← The Good Ship Illustration
The Good Ship Illustration
Illustration trends vs your creative voice PLUS what materials to use
00:24:59
Loading summary
Transcript111 lines
- [00:27]
A
We've got a good question from Niyusha, which says how to choose materials and techniques that work best for me. I've worked with ink and brushes, with ink and nib pens, acrylics, watercolor, gouache, colored pencils. I've done collage and also mixed some medias. Pooey. I like them all, each in a different way. How can I be a bit more focused to become more professional, at least in on technique? Thank you in advance.
- [00:52]
B
That's an interesting one. I remember when I was teaching in Hong Kong, they asked me to teach classes on different mediums. I was like, we don't do that in England or in the uk. We just use any old thing and you're not really aware of what they are. Obviously, ink and a nib pen is very different from watercolour. Sometimes it's nice not to think about what they are and just think about what you want from it. Like some contrasts, a single nice, sharp, scratchy line and maybe a lovely smooth, flat color. So just think in terms of contrast rather than what the mediums are. Because people looking at your work never think, oh, there's a watercolour or that's done in acrylic. And sometimes people put work on their website and they say what mediums it's done in. And I find that really jars now. I'm like, who cares? Could be digital, fake watercolour, digital. So really just think what mixes together. Mix them all up. And don't worry too much about trying to be good at specific mediums. I would think.
- [01:52]
C
Yeah, I. I really agree and I like changing mediums all the time, so I don't think you need to decide now. I have chosen my mediums. This is me forever. Yeah, that would drive me insane. I would get so bored with it. I really like swapping things up, especially say you want to draw something tiny, maybe you're doing some vignettes or something. Then sometimes my line will be a colour pencil, but say I want the work to look similar but big. Then the line might be a chunky crayon, but the same colour. So, like you said, Tanya, it's really thinking what you need this line or this colour to be and then finding something that does that and not necessarily thinking, I'm going to use watercolor from now on and I'm going to use it in a watercolory way. You can mix it with loads of water in a traditional way, or you might mix it really thick like you would with goash. You just experiment and play with it and Use it in your own way.
- [02:51]
B
Yeah, you kind of get what you want out of it, don't you? Effectively you're doing mixed media. And that's what we were always taught at college, was to mix them all up, even if they weren't supposed to work. And at the end of a kind of, when I was doing painting, some of that was sort of dismantled. Like, you can't mix this and that. Do you know that you, you know, you can't put an acrylic primer down and then go on top of it with oil paints or something like that. But that was fine art related. So then it all got a bit more. It made more sense, put it that way. But then later on with the, with digital as well, none of these divisions seem to matter anymore. And when asked to try and demonstrate how to use, for example, oil pastels, I thought, well, I remember they taught us at primary school, go over all the colors in black and then scratch them off. Do they want me to teach that? Surely not. But I realized I didn't know how any of these things, things worked properly. I knew that watercolor, you know, you let the paper shine through, it's transparent on those kind. But you don't need to become a virtuosa. I think it's in those things.
- [03:48]
C
I think you're actually kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you go and try and learn those methods. If you go on YouTube and you watch all the videos about how to use watercolor, your watercolor is just going to look like everybody else's or like you're not going to be, you're not going to find your own way to do it and have your own unique way of working. It's much, much better just to go in the art shop, shove a load of, scrape off the shelves, into your basket at random.
- [04:15]
B
Supermarket sweep, supermarket sweep.
- [04:17]
C
The art shop, or not even the art shop, the felt pens in the supermarket or whatever, and then just use them in whatever way. When you put them on paper, how is it you have to hold them and move them on the paper. That feels and looks nice. Are you clicking your fingers?
- [04:32]
A
Sorry, that was really. Oh, that sounded painful.
- [04:36]
C
Are we making you angry?
- [04:38]
A
I was just like, ooh, she just.
- [04:40]
B
Wants to, to draw. She just wants to get.
- [04:41]
A
Yeah, I'm thinking about art shops.
- [04:44]
B
But that's ultimately a much more unique creative voice, isn't it? Mixing these things up, doing what you want, making mistakes, finding out things on the way that you can actually master that mistake and make it your own. And you don't have to use these things in that particular way.
- [04:58]
A
It sounds like you've kind of done your own foundation year if you've tried everything. Because that's what they do. Like traditional art school thing. The foundation year is you try everything out, and then at the end of that, you pick what you want to do, like what you liked most or what you found easiest. So maybe that's the next step is like, what did you like most? What did you find easiest? Because in terms of longevity, you want to be able to do loads of it, and you don't have to pick one. You can mix them all up.
