Category: Art & Business

This is the process that flows for me, and varying this is often a good thing. I grab paper and pencil and draw everything out on a page, fill it and keep going until the ideas run out. 

Then I work on refinement, cleaning up the sketches, overdrawing, redrawing until I get the images I’m after. I often find during this stage that new ideas pop up and a million variations can be made, so it’s important to stay focussed a little. The wandering imagination is great but needs a little guidance. 

I use A4 sketchpads, get them from Officeworks or similar at a reasonable price. Because I sketch everyday, this is a good size for me. I’ll often take the A5 though on the road because it’s more compact for travel.

Depending on how I’m feeling, I’ll switch up between a hard HB pencil or a softer 2B. Sometimes it’s nice to sketch quick and dark. The HB is great for linework though. Then I go over it with a permanent fineliner. There’s many days where I just use the finalise too, it’s saves time and with confidence it gets easier. 

What have you sketched today? 

If you’re looking for a way to display multiple blog articles on your Shopify site, this article is for you. Thanks go to ChatGPT for being my shadow coder 🙂 I haven’t figured out how to add a new section template and get it to be available as a option, but with custom code this setup works. 

There’s more formatting work to be done, but someone smarter than me might be able to finish this off so it styles the same as the standard blog feature section. 

Instructions are: 

• Copy this code below
• Edit the blog names (in the code below) to match your blog names. I’ve set them to blogname-1,blogname-2,blogname-3 in the code below. Replace them with yours
• Edit your Theme
• Add a custom code object and
• Paste in your code and save

After doing the above, you should have the first article from each blog displaying on your Shopify site. Enjoy!

P.S. I got a little help from an AI friend to clean up the code. 

{{ 'component-slider.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag }}
{{ 'component-card.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag }}
{{ 'component-article-card.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag }}
{{ 'section-featured-blog.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag }}

{%- style -%}
.section-{{ section.id }}-padding {
  padding-top: {{ section.settings.padding_top | times: 0.75 | round: 0 }}px;
  padding-bottom: {{ section.settings.padding_bottom | times: 0.75 | round: 0 }}px;
}
@media screen and (min-width: 750px) {
  .section-{{ section.id }}-padding {
    padding-top: {{ section.settings.padding_top }}px;
    padding-bottom: {{ section.settings.padding_bottom }}px;
  }
}
{%- endstyle -%}

{% assign blog_handles = 'news,photography,art' | split: ',' %}

<style>
.featured-blogs {
  padding: 10px;
  border-radius: 8px;
  text-align: center;
}
.featured-blogs h2 {
  font-size: 28px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
  color: #333;
}
.featured-blogs ul {
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0;
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  justify-content: center;
  gap: 20px;
}
.featured-blogs li {
  background: white;
  border-radius: 8px;
  box-shadow: 0 4px 8px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
  padding: 20px;
  width: 300px;
  text-align: left;
  transition: transform 0.2s ease-in-out;
}
.featured-blogs li:hover {
  transform: translateY(-5px);
}
.featured-blogs h3 {
  font-size: 20px;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
}
.featured-blogs h3 a {
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #0073e6;
}
.featured-blogs p {
  font-size: 14px;
  color: #666;
}
.featured-blogs small {
  display: block;
  margin-top: 10px;
  font-size: 12px;
  color: #999;
}
</style>

<div class="featured-blogs section-{{ section.id }}-padding">
  <ul>
    {% for handle in blog_handles %}
      {% assign blog = blogs[handle] %}
      {% if blog.articles.size > 0 %}
        {% assign article = blog.articles.first %}
        <li>
          {% if article.image %}
            <a href="{{ article.url }}">
              <img
                src="{{ article.image | img_url: '255x' }}"
                alt="{{ article.title }}"
                class="motion-reduce"
                loading="lazy"
              >
            </a>
          {% else %}
            <a href="{{ article.url }}">
              <img
                src="{{ 'placeholder-image.jpg' | asset_url }}"
                alt="Placeholder image"
                class="motion-reduce"
                loading="lazy"
              >
            </a>
          {% endif %}
          <h3><a href="{{ article.url }}">{{ article.title }}</a></h3>
          <p>{{ article.excerpt_or_content | strip_html | truncate: 100 }}</p>
          <small>Published on {{ article.published_at | date: '%B %d, %Y' }}</small>
        </li>
      {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>
</div>
---

If you want just a list of the top 5 articles in an UL / LI list, here it is: 

---
{% assign blog_handles = 'news,photography,art' | split: ',' %}
{% assign article_count = 0 %}
{% assign max_articles = 5 %}

<div class="featured-blogs section-{{ section.id }}-padding">
  <h2>Latest Articles</h2>
  <ul>
    {% for handle in blog_handles %}
      {% assign blog = blogs[handle] %}
      {% for article in blog.articles %}
        <li>
          <a href="{{ article.url }}">{{ article.title }}</a>
        </li>
        {% assign article_count = article_count | plus: 1 %}
        {% if article_count >= max_articles %}
          {% break %}
        {% endif %}
      {% endfor %}
      {% if article_count >= max_articles %}
        {% break %}
      {% endif %}
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>
</div>

----

Hope you found this useful! Leave a comment if you have a feedback. 

