🗃 34. My first MATS art submissions

#PeptoberDay11 - Show a piece you hate.

🗃 Peptober is a social media challenge for artists by Andy J. Pizza, and it lists all kinds of strategies and topics you can use to share your work. In this post, I share a painful experience that basically propelled me into becoming a picturebook illustrator because I was willing and able to deal with the pain.

On Getting Started

MATS, or “Make art that sells”, is a series of online courses that I have been taking. I’m going to show you my submissions from my first week of class. I’m prompted to do this as part of Peptober’s Day 11 Prompt, “Show a piece you hate”.

The assignment was to create a character sheet for a nonfiction kids’ book character. It was the historic story of Jo Ann Robinson and the part she played in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After 30 hours of research, I came up with this:

I was especially proud because I turned the bus into a character. As part of class our instructor, Lilla Rogers, will pick and show the best pieces. She typically picks 15 out of hundreds.

I sat through class looking at the fifteen awesome pieces of work, work that according to Lilla, a top art agent, would easily attract paid gigs. As each piece was shown, my only thought was, mine is better, and I’m sure I would be picked next.

I did not get picked.

And that was the most important lesson in class.

I learned that I was not good enough. And I learned what good enough looked like. More importantly, I learned that I did not even have the ability then to recognize what was good enough.

I had been working as a creative for 19 years by this time. This was truly a humbling moment.

I learned then that good enough in one industry might not translate to another. And that every industry looks for very specific things.

I learned where I was, Point A

I learned where I needed to be, Point, B

The thing that made the difference was I had access to the people who were at point B, I watched what they did, I asked the occasional question, and I started walking from point A to point B, and have been walking for over a thousand hours.

So yes I hate the work I did at point A. But you need both point A and point B to make the journey.

I’d love to hear about your points A and point B, it will help me make these notes better for you. So please leave a comment or hit ‘Reply’, talk to you then :)

Next:

Note from the Goat

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