I’ve been struggling to return to mindless doodling and writing–that space of pure invention for pure invention’s sake; deep and personal exploration of what I’m thinking and feeling.

I haven’t quite worked out what it is, but I think publishing as a goal has been taking over. Who will buy it? Who will be interested? What market is this for? These questions are creating barriers to my thinking and my making and it’s not unique to me.

Over the years, I’ve known many emerging and unpublished authors describe the same questions and feelings and they all boil down to the same ultimate question, “What’s the point of making art?” And even though I’ve answered this for myself almost 4 years ago, it’s still difficult to prioritise it when the rest of the world is competing for my attention in so many different ways.

I used to think that self-confidence and motivation was a beginners’ problem but, as it turns out, no matter how many books published, or awards won, this question still emerges in any artist’s mind at different stages in their career; well, it’s been my experience, anyway.

And now that I know this is true, I have a couple options. I can persist with trying to answer the unsolvable questions – who will buy it, who will be interested, what market is this for – before I put pen to paper. This probably means that days, weeks, or months go buy without any physical to show for all the thinking and worrying that’s been going on.

The other option is to just put pen to paper and then worry about the rest later. By visualising somethig (nay, anything), it’s at least a way of recording all the failures along the way. Like any good scientist knows, even a negative result still tells us something. It seems there’s only one way after all.

Everywhere, all around us, video is closing in. Whether it’s the millions of on-demand television series offered to us by all the channels in the world, or the rise of video on social media (TikTok, Instagram Stories) whose business models increasingly depend on the rich data sources that video provide. It’s everywhere, and it’s growing. So, where does the humble still image go from here?

There’s no doubt in my mind that video tells stories. At 24 frames per second, each minute of video is composed of 1440 still images. When arranged in sequence like in video, the opportunity for storytelling is greatly enhanced (hello, movie industry) and because video also involves a multi-sensory experience (hello, sound), there are some clear benefits to the way stories are told using video.

But, if anyone has ever stood in front an oil painting in an art gallery, they’ll know that there’s a story there, too. Each brushstroke tells a story of the hand that created the work. Which colour went on first, the movement of the hand that blended them, allbeit, a lot of the time, imperfectly. The materials themselves tell a story – oil, watercolour, acrylic – all had their technological moment in the sun, and continue to do so. We very rarely see egg tempera used in today’s paintings but, that in itself, tells a story of the artworks that do contain it i.e. it tells us when it was painted.

Comics and graphic novels also tell stories. Sure, there are not 1440 images per minute to devour, but it’s precisely in it’s select frames where the story lies. In graphic novels and comics, the artist’s job is to whittle the imagery down to what is essential. To be deliberate and selective over what to show and what to hide. More impressively, by not showing 1440 images per minute, the creator also controls the images that can be crafted in the readers’ imagination between frames. Look at any Calvin and Hobbes comic to see the power of less frames, not more.

See, there’s a problem with video – 1440 frames per minute – that no data hungry social media platform seems to want to prioritise in the way they’re influencing culture. It’s disrupting imagination. When every story is told in precise, high-resolution detail, there’s nothing left for an audience to do except watch (and scroll) on auto-pilot – not remembering what they saw, when they saw it, how it made them feel, or how it changed them. Perhaps this is great to ratchet up the platform’s engagement numbers; those same numbers they use to price and sell ads to their advertisers. But, there’s a risk we end up unable to fill in the gaps, in anything, when it’s handed to us on a 1440/images/minute platter.

Picture books, on the other hand, have 32-pages and anyone who has ever constructed the visual narrative within one knows that there’s not a great deal of room there – but there’s enough. There’s enough to tell rich, powerful, clever stories that change hearts and minds, one page turn at a time.

The craft of the illustrator and author is to work together to determine what should be in and out, and why. It’s this reductive, intentional work that, whether people realise it or not, creates the ‘magic’ that an audience feels when they read a really good picture book. To create space for the reader to participate in the image building and storytelling process of sequential art is a magical experience (both as a creator and a reader) – a reminder that humans are exceptional creatures of communication, inference, deduction, logic, and, most importantly, emotion.

Storytelling in video is great, don’t get me wrong. I love film as an art form. But, the best ones, the ones that stick with me, do the same as still art – they intentionally invite me into the narrative building process. It’s why it’s scarier when the director of a scary movie hides the monster rather than reveals it straight away.

