What is success and does it make us happy? / November 28, 2017 by Esther Loopstra

What is success?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word success. What is success and does it really make us happy? A lot of "successful" people don’t feel fulfilled when they reach their goals. Have you ever achieved a goal and then felt like it just wasn’t enough?

Many times we measure success by what we see others doing or by what other’s will think about us. We compare ourselves and then say “They look successful, I want to do that!” This can be good, because it can give us a goal to shoot for, but it also can be dangerous because we loose sight of what is actually important to us. And we forget to embrace the real reason we began doing something in the first place.

How to come up with new ideas / November 1, 2017 by Esther Loopstra

Are you stuck? Having trouble coming up with ideas for a project? I've found some techniques that have helped me break out of my stuck-ness and I use them with my students. I want to share them with you!

Finding space for creativity / April 7, 2016 by Esther Loopstra

So why is taking time off so good for our creative brain? Even if you don’t THINK that you are creative… you are. In whatever job you have, you think in a creative way, come up with solutions to problems, find patterns. Those are all creative ways of thinking. Our capacity for output is only as good as our input. We spend so much time working and thinking about work that our brains get overloaded with information. Everyone needs a different amount of free time for their brain to sort through all of that information, but everyone does need some time.

Adobe Capture CC and Illustrator pattern tutorial / January 12, 2016 by Esther Loopstra

I've been pretty blown away with Adobe's Capture CC app and how easily you can turn your sketches or drawings into vectors. These "shapes" as they call them go directly into your Adobe Library so you can open them in Photoshop or Illustrator. How fun is that?

Introducing Finding Your Creative Voice (and why I created it) / December 10, 2015 by Esther Loopstra

I am SUPER excited to announce my new in person course FINDING YOUR CREATIVE VOICE. This is going to start out in February as a 6 week in person course but eventually I would like to create an online version so everyone can have access.

This class is especially for those who are held back by fear and probably have said to other people "I can't even draw a straight line" or "I don't have a creative bone in my body". Or maybe you are struggling to get back into art or writing and you are feeling "stuck".