Maudlin Elephants

Sand, songs, and feeling right…

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Hello Darling Doves,

It’s been a strange old month.

{EDIT: If you don’t want to read my maudlin introspection then skip ahead to the elephant pictures.}

Summer is not my thing. I aestivate. I absolutely do not thrive. I like the light, but that’s about it. The heat destroys me. I find myself lethargic, and unable to think straight. It makes me darn right miserable. As you can imagine, I am an absolute joy to be around.

The initial boost I felt after the brilliant feedback I got from Nosy Crow has faded, and the last month has been a struggle. Work and my new course assignment, has loomed over me, and I’ve found myself inert and sometimes spiralling.

In short, I’m used to feeling right. Right about how I think, right about how I do things. For a lot of this month I’ve felt wrong.

I’ve felt wrong because I don’t have an illustration “style” and I don’t really want one. I’m a chameleon and I don’t like doing the same thing twice (you can ask all the single socks and mittens I’ve made about that). I also come from a multi-disciplinary background - my bachelors degree was all about pulling in different ‘ologies’ to explore a subject - so I can’t help but start each project afresh drawing in inspiration from many different places, that then influence my ‘style’.

I’ve felt wrong because I don’t make several iterations or roughs, and even when I do I inevitably pick the first thing I drew. The rightness in me tells me that’s because my first instinct is usually the best one. I’ve tried forcing myself to sketch alternative versions but the result is painful and unsatisfying. But that is what’s expected of an illustrator, it’s what we are taught. It’s the better way to work, and I can totally see that. But I also can’t.

So I feel wrong, and wonder if I should follow the ‘rules’, if I should try and change the way I work. I wouldn’t feel so wrong anymore. But actually maybe I would. What if my wrong way is the right way for me?

So, I’m resigned to ‘me doing me’ and feeling wrong. It’s an uncomfortable feeling but I think feeling not-wrong but not-me would be worse. I just hope that in doing-me I don’t scupper my chances.

Convincing myself I can draw elephants.

Thankfully, this last week I’ve picked up, and through some super hyper-focus finished the client work that was so woefully late. Luckily for me I work with the kindest and most talented designer, who always manages to take my illustrations and make them so much better.

I’ve also started work on the second Pathways into Children’s Publishing literature brief. I’ve a lot to do in the remaining week before roughs have to be submitted (thanks burnout!) so I’m hoping I can summon up some more of that delicious hyper-focus. This literature brief has been set by Bloomsbury, and we’re illustrating three sequential spreads for a large format, narrative non-fiction. It’s a dream brief for me, but it’s also really hard. I don’t think I have ever drawn an elephant before, and now I’ve drawn so many I’m beginning to realise just how weird-looking* they are.

*I’m not hating on elephants, I think they’re majestic and beautiful, but when you really start looking at the shapes and positioning of certain features they’re pretty odd. A bit like when you say a word so many times that it stops sounding like a real word anymore.*

But it’s not just elephants I’ve had to study-up on. There’s also giraffes, camels, and a hippopotamus, a french train station, the Jardin des Plantes, and 19th century fashion to figure out. I absolutely love these briefs, they give me purpose and direction which really helps in building my portfolio, I just wish we had a little more time to research and build up rather than jumping straight into the middle section of a book process.

It’ll all be done by my next letter - finals are due at the end of July - but I won’t get my critique until the end of August, so you’ll have to wait until then for a peek.

This months further reading:

1. My favourite newsletter turned one.

2. I hate sand, but I love the word psammophile. And now I know why E B Nesbit’s sand fairy is called the Psammead.

3. Really interesting research about fictional brand design.

4. So Ed Sheeran won his copyright case, and heres how.

5. Which reminded me of the Axis of Awesome’s Four Chord Song.

6. And if it couldn’t get any spookier, what about all the songs that feature the exact same piano.

7. So cool.

This should be arriving in your inbox just as I’m travelling across London to the first day of Pathways classes. I’d like to imagine I’m well-slept and unburdened, sipping a cuppa with my Leon lunch in a little paper bag.. In reality I’ll be flustered and sweating, carrying a backpack stuffed with all my art materials, terrified I’ve gotten on the tube in the wrong direction. Only instagram will tell.

*We recently had a class on Hand Lettering and Typography in which we embraced our 90’s childhoods (well, I did) and wrote our names in many different ways. This was my favourite.*

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