July

July

I know, I know, it’s nearly the middle of August and I’m blogging about July?! Well it turns out writing blog posts is much harder than I thought, so it’s taken me a while to get here.

 

So onward with the update....

 

Obviously the most exciting thing that happened in July was returning to Black Cloud Tattoos!! I am beyond happy to be back tattooing. I was losing my mind without it. This has been the longest stretch I’ve not tattooed since I began over ten years ago. It has been incredibly odd.  

I’ve had lovely clients with fun projects to come back to, which I'm so grateful for. And, honestly, having a routine and schedule is much better for me, for both productivity and my mental health. Without deadlines I really struggle to get things done, and then I feel terribly guilty for having not gotten anything done. But also there has been pandemic going down, so I’m trying to not be too hard on myself about my lack of lockdown productivity.

Here are a few of the pieces I got to tattoo in July....

 

 

I also finally got to tattoo four of my charity pieces for Shayla, Jayda, Jessica and Sara, who all donated $150 each to The Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto before covid in return for these....

Peony tattoo on calf by Lu Loram-MartinPeony tattoo on wrist by Lu Loram-MartinMagnolia tattoo on wrist by Lu Loram-MartinPeony tattoo on arm by Lu Loram-Martin

 

 

I’m going to have some new charity pieces in my next newsletter, which will be going out on 30th August, so keep an eye out for those!

 

I’ve also been busy with my Patreon. July’s tutorials were Cosmos and Cherry Blossoms, and I also put together a tutorial of a bunch of little gap filler’s as a bonus....If you want to check out what I have going on over there, here’s a LINK.

 

 

Another thing I’ve been busy with in July is putting together an ebook of the floral sketches I made during lockdown!!!! It’s been nice to collate some of my work like this and prove to myself that I did achieve at least something during lockdown. It’s 35 double pages of sketches and is now available on my store if you wanted to take a look.

 

sketchbook drawing of Protea and sunflowers by Lu Loram-Martin

 

Another thing I started later in July was The Pigeon Letters Art Bootcamp. Registration for this is now closed unfortunately, but basically it’s six months of weekly prompts to make art around. Like a longer, less intense, Inktober, with a private forum to share your work with other artists involved. I’ve been wanting to get out of my comfort zone and also pad out my art portfolio, so this course came along at just the right time.

 

Talking of courses I’ve also been taking a few SkillShare courses (of course). I really enjoyed 'From Paper to Screen: Digitally Editing Your Artwork in Photoshop', by Cat Coquillette which is only 45 minutes long. And at the other end of the scale I’m still working through 'Adobe Photoshop CC - Advance Training Course' with Daniel Scott, which is over 13 hours long, plus involves a lot of projects. One of my aims this year was to get comfortable with both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, so these courses have been awesome for that.

If you wanted to check out SkillShare you can try it out for 2 months for free HERE. I get $10 for anyone who signs up for the free trial through my link. I would never promote something that I didn’t truly believe has value, I honestly love it.

 

Some other things I’ve loved this month.....

 

Books:

How to be an anti-racist - Ibram X. Kendi

So you want to talk about race - Ijeoma Oula

Trick mirror - Jia Tolentino

Me - Elton John

We were always here - Samra Habib

 (Ok, full disclosure, some of these I read in August)

Also did you know you can get audio books from the Toronto Library on the Libby app. It’s honestly the only reason I consume so many books.

 

 

Movie/TV shows:

Dear White People - seriously so, so good

Straight Up - my romance of the summer

The Lovebirds - GD hilarious

 

Other, other stuff:

 

Jigsaws - It started with my neighbor giving me one, and snowballed, now I’m obsessed. They’re so good for shutting off my mind!

Ukelele - Thanks to the tutorials by Ukulele Cheats, gotta love learning The Cure

The Calm app - Especially the sleep stories, although it’s sort of pricey for an app tbh

 

And that’s all I've got for now,

 

I’m hoping to have a little mini tutorial up for you in the next couple weeks so keep a look out :)

 

Much love,

Take care,

 

Lu

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