The target audience for my social media/blog/art and design will be modern young feminine folk around the ages of 15-35. They will be students or in entry level positions in their jobs. My target audience will be new to dating or just starting families of their own. They will most likely live and were raised in suburban or urban environments and have a family pet or a pet of their own. These young people will be crafty, artistic and quirky. They’ll listen to pop-y music and likely place a significant amount of importance on art, fashion, culture and aesthetics. I want my social media and artwork along with my target audience to be colourful, positive, and eclectic. They won’t be overly wealthy or necessarily located in the west, but they will be vaguely politically informed and social justice oriented.
There are a few strategies I’ll use to reach my target audience. The main tools I’ll use are trends. Keeping up with current trends, popular figures (influencers/celebrities) and memes will keep my work modern and interesting as well as help my work be seen by my target audience. Another strategy I think I’ll use to broaden my audience is posting about international holidays. I don’t want my work to be just seen by a western audience and I think that would be a good way to appeal to an international audience.
This June I was forced to had the opportunity to lead a free watercolour workshop for children at my job. This year Staples Canada made renovations to select Ontario stores to include a large Staples Kids section. Paired with these complete renovations was an initiative called Staples Learn & Play: a number of free workshops featuring products available at Staples.
I was in charge of a watercolour workshop in which I would teach children to use Staedtler watercolour markers and pencils to create a painting called Sunset Cacti. A trio of cacti in planted pots in front of a simple gradient of sunset colours in the background.
The event itself was very chaotic. Families were supposed to arrive at designated intervals and parents were supposed to supervise their children. Unfortunately the time slots were not being properly followed and as a result we had large groups of children all wanting to paint as their parents wandered around the store. All of this happening during hour 7 of my 9 hour shift. The bright side to this miniature disaster was because so many families came early, the kiddos that came in closer to the end of the event had much more of a structured experience. The calmer environment seemed much more enjoyable to the kids, parents and especially to me.
The best example of this was the very last family that showed up, a sassy 10 year old girl and her mother. I was pretty exhausted at this point but still tried to instruct my last mini class only to be interrupted by the child politely telling me she didn’t need any advice. The comment was so out of left field I burst out laughing. I said no problem and that I’d be here if she had any questions. The three of us, me, the mother and the girl all ended up painting together and chatting.
All of the later painting sessions had this relaxed vibe and I felt like I was actually teaching as opposed to trying to wrangle a bunch of unruly kids. It was a much better learning environment and it was these families that ended up actually buying watercolour pencils and brushes while their paintings dried.
Overall I think the event was a success. Would I do it again under these chaotic conditions? Absolutely not! But I learned a lot and had a blast painting along with some kiddos, so it all turned out okay in the end.
My hair, my favourite shirts and tumbler are all rainbow. So of course I feel an affinity towards them. The weather recently has been perfect rainbow weather 🌈🥰
To be completely honest, I can’t remember the last proper vacation I’ve been on… From a financial standpoint, I just haven’t been able to make it work. That being said, I still love visiting new places but rather than visiting tropical locales or far away places, I often find myself taking small day trips.
One of the most recent and memorable day trips I took was to Bancroft, Ontario for a geologist lead guided rockhounding tour. For those of you unfamiliar, rockhounding is the word used to describe hobbyist geology and rock collecting and Bancroft, Ontario is one of the best places in the province for it.
The Peterborough-Bancroft-Madoc region is one of the most attractive to the geologist and mineral collector in Ontario due to the abundance of fine mineral samples and the many interesting geological features to be seen.” – D. F. Hewitt, Geology and Scenery, Peterborough, Bancroft and Madoc Area: Ontario Geological Survey, 1969
My travel companion on this trip was my mom, she’s always been such a good sport and really supportive of my weird hobbies. So we hit the road bright and early and headed off to Bancroft to meet with the geologist. We met local geologist Chris Fouts at a local rock and crystal store where he gave us a brief lecture on the type of crystals we’d be looking for: Corundum.
Corundum is one of the hardest minerals, ranking at #9 on the Mohs hardness scale. Ruby and sapphire are actually the red and blue varieties of corundum. Unfortunately it is very very rare to find vividly coloured corundum in the location we were headed. We’d most likely be finding pieces of brown, tan or green corundum.
After our lecture we all piled into our vehicles and hit the road again, following Chris north to a secluded dirt road. On foot we followed a small trail leading into a wooded forest and up a steep incline. Once we made it to the top we found a large rocky landing and got to work.
View from the collection site
Safety goggles on and pick axe in hand, I spent the afternoon sorting through the large chunks of heavy feldspar. We found huge garnets lodged into the feldspar and lots of little pieces of corundum. It wasn’t until I found one piece of rock with two hexagonal barrel-shaped crystals in it that I was super excited! I ran to show Chris and he said it was one of the best pieces of corundum he’d seen from the location! Now, brace yourself for this beautiful, spectacular crystal….
There’s definitely a crystal in there, trust me
I know, pretty incredible, right? If you squint and look really closely, you can almost kind of see the two crystals. Hahaha! It’s pretty pathetic looking, but I’m still very proud of my find. The entire experience was so fun and if you have even a passing interest in geology, I highly recommend attending one of Chris Fouts guided tours! Here are a few more pieces of corundum I found…
Hello WordPress! I have absolutely no idea how this website works!!! I’m going to attempt to learn this, but… going from a SUPER customizable Squarespace website to something like this…. it feels very stifling. So rigid and constricted! I can’t even change my blogs background without upgrading to premium? What the heck! Wish me luck, I’ll need it!
Autumn Taylor's Sketchblog 