When I get home from work, I put my bag and the mail I’ve just collected on the dining table. It’s the first flat surface I encounter when I walk through the door in the evening.

Because of this, I don’t eat at the dining table. It’s too messy. The bag and the mail is all over it. So, after I cook dinner, I sit on the couch and eat it while falling headfirst into a TV rabbit-hole. One episode of something over dinner, then one after dinner. Before I know it, it’s bed time.

Day after day, this used to be my evening routine. But then, something changed, and it wasn’t me.

On a weekend, I made a new flat surface, a table, and put it even closer to the front door. Now, when I come home, I put my bag and mail down on this new table, I don’t even think about it, it’s just more convenient.

Because of this new table, dinners are eaten at the (tidy) dining table. Because dinners are at the dining table, I don’t turn the TV on. Because I don’t turn the TV on, I gravitate toward spending my evening writing, or reading, or drawing. Making stuff.

It turns out, I developed a habit. But I didn’t change me. I changed my environment, and then it changed me. It was far easier that way.

Is there anyone else out there whose suffering from having 100 beautiful sketchbooks of which you’ve used just one or two pages? Rest easy, neither has one of the most prolific illustrators of books in Australia, Bruce Whatley.

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A life time ago when I was in college the tutor (Tony Ross) used to drum into us the importance of carrying a sketchbook. Everywhere! And draw. On the bus, train, watching TV – everywhere. Unfortunately I never did it. I’ve tried every now and again. So I have a collection of beautiful leather visual diaries and drawing books – all with just a few drawings on the first few pages. Doh!

A post shared by Bruce Whatley (@whatleybruce) on Mar 24, 2019 at 1:30am PDT

When Bruce posted this to Instagram, I felt my entire body relax. I too have many half-finished sketchbooks. A library of reminders about the times I read another piece of advice about drawing everyday, saw some wonderful sketches of people who practice like this, and thought, right, now is the time for me to do the same thing.

But sure enough, 2-3 pages into a beautiful new sketchbook, the momentum fades. The only time I’ve ever been able to keep it up is when I’m on holidays and not spending my day commuting to and from my day job. There’s some part of me that wishes I could be like ‘them’. The ones who sketch. The ones who draw something, anything, everyday. But most of the time, I just don’t feel like it. I’ve had a hard day at work and my creative energy is spent, or, I value other things more (like spending time with my wife and cat).

You might be different, too

Hard and fast ‘rules’ for a creative practice have never worked for me. Write 1000 words a day, drink a cup of celery juice every morning, meditate at 5:45am on days starting with T. They’re blanket statements, said by a few people, but assumed to apply to many. But we’re all different. Each person works in their own way, and has their own limitations. Family, life, work, health, it’s different for everybody. So what works better for me is doing the work to understand my own constraints, and then optimise for that. For example, I’m a morning person, so, in general, I do my most creative or focussed work before people wake up. It also means that at night, I rest. I’ve tried working around this, but it never works. Not only do I produce less interesting work if I work at night, but the ‘habit’ doesn’t stick.

I think the only ‘rule’ is that there are no rules. Everyone is different, so we do what we can, when we can, and if it’s not how others operate, then that’s OK.

I’ll have the mushrooms sautéed in mashed banana, topped with salmon eggs. No, wait, I’ll try the chocolate-covered rare lamb fillet with vanilla ice-cream and seaweed butter, instead.

People don’t want original, even if they say they do. What people want is something that’s familiar, but just a little bit different to before. Evolution, not revolution.

Original is hard. It’s hard to stomach. Hard to make. Hard to sell. That’s why genres exist. Every genre – whether it’s food, books, or music – has a formula. Being ‘original’ really means taking that formula and tweaking just one element, or two, to make something that feels decidedly new.

When a sculptor sets out to sculpt something, the material sits in front of them. An inert hunk of clay, stone, or bronze that has already pulled from the earth. The starting point is a given, it already exists, they have something to work with. To respond to.

But writers have to make their own clay. That’s what a first draft is; the malformed, misshapen, big hunk of clay. It’s not until any writer has toiled through hacking out a beginning, middle, and end from the pit in their mind, that they can sit it on the table in front of them and begin to respond to it – to slowly chip away, or push and pull it with their hands, to make it into something that they themselves will be proud of, and perhaps, will touch someone else one day.

When you know that all you have to do is get the big chunk of clay on to a page, first drafts become easier. The point of a first draft isn’t perfection, it’s about existence.

A lot of people ask me, “Do you want to make art full-time? Do you want to make a living from your art?” And my response is always the same; first, I need to answer this question, how much does ‘a living’ cost?

“How much does a living cost” is a very different question from what I think we might mean when we ask, “Do you want to make a living from your art”. In my experience, what most people mean when they ask me this question is: “Do you want your art income to match what you’re getting paid in your day job before you can quit your day job for good?”

