If the publishing deals dried up today, I’d still be drawing, painting, and writing, just for me, just like I did before, published and paid, or not.
Author: Matt Shanks
Destination unknown
Maybe, sometimes, we need to fling something at a canvas with no intention or plan, just to see what happens; respond to what’s right in front us.
Getting noticed
How do you get noticed by publishers? How do you break-in to kids’ books? It’s easy, make work, often. Eventually, it’ll be so good it can’t be ignored.
The starving artist: a culture, not a law
Changing the law needs lawyers. Changing a culture doesn’t need lawyers, we just need everybody to agree, and that’s hard.
Bit by bit
Becoming an artist is possible, drawing-by-drawing, day-by-day, bit-by-bit. Just because you’ve never done it before, doesn’t mean you can’t.
One thing for yourself
How do you get the energy to do anything creative after a long, boring, soul-destroying day at work?
How to: Broadcast your studio for regional and remote Australia
I’ve recently offered the opportunity for schools in regional and remote Australia to come into my studio on a live workday. The aim is to give some 1:1, intimate illustrator time to those who are often at a geographical disadvantage where it’s too expensive for schools to pay for people like me to visit them.… Continue reading How to: Broadcast your studio for regional and remote Australia
Beyond Normal
Living in the space where the risk lies is the only way we’ll produce work that’s beyond normal, the new normal, a one-of-a-kind.
For prestige
And so if awards are, generally, bogus and out of our control, how do we ever know if our work is any good? Well, that’s probably the wrong question.
Passion through persistence
I can’t help but think that the romantic notion of ‘passion’, that we’re born to do one thing on this earth, is entirely false.