Before I was published, I had an Instagram account where I’d draw a single image and write some words to give it more context and expand the story. It’s not something I scoured the market to create – looking for a ‘gap’ that needed filling – I just did it because it was fun.

After a while, I tried to describe to myself what the fun bit was. I landed on “short adventures in words and pictures.” Over time, this fun little exercise was noticed by a publisher who saw that, perhaps, I could do this professionally.

And so I did. For a number of years. I’ve illustrated my own writing, and, more often, I’ve illustrated others writing. But either way, it’s always been about the relationship between words and pictures.

And now, I’ve discovered I’m leaning into a new medium – comics. It might seem ‘different’ from children’s books (and sure, it is, a bit) but it’s also fundamentally about words and pictures. The difference between children’s books and comics is the level of complexity one gets with the word/picture relationship. Picture books appeal to the minimalist in me, Comics appeal to the film director in me.

Yes, the children’s work is more lucrative and commercial because the ‘market’ is there and businesses have been built up, for many years, to serve that market. But comics is becoming an increasingly interesting and useful part of my practise; not my work practise, my art practise.

In the end, the general thrust is the same – short adventures in words and pictures for small and big people. I used to be the former, now I’m the latter. I never thought that the idea would last that long, let alone be the foundation for a decade’s worth of work. It’s funny how things work out like that.

It feels weird to say this out loud, but most people don’t notice what I notice. They don’t notice when the door handle is a little jiggly. They don’t notice it takes a few extra clicks than it should to buy a movie ticket. They don’t notice that I coloured out of the lines a bit, or that the character I drew on one page doesn’t quite match the character I drew on the next.

Because I know people don’t notice those things, I’ve learned to let them go. Perfection can be paralysing and so I’ve found that by letting those things go, I can ship more work, get more feedback, and do better on the next project. In a commercial arrangement, done is better than perfect.

But, what if you’re only working on a project for yourself? When the person who consumes the work is the person who will notice those things?

I’ve almost finished a second graphic novella and I find myself poring over those pages looking for the things to ‘fix’. There is no client. There is no buyer. This story is for me. And so, I notice what’s not right and I feel compelled to change it until it is. It’s difficult to know when done is done.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve had that experience but remembering it feels nice. It’s worth remembering. Priorities in a commercial arrangement are (quite necessarily) different from the priorities we set for ourselves in our personal work. Being clear, from the outset, about who and what the project is really for may give us the best of both worlds – shipping and learning from commercial work, obsessing over the details when the work is just for us. Maybe, over time, they’ll rub off on each other and make both types of work better, too.

I’ve never been concerned with creating something ‘new’. I certainly don’t consider myself a neophile. Marketers would call me a laggard. In fact, these days, I tend to find myself going the other way – building a vinyl and CD collection, reading physical books, using hand saws over electric ones when I can.

But I’ve recently been watching Juni Ito talk about his work in horror manga and the question he’s been asking himself over his long career strikes me as a lightning bolt, “Why would I want to create something that’s been done before?”

I’ve talked before about the value of mimicry in learning and the fact that people don’t really want original. But now I’m thinking, that only makes sense when it’s a commercial pitch. A publisher doesn’t want to take a risk on something never seen or done before; too much can go wrong. And so, if the goal is always, ‘will a publisher buy this story?’, then the work will never change. It’ll become incrementally derivative – enough for people to think it’s new, even though it’s just a small twist on something old.

But as an artist (with an income stream that isn’t reliant on the art itself), the stakes are different. I’m beginning to agree with Junji on this – why would I do something that’s been done before? Why wouldn’t I spend my short time on earth making a genuinely unique contribution? To spend it any other way seems… less generous.

Like many other artists, I spent a lot of time waiting for someone to care. I waited for someone to say, “Hey, you’re good at this. We could sell this. It’s good enough to make a living off. You’re a working, professional, successful artist now.”

The problem with this is that, even if it was possible, it’s highly unlikely. There will be no long days in the studio where you can work contently for 12 hours a day, everyday, funded by a kind or generous patron or your own work. If I keep waiting for that, I’ll die waiting.

Instead, I’ll move the ball down the field one yard at a time. An hour before work, a couple of hours after work, every extra frame I sketch and ink is another inch further down the field of having a completed project. And, once I’ve reached the end zone, it’s unlikely there will be a crowd waiting to cheer, there will be no celebratory victory. I might treat myself to a nice dinner, but then, I’ll just turn around and start moving the ball down the field in again, one yard at a time.

I don’t know about others, but I can’t just sit down and write a story. And I don’t mean that I need to do what most people talk about – plan a story with 3 acts, character biographies, fresh and detailed worlds, conflict, climax, resolution etc etc. No, I mean I need to feel the story before I can write it.

Instead of words, I start with sketches. Characters emerge on the page as I’m sketching lines and contours. It doesn’t take much – a couple of curves, a few marks for eyes and a nose, and my brain is engaged, much like, I imagine, a sculptor may be as they respond to the changing shape of the stone that sits otherwise inanimate in front of them.

As someone who admires writers, this often feels like a failure. Shouldn’t I just be able to use words to imagine and create these worlds? But then, occassionally, I come across others who seem to work like me; people searching for an image that gives them the ‘essence’ of the story (as Hayao Miyazaki says in the documentary 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki).

Searching for the essence of a story through drawing has always felt like a hack – a band-aid solution that masks my inability to write well – but I’m becoming more comfortable, day-by-day, in finding my story through marks of pencil on paper, which, at the end of the day, is what a writer of words is doing anyway.