But this is too simplistic. It puts a lot of pressure on my art. What people don’t ask is “Could you adapt your lifestyle so there’s less pressure on your art?”

Said this way, it’s not just about how much money I’m making from my art, it’s also how much money I’m spending with my current lifestyle.

Art and Lifestyle

So, here’s another question I’ve pondered more often: Is it possible to change my lifestyle so that the amount of money I really truly need to be able to live off my art is more achievable?

Do I subscribe to Netflix? Do I need to? How many times a week do I eat out? Can I do more home-cooking? Do I want to move to a place that has cheaper rent? Do I need that mortgage? These are massive questions and the answers are different for everyone. But, if I can do the work to find out what an ‘acceptable lifestyle’ costs for me, I get one step closer to understanding how much money I really need to ‘make a living.’

Once I know what an acceptable lifestyle costs, I can look at what’s possible to make from my art.

How much money does a picture book maker make?

I don’t think most people know this but the majority of a ‘full-time’ children’s book illustrator’s income doesn’t come from their art. In fact, children’s books pay very little in comparison to an editorial-style illustration career where the clients are ad agencies and media companies – organisations that have much more money than publishers.

When I did the numbers for my first book, Row Row Row Your Boat, the advance payment I got for it equated to $2.60/hour. And from what I’ve read and others who I’ve spoken to, this is not unusual. It’s a small sample size, yes, but there’s consistency.

Most ‘full-time’ children’s illustrators supplement their book work with other work: school events, writers’ festival appearance, teaching professional development seminars, plus a host of other things too. So while you might see ‘average salaries’ of 50-60k bandied around the internet for a ‘book illustrator’ career, no one seems to talk about how much is coming from the art part.

This post by Annabel Smith paints a pretty vivid picture of what income looks like as “A Writer”. As you can see, the act of writing makes up a very small proportion of her income. And, she’s one of the ‘successful’ ones.

So, if I really want to make a living from my art, it’s probably worth by starting with working out what I really need in order to live, first, then work backwards from there.

I wonder what it would be like if our goal was to fill the cutting room floor, instead of ‘write or illustrate a book’.

When a filmmaker makes a feature-length film, they shoot thousands of hours of footage. In the film-making culture, you always shoot more than you ever need. It’s expected that most of what is shot over years of filming will never end up in the movie; it’ll remain on the cutting room floor. It’s part of the process. When you’re making a film, that’s normal.

When you’re writing a book, or illustrating a story, it’s hard to let go of the first draft. We want it all to be in the book. It took hours to write or draw. We spent weekends on it, or precious time when the kids were asleep. We worked so hard to make the number of words people say you need for a book. And now we’ve done it. The book is done. We’re done.

But professional writers know that writing a book, and making a film, have similarities. We have to write or draw much more than we’ll ever need. We’ve got to fill the cutting room floor so that, of the thousands of hours of work we’ve put in to make all those words and pictures, only the best bits will see the light of day.

I’ve done it! I’m through! I’ve put on my long white gloves and my debutante gown. I’ve descended the sweeping staircase and I’ve been welcomed to the world. Ladies, Gentlemen, and all in-between, I’m into poetry.

For people new to poetry, the ‘rules’ for reading it aren’t clear. Do I just buy any random poetry book, start at the start and sit down for 3 hours reading it from cover to cover, like a novel? How do I know if I’ve read a good poem? Or even worse, a bad one? Did I understand the poem I read? What did it mean? Am I too dim to be reading poetry at all?

With all these questions running through one’s mind (like they did for me), it’s easy to say, “Well, stuff it, I’ll just read another novel.” But, as I’ve found out, poetry rewards those who persist. So here’s how I did it, how I broke in. It’s advice I haven’t been able to find in my internet searching and, well, I’m now rather addicted to seeking new poems.

Start wide, buy an anthology

Make your first poetry book an anthology. Anthologies are collections of poems, usually on some sort of theme. The themes vary wildly, so find one that you like the sound of. Are you a nature lover? Try an anthology about nature poems. Are you a romantic? There’s plenty of anthologies about love. At this stage you don’t need to worry about the poets they feature, or who edited the anthology (i.e. the person/s who picked the poems), just focus on the subject you’re interested in. My favourite ‘beginner’ anthology is A Book of Luminous Things. It’s theme can be best described as ‘variety’, variety of language, location, and subject. It features poets from all over the globe, and loosely groups poems into different subject matter themes.

Read your anthology like a recipe book

Poetry anthologies don’t need to be read cover to cover like a novel. In fact, they’re not meant to be read that way at all. I’ve found that they’re best read like a recipe book.

