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A recent check-in with my accountability coach (husband) and all-time creative sounding board, brought my awareness to what my inner critic calls the, ‘shortfalls’ in my current practice – in kinder moments I prefer to call them, ‘areas for further development’.
Both my 5 and 10 year plans include the development of my illustrative practice through commercial work and it is on my list to, ‘get on the books’ of an illustration agency. However, the steps I’ve identified to progress this ambition seem to keep being downgraded on my list of priorities…it could even be said that I have woven strands of my, tried and tested, long-form procrastination technique around them. The result is that my practice is a little, passion-heavy at the moment.
I’m pursuing all the aspects of illustration that I love, I’m making images regularly, putting in a decent number of hours at my studio and I’m iterating like crazy on current projects. What I am not doing though, is working out how I can illustrate in an editorial capacity or mocking up gorgeous book covers to showcase my work in a commercial setting.
But is this actually a problem? Is it the wrong thing to be doing what I want, should I be pushing myself harder to do the ‘difficult’ bits or am I enriching my output because it’s enjoyable and fulfilling to be experimental and have fun with my work?
As ever, I guess the answer is somewhere between the two, ‘A little bit of what you fancy…’ definitely does you good but perhaps it’s time to build in some structure to my week that enables progression of my commercial offerings. Yes, of course, why didn’t I think of it before…a list!! I love a list and whilst they can hold you captive and leave you feeling disappointed if you don’t get everything ticked off, I think a spot of list-writing is where it’s at for me, for now.
1. Make a set of book covers for an existing book series. Be nice, just two or three books, not everything, ever written by Lee Child.
2. Buy some magazines and have a go at creating illustrations for a few of the articles – again be nice to yourself, choose subjects that interest you, don’t beat yourself with birch twigs by choosing anything too political (you can work up to that).
3. Get your PDF portfolio updated with new work, you never know, it might already look better than you remember.