Human imagination is, quite likely, the most species-defining characteristic we have. The intense creation and distribution of amateur video won’t stop that – we’ll get incredibly adept at better and better storytelling; using those 1440 frames/minute to beautiful and arresting effect. But video won’t kill the still image. In fact, it’ll probably end up being a little like the effect that electricity had on the candle – it didn’t kill that either, it just made the use of candles much more special; we’ll probably just fall in love with it even more.

I chatted to a next-door neighbour the other day. She hadn’t seen my latest picture book, Rosie the Rhinoceros, until very recently. “Matt,” she said “can I just say that I loved Rosie. You’re becoming more like you!” Hmm, I thought, becoming more like me. I never asked her what she meant but now I can’t help but try to work it out.

Rosie is the first book I’ve illustrated using ink as well as watercolour. It was certainly a risk for me. I’d never used ink in this way before – bold, confident line work – but in my character discovery of Rosie, I had no choice; pencil just didn’t become her. Inspired by the beautifully energetic line of Bill Watterson’s work in Calvin and Hobbes, I studied the art of the comic line intensely. And, as is most often the case, through pure play and exploration, the style of Rosie revealed itself so naturally before me.

But, what I thought I was doing was finding the medium to match the character. Rosie has a confidence & energy in her that the bold flowing line captures perfectly. Yet, here was the next door neighbour saying that the book itself felt more like the me she knew.

But that’s often it, isn’t it? The perception of ourselves very rarely matches the ones we plant in another’s head as we meander our way through life. For example, ever since I was little I’ve always found myself in leadership roles (first in junior sport, then in school, then at work). People say my confidence inspires their confidence. But, inside, I couldn’t feel any further from a ‘confident leader’! Yet, when I look back on my life, the evidence would clearly suggest otherwise.

If I was to portrait myself, I would not consider bold, confident, flowing ink lines in the Rosie style; but I do, deep down, acknowledge some level of authenticity in that work. I bloody enjoyed it, to be honest. The bold lines freed me from the laborious but meditatively intense work of pencil and wash. I had been, in that book, closer than ever to the idea of play I bang on so much about; and yet, I thought it was Rosie, not me, who was to blame.

Sure enough, as if I needed yet more evidence of this authenticity, my new book, Herman Crab written by Peter Helliar, was commissioned off the back of the work I produced in Rosie. “We love the bold character design of Rosie,” formed part of the brief. Herman is a very different character but, again, the freedom in the line produced something different in the work.

With Rosie and Herman, I thought that I was simply evolving – becoming a more logical and conceptually-oriented artist. And, while that may be true, perhaps what’s also happening is that I’m finding those authentic marks that Bruce Whatley talks about; the marks that make me, me. I always thought it would happen more consciously than this. I would somehow logic my way towards something authentic. But, like with most things true, perhaps it’s only when the brain gets out of the way that the heart has room to speak?

I have a love-hate relationship with social media these days. On one hand, there is obvious value in sharing my work on social media. Right at the beginning, almost 8 years ago, it landed me my first publishing deal. Now, it reminds people I exist. And, if people know I exist, the theory goes, they’re more likely to engage with my work (either in a paying or non-paying capacity).

On the other hand, I find it endlessly tedious because, well, as a small individual, the algorithm and budgets aren’t in my favour. Unless I do what social media wants me to do, of course, and that helps them get folks’ eye-balls on the ads that companies who aren’t me pay for.

And so there’s this chicken and egg game that’s emerged. What social media platforms want grows over time as they incrementally optimize the ways they increase visitors’ visits, clicks, engagement and attention on the platform. The thing is, social media platforms need the artists and creators of the world to create and share beautiful content. It’s what keeps people coming back. At first, it was text (hello Twitter). Then images (hey Instagram). But now, video is the star (Twitter, Instagram stories, TikTok etc) – ever more data-rich than a single image – is turning out to be even more addictive and engaging for the general population and ever easier for creators to create.

But the trade between artist and platform here doesn’t seem fair. In fact, it seems like the classic and very old-school bargaining deal that I and many others in the design industry rejected early on in our career – Let us use your art to make us money and, in return, we’ll give you “exposure.”

But, as the algorithm optimizes incrementally and infinitely in favour of the platform, the artist becomes the spider in the toilet bowl. Struggling to create content but never quite doing it well enough, or often enough, or in a format that the platform rewards fairly.

