← The Good Ship Illustration
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- [00:11]
A
Hello, we're back. This one. So this is a sneaky one because it was kind of a quest. It was a question we got for the business course Q and A. But we realized it's just, It's. It would be useful and applicable to pretty much everyone, really.
- [00:24]
B
Especially kind of beginners.
- [00:26]
A
Yeah, beginner people starting out in illustration, figuring it all out. And the question was, where do I start? And I think I haven't got it in front of me, which is bad. But it was basically like, should I do my website? Should I work on my portfolio first? What, like, what thing? It's so overwhelming. Should I learn Adobe? Should I do all the Adobe products?
- [00:43]
C
Basically, I think her brain was so overwhelmed with ideas and things she really wanted to do, she didn't know which one to pick first, which is really understandable. I do that now. I'm not starting out, but sometimes I wake up full of ideas, absolutely full of ideas. I've got to watch out for those days because my adrenaline shoots through the sky. It's terrible. But I find it really useful just to write all those ideas down. Number one, I calm down after they're written on a piece of paper, almost as if they're done.
- [01:11]
B
Fake. Done.
- [01:12]
C
Yeah, done. Tick. But then I'll just go, which one do I feel like? Because I think there's no point doing the jobs you don't feel like doing. You're not going to do them very well. You're just going to drag yourself through them and at the end of the day, you'll feel like, I didn't do any of the others and I haven't had a nice day. So I just tend to pick the one I feel like. So if I've got a list of jobs, like sort my website out, brainstorm some ideas for a new story, I'll just say, well, which one am I in the mood for? Sometimes I do that reverse thing where I go, I have to do that one. What's my feeling? Oh, it's no. All right. Okay. That's a no for that one. I have to do that one. Yeah, I quite fancy it.
- [01:49]
A
It's funny how that works, isn't it? Like doing heads or tails and like, oh, I wanted to be headed, okay, that's the one.
- [01:53]
C
You find the answer. Yeah.
- [01:55]
B
But then do you ever get back and do the thing that you should do that you didn't want to? Does there ever come a time?
- [01:59]
C
Well, I suppose if it's one of those necessary jobs where it's an email and you really must reply Then yes, I will. But sometimes those are not necessary jobs and they just, they might go on to the next to do list the next day and the next one. And then I realize a few days down the line. Yeah, what was that on there for? And it doesn't get added again.
- [02:17]
A
Actually that's like Tanya, you were asking about bullet journaling before and I was like, it's just lists. But that's the magic of it because if you make a list and then you're copying over these undone tasks and you get to like three days down the line you're like, do I need to do this? Like, why am I pulling it along? And yeah, you can just get rid of it or do it.
- [02:33]
B
That's a really good idea because I've now got an out of date fancy planner from last year and I've decided I'll just fake the dates on it and write the to do lists and do what I normally do, which is then copy over what I haven't done for the next day and keep going. So if you're telling me I'm doing the right thing, apparently I'm bullet journaling, which is a great joy because I always thought it was super secret, complicated method, but clearly I'm doing it.
- [02:58]
A
You already do it.
- [02:59]
B
And also have the book with different. The same book but have a few pages which are like home to do's, work to do's, General life well being to do's and illustration work to do's. And so those, you can keep looking back at those four different categories and if you've got time, you pick one of them off and then copy the list over.
- [03:18]
A
Yeah. It's so hard when you're starting out though, isn't it? Like picking where to start. Because I was thinking you need a portfolio. You don't need a portfolio. You need some work to put on your website so that people can find you to hire you.
- [03:32]
B
Would you do an Instagram first if you hadn't got anything? Do you think Instagram would be the first sort of trialing it out, making an edit out of your work? What do you think?
- [03:41]
C
Instagram's nice and low key and not as formal as a website, is it? So if you're struggling to know where to start, it seems like less pressure. Well, some people take social media as a big pressure though, and they don't like that. I think it really depends what you feel like doing. I think you do need a website. Whether you have an Instagram or not, you definitely need a website. Because if you're going to send out samples to people and they, or, you know, people hear about you and they look you up, they need to be able to find you somewhere.
- [04:07]
A
And it's so easy to do social media and then just be like, I just do Instagram, I don't need a website. I think that's like. I can see why you'd think that's all right. But also you own the website, you control what's on there.
- [04:21]
C
Looks like you take yourself seriously. I think they want somewhere like a publisher wants, somewhere where they can just see all of your work easily. They can work out how to contact you, they can read a bit about you and they get, they get the feeling whether you are taking this seriously or not. I think if you just have an Instagram account, somebody looking at your work might wonder whether you are ready for work yet, whether you take yourself seriously.
