It seems like I end up in Minnesota several times a year. Last weekend, I had the pleasure of joining Bethany and Derek on their wedding day. I have known Bethany for about 9 years, so when she asked me to shoot her wedding, it was easy to say yes. It was an exciting day, with perfect weather in a beautiful place!

You know when you're in a rut and you feel like you've hit the bottom of the bucket without a single good idea? Or maybe you feel like you're starting at the bottom of the bucket? It's so frustrating feeling that stuck, especially when you're under a looming deadline. You may think that your ticket out is in nowhere to be found, but the truth is, it's in your head. And potentially in your gas tank.

I am currently working on a website for a church. I'm in the process of writing copy that informs potential visitors of what a service is like at this church. In the process of describing each service, I was reminded of an uncomfortable situation in which I found myself in awhile back.

At the end of February, I headed two hours down the road to Omaha to see Jessica Hische speak. A snowstorm rolled through the state, so I booked a hotel in Council Bluffs just in case the roads were a mess. I checked in, got settled, and got ready to go 20 minutes west to Omaha.

This week has been a wonderful kind of mad. I started it off on Sunday perfecting my portfolio for a Wednesday morning interview. It was more like a Smunday, because I didn't go to sleep till 4:30 on Monday morning. When Monday restarted around 8:30am, I got my resumes to press, and they came back looking dapper. Tuesday, I took a breather, because Smunday and Monday, while enjoyable and exciting, they were pretty intense. Wednesday started off with one of the best, most enjoyable interviews I've ever had, if not the best. I can't say I've ever walked away from an interview so excited for a job opportunity. For the remainder of Wednesday up till the present, I've been working on some new stuff for Harvest Vineyard Church. So without further ado, the letter P: inspired by the paragraph symbol.

Two weeks of drop caps were missing and now they're not. And they happen to spell one of my favorite words: NO. I'm about 57% kidding on that. Moving on. I think I'm getting better at these. The N makes me think of a fancy sushi joint. The O makes me think of the ocean (hey, O is for Ocean! I know that because I passed the third grade). I can't tell if the curl on the inside looks 3D or not, and I can't tell if that works. I think I have to take a break from looking at it, and then look at it some more. Either way, I'm satisfied with what I'm coming up with now, where I really felt like I was grasping at straws when I started this.. I think I might do another alphabet after I'm done with this one.

I came up with the idea for this week's drop cap M about four days before hand. I was sold on the idea from the second it popped into my head. I believe this letter M is strong in concept, but could use a little more contrast in the strokes, or smaller loops on the sides to draw the attention to the letter itself. I may get rid of the loops altogether. I think before I take these into Illustrator, I'm going to fine tune them on paper first.

Ladies, and gentleman, the letter L.  I was going for a Frank Lloyd Wright feel, and it turned out to be a mix of FLW and the Renaissance. I wasn't unsatisfied with it though. When I get to the fine tuning stage of this project, I'll adjust the stroke lengths, and make all the lines parallel. The great thing about thumbnails like these is that they don't have to be perfect. One thing I noticed this week is that I'm getting a little more diverse with my ideas, and they're coming to me quicker. I'm thinking about them less. I'm enjoying this more and more, and each week I get even more excited to render them digitally!

The first one matched the style of the J too much, so I challenged myself to do second. I'm finding that I really enjoy illustrating letters. It's something that I want to learn more about and get better at.