- [05:20]
C
Yeah. I would question whether you really need to pick one.
- [05:23]
A
Yeah. You don't?
- [05:24]
C
No.
- [05:25]
B
I feel like it's that those different mediums dictate or have dictated for many years to people what kind of artists they should be if they are using the materials correctly. And then you get those kind of visual genres of work that all look like each other because the medium has told you how it's supposed to be used. Just break the rules and do what you want.
- [05:45]
A
Yeah, I feel like gouache did that a bit. There's like a niche of illustration. Everybody was doing gouache, and everyone like gouache and colored pencils, and everyone's work looked the same, so it's worth avoiding that.
- [05:55]
B
And then gouache broke the rules by making acrylic gouache, which meant you could put one color on top of the other because it would dry and seal. I always thought gouache was the hardest because that's like 1950s ad man in the US in the creative department who can put one color next to another color that's not too wet, so they don't blur and they dry in between all that kind of stuff. That's is literally a craft. No one wants to work like that anymore because we're more. We have more options, and I think there's a lot more freedom. And you don't have those disciplines of the medium. But when you think of digital and procreate, people can mix up different mediums with names digitally that don't react with each other that way. So you see lots of weird combinations of textures that wouldn't work in the real life, but they will work digitally.
- [06:41]
C
I think it's really interesting to use a material in a way that's counterintuitive, a way that shouldn't really work. Like, I can remember going to Bologna Book Fair years and years and years ago. Oh, no, it wasn't Bologna Book Fair. We Went to an exhibition in the. The Royal Festival hall. And it was an exhibition of Japanese illustrators, picture bookmakers. And we saw this incredible work where this Japanese illustrator had got some big sheets of board that were like a kind of kappa board, you know, where it's sort of water resistant on the surface.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, it's got sealed.
- [07:20]
C
And then he'd use some sort of pigment, maybe some sort of ink that was quite watery. So then he's putting this high pigment, watery liquid on this sort of non absorbent surface. And so it kind of took the pigment but not the water and made this weird kind of resistance to the materials on the. On the surface of the board. And he drew these amazing, incredible grasshoppers, really big with must have been quite a thick brush or like. Or it could have been loo roll dipped in a bit of ink or something and pulled across the board. And everything about it was these are the wrong material for the wrong board and everything. But they were so incredible and we've never forgotten it. And we saw this exhibition. When I say we, I'm talking about me and my partner Jerry. We saw this exhibition maybe 20 years ago and we still talk about it now. And just recently, in the last couple of weeks, Geri actually managed to find what this book is and who the illustrator is and managed to buy a cop. And we were a bit worried that when it arrived it might let us down. It might not be everything that we'd built it up, but it arrived. And it is absolutely incredible. It's so beautiful, but everything about it. You think you couldn't use that material on that board. It looks like it would resist it, but it made these really interesting marks.
- [08:41]
A
Breaking the rules.
- [08:43]
C
Yeah.
- [08:44]
B
And making it work for yourself, using it in a way that creates almost a sort of signature. And it doesn't really matter where it came from. I think just the thing is trying to make visual impact, isn't it? People are hungry to look at new things. And if you play with materials in such a way that something really exciting happens and you know when it's happened because you get the whole, oh, I have done something amazing. Well, it might not be amazing. Sometimes you just scare yourself when you make a new mark that is not what you'd normally do. But you keep going back to it and you keep having another look and you think there's something there. That's the aim, isn't it? It doesn't kind of matter. It could be emulsion paint, really does it? Okay. Like you say, Capabord and ink making Text.
- [09:23]
C
I really like to pick up a material that at first I hate. Like for a long time I really hated a very, very fine fineliner. They're too spiky, they're too thin. Everything about them put me off. But I love picking up something like that and learning to find how I would use it and how I could make it work with my drawing. Like, I love a biro. Like a really blobby, cheap, cheap, cheap biro. You know, one to have that smell.
- [09:49]
A
Yeah, it's really good.
- [09:51]
C
And they're kind of anti drawing, aren't they? They're like, you really wouldn't think you would make a good drawing out of it, but if you find something like that and you stick with it, you can find your way to draw with it. And I get really excited when that happens. Like the bingo dabbers at art club.
- [10:05]
A
Bingo dabbers? They've got a smell as well. Didn't you say yours was mouldy?
- [10:08]
C
Yeah, they smell mouldy. I don't know if they've gone mouldy.
- [10:10]
A
Maybe probably five years in.
