If I’m learning piano for the first time, how long should it take to make something that sounds like music? I could spend several months learning scales, correct posture, hand and finger independence, and music theory so I have the building blocks for making something that sounds like music, but all that won’t sound like music. Or, I can learn a chord progression and use my voice to add a melody so that, within a couple of days, I’m making music.

Even outside of art, this holds true. When we learn to drive, we don’t sit in a simulator and learn the building blocks of driving like hazard perception, gear changing, mirror/head checking etc, we just get in and start driving. Albeit, we drive slowly, and with someone in the passenger seat, but we use real roads, real traffic, and a real car; we learn fastest by trying the real thing.

Same goes for making visual art. 

For years, I can sit around and read about art history, pigments and chemistry, properties of different brushes and papers, and I can watch endless video demonstrations. Or, I can pick up a brush, put some paint on it, and make some marks.

This isn’t to say that all theory and fundamental skills are useless, but that the motivation to develop those skills and delve into the theory often comes from making something that sounds like music, that looks like a drawing, as quickly as possible.

As an artist, I have many ideas; notebooks full of them. In fact, the reason I carry a notebook and write an idea down is because at that moment, there’s something about the idea; something more than needs exploring. Some ideas are huge (an idea for a 3 book graphic novel), and others are less so (a 3-panel comic). So how do I know when the 3-book graphic novel is something to pursue?

I know that a 3-panel comic will take me about 3 hours to draw. A 3-book graphic novel is years in the making. It would be easy to prioritise the ‘quick’ ideas over and over again, because the time investment isn’t as great. If it’s truly a bad idea, I’ll find out in 3 hours. With a 3-book graphic novel, it could be years before I get to a point where I know whether it’s worth pursuing or finishing.

There are also lots of different reasons to pursue an idea:

• Money: maybe it’s an idea to sell as a print or to sell to a publisher.
• Skill-building: maybe it’s an idea that will require me to learn something new or get better at something I’m already good at.
• Fun: maybe it’s just because I think I will have fun making it.
• Not fun: Or, it’s an idea that it will be really difficult to make and push me out of my comfort-zone.

These are all fine reasons, but there’s one more important one I find myself using more and more – will it help me make sense of the world?

In 2023, I sat down and completed an 80-page graphic novel. I spent my whole summer break on it and then worked mornings and evenings to finish it. During this time, all other ideas were paused, I chose this one. At the time, I didn’t know why, I just had to do it.

By the end of it, I experienced a greater sene of calm than I had in a long time. As it turns out, it was a way for me to process my feelings about climate anxiety, hope for the future, and biodiversity restoration. I chose that project over all the other ones from my notebook because I needed healing and I needed to understand more about what I really felt about the world through the act of making.

Of all the reasons to make something, I can’t think of a better one.

There’s a reason fast food restaurants ask if you want fries with that. It’s the same reason a hotel booking site will ask if you want travel insurance with that. It’s the same reason a restaurant asks if you’d like to leave a tip. And it’s the same reason that people stand on street corners handing out flyers. It’s because they all know that it’s more difficult to say no than it is to say yes.

One of the challenges I find myself confronting more often than not is one of creating space myself. The world is full of add-ons and distractions – demands for our time and attention. If I said yes to every one of them, there’d be no time left do the work that can only come from having the space and time to sit, think, draw, and create. But if I said no to every one of them, the solitude I seek could turn into loneliness.

That’s not an easy balance to strike sometimes but it’s always one worth checking in on – do I really want fries today or is it just because someone asked and it’s difficult to say no.

On my journey toward learning how to play piano, I’ve been trying to find beginner-level sheet music for nocturnes – I’ve always loved the nocturne form of classical music (a piece inspired by night). The problem with my search is that I cannot escape Chopin who is famously known for creating some of the most beautiful (and therefore most complex ones).

He wasn’t the only composer to compose nocturnes but he did it so well that it’s now difficult to find other composers’ works. Chopin, according the internet, is ‘the nocturne guy.’

I wonder – would Chopin, who died in 1849, be happy with how we view his ‘breadth’ today? I mean, he wrote other stuff too, but the nocturnes stuck and, culturally, have drowned out others. Perhaps this is a mark of mastery of the form. Or perhaps it’s a sign of our culture and the way it simplifies complexity of an artist – a ‘consistent brand’ that’s easy to understand. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

I’ve written before about the difference between chameleons and peacocks – and the perceptions that are possible to craft of ourselves based on the work we put into the world. The work we make and share is the work we get asked to make. Simplistically, this boils down to ‘market positioning’ but it can also be a trap.

The challenge is nuanced – one must make the work the heart wants to make but this will create a ‘brand’ as perceived by others, especially if that work is of a certain type. For Chopin, this became nocturnes.

But that brand also sets an expectation such that when the heart evolves and makes work that doesn’t fit that expectation, it risks looking ‘incoherent’, which, in marketing speak, makes it more difficult to attract a reliable audience; Chopin also wrote mazurkas.

There’s no ‘right way’ when it comes to art and marketing, after all, chameleons and peacocks co-exist successfully, but perhaps it’s worth noticing if the work we’re making is indeed heart-led, or whether what we’re making is trying to fulfill an expectation we’ve created in others, or by our past selves.

When I consider a risk, I tend to over-estimate them rather than under-estimate them. I suspect that’s a largely common response as a way to prioritise safety and survival. For example, when I think about skydiving, the risk seems catastrophic – worst case scenario is that I die. But, when I look at the data, what I see is a fairly low probability of death (~ 1 death every 200,000 jumps).

