Inspiration

Since it’s almost the end of the year I thought I’d take stock in how productive my 2017 has been. Most of my creative energy was spent on The Nut-Free Vegan, a blog I started back in February to [...]

The world—especially here in the U.S.—is in a bit of turmoil right now. No matter which side you’re on politically, there’s a lot of tension everywhere you look. That’s why [...]

Last week I did something pretty big. It was a hard decision to make and I thought quite a bit about not doing it. I sat down at my computer, psyched myself up, and sent an email to my employer [...]

To the world in general, 2016 pretty much sucked. We lost David Bowie; we lost Prince; and depending on your political leanings, some say we lost progress here in the U.S. It seemed pretty bleak [...]

I’ve heard a lot of talk about gratitude lately. It goes hand in hand with this time of year, so I’m not completely surprised. But I think it’s important to use November not as [...]

This week I’m participating in something called the Insta180 7-Day Instagram Challenge, headed by renowned wedding photographer, Jasmine Star. Each day I receive a prompt about what to post [...]

The apartment building Laura and I live in is three floors with three units. We’re on the second. And last night I saw that the downstairs neighbors were moving out. These weren’t the first [...]

Besides my morning routine, one thing that has changed my life significantly this year is a [...]

I'm writing from the kitchen bar in our Palm Springs villa. That's the fanciest sentence I've ever made. Laura and I are mid-honeymoon and I'm starting to think back to all of the things we've [...]

I'm always excited for summer because the possibility of getting out of New York and heading somewhere new is so enticing to me. And despite the fact that Laura and I do a lot of trips in October [...]

Following up February's #28toMake daily series of creative prompts (which I blogged about here), CreativeLIVE is back with #30DaysofGenius for the month of May. This one is a little less [...]

In late 2015 I decided to adopt a new game plan for my creative life. It involved a strict morning routine, saying “yes” a lot, and making something everyday. Through the end of [...]

I made a resolution at the end of 2015 to read at least one book for fun each month in 2016. Because of my job as a book designer, I read a lot of them (or at least parts) pretty regularly, but [...]

Inspired by my time doing CreativeLive‘s #28toMake project—and especially the first week, taught by Kate Bingaman Burt—I’ve decided to continue on with daily drawings of random [...]

With January having been one of my best ever as far as creativity and living with intent, the folks at CreativeLive decided to keep that record rolling through February for me by launching [...]

This last week was the home stretch with #28toMake. There were some great assignments, but I, sadly, didn’t do them. I’ve spent the past week mostly in bed or on the couch battling [...]

I liked this day’s prompt quite a bit because it involved photography. We were asked by new CreativeLive prompter, Erik Marinovich, to take a picture of something shiny that we see [...]

I’m catching up a bit here. I’ve been doing the #28toMake prompts, but haven’t had a chance to document them all like I had been earlier in the month. I was out of town for the [...]

Today’s #28toMake was really interesting. The assignment was to take four sounds—a jackhammer, children playing, waves, and paper crumpling—and visualize them. It was pretty tricky and I [...]

Before today I’d heard of tangrams, but never played with one. Turns out they’re a lot of fun. Coming up with some interesting tangram combinations was today’s #28toMake prompt [...]

Another fun prompt today: Blackout Poems. This is where you black out the words in a newspaper, magazine, or any printed article, and leave only a few visible to read like a poem. It’s [...]

I spent a long weekend away in Connecticut. But I did manage to do the the #28toMake exercises, which were the same as last weekend—days 6 and 7. The first was the People Mad Lib, and the second [...]

Until today, these #28toMake exercises have been solitary things, and I think I did OK. Today, though, we were asked to create [...]

Today on #28toMake, we got to draw doodles on photographs. When I saw the examples Ryan Putnam showed in the video, I immediately thought of the work of KAWS, who does some pretty prominent photo [...]

Just over one month into “Twenty Fixteen,” I thought I’d reflect on my progress. I didn’t consciously set out to change my life this year, but early on I can tell [...]

Gesture drawings are always fun. I remember doing them back in art school and really enjoying the ordered chaos of what I saw when I eventually looked down at my paper. And today on

Today the prompt from Ryan Putnam was to scribble. That's easy enough, right? Just get a couple of markers and go nuts? But it didn't end there. I think the goal [...]

Today marked a new week of prompts from CreativeLive. Week One was “celebrating everyday objects through drawing,” and this week is all about line form and texture with Ryan Putnam. [...]

Today’s prompt might be the easiest for many people, but I think I find it to be the hardest one so far. It was: do nothing. I find that to be pretty difficult because I always want to be [...]

I was wondering what might happen during the weekends throughout February and the #28toMake campaign. After five days of really fun drawing prompts, it looks like Saturdays and Sundays might be a [...]

Today is the last day of prompts from illustrator, Kate Bingaman-Burt, and it turned out to be a very helpful, very tricky doozy. We were asked to draw a receipt. This sounds simple—and maybe it [...]

Today's #28toMake prompt from CreativeLive was a fun one, and a bit more complex than previous ones. Rather than drawing a single item, we were asked to [...]

Today, Kate Bingaman-Burt's #28toMake prompt was to draw one of your favorite album covers. This is a fun one. I have so many albums that are favorites, [...]

Today's prompt in the CreativeLive 28 to Make month-long creative challenge was to draw a [...]

The key to getting better at something is doing as much of it as you can. Here, Ira Glass expands on that a bit in some sage advice for anybody who is creative. (I think the central point of it [...]

Today I woke up to this great video from Chase Jarvis in my inbox. His company, CreativeLive (which I talked [...]

At the end of 2015 I decided that 2016 would be the year I kick ass. My goal is to fill these twelve months to the gills with self-improvement, self-discovery, unbridled creativity, and [...]

  I’ve had this draft sitting on my site for over a month now, but I think it’s important to finish and put out. I’ve reflected quite a bit on the past year, but never [...]