Since I was ten, I’ve wanted to be a vet. No, an architect. No, a lawyer. No, an accountant. No, a pharmacist. No, an ophthalmologist. No, a physiotherapist. No, a vet, again. It seems crazy now, but all of those things were on the table at one point, and, as it turns out, I never became any of them.

I also know for certain that I never wanted to be an illustrator. Or a writer. Or a designer. Or a mentor. Or a board member. Or a business owner. Or any of the things I ended up being that has brought me so much joy.

Apparently, we’re supposed to choose a career at 17 years old. Choose what to study for the rest of our life. Get on the ‘career train’ and climb the ladder until we’re experts at whichever craft we’ve selected to pursue in our teenage years.

It makes me wonder how many people are living lives that they decided to live in their teens but don’t really like now. Lives in which they’ve spent 12 years to become this dentist, or surgeon, or vet, and now the sunk costs are too great to pivot, to try something new, to ‘give up’ what they’ve achieved.

But the thing with sunk costs is that we’re using a fear of failing our past selves to inform a life that hasn’t been lived yet. We can’t change the life we’ve lived, but we can change tomorrow. The choice, at its most extreme, becomes “Do I live another day in likely misery because of what happened yesterday (or a decision I made 20 years ago), or do I choose to try something different?” Sure, the choice to do something different may increase misery, but it also may not. And, if I don’t make a choice to do something different, then misery is guaranteed. I know what I’d choose.

Speaking of choice, it is, in itself, a privilege. People have accumulated mortgages, commitments like children and pets, and so choosing something else isn’t easy. But, it’s possible. To avoid making the choice because of what happened in the past, or what you thought you wanted to do 5 years ago and have now since learned it’s not what you want now, seems sad.

I never wanted to be an illustrator. I was working in software (and rather enjoying myself). But, with so much time spent staring at screens, I was fatiguing. I was on a great career trajectory in software and feared that, if I stopped, so would that trajectory. But, my body was telling me to switch off. So I did.

I started spending time with watercolour instead of furthering my knowledge in software design. It was pure play. There were many people close to me who told me it was a waste of time. A silly hobby. What was it for, anyway? There’s no money it!

But it was for my mental and physical health. And it worked. I became more able to do my software work because I had a way to switch off and recharge through the watercolour work. These pathways weren’t divergent, they were (and are) complementary. And then, someone offered to pay for something I made. It wasn’t a ‘silly hobby’ anymore, it was a career.

Soon enough, those same people who discouraged me from taking a path that seemed to ignore my sunk costs were telling their friends about my illustration or taking photos of my books in retail outlets everywhere. In many ways, those people became my biggest advocates.

Because of this, I no longer believe sunk costs even exist, just tomorrow – and instead of being scary, it’s become incredibly exciting!

As I write this, the Australian Open Tennis Tournament has begun in Melbourne. And, every year, at about this time, I walk past the local tennis court and notice something vastly different to normal times – there are far more people playing tennis.

Maybe it’s because we watch the pro’s and think – I could do that? Well, maybe not “that”, but that tennis seems enjoyable to play? Maybe it’s because we see the crowds and think – wow, there are a lot of people who enjoy watching or playing tennis; maybe I could be one of those people?

Whatever the reason, it got me thinking – if being more aware of tennis through the extended media coverage it gets, can influence people to give it a go, what might art need to encourage people to make more of it?

I don’t remember where I read it, but the quote goes something like this: “Anyone could go to their local fish market and buy fish far healthier and tastier than they could catch themselves. Some people just like fishing.”

In an increasingly globalised world, almost anything can be outsourced, and yet, we still have a drive to ‘do things ourselves.’ Why grow a beautiful floral garden when you can buy a bunch of flowers for $30/wk? Why make your own sauerkraut or jam when you can buy it from the supermarket for $10/jar? Why paint your own pictures when you can easily purchase one from a professional on Etsy or Bluethumb for less than $50 (or Kmart or Ikea for even less)? Why clean your own house when you can pay someone $60 to do it for you in an hour while you go out to have breakfast?