A little while ago, I wrote a list of things I ask myself when I’m deciding to take on a project or not. Now, a little wiser, there’s another question to add to that list – who might I become?

I’ve just finished reading, To Photograph is to Learn How to Die, where Tim Carpenter makes the (very convincing) argument of the relationship between our self and our ‘not self’ and how, overtime, this relationship changes who we are; our idenitity and how we behave, or, our ethics.

So, amongst all the reasons for prioritising one project over another (especially given our finite time on this Earth), thinking about the influence of a project on shaping who we might become feels valuable. It also feels terrifying. What if I choose the wrong project? Do I become a version of myself I never wanted to be? But, in that terror is also freedom; an acknowledgement of the privilege that we have a choice at all.

Whilst it may seem terrifying, it feels less terrifying than the opposite, which is to not think about this, take project after project and then wake up as a person you don’t recognise (or worse, don’t particularly like) in 20 years of doing what will be, by default, your life’s work.

I can’t remember where I heard this but ever since I’ve heard it, I can’t get it out of my head, it goes something like this, “There comes a time in every cartoonist’s life where they realise that they don’t have enough time on this Earth to complete all the ideas they have in their head.”

This has happened to me (I thought it was just me but now I know it’s not). And, I suppose, there are two ways to respond. The first is to crawl into a hole and weep. The second is to get working. I’ve chosen the second.

It’s easy to get caught up in trying to measure your progress towards goals – whether you’re achieving them or not. How many books have I published? How many people have bought a print from my Instagram account? How many followers do I have? How many awards have I won? What ‘success’ looks like is different for everyone, and it changes with every new goal we achieve. So, some wise words from Coach Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights resonate with me when I start to get distracted by whether I’m being ‘successful’ or not:

Success is not a goal, it’s a by product – Coach Eric Taylor, East Dillon Lions, Friday Night Lights

It’s easy to think of each artist working in your ‘industry’ as competition – we’re trained to think of things that way from when we’re very young. But, as I’ve written before, one of the greatest things about art-making is that the only competition is ourselves. It’s up to us what we want to focus on – that might be hitting 128k followers on Instagram, or it might simply trying to stay on the f**$!&g bus.

In 2004, Arno Rafael Minkkinen gave a commencement speech at the New England School of Photography describing a parrallel between an artist’s lifelong journey toward finding their own unique vision and, well, a bus station in his homeland of Finland.

As it turns out, in Helsinki, there are many buses on many different route numbers that leave the central depot. And, for the first part of each of these routes, no matter which route you take, they stop at (mostly) the same places along the way.

Just like each of our art practices, we begin our journey by making work that is (well, has to be, derivative). Partly because of the individual lives we lead, and partly because we need to see someone ahead of us that inspires us to begin making in the first place. I began by being inspired by the work of Beatrix Potter, Quentin Blake, Oliver Jeffers and Ed Gorey as well as watercolour fine artists like Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet, Jean Haines, and Amanda Hyatt. They were the first books I bought as visual references when, as an adult, I began drawing. In my earlier years, it was comics – Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Grug, Mr Men and so on.

And so, as it turns out, for the last few years I’ve been in Central Helsinki – riding my own route but visiting all the common bus stops along the way. It has, by many people’s measure, led to some commercial success – a dream for many aspiring book illustrators, but nothing I’ve done feels original enough… yet.

But, I came across this theory from Minkkinen at a time in my life (and artist’s journey) where I feel as though I’m finally beginning to leave central Helsinki. The work up to now has been fun, and transformative, but the ideas I’m generating now (almost 8 years into drawing and painting professionally), are different.

The recognition of other influences in my work is fading as the city gets further away. Without knowing it, I’ve done what Minkinnen told those lucky students back in 2004 – I’m staying on the f*%$^g bus – and I have to say, I’m really enjoying where I’m headed on this bus route; I don’t think anyone’s been here before.

The other day, my partner and I went for a sketch in the local park. We threw down the picnic blanket, cracked open the pencil case, picked a few trees and just started to draw. Sketching always teaches me something even though, most of the time, I’m deeply unhappy with how the sketches look by the end.

One of the best things about sketching, though, is the permission it gives me to be outside. Because inevitably, after a few sketches, I lose some interest in what I intended to draw and, with nothing else to do, I lay down at stare at the clouds for a while.

It’s a cliche for a reason but whenever I give myself permission to do this, something magical happens. In response to the clouds moving and shape-shifting as the wind moves them along my mind can’t help but give them form – a name. It might be a crocodile, a turtle, a horse… it might even be all three of them in the same cloud over the space of a few minutes.

Soon enough, I need to pick up my sketch book again. Not because I want to draw the clouds, but because I’ve had an idea – a story I want to tell.

I almost hate how prevalent this ‘advice’ is because it’s so simple. Unlocking one’s imagination should be more difficult, shouldn’t it? Isn’t there some sort of effort I need to put in to enable one of humanity’s most powerful and transformative gifts? Shouldn’t I need to study for 10,000 hours, get a degree, be mentored and work really hard for many years before the pay off?

It seems like a shortcut or some sort of cheat code for life, but simply giving myself permission to daydream – to stare at clouds sometimes – is one of the surest paths I know exists to improve my imaginative thinking. Maybe it’s prevalence isn’t something to be admonished, but perhaps a sign of a more universal human experience.