- [04:45]
B
Yeah, I think making the edit on your work is the most important thing. Prior to that, if you know what your best 10 pieces are that you would stand by, that's probably the first stage to get through that. If you think I am represented by a set of images, what are they going to be? And that's. I mean, it's often saying that's really important and it does take a while, but it is quite important because you can't be bothered to do it again a year later or six months later. Later. So getting yourself to make those decisions, even if it's like print out playing card size prints of those images and put them all on the floor and go through them all, pull them out, rearrange them, try and get it down to 10 or 12. Ask someone whose advice you trust which ones they can sit with you on the floor pulling these images about and once you've got those 10, you're kind of ready to go, you've sorted your content and that's when you can think about the website and Instagram and I would say LinkedIn as well. There's something about existing on LinkedIn which kind of makes someone a bit more real, even if you don't have to. You don't have to do loads of stuff on LinkedIn.
- [05:55]
C
I've never really done LinkedIn. It was only when you talked about it when we started. Good Ship. I opened a LinkedIn. It's a whole other world to me. Yeah.
- [06:03]
B
I mean, it is the most boring place in the world.
- [06:05]
A
Is it? Well, yeah, kind of.
- [06:07]
B
I think lots of people who exist in that corporate sphere use it a lot and communicate a lot with each other through. But I found it really helpful when people contact you, especially if you're not working with industry clients. If it's sort of semi private clients, get in touch. They could be anyone and I need to check out they really exist. Find out if we've got any connections in common, see if I can ask someone about them. Because I don't want to dedicate a month's work to someone who might be a bit of a flake or not really be in the industry. But it's good to check out all of those approaches from strangers or from small companies. You can do that on LinkedIn, so it must work the other way around. I think even just to have a presence there with a couple of images really helps.
- [06:50]
A
I was gonna say it's worth, like, just making sure your profile shows you an illustrator at the very least, if you are an illustrator.
- [06:57]
C
Oh, yeah, that's a bit of a bug. Bear in mind, when I look at an illustrator's Instagram account and on there it says, itty bitty drawer Doodler.
- [07:06]
A
Aspiring illustrator wannabe.
- [07:09]
C
You wouldn't. I'm imagining putting myself in the mindset of the commissioner. You would think, oh, well, they don't know what they're doing yet. No, I like their work, but obviously they're not ready. So you need to call yourself an illustrator.
- [07:21]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [07:22]
B
You don't want to make it look like you're kind of just playing around. That reductive language and stuff is quite detrimental to you as a business person, isn't it? I remember one of my favorite clients, Julia, agreed to come into the college that I was teaching at to talk to the students. And she sat through the crit and she said at the end of it, I've noticed that lots of you use language like, I'm just gonna play around with some ideas. And she said, don't do that. If I said that, you know, it's a small thing, but if you said that to a client, I'll just play with some ideas. They're like, well, we don't need to pay these people properly. They obviously love it. And the thing they're doing is simply play. It's not real work. So diminishing what you do and who you are as an illustrator is probably the worst thing you can do. As you say in the bio, so start feeling confident. Even if you don't feel confident, project yourself as if you were confident. Fake it till you make it and you'll get there.
- [08:20]
C
You don't have to have even had a commission to call yourself an illustrator. You've made a folio, you're an illustrator.
- [08:26]
B
Yeah, done.
- [08:28]
C
Yeah.
- [08:29]
B
So would you say that's the starting point? Choose the work and if you think you're missing anything or it looks like a bunch of work you wouldn't like to be commissioned for, then make some work that you would want to be commissioned for that reflects the stuff that you value and the kind of work you want to continue doing.
- [08:47]
C
But also, if you feel like you're not ready, you don't have those ten pieces. Ten isn't absolutely the answer. You might have eight pieces you like. Because there's that thing of thinking, well, I'm not ready yet, I'm not ready yet until I have a certain number of pieces that I absolutely love. I think there's something to be said for Katie's advice of half assing. You've got a few pieces you like, just get them on your website. Say there's only five pieces, but you've got some lovely drawings in a sketchbook. Show some sketchbook spreads as well and just get started. So that. So you've got some work online and then you can concentrate something else for a while and then you can come back to your website when you've got more of your folio put together. So don't let the fact that you don't have eight pieces that you absolutely. Or ten pieces that you absolutely love hold you back. You know you want to be an illustrator, just get started. If you've only got five pieces but loads of nice sketchbook work, get that on there for now.
