A Disney Mulan animated theme.
I'm excited for the release of Disney's Mulan live action remake this September. I loved the animated movie in my youth and can't wait until the 4th. Since I can't watch the movie yet, I decided to work with a Disney Mulan animated theme in my journal in honor of the live-action film.
The Design Theme
I searched for "Disney Mulan 1998" images online for inspiration. I avoided images of Mulan, Li Shang, and other human characters because I didn't feel I could draw realistic or animated people well. Perhaps I'll try in the future, but not this month.
For sure, I knew I wanted to include Mushu, Cri-Kee, and Little Brother somewhere in my designs. I've never attempted to draw these characters before, so I practiced making several sketches in my sketchbook before committing to the inclusion of these characters.
Because I'm not familiar with drawing much of what I wanted to include in the designs, I spent hours sketching and re-sketching in my journal. It took me time and lots of erasing to determine where I wanted the three animal characters to be located.
I struggled the most drawing Mushu and a tower filled with firecrackers. I didn't feel like I could draw those well enough to leave it as-is. I eventually sketched Mushu a way I liked but ended up leaving the rough sketch of the tower as-is. I essentially gave up with that design.
The Contents
For the title page, I wanted to do something I thought would be simple for me to draw and visually appealing. After a search for "Disney Mulan 1998" images online, I found Mulan's sword was prominent in a lot of the original movie posters.
I knew I wanted the sword on the title page, but I thought I needed something else to write the month's name and current year over. The misshapen 'blob' is supposed to resemble the ornate shape on the sequel's move poster.
I struggled with this design. Drawing the sword was easy, although I later realized I sketched the guard of the sword incorrectly (the golden face below the sword's black handle).
The shape that contains the month's name and current year is grossly misshapen. I probably should've used a stencil to create the shape, but the thought never crossed my mind at the time. Instead, I became distracted with the marker I used to outline the shape.
In the sequel's movie poster, the shape was outlined with an ornate gold frame. After coloring the shape green, I used my Cricut metallic gold pen to trace around the shape's border. I couldn't do so well because the pen's ink was running low. I decided to retrace over the gold ink with my Spectrum Noir metallic gold marker. It wasn't until late that I noticed how awful the shape was.
Coloring with colored pencils also proved challenging for me. I haven't used colored pencils since my childhood, so I wasn't sure how to layer or blend colors if that was a possibility. It also didn't help that I'm unfamiliar with color theory or how to color shiny, metal objects. I didn't realize how difficult it'd be for me to color the sword.
Unfortunately, this is my least favorite page in my September design theme. I thought about creating a new title page design on a separate paper and adhering it to this page. I also considered painting over the page with acrylic paint. In the end, I decided to keep this page as-is, at least for now, and move on.
The calendar overview is where I note important dates, such as appointments and birthdays, things I should do that month, and things that are coming up in the next month.
I had so much fun sketching and coloring Mushu and Cri-Kee above the calendar. Cri-Kee's proportion is off from the animate movie, but I think I did a pretty darn good job with sketching Mushu!
Since I used gold ink on the title page, and gold was used in the animated movie's posters, I decided to use gold to label the various sections of my calendar overview. I filled-in the headers with black ink and wrote the labels with a gold gel pen.
Every night, I write a line of text highlighting one good thing about that day on my highlights page. Usually I write about a simple thing that made me happy. Even on the worst days, I try to find a highlight to write for that day.
For example, I'm now getting over bad food poisoning. The last couple days have been awful. However, on Tuesday I noted that my little dog "makes a great heating pad across my stomach" and on Wednesday I noted that "I finally quit hurling!!!" No matter what happens, I'm trying to convince myself that there's always something good to note and remember.
On my highlights page, I sketched the hair comb barrette Mulan's father placed in her hair in the beginning of the animated movie. I felt the scene represented the beauty her father saw in her, just like my highlights page represents the simple everyday beauties that exist in my life.
I also note when I complete my favorite hobbies and different things I do for my dogs on the trackers page. While many journal enthusiasts track multiple habits, I like tracking my favorite hobbies since I sometimes forget to take time to have fun. I've always been the type of person to put work above all else, which is likely why I'm still single at my old age. Tracking my hobbies reminds me to focus on myself and happiness through a few hobbies.
My dogs' care and happiness are equally important. When I worked full-time, I'd sometimes go home with my work and forget the simple tasks such as brushing my dogs' hair and teeth. I'm now creating a habit of tracking it daily in hopes that I don't forget again when I return to the workforce in the future.