- [10:13]
B
And you're always changing up anyway, aren't you?
- [10:15]
C
I change the materials all the time because I think by nature I'm just a jump from one idea to another. I just really like experimenting all the time. There's no way I could be an illustrator who chose my materials and stuck with it for life. I think it's kind of. It's a good idea to choose your materials for your first ever folio and the first artwork you put on your website. Maybe just while you're getting a foot in the door. So people know what they're gonna get. And then after that I think you can just, you can do what you like. I don't think people notice when I swap materials.
- [10:46]
A
I was gonna say it's that age old thing like in the freak flag course. People will be like, oh, I'm trying this new medium.
- [10:52]
B
What's the media when style even.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah, you style. And they'd be looking like looks the.
- [10:56]
C
Same, like they're by the same person. You can see their decision making, their subject matter they like to draw about. You can just see how they hold a pencil. Like their visual language is in there no matter what they pick up.
- [11:09]
B
Yeah, and it could be, it could be your color sensibility and a palette you keep returning to, or the way you depict a face or a dog, whatever. Those things will define you as you, regardless of the mediums you use. And that's what you should sort of aim for in Your voice, not really what mediums you use. Those can swap continually and no one would know the difference.
- [11:31]
C
You know when you're sometimes asked to put some work in an exhibition or it goes into a, like a compilation book of some sort and they say, what materials did you draw it with? I always think, what are you asking me that for?
- [11:41]
B
What does it matter?
- [11:42]
A
What were the dimensions?
- [11:45]
B
Ask her a number question. Yeah, well, I hope that's all for you. You can go and do what you want.
- [11:54]
A
Do what you want. That would have been a shorter version of the podcast.
- [11:57]
C
Do what you want next.
- [11:59]
B
It's a nice question though, because it is very freak flag, isn't it? It's just throw off the shackles of medium and find out who you really are in other ways. We got another question.
- [12:10]
A
Yes, many, many, many. Thank you for sending in. Good questions.
- [12:13]
B
That was really nice to talk about. It's nice to talk about proper creativity and tools because so often, I mean, courses, a lot of questions are money questions or business questions. And they're valid because no one talks that much about them. But it's lovely to get back to the roots, isn't it?
- [12:30]
C
Yeah. What materials you pick up, how you put them on paper. It seems so obvious to me that you just get some random materials and you try and make them work. Hang on, where was I going with this? Hang on. There was an end to this sentence also, I think. Oh, that was it. We all feel as if we're just cobbling. Cobbling, what's that? The word? Cobbling our way along. We're just kind of making it up as we go. And you know what? We all are. And then we're all getting it right. That's. That's how you should be doing it.
- [12:58]
B
Yes.
- [12:58]
A
Yeah, it's reassuring.
- [13:00]
C
Yeah.
- [13:01]
A
What about this question from Anna? What are your thoughts on keeping up with technology and trends without hopping on every train and going insane?
- [13:09]
B
Oh, that's interesting. So it's a complete digital version of.
- [13:12]
A
Technology and trends because I kind of, I suppose in terms of techie trends, that's a whole thing, isn't it?
- [13:18]
B
I wonder if this means like social media or exposure or whether this is tools, technical tools for work.
- [13:26]
C
I really like picking up the techie tools for work, I think because I by nature just really like to swap things and try new things all the time. I really, really love getting into a new bit of software. Try it. So I'll think, okay, I'm illustrating the next book, but I want to learn procreate or affinity. I'll just use that to illustrate it and learn on the job. And then at the end of it, I think, was that fun? Now I might do some work on paper next time. So I really love it. It's just another tool, isn't it? But it may really love it.
- [13:59]
B
You're so brave. You'll learn a tool on a book on a new job. I mean, that's madness.
- [14:05]
C
Either brave or mad.
- [14:06]
B
And you pull it off at the end of your new project. I've learned procreate in public, but I mean, you do a runner. It's not. It's not.
- [14:14]
C
It's just learning on the job that's the best way. That's life.
- [14:18]
B
Yeah, it's life, but it's brave. Definitely. I'd love to be that. Or just to be that brave and try new things. I don't know whether my brain and my neuroplasticity has got me so stuck in Photoshop, even if I use Illustrator, I'm like, just cry all the way through it because I hate it. Because the moment I try, I'm like, I can't be bothered. Let's just go back to the way I work.
