You Can Do Anything But Not Everything

You Can Do Anything But Not Everything

A couple months ago I purchased the Skillshare class "The First Steps of Hand-Lettering: Concept to Sketch (Lettering I)" taught by the talented letterer and illustrator Mary Kate McDevitt. The purpose of the class is to hand-letter your favorite quote, title, or phrase, I chose the quote "You can do anything, but not everything" by David Allen and a poster as the application.

In my initial brainstorm some of the first ideas that came to mind were the "You can do it!" poster and superheroes, specifically Wonder Woman to represent strength. But as the project evolved, I wanted to get closer to the reason why I chose the phrase which was a reminder to myself, good advice to follow, from there the idea of a self-portrait emerged.

In the larger, refined sketches I had two main ideas to execute this concept: a profile whether a side profile, full body, or just the outline showing the hair to frame the text or a mirror you might view your reflection in. Since I wanted to be more subtle than literal I decided to use the mirror concept as the final, you can view the process below.