When I buy a recipe book, I scan the whole thing first. As I’m flicking through, there are some recipes that catch my immediate attention. The reason they do this isn’t always the same. Maybe I like the poached pear and raspberry sorbet one because it’s hot today. Or maybe the roast lamb with rosemary potatoes is interesting because the photo looks nice and lamb is cheap this week. Maybe I’m just more confident in my ability to make the lemon tart that I see because I’ve had repeated success with a cheesecake in the past. Either way, I always bookmark a few on my first go. These are the ones I’ll cook first.

Poetry anthologies can work the same. Do a quick pass of book. Maybe you like the sound of one because the title is intriguing (this happened to me when I read Les Murray’s Cuttlefish). Or maybe you prefer the short ones over the long ones, like Antigone Kefala’s Knossos. I’m a minimalist by nature, so I love the short ones. All you need to do at this stage is to bookmark the ones you think you might like to try.

Give your favourites a go

Once you’ve earmarked a few that sparked an immediate interest, give one a go. And when I say ‘a go’, here’s what I mean:

1. Read it once, from beginning to end. Don’t worry about trying to ‘get it’ or ‘work it out’. Just read it. You’ll stumble and fumble and mumble your way through it, that’s OK. It’s a bit like eating spaghetti for the first time. Until you learn how to twist those strands onto your fork, it’s going to be a mess. Then,
2. Read it again, slower this time. Less like a novel, more like a recipe, line by line. As you’re reading the second pass, try to notice the bits you like most. Is there a particular word or phrase that rolled off your tongue better than others? Did a particular line put a vivid image into your head? Do you even like it, still? Maybe it kind of sucks? That’s OK.
3. Ask yourself, do you like it? Have another scan through it, and again if you need to. You don’t have to have a definitive answer. But it’s good practice for you to internalise the poem and simply work out whether you think it’s a good one. You could even write some notes about it to help you work out whether this is the sort of poem you like. Once you think you’ve made your mind up, then,
4. Read a different poem. Select another poem that you earmarked from your first pass and follow steps 1-3. But, at step 3, you can now compare it to the first poem you read as a way of helping you decide whether you like it. How does it compare? Do you like the second poem more or less than the first poem? Try to work out why. There’s no right or wrong answer because poetry is simply about your experience with the words.

Refine, then define what you like

After you’ve given some favourite-looking poems a go. You can now begin to orient yourself in this world. Maybe you’re finding that you happen to keep liking a particular poet in this anthology (that’s what happened with me and the Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska). By the way, I never thought I’d say that phrase. But for you, maybe there’s a type of subject, or a way certain poems look that you seem to be drawn to. What you’re trying to do, like I did, is find out where to go next. What you like, and what you don’t like. You could do another pass through the anthology and see if different poems grab your attention now; perhaps you’re feeling a bit more adventurous after a couple of first poems.

Welcome to poetry

All you need to find from your first anthology is one or two poems that you like. From there, you can seek out another anthology that is refined by your new-found taste. Maybe you’ve connected with a particular poet and so you seek out one of their own collections to see how much of their work you like. The main thing is, you’re in. You’ve got a foothold in what is normally seen to be a very academic activity. You’re one of those people now, the ones that can read and enjoy poetry. How exciting!

What if you didn’t find anything you like in your first anthology?

Well, it’s one of two things:

1. The curator/s was not for you. That’s OK, after all, anthologies are still curated by a single person or a very small group of people. Maybe you just didn’t like their taste? I’d suggest trying another anthology curated by someone else to see whether the editor of the first anthology was the problem.
2. You don’t actually enjoy poetry. Whilst I find this difficult to believe because of the sheer variety that exists in poetry, this just may be the way it is for you. That’s also OK. There are some people in the world who don’t like Italian food and some people don’t like cooking at all. At the very least, this exercise has given you this knowledge about yourself, which is great because it means you can focus on the type of reading that gives you joy, whether it’s novels, magazines, comics or non-fiction.

Pair this with my tips for writing poetry (hint: don’t call it poetry).

In the early days of human existence, we transferred knowledge to one another through the oral tradition. We literally told stories to one another. Back then, we needed one another to survive. Alone, our species is vulnerable. We passed down ‘life hacks’ from one generation to another. Grandad and his mates learned (through failure, no doubt) the best way to hunt a dangerous animal, and they told the next generation how to do it.

Oral tradition and tribal living have, in general, stood the test of time as an effective way of knowledge transfer and human survival. Indigenous Australians are a pretty good example of this if you think that survival over 65,000 years and counting is considered success.

But, like with most things, there are positives and negatives.

On the one hand, the oral tradition meant that deep, multi-sensory knowledge could be transferred between generations fairly easily. The connections to these stories would have been so personal that empathy for the experiences and emotions felt through them would have been unlike anything my privileged mind could imagine. But, on the other hand, unless someone with knowledge was able to transfer it to another before they died, the risk of lost knowledge, potentially life-saving knowledge, was high.

