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.

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.

Walking past the laundry doorway, something’s different. Back in winter, we hung a noren – a beautiful piece we bought in Japan almost a year ago. For six months, it hung in our doorway adding a beautiful and subtle separation from the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ world. But today, it’s not hanging straight down – it’s moving a little, very subtly, towards the open backdoor – an invisible force gently pulling it outwards.

Had I not seen the noren hanging in this way, I would never have become aware of the flow of air moving through that part of the house. Because of this simple bit of fabric, I stopped and became hyper-attentive to that moment, that air, that movement – I could actually feel it on my body when I took the time to notice.

It makes me think how little one needs to render the invisible visible; the unfelt, felt. How often this must happen on a day-to-day basis but most of us are too busy to notice. And perhaps, that’s one of the roles of art and the artist – to render what’s there in the gentlest way so that we become more attentive to the world as it is.

When I begin a piece of final art, I begin with ritual. I pull and cut a fresh piece of watercolour paper, at the same time, I’m reminded of who and what had to happen to make this object – the cotton growers, the pulpers, the factories, the pressers – so that I could use it to make the work I’m about to make. I clean and fill water buckets, select the brushes I know I’ll need to use, prepare lighting, make the first marks on paper – the crop marks – all before the final act of art making. I know that once this ritual begins, I’m committed for at least 4 hours to the continual shaping and making of marks on paper.

With each piece of art, there’s risk. The materials that go into the final work aren’t cheap. The physical resources I will use are taken from the world and placed with intention on this piece of compressed cotton. There’s an immense privilege in that. If I stuff it up at any moment before it’s ‘finished’, I have to start again; more resources, more time.

I contrast this with digital ‘final’ art – something I’m trying for the first time as I write this. The same sense of risk isn’t there so the need to ‘prepare’ methodically also isn’t required.

No matter what I’m making, the process is fast and efficient; power button, swipe, tap, tap, go. I can work from anywhere, anytime, and for any amount of time – 5 minutes or 4 hours. I don’t find myself being aware of the thousands of people and precious metals that were needed to create the tablet in the first place – it doesn’t feel sacred to me in the way a piece of watercolour paper does; it feels decidedly commodified. But maybe that’s OK.

One of the things I used to love about physical art for picture books is it felt like a win-win – I experience the sacred and, eventually, it ends up scaled through the commodity of picture books; the money through which I can fund more materials. But now, the digital work flow hasn’t ‘devalued’ the sacred work. If anything, it’s made those moments of working with physical art materials even more more special, more private. I like that.

The other day, I had to drastically prune one of my favourite plants in our small back garden. I avoided pruning it for a long time because I enjoyed it so much so it’s been happily (over)growing for almost 10 years and it gives the garden a certain calming feeling.

In a matter of minutes under the heft of a power tool, it went from lush, full, green and beautiful to spindly, grey, and sad. I definitely experienced feelings of loss that day.

But now, just a week or so later, I’ve noticed new growth – a lush, green, bright contrast is emerging on those grey, spindly branches. These are branches that probably haven’t seen light for many years but here they were, responding to and welcoming the change.

We could learn something from that.

There’s something really lovely about doing the same thing over and over again; getting a better understanding and a deeper connection to the activity over time. It’s what many of us call ‘craft’. Craft extends to many things that, in today’s world, might be considered ‘menial’ like collecting soot to make traditional Japanese ink when industrial solutions exist or mending a thatched roof with straw when it would be much easier to replace with a tiled solution.

I consider my watercolour work in a similar way. The multi-sensorial learning that’s associated with it – the colour-mixing, the weight of water in a brush, the sheen of water on the paper that indicates the right time to place the pigment – these are all learned from ‘menial’ repitition. It’s something I’ve deeply enjoyed and continue to enjoy.

However…

Whilst I spend this time improving my craft, there are also things I’ve said no to. I’ve said no to digital art, for a very long time. I’ve tried many tools over the years and, every time, I fail to get the feeling that physical watercolour gives me – there has been a distinct absence of flow when I’m working digitally.

But, the final resting place of my watercolour work is mostly within commercial picture books – a world that isn’t immune to the consistent and continual commodification of things: how might we do more with less?

Responding to commerce

As an illustrator, I have a couple of options. The first option is that I tell myself I’ll remain ‘consistent’ with my watercolour practice and, if the picture book work dries up because publishers can no longer afford the extra time, attention, and care it takes to convert those physical paintings into a book, I bid that work a fond goodbye and consider it a fun and interesting period of my life – all good things must come to an end.