Both my dogs, Shadow and Rascal, love car rides and travel with a passion. They know where the car keys hang on the wall and sit under it when they want to go for a ride. For them, it doesn't seem to matter where we go. We could visit the vet and they'll be happy.
Shadow, my senior dog, started experiencing mobility issues years ago when he displaced his hip while playing. For a few years, there were many days when he wouldn't leave the couch or bed except to eat and go potty.
He's been more active and playful since he started taking his prescribed Galliprant medication last year. There are now fewer days when he doesn't want to play. When Shadow doesn't feel like playing, it's hard to get my little dog, Rascal, to play. Rascal usually refuses to leave Shadow's side on those days.
For me, I feel it's important to track their extended or extra playtime. It'll let me know when Rascal's been inactive and whether Shadow's medication doesn't work well for him.
I track the following for my dogs:
when they go for a joy ride,
when they received teeth care with brush chews or tooth brushing,
when I've cared for their coat with a brush, leave-in shampoo, or bath, and
when they participated in extended or extra playtime.
As always, the mood tracker page serves as a simple coloring page for me. I decided the tower where the firecrackers were set off towards the end of the animated movie works best for this page. I'll color-in a firecracker based on one of four moods for that day: good, meh, bad, or sick.
Drawing this design proved challenging for me. I don't draw architectural designs, and I didn't want to spend my time focusing on perspective and details of the tower. I figured I'd spend so much time on trying to draw this properly, I'd only make it look worse.
I decided to trace over my original rough sketch with a black pen. I also didn't focus on replicating the colors exactly as it appears in the movie. Instead, I thought it couldn't be any worse than the title page and colored it like a 5-year-old with no care in the world.
I kept my websites & stuff page simple. I wanted to extend the edu resume & folio section following an increase in subscribers and interest I gained on that website. That extension left me with less room for artwork.
However, the increased interest in my professional skills and knowledge of higher education brought a sense of pride and accomplishment in me. I couldn't help but imagine what I felt was like how Mulan felt when she made it to the top of the pole and shot an arrow before Li Shang's feet.
On this page, I'll track when I make edits and updates to this website, my professional resume/portfolio/blog website, YouTube, and Instagram. I'm bad at uploading or logging in to Instagram, so I may minimize or eliminate that section next month.
After I completed the designs for this month, I started wondering how much time I devoted to brainstorming, sketching, drawing, and coloring. I was also in the middle of editing a video of the design for upload to YouTube, but I didn't know how long it took me to get to that point in the edit.
I've wanted to try tracking my time spent on things for months. Now's a good enough time to get into the habit of tracking things I do. After all, it'll help me get into the habit of tracking the time spent on tasks when I return to the workforce. I don't believe I've ever worked for a supervisor that never asked me, "approximately how much time do you spend on your various tasks and responsibilities?"
I wrote time well spent? because I couldn't think of a better title for this page. I may change the page title in the future if I continue to use this tracker. For now, it's a question I've been wondering when I complete the unnecessary, non-work-related tasks I've given myself to do each week.
Creating the table seemed easy to me, but only time will tell if it's effective. I listed time from 8 A.M. to 12 A.M. on a row along the top of the table and the days of the month in the left column. I then listed and color coded five tasks I wanted to track my time spent: video editing, writing for this blog, edits and updates to my professional resume/portfolio/blog website, trainings I complete, and craft projects.
It made sense in my mind to associate each task with a color. I'll use that color to fill-in the time block I spent completing those tasks. My only concern is I won't remember to complete this daily, or as I work on various tasks I want to track.
My Thoughts
Overall, I feel like this was a good attempt at representing Disney's Mulan animated movie. Hopefully, when I look back on September 2020 in my journal, I'll be reminded of the time and effort spent into designing the theme.
I dislike the title page the most. It's dull and boring. Perhaps I'll do something with it later, but chances are I'll forget about it after today.
I'm most proud of my Mushu. I struggled drawing him initially, but he turned out to be the best artwork in my opinion. I especially like how I made his arm hang over the calendar.
What's Next?
In a few days I'll begin filling in the various trackers and my highlights page for September. I'm curious to see if the time tracker was worthwhile, if I want to make changes next month, or if I'll eliminate it from future journal designs.
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Thanks, and have a great day!
Simply Jelly Jam
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