The commercial benefits of the artist’s work for the platform are clear, tracked, and measurable. The artists’ benefits are not. Instead, artists (or maybe it’s just me?) are driven by a blind faith and a fear-of-missing-out that’s pushing us to post more often, at particular times, in different ways. The value proposition for using social platforms for ‘marketing’ seems so diminished that I’m sitting in the ‘why bother’ camp now. The power and benefits balance is, well, unbalanced.

I’ve noted before that Roald Dahl doesn’t have an Instagram account but despite this, his incredible work (produced in a time before social media), still has a very strong presence on social media. A lot of my favourite artists aren’t posting there either. So, if the time I dedicate to ‘marketing via social media’ is, instead, channelled into thinking more deeply about (and doing) the work itself, I have a hunch that I’ll be better off in the long run in my pursuit to find a truth in my art. Chances are, if I find that truth, the commercials will follow. And if they don’t? Well, I still got what I needed to get out of my art.

I love sweeping my courtyard. And I don’t mean that in figurative sense. I mean that I literally love sweeping my courtyard. I don’t know why this is, but it’s a ‘chore’ that I look forward to. I don’t feel this way about vacumming the house, or cleaning the toilet, or clearing the gutters. But sweeping? That’s for me!

Perhaps it’s something about the way it creates fertile ground for creative thought. After all, there’s plenty of science to tell us that mindless, repetitive tasks are some of the best moments for ‘lightbulb’ moments. I have a lot of lightbulb moments when I’m sweeping the courtyard. Far fewer when doing the other things. I wonder if that’s why I never see a monk using a leaf blower?

In a world that’s trying to systematically solve for mindless repetitive tasks (like sweeping with the invention of domestic leaf blowers), so that we can spend time on more ‘useful’ things – which likely equates to working longer hours and being more ‘productive’ – finding space for that fertile ground of creative thought is becoming more difficult. “Why sweep when you can be done in half the time with a leaf blower?”

But, what’s the endpoint of the systematic removal of mindless, repetitive tasks from our daily lives? Do we find more lightbulb moments in our hyper-focussed, task-oriented economy? The science tells us it’s unlikely.

Maybe what happens is we become less ‘creative‘. Less able to connect abstract ideas from different domains to create something entirely new. So what happens in its place? Do we end up taking small evolutionary steps rather than setting ourselves up for big leaps of innovation? Maybe it’s simpler to do it this way, more convenient? After all, no one wants something truly original. Maybe what we really want is no surprises? But I’m not sure that’s true. I like surprises. And I like surprising people. So, I’ll keep sweeping the stones whilst the rest of the world picks up their leaf blowers.

A poem: Sweeping the courtyard
The courtyard is full of leaves
it has been that way for some time
so I take my broom
straw, and bound with cobwebs
and sweep
sweep
sweep
a little
until I can feel the earth again.

There’s a growing adoration for Ken Done’s work in our household. He’s been doing some video tours of his studio over the last couple of years and, whilst they’re nothing like formal education, his rambling, generally unstructured ‘tours’ give us an interesting insight into what’s important to him and how.

Ken Done’s work speaks for itself – bright, colourful, a sense of whimsy and optimism resides in almost every one of his later pieces (especially his reef works). But amongst the various sand and silt of watching Ken Done ramble his way around the studio there is a key phrase he uses that captures his work – the feeling of the thing.

Whilst Ken Done can find and hone in on those distinguishing features of his subjects – the sails of the opera house, the iron shapes of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the distinctive markings and colours of fish, the “twisted leg of a magpie” – he is more interested in capturing the feeling of those things rather than the things themselves. This idea allows him to abstract otherwise representational paintings into something more – it allows communication between viewer and reader at a primal, more intuitive level – one that feels so simple that it evokes responses like, “Even I could do that,” except, as it turns out, no one else ever has or does.

If there’s something I’ve learned about simplicity over my years as a designer and now visual storyteller, it’s that true simplicity only comes from deep, intimate, and extended knowledge and practice of one’s craft. Ken Done in painting. Les Murray in words. Hamaguchi in film. Miyazaki in animation. Master craftspeople learn, over time, how to strip away ‘distraction’ and find the heart of the thing or, as Ken puts it, the feeling of the thing.

Despite how simple it looks, finding the feeling of the thing seems to be one of the most difficult things an artist can do, but the rewards are immense. Once you’ve got the feeling of thing, it’s got the chance to transcend language and cultural constraints. Human feeling is, in many ways, universal. I don’t know if there would or could be anyone who gazes on a Ken Done and feels tragedy and despair, or someone who sees a Goya and feels optimism and hope. And so, as it turns out, finding the feeling of the thing not only means good art – a puzzle for and driven by the artist – but it also means good business because it makes your audience a global one.

