Organisers of Future Past

Mixing colour with The Special Tupperware

Past Me really saved my arse this week.¹

All my art materials are kept organised in a set of drawers so I can generally find things at will.

One of my tidy drawers

When I’m working on a job I use The Special Tupperware. It houses all the materials I need for a specific job. That way I can work fast enough to keep energy in my final artwork, and keep colours consistent throughout a whole book, and hit my deadlines. The Special Tupperware is an essential piece of equipment.

The Special Tupperware

But . . . recently, my system started to break down. 

Over the last few months I’ve been leap frogging the colour stages of two books and two pitches. All 4 projects use overlapping colour palettes and The Special Tupperware had become a jumble of varying types of blue.

Some of my blues, nicely arranged for this photo

Then I got the green light on the colour stage of a book project and the timeline was scarily tight. Hoping for orderly calm, I approached The Special Tupperware and a chaos of materials spilled out and laughed in my face:

“Does this particular job hinge on the blue/greens? Or the pure cyans? Have fun mixing all your colours wrong and losing a morning’s work! Somebody’s not hitting their deadline.”

Taking a deep breath, I started opening my digital files for this job - but then . . .

Ta-da!

I found Past Me has taken photos of all the materials I needed! And filed them with the digital files for the right project!

and this one too - those are the pencils and neocolours I needed!

All the information was right there, laid out beautifully. Thank you, Past Me! 

I am definitely adding a photo of materials into all of my projects from now on. If a client comes back to me months later and needs something adjusted - Bam! I know what I used to make that colour! And I can find it before you can say “Ice Blue Luminance”.

Which Luminance was it? Was it even a Luminance at all?

I will keep using The Special Tupperware because it’s so useful to have all the materials in one place. With the addition of the The Special Photo of Materials the whole system shouldn’t get out of hand again.

I also keep notes for each job in my Colour Working Out Sketchbook. I start with mixing to find the right base palette of 6 colours or so (excluding skin and hair colours).

Colour Working Out Sketchbook

Then I use that palette to mix specific colours for particular elements in the book, like exactly the right mustard yellow for a character’s jumper.

keepin’ it consistent

Yesterday, Past Me decided I had been spending too long hunched up at my desk, stressing about deadlines. 

And so launched into a 20 minute Hiit workout. It was quite the step up from my usual exercise goal of roughly ten thousand steps a day. 

That optimistic leap has left Present Me walking like I’ve wet myself - shuffling cautiously with slightly bent knees. I’ve never had such sore bum cheeks.

That’s Past Me: sometimes saving my arse, sometimes a massive pain in my arse.

What has Past You done for you recently? Was it helpful or . . . otherwise?

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Some other things that Past Me has been doing to help out Future Me:

🚀 These neck exercises from NHS Scotland make a huge difference when I’m spending all day leaning over drawings. I do them in the morning and last thing at night and very rarely have a stiff neck now. (Obviously, I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice. Just passing on something I found helpful)

🦕 Overnight Oats. I’ve been ignoring these for ages because . . . well, it’s just bougie porridge, isn’t it? But, it turns out having a full healthy breakfast waiting for you in the fridge is a real morning timesaver 🤦🏻‍♀️ I make mine while I’m making dinner so it’s only one batch of dishes and tidying up.

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All my posts are remaining free and open for the foreseeable future! If you fancy getting me a cuppa tea that would be amazing! Totally up to you, we’ll still be friends!

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1. I’ve been back and forth on whether or not to use the word ‘arse’ in my newsletter. I decided it fits with my aim to write like I speak. I don’t use the words ‘ass’ or ‘butt’ because I’m not American. ‘Bum’ is always funny, but it felt too clunky for the flow of this post. The prudish ‘behind’ is a substitute word I would only use in front of my in-laws.

So, I did think about this and if it causes a lot of offence then I won’t use it ever again in my newsletter, I promise.