriends from my youth who was a "real artist." She was going to paint and draw, so I thought I'd try; thinking I'd never make it back to Europe again. (At the tender age of 24, I have no idea why I thought I'd never go back! I've since lived in Europe!)

So, that first simple, amateur journal was the beginning -- something that I did JUST FOR ME. Not to put up on the wall, not to create into a logo, not for anyone else but me. That made all the difference.

Now when people see my watercolor journals, they want to hire me to create websites because I have an "artists eye" they tell me. All I know is that I am a lot happier because I have the outlet to relax and sketch and put what's up in my life down on paper. FOR ME! And now that I have a little baby girl; for her to know me a little better someday.