To pretend there’s a single reason for these decisions attempts to falsely reduce the complexity of how humans work. There can, and will be, many reasons for why anyone does anything ‘less efficiently’. Maybe they enjoy steep learning curves? I do. Maybe they enjoy the multi-sensory process that comes with tending a garden, or squashing some sauerkraut? I do. Maybe it’s something to do with manufacturing some periods in our day that allow the brain to make more lateral connections, those ‘mindless repetitive tasks’. I do that too. And maybe cleaning one’s own mess is a moral reminder that we are not perfect, that we consume, destroy, and leave things behind in our wake. Or that the process of de-cluttering is also meditative in its own way. I am constantly reminded about this when I spend Saturday morning cleaning the house or my studio.

One might say, “but imagine how many more books or drawings you could produce if you outsourced some of the mundane work, or focussed on just one thing instead of being occupied by so many other things.” Or, as I’ve heard said before, “adding one brick at a time to 7 different houses will only leave you with 7 half-built houses.”

In the end, it comes down to how we measure success. Is it by what we achieve – number of books, number of friends, amount of money? Or is it more about who we become? It’s difficult to shoot for the latter when you can’t quantitatively measure things like kindness, patience, & compassion. But, it seems to me, that sometimes the more difficult way may be the more valuable one.

For the first time in 8 years, I didn’t pick up a watercolour brush over the Christmas holidays. In the beginning, it was difficult, it felt as though I was ‘slacking off’, or procrastinating, or simply not spending my life in the most productive or useful way. But two weeks later, I have a very different perspective.

What did I do instead? I spent very present time with family. I spent a disgusting amount of time (for me) ‘wasting’ it playing playstation. I spent a bit less time exploring Procreate – not to see if I could mimic my watercolour work, but just playing around for fun to see if there’s a way I could enjoy it for image-making. I spent time learning how to take pictures on 35mm film (and bought a lot of camera gear). I even read 3 or 4 graphic novels (and not a single ‘normal’ novel).

In case you’re wondering, all of that is very much out of the ordinary for me.

What I could’ve done instead? Well, my list is long, even beyond “completing the two books I’m currently working on”. I could have lodged my tax return, painted the office, built a frog bog, cleaned the gutters, organised a tradie for our internal doors, weeded the garden, taken some e-waste and paint waste to the recycling facility… there’s a lot more, too. But I didn’t do any of that.

So, did I waste time? Well, if you’d told me that’s how I was going to spend Christmas break before I begun it, I would’ve said yes – all of that sounds like a huge and pointless set of distractions.

But now, the answer is an unequivocal no, because, as I’m writing this, I’m feeling so much energy to get back into watercolour work; an energy that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. And, because of the time I ‘wasted’, I have 2 really fun new hobbies (film photography and my cinema-frames project on Procreate), and a different way to think about storytelling (game-storytelling is a rich space for learning great dialogue and great story arcing).

Maybe I was getting into a rut before but wasn’t aware of it? Or maybe everything is connected in some way? Maybe, no matter what I do, what I’ve realised is that my brain is geared for learning and cross-pollinating ideas across domains that others would not be able to see connections in. Maybe I can’t help it.

Or, maybe there are certain “distractions” that are generally healthy and attempting to optimise our lives with such focus (like we’re driven to do by our commercial and ‘high-performance’ productivity culture) is harming more than helping; or, at the very least, limiting the richness of our possible human experience.

I’ve recently jumped, head first, into a 35mm film photography rabbit hole and it’s glorious. Why? Because it exploits the tactility of physical things. There are knobs, dials, clicks, and clacks. There are no LCDs, no hidden menus, no touchscreens. The feedback isn’t immediate – I have to wait weeks for my film to be processed – so while I’m using the tool, I remain in the moment; assess the light, contrast, and composition, then… click. That’s it.