Instagram changed the layout of the post grid from square to a 3:4 aspect ratio format on mobile. It remains the same for now in the web browser. Note that the reels tab was already this new ratio. 

The impact is that anyone who designed their content to fit Insta’s square format, now has a messy looking profile / grid. It’s clear that the platforms will continually make changes to fit whatever drives engagement and creatives are at the tail end of those changes. 

Insta’s square grid has always been an outlier, a legacy layout from the early Insta days and never really worked well on mobile devices that have the 16:9 aspect ratio. 16:9 is an international standard and mobile cameras shoot in that ratio by default. 

Here’s what the grid looks like in the browser.

And on mobile.

The learning & the fediverse

The learning here is to create work in a format / ratio that suits your end game and also caters a little for the future, not for the platform. 

I create a lot of my images at 5-6000 pixels across. It’s enough for most purposes and allows the work to be scaled down or cropped easily. If you’re a Redbubble user, you’ll be familiar with their one upload of the 6000 pixel upload that then generates all of the images for their various product merchandise. 

The fediverse is Meta‘s answer to making all public online content and conversations available across all of its platforms that you give it permission to access. It’s important because what it means is that your online work / content is now (if you’ve turned it on) platform agnostic, Instagram users can see your threads content etc. 

It’s not hard to imagine that the current platforms (Insta, Threads, Facebook etc) will all merge and become the Meta platform. So putting all of your effort into a single platform, is a risky long-term approach. 

Federated content

The little fediverse icon next to your name (the two circles, on Threads) is there indicating progress on federating your post to the network. It’s posting it to the  server infrastructure and running all sorts of algorithms for it to find the right audience across all of Meta’s platforms (Insta, Threads etc). 

Own your house

From a marketer’s perspective, the best choice is always to own your house. Make your website and post the content there and share it out to the platforms. if you have the time and resources, there are benefits and necessary cases to posting direct on platforms such as TikTok (doesn’t support URLs), but branding and actions should drive back to your home where possible. 

For the wanderlust travellers and those who post mainly on Instagram or TikTok, tips would be to make sure you save drafts of all of your media on your phone or lappie. You never know what will happen in the future, like the grid change, and you’ll need to resize or repost. Save any edited content, reels etc that you’ve added copy, effects and all that editing time, onto your device. 

Let me know if you have thoughts on the grid change and what’s coming in the future. 

Follow me on these platforms for more: threads, Insta, Facebook, TikTok 

I’m an artist and illustrator working in Perth, Boorloo – Western Australia. 🌱 I illustrate a sustainable lifestyle of growing your own food, whimsical characters, books and also Shop✨ If you’re looking to hire an illustrator or collab, hit me up on socials or contact with your requirements.

As a student I studied Fine Arts at Curtin University majoring in sculpture and lived in Melbourne and Kyoto and travelled a little. I spent over 10 years living in Japan in the game development industry. Eventually the winds brought me back to Perth and now I create in a small garden. 

The ocean and our green world is what I dream about and you’ll find lots of that inspiration throughout my work. I try to produce everything in a sustainable way using available materials. I love to draw, paint and sculpt and use many mediums to illustrate, make bush crafted materials and produce gifts. 

Thanks for checking my site out and I hope you find something that moves you. 

Artwork

Join me on these platforms for more: threads, Insta, TikTok

I make art and illustrate a whimsical life. I’m an ocean and nature lover and try to contribute back by sharing knowledge and supporting protection efforts where possible. Mixed in amongst all of that, are plenty of cute characters, like coconachan 🙂

I previously worked in the game development industry in Japan with some amazing game artists. The teams in Japan worked on Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation and other console games. And yeah, a bit of that slot (pachinko) work too. 

Check my blogs for art prints, stickers and decals or merch and sustainability ideas. 

If you have a collaboration idea or your searching for an artist in Perth, WA to design characters or other things for your business, please reach out and let’s have a coffee contact me

Follow me on these platforms for more: threads, Insta, Facebook, TikTok