Figuring out your illustration style - how long does it take?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Good Ship Illustration Episode: Figuring out your illustration style - how long does it take?
Release Date: April 25, 2024
Hosts: Anne, Katy Chappell, Helen Stevens, and Tanya Willis

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1. Introduction

In this episode of The Good Ship Illustration, the hosts—Anne, Katy Chappell, Helen Stevens, and Tanya Willis—delve into the perennial question many illustrators grapple with: "How long does it take to figure out your illustration style?" Celebrating their flagship course, Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag, they set the stage for an insightful discussion aimed at helping illustrators navigate the complexities of developing a unique creative voice.

2. Common Questions about Finding Your Creative Voice

Anne opens the conversation by highlighting that the question of how long it takes to find one's creative voice is frequently asked within their community. This curiosity isn't solely about establishing a commercially viable career but extends to achieving confidence in one's work and sharing it authentically with the world.

Anne [00:00]: "There are three of us... people wondering, like how long finding your creative voice takes."

3. Course Structure and Flexible Pace

Katy addresses inquiries about the length of their course, emphasizing its flexibility. While the program is structured as an eight-week course, participants have lifetime access, allowing them to progress at a pace that accommodates their personal and professional lives.

Katy Chappell [00:51]: "The course is actually literally eight weeks. But you have lifetime access and you can do it at your own pace."

Helen echoes this sentiment, advising against rushing through the material to prevent feeling overwhelmed, especially for those balancing full-time jobs.

Helen Stevens [01:06]: "You couldn't necessarily be in a full-time job to do that. So we'd advise, ... Maybe it takes you three months to go through it."

4. The Endless Journey of Developing a Creative Voice

Anne muses on the perpetual nature of refining one's creative voice, likening it to a never-ending yet enjoyable project.

Anne [01:34]: "Your creative voice sort of lasts forever. Annoyingly, I feel like it lasts forever."

Katy adds that, much like improving one's living environment incrementally, developing a creative voice involves continuous improvement.

5. Key Ingredients: Taste, Confidence, and Perseverance

The discussion pivots to the essential components of developing a creative voice: cultivating personal taste, building confidence in one's work, and maintaining perseverance through challenges.

Anne [03:06]: "There's lots of ingredients to it, isn't there? Because you're developing your taste, your own taste."

Helen introduces the concept of the "taste gap"—the discrepancy between an illustrator’s ideal preferences and their actual work, which can be discouraging but is manageable with perseverance.

Helen Stevens [03:23]: "The taste gap is real... a big body blow sometimes."

6. The Taste Gap and Its Impact

Understanding the taste gap is crucial. Helen emphasizes that recognizing its existence allows illustrators to navigate through it without losing momentum.

Helen Stevens [03:23]: "If you're in the early stages of your career, you can deal with it, you'll get there."

7. Building a Portfolio Aligned with Your Creative Direction

Katy shares insights on the importance of curating a portfolio that reflects the illustrator's desired direction, avoiding the trap of showcasing work that doesn't align with their creative goals.

Katy Chappell [08:48]: "It's really important, isn't it, to just not. Don't show anybody the stuff you don't like because you're just going to be stuck in that rut of doing that forever."

8. Importance of Part-Time Jobs and Financial Stability

The hosts discuss the benefits of maintaining part-time employment while building a freelance illustration career. This approach provides financial security, allowing illustrators to take creative risks without the pressure of immediate financial returns.

Helen Stevens [06:33]: "There's also the part-time job... you can afford to take those risks and maybe do a few jobs."

9. Learning Through Experience and Real-World Projects

Katy reflects on her personal journey, emphasizing the value of learning through actual projects rather than solely through formal education. This hands-on experience, though challenging, acts as an apprenticeship that fosters growth.

Katy Chappell [06:08]: "Learning on the job has been really vital for me... an amazing apprenticeship."

10. Community Support and Building Confidence

A significant theme is the role of community in supporting illustrators. The hosts highlight how being part of a supportive network can bolster confidence, provide encouragement, and set realistic expectations.

Helen Stevens [10:07]: "The Facebook group is so good for that... you'll have a lot more certainty about your work."

11. Conclusion and Testimonial

To wrap up, the hosts share a testimonial that encapsulates the course's impact, reaffirming its value in rekindling the joy of drawing and exploring creative ideas.

Katy Chappell [11:42]: "The course is exactly what I've needed at this point. An abundance of ideas to rekindle the joy of drawing, making and exploring."

