Open Studio, is the free edition of this newsletter. It’s where I share updates in freelance illustrator life. Things I’m reading and working on. It’s like you just walked in and found me working. Welcome!
Obligations and Opportunities
I’ve recently come through some crunch time deadlines on a couple of books, getting sick in the final day of one of those books. I’m better now, and already I have a number of open tabs to work through.
This juggling of open tabs is one of the features of freelance work.
It takes a kind of tunnel vision to get through a picturebook especially the end stages, and the light at the end of that tunnel can be overwhelming. I was coming out of my cave and the vastness of things that needed to be done seemed to stretch into infinity.
To get a grips on what I had to do, I got a last sheet of paper and began to CAPTURE everything that needed to be done.I realised that what needed to be done fell in a few categories.
And more broadly they categories turned out to be Obligations and Opportunities.
Obligations were all once opportunities that we decided to pursue, and they can bring a lot of reward and satisfaction.
Opportunities are rolls of the dice.
And artist are inherently a kind of gambler. As I look at my lists it’s clear that I cannot pursue every opportunity or atleast not all at once, and definitely not all right away. I also need to manage my obligations to get them done in an organised fashion.
I guess being a freelancer is all about taking risks in a managed way.
Concretely that means deciding to do one thing at a time and ignoring everything else.
I think that’s the hardest thing about the job, deciding what to do and doing it. If you decide to pursue too many opportunities you spread yourself thin. If you decide to hyperfocus you risk being stuck or becoming redundant.
The guidance I might offer in making decisions about what to do is to understand the 80-20 rule. The idea that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of activities. And as much as possible strive to work on those 20% activities.
Because the reverse is also true, 80% of activities produce 20% of outcomes, and if we focus on those activities we get diminishing returns.
In this newsletter, I try as much as possible to point out those 20% activities that produce those 80% results.
I challenge you now to spend at least 20% of your days, weeks and months, pursuing opportunities
Reading List
One type of opportunity or 20% activity is reading. Because teams of experts spend hundreds or thousands of collective hours of effort to bring you something that you can consume in minutes a day. The thing to be mindful of and to make reading most effective is at the end of every reading session, write down one action you can do based on your new found knowledge. These are the books on my reading pile.
Art Life Practice
My favourite kind of books are the ones that tell you what action to take, and Art Life Practice, the guided sketchbook is exactly that kind of book. If you’ve never kept a sketchbook before this is a great way to start. The book is a jam packed introduction to making art delivered in bite sized prompts. It’s complete in the range of activities it covers.
I definitely will be using this in my daily practice when I don’t know where to start. As I do I’ll share my progress.
Real Artist Wear Black
“Art School professors and peers, family members, critics, galleries, random strangers — people say and do dumb stuff that can completely stop artist in their tracks”. Things like ‘Real artist wear black’ or ‘you should never paint again’ and ‘serious artist don’t have day jobs’.
Danielle Krysa , calls out all the bullshit, but also guides us on what to do instead. Instead of bullshit Danielle shares hard earned wisdom presented in a fun accessible style. In her book Real Artist Wear Black, and other lies about being creative.
Don’t Call it Art
I used to think of Austin Kleon ’s Steal Like An Artist as a Trilogy, in many ways it has been the guide book for my own career. Don’t call it art comes at the perfect time, an inflection point for me and it’s chapters are presented as 10 ways to create like a kid again.
One of the chapters in the book is ‘borrow a kid’. I don’t have to borrow a kid because I have one, but however you get one making art with a kid is such a great way to learn.
Today we made whipped paint art, and even as I’m writing this she’s drawing a little cake next to me using that care free expressiveness that children have so naturally!
Updates on the newsletter
One of my obligations in writing this newsletter is to drop a new 5 day project every month. I’m behind on that as I’m working to organise the newsletter, another obligation in itself.
But I have a project coming up for you!
And it’s called, Drawing 100 faces: a Ten Minute Artist project. I had so much fun with the recent artgym workshop where we drew characters, that I wanted to extend it.
So over the next 5 days, I’ll be progressively guiding you through drawing 100 faces! If you’re new here, this would be a good place for me to tell you what you get as a paid subscriber.
As soon as you subscribe you get a new email everyday that will equip you with everything you need to start a daily 10 minute drawing practice. Including a new prompt daily for 15 days and a private community to share your work.
Every month you get a new 5 days project to help you keep the habit growing.
You get access to the entire project library of previous projects.
If you struggle with keeping a consistent creative practice (we all do), this community is the solution!
One final Opportunity I have, is a chance to meet you in person in remote and rural Monsaraz, Portugal in 2027 as I host a 5 day retreat. In it I want to walk you through the process that starts with ‘ugly’ sketches in a sketchbook all the way through to a final illustration that tells a story.
I’ll be spending the rest of the day writing a post to tell you as much as I can about the retreat.
And in the coming week, I’ll be turning these ugly sketches into books!
Okay, you’ll here from me soon as I guide you to draw 100 faces in 5 days!