- [09:41]
B
Instagram's much more forgiving for that, isn't it? You can load it much more with work in progress or sketchbook work than maybe you would do on a website. But it can operate at two different levels, with your website being the big reassurer to the client.
- [09:56]
A
Yeah.
- [09:57]
B
Or anyone who's looking at your work.
- [09:58]
A
That's the thing. You know yourself whether. Because you're never gonna feel ready. I think that's really annoying. You never think, oh, finally, my portfolio is perfect. Time to build my website. It just doesn't work like that. And I think, you know yourself, if you're really honest with yourself, you know when you're just being like, I'm scared because it's quite scary getting started. And yeah, the half arsenate helps loads. And my first website just whapped everything on there. My sketchbooks, pictures of my face, my drawings, my paintings, all my work was. It felt completely different styles it worked to get started with. And then I had something to refine. I think that's the thing. Like get something up there.
- [10:34]
C
That's so true. It's the same with writing a story or anything. You get the bare bones down. What you can set your timer even like, think, right, today is website day. I'm going to do whatever I can in a day today. So I'm going to get however many pieces I can get in there one day and I'm not doing any more tomorrow. This is the bare necessity. Concentrate on something else tomorrow. And then a couple of weeks time, you come back with your editor's eye, you look at that folio and you think, I don't want work like that piece. I'm going to knock that one out and stick something else on there. It's much, much easier to edit when you've got something there.
- [11:07]
A
You'll also learn on the job because if the client commissions you for that thing that you hate, you'll be like, right, time to remove that from a portfolio.
- [11:14]
C
It was you who told me that at art school, Tanya. What was that about having a folio of stuff that you actually want to be commissioned? So don't put, don't fill it up with work that you might have been commissioned already. And so you just want to show you're a working illustrator. Don't stick a load of work in there you don't want because that's what you'll be commissioned to do next.
- [11:32]
B
I remember that, yes, people would. And you do have that feeling. Like if a small company in your town gave you a job and they pushed you around, especially as a big. As a young illustrator, they got you to do what you. They wanted you to do. And perhaps visually and aesthetically, it's not what you'd repeat again, but you just feel really tied to that piece. It's like, look, I can do it. Someone asked me and I did it. It's a real job. And those, those pieces just haunt your career if you leave them in.
- [11:58]
C
They're best written as a list, aren't they? So have your folio and then have a list somewhere that says previous clients and stick that work in there. You don't literally have to show the work you did for them. You can just show a list of clients.
- [12:10]
B
It's a mindset thing, isn't? It's really hard to get, get over that thing of wanting to say, look, I did this and it was paid for, so therefore I am real. Yeah, like, no, just ditch that one and show the stuff you like.
- [12:19]
A
You're allowed to be picky and also.
- [12:22]
B
Like you said, Katie, the other thing is you can just keep changing it. Well, I mean, you're saying before you've got something there, you can edit it. I don't know whether it's a boomer mindset, but mine was always like, right, you get it there, get it done now, leave it alone for three years. But, you know, I like the idea nothing's there forever.
- [12:40]
C
I think it's because originally, when we made our websites back in the early 2000s, that was a massive deal. And actually it wasn't. It was nowhere near as easy as it is now. You'd. I went and did a Dreamweaver and a Flash course to learn how to do my websites. So when my website was up, it had been months of work, and so that I really didn't want to be going back in and editing anything because it was hard work, or you would have to get somebody to design it for you. It's so easy now you can half our sopholio and tweak it the next day and the next day. And it's easy.
- [13:11]
A
Yeah, you can pop in and remove, like, swap an image, change this, change that, easy peasy. You don't need somebody else to do it for you.
- [13:19]
B
Which I would nod at a few months ago going, yeah, but I still don't know how to do my Squarespace stuff. But last week was a revelation. I went in and thought, I'm sure I can change the words. Oh, look, I can change the size. And I could. And I dragged pictures in and it came running downstairs. It's been four years since Katie and Helen said, oh, Squarespace is easy. You can do it. I actually did it. And now I'm like, I could put up maybe, you know, new projects, new work, swap the stuff out. And that was like, oh, wow, this is really. It's. You could just reinvent yourself and do what you'd both said is just decide to take a chunk of work out, show new work, give it a try. If it gets a poor response, then ditch it. You know, everything's movable, it's not set in stone.
- [14:06]
C
But that thing with, like, where should you start? We've been talking about this a lot in the Good Ship about you've got your business car and you've got your creative car. So you think, well, which one shall I get in first? It doesn't really matter. It's just the one that feels most exciting. So you could do some business today, like, sort your website out, post on Instagram, share your work with the world. Or you might fancy drawing today. And that's. That's fine. I just think you make a list, you choose the one that's exciting, might be a bit of business, might be a bit of art. Do the other one tomorrow.