They also briefly mention ongoing and upcoming community events like Art Club, encouraging listeners to stay connected and continue their creative journeys.

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Key Takeaways:

• Flexibility is crucial: Developing a creative voice is a personalized journey that doesn't adhere to a strict timeline. Courses offering flexible pacing can accommodate diverse schedules and learning speeds.

• Embrace the never-ending process: Like personal growth, finding and refining one's artistic style is continuous. Illustrators should view it as an evolving project rather than a finite goal.

• Navigate the taste gap with perseverance: Acknowledging and working through the discrepancy between desired and actual work is essential for growth and achieving a unique style.

• Curate your portfolio intentionally: Showcase work that aligns with your creative aspirations to attract the type of projects you wish to pursue.

• Maintain financial stability: Balancing part-time employment with freelance work allows illustrators to take creative risks without undue financial stress.

• Leverage community support: Engaging with a supportive network can enhance confidence, provide accountability, and offer encouragement throughout the creative process.

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This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for illustrators seeking to understand the multifaceted journey of developing a unique illustration style, emphasizing patience, persistence, and the importance of a supportive community.

Transcript

[Anne]

Hello, welcome to the Good Ship Illustration podcast. We're here to offer no nonsense advice to illustrators and image makers navigating a creative career in the Good Ship. There are three of us, Anne, Katy Chappell, and there's Helen Stevens and Tanya Willis too. We are celebrating our flagship course, Find you'd Creative Voice Fly youy Freak Flag, being open this week. So we've got lots of episodes all about Finding youg Creative Voice. So this is a question that we get kind of all the time, daily, and not directly, but we just see glimmers of it, like in our online community and in the live calls and on Instagram and things in the DMs. And it's people wondering, like how long finding your creative voice takes. And not even in just like a commercial sense, like making a living from being an illustrator, but just, you know, and feeling confident about your work, making work that feels good, sharing it with the world, that kind of thing.

[Katy Chappell]

People ask how long the course is as well, how long it takes to do the course, which is a similar difficult question to answer because the course is actually literally eight weeks. But you have lifetime access and you can do it at your own pace.

[Helen Stevens]

Which is what we'd advise, wouldn't we? I think if someone just went straight through eight weeks, I think that would have been a little bit overwhelming. You couldn't necessarily be in a full time job to do that. So we'd advise, because most people are in a job, that you just eke it out in a way that suits you, in a way that suits your life. Maybe it takes you three months to go through it, or you do a quick skim to begin and go back and then start again. Spending longer on the things that speak to you and taking time and finding.

[Anne]

Your creative voice sort of lasts forever. Annoyingly, I feel like it lasts forever.

[Katy Chappell]

It's like, it's like, it's like saying, I want to have this ideal life. You know, it's about. It's the way you live your life as well. You're always improving it, aren't you? Always rearranging where you keep the cutlery in your drawer or how are you going to sort out where your clothes are stored? Or like your whole life is full of decisions that are trying to improve things. And I think it's like that with your work as well, isn't it?

[Anne]

So true. Think of a never ending project. But it's a good project. It's a fun project to work on.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah. And we really help people pull it into shape. Quick, quickly, with the freak flag course. I mean, it's still a lifetime work.

[Anne]

But we're helping speed it up.

[Katy Chappell]

Exactly.

[Helen Stevens]

Yeah.

[Katy Chappell]

We kind of. What do we. We've kind of signpost everybody in the right direction.

[Helen Stevens]

Yeah, yeah. I think they're not shortcuts as such. And I think you wouldn't want to expect that you will be a fully formed illustrator at the end of doing an eight week course. And some people do have those expectations, but it's all about developing yourself, like Helen said, and becoming a more creative person. But once you can start looking at a series of images that you've made that look like that, they were made by the same hand, they've got consistency, they stand out in that they are not like a load of other illustration. You're not making yourself a cookie cutter illustrator to be sent straight out into the world. You need to be valued for what you make and that needs to be quite unique. So that's what we try to help you do, is become yourself.

[Anne]

Yeah. So there's lots of ingredients to it, isn't there? Because you're developing your taste, your own taste. And then you're also developing your confidence in your own work and your ability to like appreciate what you do and think actually this is valuable. Like my work is going to help with whatever.