The second option is to ‘adapt’. To reframe the idea of ‘craft’ not around the physical medium of the work, but the intent – visual storytelling. When the craft is visual storytelling, the ‘physical/digital’ divide goes away because it’s not about that anymore, it’s about image sequence, composition, framing and the image’s relationship with the text. It’s less about the artefact, and more about the process.

I use to say I was remaining ‘consistent’ with my aversion to digital work, but now, I think I’ve been resistant – closing myself off to the possibility and opportunity it brings to focus on a different part of the craft, not just wet paper and pigment.

There are distinct advantages of the digital medium over the physical one when it comes to art-making but there’s one feeling I can quite get from digital, no matter how much I try. With physical materials, I feel like I’m making a dent in the universe – the physical artefact a manipulation of the environment around me. With digital, it often feels like I’m just adding to the pile of space junk.

What if reviews of a work said more about the reviewer than the quality of the work. Would that 1-star review matter?

So, I’m learning to play piano and there seems to be 2 schools of thought on how I should go about it. The first is to find a teacher and learn the proper technique from day 1. If one doesn’t do that, the risk is that I’ll build some bad habits that will be more difficult to unlearn later. Proper technique involves hours of scales and finger exercises, learning music theory and playing ‘simple songs’ like Happy Birthday or Jingle Bells (not every adult’s cup of tea).

The second approach to learning piano seems to be to prioritise fun and making something that sounds like music as quickly as possible. Proper technique can come later. The idea behind taking this approach is to use it to orient one’s self around the keyboard and use one’s desire to play songs and music as the driving force for building an emotional connection to the instrument.

Which one to choose? What if I choose the wrong one?

Proper illustration technique

Any reader of this journal will know that I’ve always felt a bit like an imposter when it comes to illustration. I never went to Art School and yet, I’ve been professionally illustrating picture books across almost every publisher in Australia a few years after picking up a watercolour brush 10 years ago.

When I first began trying to learn watercolour, certain (very experienced) people told me that there’s a ‘proper technique’ to illustration (and watercolour painting). It’s about doing exercises in black and white painting (understanding values), charcoal life drawing, colour mixing exercises and pigment science etc – all that before you should start ‘making paintings’. I never did any of that. Instead, I stumbled forward through trial and error until I found an emotional connection with the medium and produced drawings and paintings that made me feel something.

Sure, perhaps doing some of that theory would have made a difference but, to be honest, I find myself more interested in pulling those ‘traditional learning’ threads while I’m working as an illustrator now because I have a need – I want to amplify the emotion I’ve found in the work and theory can be useful for some of that.

Proper piano technique

So, this brings me back to piano. As I’ve written before, for most things in life, we don’t need a piece of paper, a credential, or someone else’s permission to make art. I’ve never even considered hiring an art teacher to watch me paint so they can tell me how to hold the brush ‘properly’ – so maybe the same goes for learning piano? Maybe the proper technique isn’t about hand position and posture; that’s just biomechanics. And, whilst we all have our individual motivations and best ways to learn – for me, the ‘proper technique’ in any art form is emotion first, biomechanics and chemistry later.

I find an immense pleasure in the mess that comes with traditional art materials – they provide a setting with less control & order which increases the chances of accidents and serendipity.

With traditional art materials, I can put my markers on the left or right of my paper. I can hold a bunch of recently used mark-making tools in my left hand while I draw with my right. I can surround my work surface with all sorts of stuff so anything is in easy reach at any time. I can move using a combination of gross *and* fine motor skills (A2+). A physical art desk is a fully-customised user interface for making images. It actively encourages play, serendipity, accidents, and unintention – all whilst operating with a distinct set of limits constrained by physics and the physical world.

Digital works the opposite way. My ‘palettes’ are in the top right corner. The brushes I use are under the pencils, which are under the markers, which are under the textures, all in the “Pencil Case” folder. It’s neat – conducive not to accidents but order. Digital art workspaces bring procedural thinking to a process that could (or should?) be un-procedural. When I close my digital tools everything is clean and ordered. I can’t walk past them and see, at a glance, something that I could add, improve, or takeaway. With digital, I’m either making or I’m not.

With the mess created by the physical process, my art is always in the background – a presence that I can engage with as I go about my day. It allows my focussed work at the messy desk to infiltrate my subconscious and develop ideas even when I don’t think I’m thinking about. I like that.