It's the most stressful time of the year...

If you had a job in the service/retail industry, you would know what I mean.  For it being this time of the year that you would expect others (or just the public) to show the better virtues of society like gratitude, charity, consideration and just being respectful towards others, we, the helpers, unfortunately don't get it back as much.  Getting more than usual heavier foot-traffic of people along with the expectation of you being able to keep up the work pace like a machine; you can't expect the public to remember that we're still human beside those actual machines and that they're guests in the stores that have to show good manners just as much.

This is the only issue that I have during the Holidays. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way with holiday crowds. I do love everything else about the Holidays but it isn't easy to endure all the stress and fatigue of running a cash register for hours with near nil assistance and with an endless lineup with heavily packed cartfuls of goods to bag up and hair-triggered egos to deal with. Well, I don't want to rant on and on over it; this is a seasonal trend that'll never change no matter what.

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On a more positive note, I've finally got around to purchasing new Adobe Programs.  It isn't the subscription one that the company now does; it's an older copy of their Adobe Master Collection CS6 for the Mac platform, never opened or used.  With my older Adobes being on an even older Windows XP platform that I need Parallels to have access to them, it causes a lot of slowdown time / memory usage on my Mac Mini.  Plus I like to see about getting not only faster performance on my art programs but also more compatibility between them and my Wacom Tablet.  Just hopefully I didn't get scammed on it for the lower price compared to past listings; this was over on eBay with only 3 available at the time. I should expect it in about 2 - 6 weeks approximately.

For a lot of this week, it's been doing several DIYs between work shifts (when I'm not overly exhausted that is). Small odds and ends to help streamlining my chores or clear up more things on my To-Do List.  While I didn't do much artwork, I should have an easier set of shifts this week to invest for this week.  In the meantime, here's a sketch I did while dealing with updates for my tablet. More Christmas-y theme works for next week, hopefully.

Still got Halloween on the brain, apparently.

Happy Holidays and Raving' Retailers

Finally with some money coming in, I'm taking time to go to any events that catches my interests.  The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto during early November had always been a favourite due to the animals.  If people aren't a challenge to draw as it is, animals are fairly similar.  At least they don't get touchy about being drawn, just some about being petted.

Wanting to finally see it in person for myself, I went to see this year's, Toronto's Santa Claus Parade. It was a bit chilly (luckily I thought of packing a wool blanket & hot coffee in a thermos) so I tried my best to sketch in the cold. I've ended up taking a few photos and videos.  

Two more sketches from my last TOUSK group meet up at the CF Eaton Centre. Not too many showed up due to large holiday shopping.

 And this last one on my own time (just before my extra shift at work)

The holidays I have to say are definitely keeping me busy, between extra work hours, winter house chores and personal side projects. I'm doing my best to keep it all balanced though I do admit, I have to put some things off at home for a couple of days at least. Frankly, our Christmas Tree isn't even put up yet. So hopefully after the holidays like New Year's Day, there'll be more time at home to get creative again.

More like Graphic Design

Okay, so lately I've been looking into how much kinds of work I have and I'm noticing that I haven't been making anything to showcase for retail.  I was making gondole pricing tags from my past temp job for the Toronto's L'Oreal Warehouse Sale as a pricing associate.  Mostly I had to print and laminate the gondola tags made at their headquarters (gondola as in those shelving stands common in retail stores) and place them on the correct spots at the sale's location, including editing and replacing them as prices changes in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Sand Checkers Club, 2016

The job did gave me the knowledge about coordinating the product's info and imagery together into an appealing yet understanding composition for any reader.  I had done some school postings before so I already had some amateur experience with this.  Anyways, these are samples of event postings and pricing tags using my own artworks (excluding product photographs); none of them are for authentic store prices or events.

Annual Winter Solstice Fair (Postcard Ad), 2016

Since I'm considering applying for jobs that deals with making these, these are for my portfolio for graphic design-related works.

Gondola Pricing Tags, 2016

Lance Blush (Bin Labels), 2016

Multi Brands Makeup (Bin Labels), 2016