[Helen Stevens]

And we talk about the gap a lot, don't we? The taste gap, which is a big. It's real. The taste gap is real. You know, you probably love. I'm sure you have loads of things that you would put all over your wall, like an external Pinterest sheet. You've got great taste, but what you make might not match up to that. And that's a real body blow sometimes, isn't it? When you start. And a lot of people get knocked off course because the gap is large. But if you know it's going to be there and you're forewarned and you're. If you're in the early stages of your career, you can deal with it, you'll get there. But perseverance is a really large part of illustrate a good illustrator skill. Because like you said, there's lots of people you've seen who've been really talented, but they don't follow through and don't keep pushing.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah, don't get their work out there.

[Anne]

I always thought growing up that that was all you needed was to be really good at drawing. But then when you look at the pie chart of being a successful illustrator, being able to draw as a tiny slice and there's so much other stuff involved. I was really angry about that, actually, because it's true. You'd look at like, how have they got that published? It's rubbish.

[Katy Chappell]

I was quite pleased when I found out that because my dad was a car salesman and I thought, oh, this is great, because I really like art, but there's a bit of me that really loves hearing about what my dad does. So it felt to me like a brilliant. A bit of me that seemed like when I was at art school, the fact my dad sold cars was just like a bit embarrassing. He wasn't a great artist or a writer or anything, but actually when I left art school, I thought, that's brilliant. I've got this extra ingredient.

[Helen Stevens]

Superpower.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah.

[Helen Stevens]

The entrepreneur. What did your dad used to say? Throw a lot of.

[Katy Chappell]

Throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick. That means send out samples to everybody all the time.

[Helen Stevens]

And I think that's what your dad got your career on the road, really. It's with his very wise advice. But then you were saying, Katie, that only. What did you say out of your course? How many people became illustrators from a course of what, 28, 30 off the.

[Anne]

Top of my head, like, who I've stayed in touch with and sort of peripher seen. I think like three or something. Very sad percentage. But then people. I think part of the developing a creative voice and things. A big part of that is perseverance, isn't it? Because it's not constant and it's so easy to be like, oh, it's not working. I'll just go back to my job and stuff. It never meant to get. It was never going to happen. But I think the people who do become illustrators and do find their creative voice and make a success of it, whatever success is to you, are the people that kind of throw enough mud at the wall and see what sticks, but they keep going and keep going and try new things and. And even that perfect life analogy, like, you know, consistently just keep improving tiny things and even if it's just like a 0.5% improvement, it will accumulate.

[Katy Chappell]

And learning on the job has been really vital for me. So I didn't really know what I was doing, but I got my first book published and I learned a lot doing that book and I still didn't really know what I was doing. And I learned a bit more on the next book. Like, it's very hard to motivate. To motivate yourself to learn a reason to do it. So I just jumped straight in with absolutely no clue what I was doing and just learned as I went like an amazing apprenticeship.

[Anne]

That's with.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah.

[Helen Stevens]

But there's also, in this time thing, there's also a case to be made for the part time job, isn't there?

[Katy Chappell]

Oh yeah.

[Helen Stevens]

That, you know, you can start slowly on a low risk level rather than going all in because then if it, if you're not getting enough jobs, you can, it makes you feel like you're a failure pretty quickly because if you're not getting enough money to live on, you know, you think, well, this isn't happening quick enough. But if you keep the part time job going, you can afford to take those risks and maybe do a few jobs.

[Katy Chappell]

You could turn down the jobs that you don't want to do. The ones that don't feel like a good fit. Which is brilliant.

[Helen Stevens]

Yeah.

[Anne]

Because you've got the financial. I always felt like if my part time job paid my rent and bills, anything else was a bonus. And then. Yeah, it didn't mean that like if somebody got in touch and they tried to lowball the budget, I'd be like, nah, I'm not your illustrator. Whereas if I had no other financial income, I'd be like, yes, anything. I think that graspy, desperate energy, people can sense it, can't they? But if you've got like a. Not smugness, that's the word safety belt of our job, I'm not going to go for that because I'd rather just not be working.

[Katy Chappell]

Don't want to end up taking any job. I remember when I first left art school, I was just telling you guys this a bit earlier, but a friend of mine said that she would pay me to do a card for her dad. I think it was a retirement card. And I said no immediately. And then she said, no, no, it won't take you very long. It's just a quick one. It's just a drawing of my dad playing golf and a naked woman in the bushes.

[Helen Stevens]

Dream job.

[Anne]

Why would you know if you'd got.

[Helen Stevens]

That in your early career portfolio, imagine the jobs it would have led to.

[Katy Chappell]

Imagine. Where would I be now?

[Anne]

Illustrator sounds quite good fun.

[Katy Chappell]

She said she would pay me with a lottery ticket, by the way. No.