Because I have this tendency to overestimate risks, I’ve developed a practice of writing them down. As soon as I see them on a page, I think about them differently – they generally seem less risky, and the options I have for mitigating them seem more plentiful. By giving them a likelihood (rare → almost certain) and a consequence (minor → major) rating, they are easier to compare and separate from one another. In corporate land, they call this a risk matrix.

If I let these ideas swim circles in my head, they only continue to generate a whirlpool of doubt and uncertainty. Just like when I draw, paint or illustrate, it’s in the act of mark-making that I find clarity and confidence to know what to do next.

Why is it that I’ll drop $2000AUD on a company director’s course, no questions asked, but I struggle to think about me as investment. Is it because I don’t give myself a certificate at the end so it’s more difficult to imagine having something to show for it? Or that even if I did, anyone that would care?

I’ve now been working professionally, as an illustrator, for almost a decade. I’ve published over 20 books, won some awards along the way, have sold foreign rights and have worked with almost every publisher of children’s books in Australia. And yet, I struggle to invest in myself.

I know this work isn’t financially sustainable for the lifestyle we’ve chosen, but I also know I could do more to improve that.

Typically, a business will invest in itself to grow. Amazon didn’t turn a profit in its first 10 years or so – the money it made went back into the business to make it better/faster/stronger – in the corporate world it’s called ‘research and development’. And whilst I hate to use Amazon as an example, it’s a simple and obvious one – whether it’s been a net positive for the world is a whole other thought.

Do artists need to be ‘better/faster/stronger’ though? For an artist, the only competition we have is ourselves. Perhaps instead of using classic capitalist metrics, the investment we need to make in ourselves is something different – what if the investment led to more beauty, more heart, more humour, and more hope in my work and in the world? If there was a course I could take that would give me that, what would I pay? Why wouldn’t I pay myself?

I’ve completed two May Gibbs’ Fellowships in recent years – a month away from home, with no income but plenty of time. These fellowships cost me about $10,000 each in lost wages. But, each time, they have borne fruit that wasn’t immediately obvious and yet they did bare fruit. It wasn’t an immediate payback but any good business person knows that we need to invest in short, medium, and long term strategies for a healthy and sustainable businesses.

If one can pay the bills and invest in more heart, humour, and hope, why wouldn’t they?

In children’s publishing, a lot of care and attention goes into every book. Everyone I’ve ever worked with, on each and every book, wants that book to be the best it can possibly be. One of the many criteria it needs to fulfill to reach for this target is, “Does it make sense to the reader?” and “Is it clear.”

But, there’s a fine line to tread because by making something ‘as clear as possible’, we close doors to the reader. If clarity goes too far, we end up with a book that has no space for the reader to co-create as they read. That space is, in fact, the magic of books.

Just as poetry or painting invites a reader to make their own meaning, so too do good picture books. There are many ways to do this – in the words, in the pictures, and more interestingly, the combination of them.

Words, pictures, and the combination of them

Words have an advantage – they are abstract by nature. I could write the word “Yellow” and, chances are, five different readers will conjure a a different shade in their mind. I could ‘clarify’ this word… perhaps use the words “Lemon Yellow”, and those 5 readers might picture a more similar shade of yellow. I could add another descriptor – “Light Lemon Yellow” – and the image would be further refined.

This doesn’t work with pictures. The yellow I paint is the yellow a reader will see. The same yellow – for everyone. There’s no room for the imagination to breathe like there is with ‘yellow’ as a word only.

The challenge for me, as an illustrator, is to build my illustrative vocabulary (line, colour, shape, tone, pattern etc) and learn how to use those things to invite a reader into the pictures – to not prescribe but suggest. This may be something as simple as not completely closing line work, or using how colours, lines, shapes, tones, patterns etc feel so that they provide the conditions for a reader to have their own, unique emotional reaction to a drawing. It may also be recognising that if the sentence I’m illustrating uses the word ‘yellow’, then perhaps the illustration doesn’t need to tell the reader exactly which shade and instead, let the reader in – to co-create the images in their minds rather than being told exactly what to see.

It’s really difficult to show another human your idea without putting something on the page. In this way, every drawing is a raffle ticket. The more ideas one puts on the page, the greater the chance becomes of connecting with someone – someone who gets it; that may be a loved one, or someone you’ve never met, or a publisher who has the power and budget to take your idea and show it to the world at scale.

When I pick up a pencil and make a mark on paper, it begins – a conversation. The mark left behind is a prompt to myself; where should the next mark go? And, as mark begets mark, a drawing emerges, and, as a drawing emerges, so does new thinking.

Nine times out of ten, these drawings don’t go further, at least not immediately. But sometimes they take flight and turn into something I could never have predicted in advance. The drawings that take flight are an emergent thing – they arise from the doing. Do nothing, and nothing arises.

So, pick up a pencil now, make some marks, and see what it’s trying to tell you.

There’s nothing quite like the energy of a creative partnership. It’s different from an “I love you” partnership and different from a “you’re a great friend” partnership. Those partnerships are overflowing with encouragement and support, but they’re also easy to dismiss because, “you’re just saying that because you love me.”

The Creative Partner says, “I don’t want to sleep with you, and I believe in you.” They provide a cocoon of psychological safety so that one can take risks that one might not otherwise take – it helps when you know you’re in this together. Creative Partners are also able to see an idea for what it is without the emotional attachment that unavoidably comes with being the originator of the idea.

Creative Partners aren’t easy to find, in fact, it’s a bit like happiness – once you go searching for it, it vanishes. The goal then is to recognise those people in your life as they serendipitously enter and allow them to nourish and fill your soul so when they inevitably exit your life for whatever reason, you carry a piece of them with you forever.