Three Things About Me:

This week’s throwback is to one of my very first blogger awards! Since then, my art has become my main pursuit and my music has become a welcome hobby. ¡Todavía estoy aprendo español!

1. I hate bananas–the cold mushy texture, the afterthought of a flavor. I rebuke it. Give me fried plantain any day! I can’t remember ever liking bananas, but I do remember many a standoff as a child refusing to eat my “fruits”.
2. I’m an aspiring music producer. I’ve had an on-again off-again love affair with the piano since preschool. Today, I’m pursuing a career in music production.
3. “I’m currently learning Spanish”…has been a perennial saying of mine for the past two years.

Read more via Mystery Blogger Award

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Google Plus is dead and my current leave-in conditioner is Creme of Nature Moisture Recovery Leave-in Milk. Time’s have changed since this natural hair tag!

I’ve been tagged! *runs around in circles freaking out* Shout out to Yeka over at MyYeka for creating the tag and for nominating me. Thank you, lady! Y’all check out her site. Keep reading for my answers.

via Natural Hair Tag — Pursuit of Natural

6 years, this week! Here’s a throwback to my Year 5 retrospective.

18 months after going natural, a woman complemented me on my first ever twist out. I was over the moon all day. You couldn’t tell me nothin! I was ready to rock twist outs every single day, but of course my second try was nowhere near as bomb, and the travails of free hair checked […]

via 5 Years Natural a Photo Retrospective — Pursuit of Natural

Art Better: Skills Management for the Self-Taught Artist

 

Skills management provides some structure and formalization to the learning process when you are a self-taught artist. It is a self-assessment technique that you can return to again and again as you develop and it will help you find answers to the question “How do I get better?”

Because not everything you might think to study is actually relevant to your goals as an artist, it’s important to understand those goals and the steps that will help you develop with those goals in mind. Here, I’ll briefly outline how skills management helps to do that.

When to do More or Less with Natural Hair

 

So, I recently discovered my ends covered in product buildup, which is highly unusual. When I identified the issue, it turned out to be a combination of being heavy handed with a new, heavier product and exercising more, which meant my usual wash regimen was not keeping up. Sometimes the problem is that I’m doing too much. Other times, not enough. From washing to trimming, here’s a shareable graphic with a few signs to look for when you need to do more or less with your natural hair.

 

Are you on Pinterest? I am! Follow pursuitofnatural over there for more art and beauty. ❤

Dear Newly Natural Me: Learn to Cornrow

 

Dear Newly Natural Me,

Can you please learn to cornrow? It will break the space-time continuum, considering your first attempt isn’t for another year, but it’ll be worth it. In fact, here: watch this tutorial by Breanna Rutter and thank me later.

Art Better: 3 Tips for the Self-Taught Artist

 

I’ve decided to write about art and illustration for a spell. I hope you don’t mind. I’m going to talk about the discipline behind the discipline mostly. If you want to quickly dive into some tutorials, I keep a repository of great tutorials from around the web on my Google Plus collection “Art Better”.  And for quick tips & references I have an “Art Better” Pinterest board.

If you want to stick with becoming a better artist over the long haul, though, study, research, and self-assessment are, in my experience, the core of what will support your efforts. Especially, when you are teaching yourself art. These are skills that have helped me develop my craft with efficiency and purpose. Here are some tips to get you started on honing these skills.

Style Hacks to Reduce Tension

I love visualizations! This is just a shareable graphic on some styling hacks to reduce tension. Are you on Pinterest? I am! Follow pursuitofnatural over there. And if you like this post, take a second to like this post. ❤

Dear Newly Natural Me: Let It (Combs) Go

 

Dear Newly Natural Me,

We need to talk about detangling.

You’ve tried three different shower/detangling/wide-tooth combs now, and all of them snag and break your strands. You’re only hanging on to the tool because it’s supposed to make the job faster and easier, but you painstakingly inch your way up from the ends, like they said to do in all those tutorials, and ten minutes later you still haven’t reached halfway up the hair shaft. Maybe if you get a seamless comb, or a denman, or emptied an entire bottle of conditioner on your head–stop! Let it go.

Overwhelmed by Natural Hair

I think it’s pretty normal to feel overwhelmed as a new natural. I’ve written before about information overload.

For a lot of us we traded in running combs through straight hair for figuring out how to untangle kinks and coils with just our fingers. We went from knowing our favorite brand of hair grease (and our momma’s momma’s favorite brand) to trying to figure out which ingredients to avoid. And how come our textures can’t all pull off the same hairstyles?

It’s a lot.