[Helen Stevens]

Oh, to add insult to it. Yeah, insult for me.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah. That part time job at the science.

[Helen Stevens]

Museum was excellent because they say whatever you do, you do more. There's some phrase like that if you. What you do, you'll keep doing. So if your first jobs in your really crucial portfolio are things that you accepted but aren't really proud of in the end and you put them in and there's bound to be someone who says, oh, I love that golfer with the naked woman. And they'll have loads of ideas and that will be your career. It will take off in that direction.

[Katy Chappell]

We get asked this quite a lot in the course, don't we, where people have ended up in a direction they didn't really want to go in and they feel more certain what their creative voice is now and they want to do more of this, but they don't know what to put on their website because if they put the old work, you're guaranteed to get more work like that. But they haven't really done a lot of the New Year work yet. But it is really important, isn't it, to just not. Don't show anybody the stuff you don't like because you're just going to be stuck in that rut of doing that forever.

[Helen Stevens]

It's a sod's law thing. There's always someone who loves your worst work. It's a bit like Ruffs if you include a rough version of something you don't like, the other two you love. Somehow there was even another director.

[Katy Chappell]

They always pick that one, don't they?

[Helen Stevens]

You almost have to put blinkers on and think, I don't want to understand why that law works. It doesn't mean that my best ideas are rubbish. Because you've got to believe in yourself, haven't you? Which is the confidence thing as well. Perseverance. Confidence.

[Anne]

Yeah. And there's that thing of never offer something you wouldn't be happy to give. Like it's life advice. You know, if you say, you say to somebody, oh, I can't do that day, but I'll do this other thing instead. When you're like, don't, don't take me up on that offer. Don't take. Like the best option is to not even make that offer. And the same with your portfolio. Like don't show the work in the first place because then you want to be in those sticky positions where you're like, I don't want to do this.

[Helen Stevens]

Yeah, that's what that self initiated is the way to go, isn't it?

[Katy Chappell]

Oh yeah.

[Helen Stevens]

Put the work in the portfolio that you want to do even if it wasn't a job. Take the time to do your own work. So some people feel like that validation only comes when it's a real job and then they become a real illustrator. But you become an illustrator the moment you start making work and Putting it out there, making yourself available for work, that is you being an illustrator.

[Anne]

That's the stuff that's really hard to do by yourself, isn't it? Like, look at your website, change what direction you're going in. Do self initiated work that's on purpose, intentionally. And I think that's when doing a course with a community and other people doing the same thing is so valuable because you can go and be like.

[Katy Chappell]

This is really scary.

[Anne]

And then three other people will be like, I know. But then you carry on doing it because you've got, you know, other people to bore you along.

[Helen Stevens]

And the Facebook group is so good for that. Especially when, you know, the first cohort come in, they say, hello, I'm from wherever, I'm from Hereford and I've been working for a couple of years. But I'm really nervous about becoming part of this community or doing this course. I don't know whether my work's good enough. The old famous one, a bit of self deprecation and everyone kind of gathers around them and says, don't worry, we all felt like that when we first joined. And you know, your work's great and you'll feel confident by the end of this, you'll have a lot more certainty about your work. So yeah, the community is another part of the confidence building and giving you realistic expectations about, you know, how long it takes to get that creative voice going.

[Anne]

A long time, but it's worth it.

[Helen Stevens]

What have we got, anything nice to read to people?

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah, maybe a testimonial.

[Helen Stevens]

Let's find one.

[Katy Chappell]

I found one here.

[Anne]

Oh, good.

[Katy Chappell]

The course is exactly what I've needed at this point. At this point, an abundance of ideas to rekindle the joy of drawing, making and exploring. That's lovely.

[Anne]

Are we doing Art club this Friday?

[Katy Chappell]

Art club. Doors to the find your creative voice course close at Art Club. And if you love Art Club, we run it every now and again. We used to do it every single Friday, didn't we?

[Helen Stevens]

Not anymore.

[Katy Chappell]

Not anymore. We do special pop up ones so if you don't want to miss them, you need to sign up for our emails.

[Helen Stevens]

Yeah, 5 second animal is the best bit as well, isn't it? Someone told me that this morning. They said, I love Art Club, but you know, the best bit is 10 second animal.

[Anne]

Helen's favorite.

[Katy Chappell]

Yeah, it's embarrassing.

[Anne]

Well, we'll hopefully see you there.

[Katy Chappell]

See you at Art Club. Bye.