Peep this, Skiotch!
It's funny how things come together without any rhyme or reason, especially in good and interesting ways.
Just last week, I was thinking of something new that I wanted to undertake. Not so much a hobby or project, but an exercise routine of sorts for my creativity and imagination. With my line of work, surprisingly enough, I don't seem to get a lot of time to do much drawing or illustration, and I'm starting to think it might be affecting my design work overall. I find myself managing workflows and manipulating tools more than actually doing what I'd consider really creative stuff, and I figured it was time to find new ways to do that, even in the simplest ways.
So, I considered picking up a sketchbook and taking some time at the beginning of each day to do some doodling. Not to create anything in particular, but just to have fun with it and see what happens, and most of all, to flex the creative muscles. While a real pencil and paper are still a preferred method, I even considered just booting up Photoshop every morning and using my Wacom tablet to get something down on virtual paper.
Then something else occurred to me. I could do these as an exercise for myself, then publish them here to share with everyone. More for kicks than anything else, but I've seen it done by other illustrators and I've always found it amusing to see how they think when working on such a small scale. However, this is were the problem of how to publish these theoretical doodles came up. If on paper, I'd have to scan, format and upload; if done digitally, I'd still have to format and upload. Either way, it's not a total pain in the ass, but I know myself, and it just gives me more instances to want to "do more" to enhance or touch-up or what have you, when the goal is to keep the process as simple as possible.
And today, what arrives in my inbox but an invite from a good friend to check out Skitch, a small Mac application that is essentially a web-enabled, digital sketchpad. It allows for basic drawing and painting, and can even be used for notation on screenshots and photos, all with the ability to quickly upload to the MySkitch web site or other services like .Mac or Flickr. In short, it looks like the business.
Since I'm still hopped up on Halloween candy and feeling the vibe, I took it for a spin and here's what I did. I think this could be exactly what I was looking for. It appears that the application and site are still on an invite-only basis, so I'm anxious to see if Skitch takes off. I have two invites for anyone interested. If you'd like to give it a spin, let a brotha know.
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