How I got Organized for this Semester

College is in full swing! The key to staying ahead and creating as little stress as possible for yourself is being organized. One of the ways to do this is to use a planner. Now, if you're like me a traditional planner usually gets shoved into a drawer and forgotten about until the end of the semester.

Enter the Bullet Journal. You can read more about the original system here.

It can be as minimalist or as elaborate as you'd like. It can even be both! I know my spreads are more elaborate when I have more time. When I'm pressed for time, I stick with a simple design with some washi tape to liven things up a bit.

The great thing about this system is that you make it as you go so if you miss a week you haven't wasted paper.

Instagram is a great place to find inspiration!
I saw a layout like this one and am finding it useful so far.

Using this system to keep track of my projects for classes is a great help. It's also really rewarding when I check off a task, because it helps me realized how much I've accomplished that day. It doesn't even have to be a big thing like finishing a piece, I've definitely written down a task reminding myself to do my laundry. Write down anything and everything - it really does help.

Don't fret if at the beginning of the week, you don't have anything to write down for every day. I usually wait until the day before, or even the day of to write down what I have to do. Of course you don't need to wait this long, especially if you have pre-planned events. Finding what works for you may take a couple tries, but when you do find what works, run with it!

You can also add whatever you want in the journal. I have monthly and weekly calendars, but I also have a place to store my shopping list for Blick.

The Bullet Journal is really customizable to your needs. There's also tons of ideas on Pinterest already, so I would start there for inspiration! This system has really helped organize my life and took away a little of the stress too.

Digital Pointillism Tutorial

For this tutorial I used Adobe Illustrator, but you could use any comparable program to achieve the same effect. I have my color settings set to RGB, because I intend to put this up on Society6. Illustrator automatically sets to CMYK. I would also like to mention that I am using my trackpad to draw all of this, I am not using anything like a Wacom tablet.

The first step is to choose the size of your canvas and your reference picture. My canvas is fairly large (3300 x 5100) because of how Society6 works. My reference photo is a picture of Ken that I took at this year's Pony Penning. My canvas size required me to scale up the picture. 

The next step is to trace your image. It doesn't have to be perfect or pretty. It will serve as a roadmap of where you are going to place your dots.

Next, you're going to color sample the section you want to start with, with the eyedropper tool (pictured right). This color will usually show up in the fill box which is the box which is completely filled with the color. You're going to want to switch that color into the stroke. You can either do this manually by clicking the arrow by the fill and stroke icons, or let the brush tool do it automatically.  

After you switch the color to the stroke, you are going to want to select the brush tool. This is what you are going be using to create your marks.

the color is in the stroke

I usually start with the 15pt brush and mark out a vague section of where I'm going to place the color. This also helps me pace myself. Getting a small section finished seems a lot easier than the entirety of the subject's face.

I then scale down to the 5pt brush to fill in some of the spaces. I also feather out these smaller marks to prepare for blending the different colors together. 

Repeat the steps above for the next color. Remember to intersperse the second color into the first for a blended effect

Sometimes, depending on the lighting of your reference, the eyedropper tool will give you some very dark colors. Depending on how light the other colors are in your piece, this may look very odd. If that is the case, take the lighter color and intersperse it throughout the darker color. Make sure to zoom out to make sure that this helped to blend the colors together.

When you get close to finishing your piece, you are going to want to decide how to finish the piece. I'm personally a fan of letting the subject dissolve into dots.

When you are finished, delete your guideline. You're finished!