- [14:41]
A
I feel a bit like that about my work. Like I've discovered what works, like procreate, doing it digitally, that's just what I do. But then I feel like because the content is different every time my brain is stretched that way, it's almost like you want to keep those things the same and then change other things. But in terms of like, technology, things outside work. Like, I love learning new stuff and jumping on new things and like, you're good at it. I just get so excited about it. But I can see where she's coming from and saying, how do you do that and not go insane? I think there's sometimes, like, in terms of new social media platforms, if I hear about them, I think we talked about this in a podcast. I'm not into that.
- [15:17]
C
I feel through with that. I'm bored.
- [15:19]
A
Yeah, I've got to be. I've got to be really excited about something to jump into it.
- [15:23]
B
And then sometimes Adobe sending you these kind of demo email videos. Look, there's an easy way to do this now in illustration. And I think, well, I worked out a really long winded way myself and it seems to work. It's a little bit wonky, but actually maybe I need to keep the wonky in it because then it has some handmade quality. So say you're extruding a shape or making it 3D. I know how to draw that perspective in my head even using a digital medium. But if Illustrator say some kind of shape tool will suddenly miraculously make it 3D with some gradients on the side, I'm like, yeah, knock yourself out. That's not for me. But I'm sure someone likes it.
- [16:02]
C
But there's something to be said about for that, about learning it your way. And even if. Because I really like to learn a new, you know, piece of software for making a piece of artwork or whatever. But I learned the very basics, probably the idiot very simple way of making this happen. I don't get really in depth on affinity or something and know it inside out. I couldn't really run a workshop on affinity or procreate. All I know is I just grabbed the easiest things that would make this work the way I wanted to work and stick with that. Like you're saying you, you kind of cobble together your own way of doing it and that becomes your visual voice. You don't need to know the whole program inside out. Oh, it'd be so boring.
- [16:45]
A
Maybe that's the key. Like get in there, figure out how to do the thing you want to do, then leave.
- [16:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. I think we did Photoshop for me in the beginning was like, oh, this, you can draw with this stuff that. And it has some brush type things in it. And then the layers made it into a kind of screen printing machine. And I thought that's what Photoshop is for me is a digital screen printing machine. And I only want to know things that work within the recreation of something that looks analog. If it's got some snazzy add ons that become quite digital or your workflow is suddenly shortened and you can do things much, much more quickly. I'm like, well, it will take me three days to learn those things. So ultimately, will my workflow be economized? It probably won't because I'll get m some manual or video that is supposed to be teaching me a quick way to do it. I was already okay. It was a bit wonky, but I could do it.
- [17:36]
A
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- [17:38]
B
Exactly. Yeah.
- [17:39]
A
And same like the trends and things. I think if there's a big trend, it almost puts me off jumping on it. If everyone's doing it, I'm like, no, I don't want to do. And bro was talking about kind of avoiding trends.
- [17:50]
B
Really.
- [17:50]
A
I think for everything it's.
- [17:52]
C
I get rejectful of trends. I don't like a good word.
- [17:55]
B
Yeah, avoid them. Like, yeah, well that's what Freak Flag was really about, wasn't it? Avoiding that huge pitfall that so many people seem to be in, in that the, the industry, when I say the industry, I mean really generally people were buying images of quite stuff that eventually became cliches, trends that became cliches. Owls and llamas and avocados and rainbows, unicorns. So the industry of manufacturing and creating products that were differentiated by having images stamped on them, and that's something that didn't exist 20 years ago, but now all these things, whether they're phone cases or tea towels or tote bags, need illustrators and visual people to provide stuff for it. And those trends are just such a danger for an illustrator. Your entire portfolio is redundant once that ship has moved on.
- [18:48]
C
I also feel like I've worked out my own way of doing a thing and I'm actually not capable of going and joining that trend because by the.
- [18:59]
A
Time you get there, it's moved on.
- [19:01]
C
Yeah, I, I, it's almost like the way you work. Oh, I don't know how to word it exactly, but I heard you know the band Travis. Oh, yeah, I've forgotten the name. Franny, the lead singer of Travis. I know that because he was at Glasgow School of Art when I was.
- [19:18]
B
Like, oh, I was gonna say this.
- [19:19]
C
When you were Tanya. I know it is.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah.
- [19:22]
C
The reason I remember it, I vaguely remember him from art school and he was talking about how you're so, he's talking about music and he's saying, he says in this podcast that you have almost no choice what you, what your work is when it comes out. It comes out and you're like, oh, I didn't expect it to be so quiet. But that's how, that's how it turns out. And I don't have any choice in this. I feel like that about my work to some extent. If there's a trend, I can't really get on that trend because I've worked out my own way of making a story and doing the pictures and it's a very laborious, weird way I get there. I can't really just jump out of that and follow a trend for a while. It makes no sense. I can't do it.
