Creative work, updates, and curiosities.
What if a portfolio did not begin with a grid of projects but with one small found object? In 2026 I tried it with a dented thrift-store tin, a tiny exhibit label, and a year of work hiding behind a QR code.
On November 11, 2026, I spread a year of creative receipts across the studio table and asked a blunt question: what actually earned its place? This is the keep-cut-cancel audit I wish I had run in January.
For ten years I've shown my work to the same small circle of designers and illustrators, and we've all gotten very good at nodding. So I printed the whole portfolio, handed it to a friend who writes software documentation, and asked her to be honest. What came back was awkward, funny, and more useful than most studio critiques I've sat through.
I made a rule: no idea gets developed until it survives being written as a single sentence. Six months later, my notes app is smaller, my abandoned projects are fewer, and I can finally tell the difference between a good idea and a good mood. Here's the template, the failures, and the three tests I use.
I’m not banning a word for anyone else. I’m retiring it from my own vocabulary because it was flattening my portfolio pieces, my blog posts, and my genuine curiosities into one gray pile. Here are the three terms I’m using in 2026 instead—and what changed when I did.
The free bin at my local library is not a metaphor. It is a cardboard box of other people’s castoffs, and every week it gives me a constraint, an image, and a reason to make something. Here’s the repeatable exercise I’ve been running in 2026—and a few finds that surprised me.
A museum guard once told me that visitors almost never look at the middle of a room — they commit to the first wall, then start scanning for the exit. I've been editing my portfolio around that sentence ever since. Here's what changed, and the attention checklist I now run before anything goes live.
I used to delete abandoned pitches and dead sketches the moment they embarrassed me. These days they live in a searchable library with tags, dates, and a standing invitation to come back. Here's how the system works, plus the three kinds of failure I've learned to keep.
For years my best work sat in a folder labeled 'not yet.' This is the story of why I started posting the half-finished, the abandoned, and the frankly embarrassing — plus a simple three-line template anyone can use to do the same without feeling exposed.
Not a best-of list. A shelf of small, strange, under-covered creative finds from the past year — a tool, a micro-community, a format, a habit — each with a short note on what makers can actually take from it.
Tightly compressed vertical stories can feel more emotionally precise than bloated short-form series. Here is why I am making 60-second storytelling a creative priority in 2026, with lessons from recent experiments and a practical craft checklist for US collaborators and fans.
A look inside the weekly 45-minute sketchbook session that feeds my finished work, from the prompts and cheap materials to the recurring mistakes and tiny decisions that make a rough page useful. At the end, there is an open invitation to try the same exercise and share your page for a future community roundup.