We had a 4 day weekend here recently – something that I don’t often allow myself to embrace fully. This huge luxury of free time! What would I do with it all?

I rolled out a new 4′ X 6′ paper on the wall of my working space and started looking at the next 3 years, the next 2 years, and what I’d like to have accomplished by this time next year. The process that I use for personal planning is loosely based on the Path Workbook process (informed by my experience doing graphic recording for individuals and groups).

I planned to spend 2 of my 4 days off ‘sharpening my saw’ as a good friend of mine puts it – an analogy that I particularly like. The idea behind it is that spending all our time working leads to dull tools. We need to spend regular chunks of time ‘sharpening our saws’ so that when it comes time to work again, we are ready. Usually in a company or organizational setting there is time/resources for professional development – but self-employed people don’t always remember the value of (or make time for) building our own professional selves, our capacity and skills.

One of the things that came out of my PATH time was that I really just need to get on with learning Adobe Illustrator. I’ve worked with a variety of vector drawing programs over the last 16 or 17 years, but it’s time to bite the bullet and become more comfortable with this industry-standard program…so that’s what I’ve been doing in my spare time this week, taking a course over on Skillshare.

That, combined with part of an art challenge from Regina, led to an exploration of making colour schemes from photos.

[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”5″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_slideshow” gallery_width=”600″ gallery_height=”400″ cycle_effect=”fade” cycle_interval=”10″ show_thumbnail_link=”0″ thumbnail_link_text=”[Show thumbnails]” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]I’ll be playing with all this more as the days go by, but am thoroughly enjoying the chance to play – simply to explore new tools, hone my use of them, and the possibilities that come for making new things.

Until next time,

Lisa