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.

The vision I get when I think about the internet is one of absolute and infinite connectedness. Billions of tiny nodes connected with one another through a fibre-optic gossamer; access to interactions with millions of others at the click of a button.

But, this is an illusion. The fabric is controlled by algorithms optimised for one thing; selling advertising. There are chances for us to connect with others in this vast web, but only if we play by the web’s rules – which tighten and change every day. And even then, we’re competing for connection with the billions of others trying to do the same.

I had one meeting last week, in-person, and I came away recharged and with a feeling and privilege I haven’t experienced in many years on ‘social’ platforms. The feeling of true human connection – creative harmony with another soul. That feeling is indescribable.

Social media is a siren’s song – of scale, of connection, of ‘monetisation’, of a valuable way to spend time. But given the week I just had, it seems much better to stuff one’s ears with wax and keep away from the rocks.

It’s obvious when it comes to physical activity – if I haven’t run 5km for 20 years, it’s not fair to expect that i’ll put on my running shoes tomorrow and be able to do it without breaking a sweat. It’s expected that I’ll have to work up to it again. 1km per day for a while, then 2km, then 3km and so on.

Same with learning piano. In June, I sat down to a piano in for the first time but knew I wasn’t going to bang out Moonlight Sonata. I pressed a few keys (many of them wrong), made some sounds, played some chords based off an ebook download… then my concentration wained, my fingers grew tired – but it’s a start.

For some reason, I thought that completing a picture book digitally wouldn’t be that different to the 20 or so I’ve already done, but they’ve been HARD. Like trying to walk through a thick swamp.

Normally, I find flow in final art making but there’s been very little of it lately. The software and new workflow has gotten in the way more times than I would have liked and if the Apple Pencil wasn’t worth $200, I probably would’ve snapped it in my moments of frustration.

But…

Something changed towards the end of the second book. I realised, almost without thinking about it, that a workflow had emerged. I opened a canvas, followed a series of steps – lines, flats, colour, render – organised layers after the ‘creative’ bit was done, then prepped files for delivery.

I don’t know why I thought it would be easier. The learning curve was less of a curve and more like a steep wall:

• It was my first time using Procreate (so I had to learn an entirely new piece of software and how to maintain consistency across those files),
• my first time dealing with digital colour spaces for illustration (and the onscreen differences),
• my first time trying to work on two very different books at the same time (switching sizes, materials, styles etc),
• my first time setting up new files for print across inDesign & Procreate,
• my first time colour-adjusting after the work was done,
• my first time working out what the iPad was good for – how to sit with it sustainably and comfortably over long periods of time,
• and many other things

That’s a lot.

I ran two marathons in 6 weeks having never ran one before and, not only have I made it to the finish line, but I didn’t finish last – I outran myself. In hindsight, it was probably a bit dumb, but isn’t that always the way; sometimes naivety can be a strength.

And, like with any learning experience, now is a time for consolidation. To go back and watch the replays and think about what I could be doing differently next time. What worked and what didn’t. To learn from the successes and the mistakes so that the next marathon is less of a slog – perhaps I can improve my endurance, and who knows, maybe, eventually, work up to a point where I could even find some flow.