Each month we invite a creative to curate our social feed for one week. We spoke with October’s Guest Curator Stormy Nesbit about her illustrations and her journey into livestreaming her creative process.

As a toddler, Stormy Nesbit could often be found with a marker or crayon in her hands. “I was even caught chewing on them from time to time,” she admits, so it’s only natural that she went on to pursue a creative career.

Stormy followed her brother’s advice to pursue graphic design, and fell in love with the process and the art of the discipline. She received her degree in graphic design from West Virginia University and a Master’s in Visual Communication from Arizona States. Today she is a graphic designer at PetSmart by day and a freelance artist by night.

“I like to think that I’m simultaneously an illustrator and a graphic designer, because in most cases there’s an overlap. The only change is that I switch my materials and style depending on my desired goal.”

See more work by Stormy

Stormy’s illustrations celebrate self-care and self-love, and feature African American figures as the heroine. Her hope is that her images will help to uplift those in her community by representing them in a positive and powerful way. “I’m trying to show the viewer, and sometimes even myself a part of my culture and my community’s culture in an elegant and modern way.” Her inspiration often comes from those closest to her: her friends, her family, and her community. “Our skin, our hair, our bodies and our culture deserve to be seen for what they all are — beautiful.”

See more work by Stormy

Earlier this year, Stormy collaborated with the Adobe Fresco team and to use the new livestreaming feature directly from the iPad app, which gave her an opportunity to connect and engage with her peers and with her followers. “It’s such a cool feature that is simple to set up and can be used anywhere. The freedom it provided completely changed my perception of streaming.”

It’s no easy task to show your creative process in front of a live audience. For Stormy, the biggest challenge was overcoming the fear of messing up: “It’s easy to get into your own head and focus too much on not messing up instead of just working through the process, but getting that first stream out of the way made me more comfortable.” Her advice for first time streamers is to just do it: “There is nothing to be afraid of. The people in this community who will watch and follow you, will also support you.” Stormy’s hope is that sharing her process, she can inspire others, just as other artists have inspired her.

Watch Stormy create this illustration on #AdobeFresco

Stormy found inspiration for this week’s takeover from color, dimension, and movement — all elements that she hopes to incorporate more into her own art form.

See all the projects from Stormy’s moodboard

Stormy found all three of those elements in these abstract 3D images by The Berd. “I like the textures that each composition has, and the balance they have with each other. It’s awesome to see someone create a texture so realistic by rendering.”

Blub by Berd

Another project that caught Stormy’s eye was this series of Nike sneakers by Cristian Acquaro, Riccardo Bancone, Claudio Gasparollo, Giovanni Mauro, and Pietro Furbatto. “I’m a french fry connoisseur and a fan of shoes, so this is an unusual and captivating take on an iconic shoe. It takes a American subculture icon and serves it to the masses as America’s favorite side dish.”

NIKE RT by Cristian Acquaro, Riccardo Bancone, Claudio Gasparollo, Giovanni Mauro and Pietro FurbattoBerd

“It was fun to look at different mediums and explore outside of my own creative field,” shares Stormy. “It will be an interesting challenge to try to incorporate some of the creative elements from this mood board into some future pieces.”

Throughout the week we’ll share more projects from Stormy’s moodboard on our Instagram and Twitter. You can see more of Stormy’s work on her Behance page and Instagram.