- [14:35]
B
It's such a good system. I think people will probably be like, wow, can we do that? Just do the one that appeals most. But like you said, that gives you longevity. You can keep going because you're enjoying yourself instead of it being a trudge.
- [14:48]
A
Yeah, it's that single tasking thing as well, isn't it? Like when you pick one thing and do it and your energy is all like a laser beam on that one thing, you'll get so much further than if you're like trying to do all the things at once and trying to try to start a substack and set up an Instagram and set up your website and build your portfolio and do some drawing every day. And like, I think the less someone say the less you do, the better. And if it's like Helen said, something you're really excited about and you do that one thing.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think without. I feel bad. Like, we're upselling, but our business course takes you through that. Lots of different levels, from beginners to people who want to sort of reinvent who they are and start again, or people who have had a long career and realize maybe their marketing is not as good as it could be, or maybe their workflow is not as good as it could be. But I'd really like to write that list of, if you're coming at this from nothing and you're a brand new illustrator, what would we put in the process? We should write that.
- [15:44]
C
But that advice would be do whatever you like.
- [15:47]
B
Yes, Helen, it would still be just whatever you want.
- [15:52]
A
I think my advice would be like, draw, draw and share every day.
- [15:57]
C
Yeah. That is basically art and business. Draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw. So it becomes less daunting and easier to do. And you've got the skills for when you need to imagine something because you can draw. You can draw from life and that helps you draw from your imagination and then share it. Basically. Business is sharing, isn't it? That's it.
- [16:19]
B
And that if you keep sharing, you desensitize yourself to it. Because the biggest thing that we have in terms of the questions from students is I'm just, I can't bring myself to put my work online. I'm, you know, racked with doubt and anxiety about my work. I feel unconfident. The only Way to do it is just to push through, isn't it? Do it a few times. Don't feel there's that separation thing again. Although it is your work, it's not everything you are. This is just your work going online. This is not you going online with your pants down and your bits shoved, you know, it's just your work and stuff.
- [16:54]
A
That feels really scary now. It'd be a walk in the park even in a few weeks. Sometimes, like, when you start doing something that feels scary, it never, never, ever stays that scary.
- [17:03]
B
Well, I mean, you're living proof of that. You always said you're an introvert, but I watch you Talk on your YouTube videos. Wow. How can she do this?
- [17:12]
A
Because nobody's there. I talk it to myself.
- [17:15]
B
Is that what you tell yourself when you go.
- [17:17]
A
When you record? Yeah, I'm just saying I'm by myself, so I think I'm just like having a bit of a chat, film it. Then I'm like, this is fun because I'm. Because I haven't. I'm having fun and I'm excited to talk about it. And I think that makes it way easier because then I'm like excited to write about it as well, and I'm excited to share it. And then that energy. I think people pick up on it and then they respond. You get lots of comments and then that's exciting. And then I'm like, what will I talk about next? So it's just like a positive cycle.
- [17:41]
B
So once you throw yourself into it, then it starts to kind of churn and you get response and.
- [17:46]
A
Yeah, and I don't really like that one. I did recently, I only had 20 minutes to do it. I was going to move my car, so I was just like, right, I just want to talk about this because I've been thinking about it all day and I've got some time, blah, blah, blah, done. And then it was. That was a really good. I think, yeah. That sort of. The half arson.
- [18:01]
B
Do you imagine someone you like when you're talking?
- [18:04]
A
No.
- [18:05]
C
Maybe it's like here. Maybe it's like here we're talking now. Is it similar?
- [18:09]
A
Yeah, it's a very similar feeling because I'm just talking about things that I'm interested in with people I like or myself that. Like just having a bit of a chat and then. And also I suppose sometimes maybe I'm talking to myself in the past. But yeah, I just. It's that assume positive intent thing as well, isn't it? Like, I think I'm like, people this is gonna be. People will like to see this.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah. And it will be of use.
- [18:34]
A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then sharing your work like, I had fun doing this.
- [18:37]
C
Look.
- [18:37]
B
Ego. Yeah.
- [18:38]
A
Okay.
- [18:39]
B
I'm going to bear that in mind.
- [18:40]
A
Yeah.
- [18:40]
B
I thought you just. You were talking to me and Helen through YouTube.
- [18:48]
C
Okay. I think that answers it, doesn't it?
- [18:49]
A
Yeah. Do what you want.
- [18:52]
B
See you in the next podcast.
- [18:54]
C
Bye.