A small collection of thoughts from July
A post about (in no particular order): thin spaces, feeling quite tired, introversion, creative flow, and what it’s been like to be an illustrator recently.
I thought I’d sit down and write about how I’m feeling at the moment, because I seem to have a lot of thoughts. I woke up this morning feeling the same exhaustion that I’d felt all week, and had assumed that a few longer sleeps would fix. But this was a different kind of exhaustion, and one that I recognised from years gone by; the bone-deep tiredness that I’d felt before when I was heading towards burnout. I have a tendency to pack in too much and try to be everything to everyone. I am an introvert through and through and a day or three spent talking to no-one is often enough to restore me at least 75% of the way.
July has been a very full and lovely month, but also one in which I’ve been juggling a lot. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of illustration jobs being put out on social media with an open application process, and having applied to several of these in the past few weeks I’m starting to feel a little bit worn out. One of the companies said they received over 800 portfolios, another informed us that they’d need an extra month to get through everyone’s applications! The entirety of the first week of July was spent creating prospective work and applying to jobs in the hope that something might come off later in the year. I loved the whole process, I loved creating new things…. and I know that in the long run it will pay off. In my experience it always does- it creates good energy, leaves you with a fresh portfolio of new work and is just part of the deal as an illustrator. But sometimes it's good to take a step back and acknowledge that being an illustrator is both wonderful and incredibly competitive, and hard work too!
Above: Some of the artwork I’ve submitted to various illustration jobs this month
Just as I sat down to write about how I’ve been feeling, I thought- ‘don’t bother, you really don’t have time, you’re already behind and it’s only Monday afternoon.’ I think i almost always feel behind. It’s like we’re existing in a world hurtling towards…something(?) at 100 miles an hour, and everything these days is designed to be quicker, more productive, more profitable. AI could probably generate a neat little summary that I could copy and paste onto my blog, and I could skip the introspection process entirely. It’s an absurd idea when you think about how the whole job of an artist is to connect to the humanity of people in some way, and have an authentic voice. Introspection, dark nights of the soul, small melodramatic moments in which you question your existence and quietly despair about things… AI knows nothing about this. I do all of the above quite a lot, usually in a very polite way, in the confines of my own brain (you probably wouldn’t realise what’s going on in there if we had a chat in person.) But all of these things are very much part of being human and I think might actually be a vital part of the reality of the creative life. What would happen if I just cut every corner I could in the name of productivity- what would be the point?
I think this soulful aspect of being human is something we all need to protect. There’s something sacred about expressing your experience of the world, however you can- whether through words or pictures or something else. The process is the whole point, that’s where the humanity lies. And yet there is a tiny voice that appears from time to time and tells me to get through the process as quicky as I can, just so I can tick another thing off. In my experience though, the quicker you go, the more your world just speeds up and you never quite catch up. If you reply too quickly to tidy your inbox, you tend to hear back very quickly too, and the cycle continues. Somehow, as an illustrator I have to find the balance between doing all of the right things so that I’m actually earning a living, and protecting myself and the space that is needed to produce meaningful work from a thoughtful place. Often, I find burnout comes not just from stretching yourself to thinly, but from when there is no time for play, and you’re just there fulfilling deadlines and marketing things.
Sketchbook development work from a recent project
I’ve had a few little moments over the past few years of wondering what the future holds, and where illustration will be in the next few years. Ever since graduating I’ve been incredibly fortunate in that I haven’t had many gaps in-between commissions at all. I look back to 2014 when I was starting out as a freelancer with rose-tinted glasses on, probably…. but I know I was trying to establish at a time where illustration was a thriving industry. I heard Creative Boom describe it as a ‘golden age of illustration’ and that made sense to me. I can’t get away from the fact that as I look at my old work now, I see that I had a long way to go and I knew so little (and had a slightly naive kind of faith that it would all work out.) Eleven years on, and I’ve had a lot of life experience, and can recognise that sometimes I can lack a bit of faith compared to the me from back then. Maybe a little bit of fear has crept in, or maybe it’s an understandable reaction the current world and where illustration is at the moment. Every time I question things too much though, I think- no. I absolutely love this job, I love illustrating, it’s in my bones. I am where I am supposed to be. And while I’m questioning what the future holds, in the present I’m still doing int, still making new things. As James Hughes of the Illustrator’s Guide has talked about- all through history, artists have been fighting to create work against the odds. This really is nothing new at all.
Small moments from studying Illustration at Falmouth, 11 years ago!
I recently had the honour of illustrating the order of service for the funeral of a friend, and the process of that really stayed with me. It felt more important than ever to get this right, and I spent a day really struggling to find my way with it, questioning myself. However, something changed on day two when I got into a flow state. I started working intuitively, getting completely lost in the work and instinctively knowing when it was feeling ‘right.’ The process felt like it happened beyond or outside of me, and I could almost hear my friend chatting away with me as I worked, directing me, telling me what colours they liked. There’s a concept in Christianity called ‘thin space’ where the boundary or veil separating the physical world from the divine lessens, and something about this process felt akin to that. It reminded me of the transcendent aspect of the creative process. I don’t want to contribute to the noise constantly being generated in the world of AI. I want my illustrations to be authentic and bring joy to people. And in order to create authentic art, my process needs to be authentic too. Sometimes that might be a little bit slower and inefficient than the world seems to demand, and sometimes I’ll need to rest to be able to make things that feel honest. Getting all of this down on paper has definitely made me feel a lighter and more creative too- it seems like processing is all part of the process.
