I’m in the middle of finishing two books in 6 weeks and it’s the first time I’m using digital technology to create the final art. It’s never felt more like work – is that correlation or causation?
I found (and fell in love with) watercolour as an antidote to looking at screens which formed so much of my day job at the time as a software designer. I enjoyed closing the computer screen at the end of the day in preference for a piece of paper and a pencil.
The digital work flow I’ve experimented with has had some advantages – no doubt – but these final stages of finishing digital art (normally, my favourite and most meditative bit of the process), doesn’t feel like it does when I’m working with physical materials.
That may sound a bit sad or unfortunate, but on the contrary, it is clarifying. Because picture book ‘final art’ isn’t really ‘art’ at all. For every book there are stakeholders, a brief, constraints. There is the exchange of money for services and time. There is feedback, and edits. There is emotional and physical labour. Making a picture book is work. It’s just that when I’m delivering physical watercolour pages, it feels less like it.
And maybe this more direct connection to ‘work’ that I feel with digital art is a good thing, occassionally. Because it brings it back to what it’s for.
I could feel ‘robbed’ of the opportunity to play with physical materials by having to deliver digitally. After all, at the end of developing final illustrations for a book using physical materials, I get a ‘bonus’ of 24-32 pieces of physical work that I get to keep/exhibit. However, by being made more aware of the final illustrations as ‘work’, I remember more deeply the reason for doing this work in the first place – to fund biodiversity conservation and restoration and help improve childhood literacy levels in some of our most marginalised communities.
So, yes, delivering digitally means that illustrating a book feels more like work than ever before, but nothing in the world will change unless we put in the work; and that’s what keeps me going.