Over the years, as technology has ‘improved’, it’s given us the ‘freedom’ to become less reliant on one another for survival. And while we might be living in closer proximity to one another than ever before, the written tradition has re-structured our society in such a way that, at least in the developed world, one can live in general comfort and safety without needing another human being for most things. I’ve over-simplified this a bit, but you get my point.

At 35 years old, I look back on my childhood and wish I got to know my grandparents more. They’re no longer with us, and I can’t help but feel that along with them, a lot of knowledge was lost too; knowledge I probably could’ve used. Since then, I’ve started this career in picture books, and I’ve realised something.

Even in this modern, busy life that we lead, our society still values books, at least when it comes to our youngest generation. Parents and grandparents still believe that reading books to their kids and grandkids is a worthwhile activity to do together, in the same place and time as one another. But here’s the thing. I’ve been trying to rack my brain for another object on our planet that humans still value enough to introduce into their lives in this way. A physical object that creates a shared time and place for our oldest and youngest generations to come together, disconnected from the internet, and share in an idea with one another. I think picture books might be the only one.

So then I think, wow. In this last surviving space for intergenerational, synchronous story-telling and knowledge transfer, lay the ideas I’ve added to the world. Right there, sandwiched in this weirdly precious moment. Books like Queen Celine and Eric the Postie. The ideas and messages in these stories planted in the brains of two or more generations at once. An idea sent to this tiny tribe from a foreign land. What will they do with this new information? Will it change a mind, or spark a conversation? It’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly, but one I’m immensely grateful for having the opportunity to be a part of.

Let’s face it, these days, it’s easy to be the same. To conform. To take a nice, comfy seat high up on the bell curve of what’s ‘on trend’. If I want to buy some new clothes, it’s easy for me to pull up a Pinterest board and see, in an instant, what the world is wearing. If I want to plan a picture-perfect wedding, the same is true. But, if we’re all looking at the same thing, reading the same information, looking at the same style, then we’re probably, eventually, going to think the same. If we’re thinking the same, we’re probably going to create the same things. That’s boring.

To think differently, we need to act differently. We need to ask ourselves, what am I doing differently to everyone else? If people are no longer letting boredom into their life, if they aren’t staring out the window, if they’re all listening to podcasts while they’re doing passive activities like cooking or vacuuming, if passive activities are now ‘wasting time’, and a thing to be avoided, then maybe I’ll ‘waste’ some time. Maybe I’ll stare out of a window for a while. Maybe I’ll shut off the incessant sound of podcasts in my ears. Maybe I’ll do exactly that, and see what happens.

Believable environments filled with intrigue are something that an author very rarely describes in a picture book text. But, it’s an area rich in possibility for a good illustrator and storyteller to exploit. It can add depth to the work, it can improve it’s repeat-value, and can help reader and child engage in a far deeper conversation about the context of the action than what the text describes. It’s, in short, what the great picture books do. But this isn’t just a thing about picture books, it goes right back to what great painters do.

Not so still-life

This image is a painting by Cezanne. It’s called “Still-life with Commode” (1883-87).

Now, in my opinion, the subject matter is relatively banal, but then again, so is the painting. We see some fruit, a few jars/vases, there’s nothing particularly human about it. It feels staged; something that Cezanne setup to paint, then put back once he was done. I mean, who puts a bowl of fruit in front of a set of draws?

In contrast, the image below from Van Gogh, a still-life called “A Still-Life with a Plate of Onions” (1889) invites the viewer into a story.

When I look at this image by Van Gogh, I’m not asking whether he set it up intentionally to paint or not. I’m asking questions about who was at the table and why. The pipe, the letter, the book, the half-consumed bottle of wine all indicate a human presence without explicitly showing a human. It invites my brain to invent my own stories from these disparate items. It draws me right in. Was Van Gogh really eating onions whilst drinking wine and smoking a pipe by candlelight?

Background stories

When I’m creating environments (like a living room) in my picture books, it’s easy to include all the tropes I associate with living rooms. A couch, some pillows, a TV, a bookshelf, and so on. It’s easy to forget the fun and human-ness I can bring to a simple environment like this. Does the couch seat have an indentation? What shape is it? Is the pillow askew? Are the books on the bookshelf scattered? Are there books missing? Is the TV on? If so, what’s on?

Backgrounds, and settings in general, give the illustrator a rich opportunity to tell stories through the pictures alone. It’s one of the most fun parts for me. And almost always, it’s the child that notices first.

A short thanks to Sarah Davis, Illustrator and Art Director at Walker Books Australia for her wonderful talk at a recent conference that got me thinking about how we can bring more intrigue into illustrations in picture books.