People often ask why I still work in watercolour when digital is so available, cheap, easy, and, well, risk-free in many ways. Don’t like a line or colour? Change it. Ctrl+z. Undo. Redo. Undo again. The level of refinement is endless and, if you want to, you can control each and every pixel until it’s exactly how you want it. The problem of course is that it implies that the image you can see in your head is the only correct answer, we just have to work long enough to get to it.

The same goes with image-making in digital photography. Like a scene? Snap at it – 5, 10, 50 times if you want – until you can see on the LCD screen what you can see in your head. If you beat the nail hard enough, it’ll eventually go in. Snap away on the shutter until your finger falls off.

And, whilst you may eventually be able to get your perfect result, the sensory experience between physical and digital image-making is vastly different.

As it turns out, what I love about any sort of image-making is the process. In watercolour, there is pleasure in the filling of my water pots, the weight of the water in the brush, the sound of the sloshing, the scraping against the paper; it’s inescapably multi-sensory. In fact, those things bring me much more pleasure than seeing the final book appear on a bookstore shelf.

Film photography has tapped into the same feeling. With film, the result is weeks or months away. I don’t see the photo I snapped until it’s developed. In the meantime, I can focus on the physicality and multi-sensory experience of making the image as I’m making it: assessing the light, contrast and composition. I find immense pleasure and presence in the clicks and clacks required to expose a piece of film to some light for 1/500th of a second – or more, or less. The roughness of the lens against my fingers, the weight of the camera in my hand and around my neck, the shape of the shutter speed adjuster compared to the aperture ring. And, after all that – SNAP – a mirror flicks back and forth as it’s done for almost 50 years.

I have no idea whether the image is good or not, but, as happens with watercolour, there’ll likely be things I see that I never planned to see but end up discovering with unbridled joy – stuff I could never have made had I retained full and complete control over the process. They say watercolour is best when the painter gets out of the way and lets watercolour paint itself. Maybe it’s the same for film photography. In the meantime, I can get lost in the process of both without caring so much about the product that comes from it because by the time the final piece comes around, it feels like I’ve already won.

It’s been a while since I’ve journaled a ‘listicle’. Most of my entries are either about starting, making, or marketing art. I have, for quite some time, felt a lot of guilt about ‘not being a reader’ as a young person. Instead, I spent most of my time watching movies which, in hindsight, was much better training for understanding visual storytelling. And so now, instead of leaning away from film, I’m leaning much more heavily into it (that, and comic books), as a way to satiate my curiosity about how visuals contribute to telling a great story.

And so, this year, I’m posting about my favourite films I watched this year. Not necessarily influential ones, or ones that were released this year, just ones I watched for the first time this year and that had a profound effect on me for some reason. The short version is:

1. Quo vadis, Aida?
2. Fire of Love
3. So Long, My Son
4. The Lost Daughter
5. Everything Everywhere All At Once
6. Drive My Car
7. Petit Maman
8. I, Daniel Blake
9. I Am Love
10. Bait

Honorable mentions:

• Memoria
• The invisible life of Euridice Gusmao
• The Batman
• Mariner of the Mountains

The Top Five

Quo Vadis, Aida?

By the 90th minute, I was bawling my eyes out in the cinema at this movie. It’s been almost a year between writing this and seeing this film but it was complete tragedy. I have a personal connection to the ‘civil’ war over Yugoslavia which is likely to have affected how I felt about this film but, that final scene, with the kids singing at school, and the us/them sitting in the crowd watching along was heart-wrenching. I couldn’t help but imagine a life where you would need to co-exist with the barbarism you experienced, even once the war was over. It made me reflect on how lucky we are, living in this period of history, in the safety of Australia.