- [20:05]
A
It wouldn't be comfy.
- [20:07]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
- [20:10]
B
It's true. Pre Internet world, you didn't have so much stuff to look at. You had libraries and stuff that was in the real world for you to go, am I like that or should I be more like that? Or should I just be Myself. So the ability to be truly yourself, with integrity was much, much easier because you weren't overexposed. Now we're bombarded visually by all these things, you know, that include. You'd be better off if you tried a bit of this because these people over there are making money. Have a go. Then you end up like some kind of minestrone soup of influences, which ends up quite mediocre in the end. We all just need to go down into bunkers and ignore the world and try to go back to. It's going to come out how it's going to come out, that I love the idea that it's going to come out quiet, if that's you. So if you think of that in terms of color, that's how certain people have those beautiful, quiet, neutral palettes, because they only ever had those paints and they just stayed like that. But it's really hard in this overexposed world to find out who you truly are, because you think you like everything like a magpie, and you can't stop looking at all these things and trying to pull them into your work. And so trends. Yeah, Avoid them. Try and put your blinkers on and figure out who you are.
- [21:22]
A
It's so noisy out there. It's hard.
- [21:24]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:24]
C
Just be a fan. Just be a fan of all that amazing illustration that's not you. That's fine. But, yeah, don't try and copy.
- [21:33]
B
All the things that I really like are absolutely the opposite to what I do. And I find that quite a confusing thought, that if you look at things and you're just like, oh, so beautiful, but, you know, it has no relationship to the work that you produce. And then you start wondering about the work you produce. Is it you? But you, before you had seen this amazing work, you hadn't thought of it, therefore it can't be part of you. You're just being a fan. And there's a huge division, isn't there?
- [22:01]
A
I saw a thing recently and somebody. I can't remember, it was on the Facebook group or some. Somewhere. I wish I knew where. They'd said they were browsing Pinterest. And they'd got into a habit of every evening just, like, looking at Pinterest, looking at illustrations and thinking, oh, I want to draw that. Oh, I want to draw that. But they were stuck in that mode rather than drawing. And I was like, there's something to be said about the create versus consume thing, isn't there?
- [22:21]
B
Like, totally.
- [22:22]
A
Make sure you're not absorbing too much of other stuff or Reading too many things or listening to too many other people and flick the switch. So you just make stuff and almost like covering your ears and go la, la, la. And just make things. Maybe that's.
- [22:34]
B
I think that's really true, actually, because you can kid yourself. You're doing work, you're looking, Exploring inspirational ideas, and it's. Oh, it's just like creative shopping. It's like being in this massive shopping mall, wanting to grab all these things even though they don't fit you and you've got nowhere to go in them. You, you know, you're just adding them on to yourself and you don't need to. It's trying to find that quiet space after you've had a look. Then you say, I'll go away and be a hermit for a year and just try and be me.
- [23:01]
A
I would love that.
- [23:02]
B
Oh, I'd love that. And they're just saying it makes me.
- [23:04]
A
Think, just unplug the WI fi for a year.
- [23:07]
B
I think that will happen soon. I think we're getting. We're so stuffed with things and so overexposed. We're raw. It's time to just log out.
- [23:15]
C
On my way here, I walked past somebody's house. You probably know who they are, Tanya, because I walked. We're at your house. And I walked past this person, one of your neighbors, and in the window, she has a sign saying, I am not on Instagram or any social media. That's all it says.
- [23:32]
B
She's an artist and she's older than us and she reads the Idler. That's all you need to know. She's like, here's the work in the window. Knock on the door. If I'm in, you can come in and buy it or look at it, but don't ask me if I'm on Instagram.
- [23:47]
A
I see people talk about going on an information diet. Maybe it's that as well.
- [23:52]
B
Oh, maybe it is. Keep an eye out for the next good ship incarnation, which is we. We get a series of caves in a hillside, maybe somewhere in Turkey.
- [24:03]
C
Maybe we actually get a ship and just sail off with our.
- [24:07]
B
And no, there's no WI fi anywhere.
- [24:10]
C
A cruise. A giant cruise.
- [24:15]
A
Hope that was helpful.
- [24:17]
B
Yeah, that's a nice, big conversation. Two big conversations.
- [24:22]
C
Thanks for the questions.
- [24:23]
B
Yeah, thanks a lot. It set us off on a good, good voyage.
- [24:28]
C
Goodbye by.
- [24:42]
A
It.