Fire of Love

I loved this so much I saw it at the cinema twice. Once on my own (there was one other person in the cinema), the second time with my partner (also only one other person in the cinema). The story of the Krafts is amazing on so many levels – the coincidence, the love, the travel, the partnership and life together, their acceptance of danger, their wanting to help humanity using science – it touched every one of my love bones. The music, sound, editing, and typography were perfectly retro and rock at the same time. Just after Boxing Day I watched Werner Herzog’s version of the same couple and again, was completely enthralled. Watching the two different films side-by-side is something I recommend to every person I meet now.

So Long, My Son

What would it mean to live a whole life in misery because of an accident that happened in your youth? Could things be another way; perhaps in another time or place? This 3-hour family tragedy was another that had me bawling at the end. It’s gorgeous, slow, & sad, but also politically interesting to see the sorts of affects the one-child policy had and continues to have in China. The actress who played the mother is just completely outstanding and all I wanted was to help her, to console her, to make her not feel so sorrowful again – before it was too late. I can’t wait to watch this one again.

The Lost Daughter

I was so surprised by this movie. I mean, sure, when you say that Olivia Coleman has the lead role and it’s directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, the idea of being surprised by the magic of cinema and story seems ridiculous but, this was truly great. Suspenseful, beautiful, wistful, tragic, and a little bit creepy, I was sucked in from the beginning and it didn’t let go until the end. The cinematography was gorgeous, even though it was a little raw is some spots, and, well, I don’t know, it’s just a really lovely and original way to touch on what is often a taboo subject – unnatural motherhood and the competition with career.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

What. A. Ride. It appealed to my love of absurdity and time/space travel simultaneously. The editing and cinematography stood out to me and I couldn’t help think that this is the sort of crazy movie I’d love to be a part of. It, in many ways, reminded me of our contemporary society – chasing extremes and the increasing need we seem to have for novelty – but nonetheless, it was a lot of fun.

Drive My Car

If I love anything, it’s a 3-hour saga where the opening titles appear 60 minutes in. This gives you a good indication of the sort of movie Drive My Car is – slow, gentle, & subtle. I think my partner fell asleep at moments in this movie but I loved it, the 3 hours flew by. Once again, beautiful cinematography (I’m sensing a theme here) paired with a gorgeous but spare soundtrack, it’s a lovely time to reflect on one’s relationships, the role of women in society, and friendship.

Petit Maman

I’m a huge fan of Director, Celine Sciamma and whilst this movie was incredibly short, it felt like the fairytale I needed. I actually saw this with my mum who I thought would love (alas, I was wrong). It’s such a gorgeously gentle film about motherhood, friendship, and time, I came out of this film smiling and I smile every time I’ve thought about it since.

I, Daniel Blake

Just like Celine Sciamma, another Director I can’t get enough of is Ken Loach. I first encountered Ken’s work in a much more recent film (Sorry, We Missed You), and just absolutely love how he can use film to make a comment – especially about socialism and class (his specialty). I, Daniel Blake probably struck more of a chord with me having just gone through the Centrelink process for my parents (from which I still carry scars). But, this wasn’t just relevant to me, it also *looked* how it the main character felt. Raw and cold on the outside, warm and heartfelt on the inside. The deep personal relationships and friendships that are explored here, as well as an individual’s relationship with the State (and the paperwork that goes along with that!) left me with a lot to think about; mostly that, above all, kindness is what the world needs.

I Am Love

Wow, this was amazing, and totally not what I expected. Of all the films, the warmth in the colour of this film had me from get go. My partner went down a costuming rabbit hole with this one and once you find yourself at the bottom of that, you realise how well-considered this film was on so many levels. I’m a sucker for a Tilda Swinton movie and this did not disappoint. Again, themes of tragedy, motherhood, and familial bonds are explored here (gee, I didn’t realise it was *that* sort of year for me), but it does so without one feeling depressed or hopeless. Also, because of this movie, I almost constructed a grapevine out the back of our place just so I could sit under it.

Bait

Bait just goes to show that you don’t need a big budget or a huge acting cast to pull of a great story. Bait, shot all in black and white on a really old camera (a hand-cranked Bolex camera, using 16mm monochrome film for those interested), explores the menacing tension between locals and tourists (something obviously topical with things like AirBnB doing a lot of disrupting in this space). It’s a tale of hardship, entrepreneurship, friendship and, ultimately, lobsters. I can’t remember where I saw this (might have been SBS), but even though this is ‘number 10’ on the list, I still think about it as on par with many of the other films mentioned above.

The near misses

So, because Top 10s only have 10 spots, there were a few standout films that would be weird not to mention as exceptional films that I saw in 2022. This list is mainly here so I can look it up later and re-watch some of them, they’re that good.

• Memoria
• The invisible life of Euridice Gusmao
• The Batman
• Mariner of the Mountains

Things you never know until you write about them

I didn’t realise how many of my favourite films are touching on deep questions I’ve been having this year. The familial bonds we hold dear, even though, often, our friends act more like we expect family to be. Motherhood and the role of women as I’ve been exploring system of patriarchy and its negative effects men. Mortality and death and, in the end, what might a well-lived life look like based on the everyday choices we make for ourselves.

It’s incredible to me that, even subconsciously, I’ve been drawn this year to films that are also exploring the same questions I have for myself. I love seeing their answers, and adding their answers to my own as I shape loose thoughts and opinions about them in my own art. In the end, that’s what art is for, isn’t it? To answer those questions that rise up inside of us and find the others for whom those questions burn brightly also.

Growing up, I was taught that big was beautiful; that it would be an achievement to run a big business, make large amounts of money, buy a big house (most likely through a big mortgage), and, generally, live a big (and therefore, important) life. There have been very few people in my life, if any, who have encouraged me to ‘think small’.

But what I’ve learned is that small is efficient, and efficiency is beautiful. When you’re small, it’s easy to change and adapt when something unexpected happens. Most ‘big’ businesses go under when they’re disrupted by something or someone smaller who is able to move more quickly and respond to a changing market. When you don’t have a lot of money, you tend to use it more wisely (i.e. waste less of it) than someone with ‘plenty to spare’. And when you live in a small house, it saves you money in heating and cooling, repair and maintenance.

I’m starting to think that thinking small might be a better way.

I don’t know about other artists, but the ones I know are looking for big – a big audience or a high price tag for their work. That’s what success looks like. I started off that way, too.

But then I got to thinking – what does it mean if I make my art and ‘only’ one or two people see it, not hundreds. Was it still a ‘success’? Am I less of an artist because if my audience remains small?

No matter which way I look at it, I was making work before people were interested, and I’ll continue to make work after. The original need to make art wasn’t driven by a big commercial outcome or audience, it was driven by an interior need – to seek answers to questions I had both of the world, and more importantly, myself.

Not everyone is (or will be) interested in what I make, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s helpful, because I also can’t scale me. I can only do X books a year, or paint Y paintings. Smallness is baked into the artist’s way of producing the work.

When there have been attempts by some to scale that inherit smallness – through merchandising or hiring employees to paint/draw their way – history seems to point to a growing perception of inauthenticity in the work, even though it may have begun in the right place. Through saturating a market with one’s work, it ends up diluting it. “Household names” like Garfield & Peanuts are all both examples of this from the comics world. Sure, they have attained ‘global status and reach’, but does the link from merchandise to engagement with the original work really not change the original work? I doubt it.

The thing with a capitalist culture that celebrates scale is that, quite oddly, it also celebrates scarcity. Scarcity creates value, too, and it seems to me, that for art, small can be beautiful.

Things are getting faster. No, I don’t mean the pace the world is moving faster, although that’s true, too. What I mean is that I’m getting faster, and I almost didn’t notice.

Over the weekend, I did some rough illustrations for a picture book. In the past, those illustrations would’ve taken a few days. Now? They take one. And the drawings, in my opinion, are better quality than they were when I first began in 2016.

I also used to wonder how the watercolour masters I admire – Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet, and Amanda Hyatt – could work the way they do; such a fine and intimate understanding of how much water is on the paper and how much paint is on the brush.

But now, I’m noticing that in myself, too. I don’t need to touch brush to page to know there’s too much water in it, I can tell by the weight of it in my hand. That’s not a sensitivity I set out to achieve.

What school never taught me about learning is that it’s a multi-sensory experience. That it doesn’t need to have an ‘intellectual’ or ‘intentional’ focus. Yes, sure, it’s important to have goals and criteria to help us shape a path and define a structure to attain them. But, there’s another type of learning, ‘osmotic’ learning, where we learn not through goals and criteria, but practice and consistency.

I never created a 5-step plan to ‘achieve better weight sensitivity to the water in my brush’. Never once did it cross my mind that I could go from drawing roughs over a few weeks to roughs in a day, and if I never imagined it I certainly didn’t design my learning path to achieve. Yet, both of these things have happened.

How did I notice these things? Well, one thing I’ve always had is planned time for reflection. Blocks of time where I write or draw about a process or project I’ve been working on. What was fun? What worked well? What didn’t? What could I do better next time?

In the software world, this is called a ‘retrospective’. A way for a team to come together and look back on the past fortnight to see how things could be improved for the following one. Maybe out of habit, I’ve taken this process into my picture book work, and it’s revealing things I never would have seen otherwise.

I wonder how many other illustrators are missing out on seeing and feeling progress by not taking the time to reflect on what’s going well and what’s not in their practise or business? I wonder if anyone who reads this will begin doing it?

Whenever I’ve worked in a team to solve complex problems, especially in my picture book work, one thing remains true – people communicate their problems in solutions.

I’d be surprised if it hasn’t happened to other illustrators or writers, too. We receive feedback on our work and it’s often in the form of recommendations about how to fix a problem, not what the problem is. For example, “Could we change the shape of the trees in the forest to something like X, it’ll feel more ‘natural’.”

With this form of feedback, I first need to work out whether it’s direction, suggestion, or comment, before I’m able to respond in a productive way. But, there’s also another way to be productive when we receive solutions to unarticulated problems – find out what the problem is.

See, the issue with providing ‘written notes’ as feedback is that we’re limited by language. Not all of us are great writers and so feeling, meaning, and intent can slip through the cracks. I can’t remember where I read it, but the quote was, “When an editor can see something wrong, they’re almost always right. But the way they suggest to make it right is almost always wrong.”

Asking questions like, “what do you mean by natural?” or “can you explain to me why you’re feeling this way?” (the ones that have ‘why’ in it) finds the layer below the solution and, inevitably, uncovers the problem.

Once we have the problem, we can use what we do best to solve it.

No matter how much I draw, whenever I sit down to the blank page, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to get started, difficult to think about what to draw, difficult to trust in my ability to draw it and, therefore, difficult to feel like there’s any point at all. That feeling, 7 years into a professional illustration career, hasn’t gone away. I suspect it never will.

But, what I’ve learned in those 7 years is that almost everything hinges on the first mark. Not whether it’s a good or bad mark, but just a mark. If I can get to the first mark, those other questions go away and now the conversation is just between me and the page. It works even better if the first mark is with something I can’t rub out with an eraser as soon as I make it.

Why the first mark? Because it’s feedback. Sure, it might be a crap mark, but the next one will better because I won’t repeat the first one (at least not exactly the same). With a first mark, I’ve learned something. With a second one something else. And, like a fencing match, the page and I parry back and forth until suddenly, almost without noticing, I’ve filled a page of my sketchbook… and then another… and then another.

No mark-marking is ever wasted, but boy it can be difficult getting to that first one – even after seven years and counting.