What’s the difference between a tree, a piece of broccoli, and a piece of broccolini? Or, how do you draw a cucumber and not a zucchini? Or Venetian architecture versus Gothic?

There’s something that most people won’t agree with and it’s that I can’t really draw. And I don’t mean that in a fake self-effacing way that’s fishing for a little bit of external validation – that person to say, “No you’re not, you’re a professional illustrator.” The fact is, I’m not the sort of artist who was ‘trained classically’ or whatever that even means. I never went to Art School. I didn’t spend hours rendering still life or figures in 100 shades of pencil or charcoal to create a photo-realistic representation of the thing in front of me. I actually find that stuff incredibly boring to do – to reproduce what’s already there or to do something a photo is far more capable of doing than me. But, I also find it incredibly impressive to witness.

As it turns out, I have this other thing that other people I’ve met since don’t seem to have. A strength I never knew was a strength – to find the thing that makes something itself; it’s distinguishing characteristic/s. But to me, that doesn’t mean good drawing, it means something else.

If someone asks me to draw a portrait, what I’m unable to produce is a beautifully rendered, photo-realistic likeness of them; something akin to what they’d see in a mirror. I find it incredibly impressive when I watch charcoal artists do this on the street, though. No, what I’m able to produce is a few lines and dots that find the right shape of the nose, or the right colour of hair, or a particularly type of body language that makes the person that person. In both cases – the charcoal rendering or the lines and dots – the end goal is the same. But, when I do it, I say I can’t draw. Why is that?

I never really understood that what I do isn’t common because, like most strengths, it *feels* effortless (most of the time). By the way, for what it’s worth, the biggest difference between a cucumber and zucchini is that cucumbers are cut from a vine and often have a little of it still attached (like its own little umbilical cord) where as zucchinis tend to have a dried flower stump attached. But I digress.

What seems true and universal is that we always want what we don’t have. I know other representational artists who wish they could simplify in the way I do. They say they can’t draw, too, even though their strength is in their ability to render perfect proportion and detail. Like me, they say, “Oh, that’s easy, it’s just drawing what’s in front of you.” And yet, I find myself doing what they do – wishing I could draw better. More realistically.

I read somewhere once that your style is just an accumulation of the mistakes you make. And, in this case, it seems pretty accurate. Most of the time, we’re caught focussing on what we can’t do, even though what we end up with is the same – a drawing of a thing or a person who 9 out of 10 people would agree is definitely what we set out to draw. Shades of grey or lines and dots don’t seem to matter. We all think we can’t draw, but everyone else thinks we can.

So, what we’re left with is the struggle to identify, accept, and appreciate our own distinguishing characteristics. To focus on what’s there rather than what’s not there. We’re often quick to accept our physical characteristics, but less so our artistic or intellectual abilities and maybe it’s because there’s no mirror for that?

What do the following have in common: A hermit crab looking for a new shell on a beach crowded with seagulls. A butcher deciding whether his newfound veganism is a problem for his profession. An old lady who loses her only friend left in the world.

The answer is – the stakes are high. The hermit crab needs to risk her life to find new shelter. The butcher needs to decide between principles and livelihood. The old lady stares down the barrel of loneliness. Underneath all of them is fear – and, it seems, we like a bit of that in our storytelling.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives us a really clear view of what’s important to humans, in order of importance. The more basic the need, the higher the stakes.

Take, for example, level 1: Biological and Physical needs. This includes things like air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep etc. This is the level at which our hermit crab is scrapping for survival. She’s outgrowing her shell, and needs to find a new home. This basic requirement for shelter raises the stakes. Will she brave enough to dash to a new shell, risking her life as the seagulls circle looking to pick her up as soon as she leaves?

Our butcher is playing at level 2: Safety. His job is the way he makes money so he can afford the basics. We know that our job provides us security, so it’s easy to relate. Does he feel strongly enough about the safety and treatment of animals to risk his own safety?

And lastly, our old lady. She’s alone in the world. She plays at level 3: love and belonging. With no one left, how will loneliness play out in her life now. She’s old, so she’s frail, less mobile. This isn’t a good combination and probably a fear we all have at some point in our life as we head in to old age.

To improve the level of conflict, urgency and relatability in my storytelling, I often consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a way to step back from the story and understand what’s really going on. The more basic the need, the more relatable and urgent the story. It’s not the only lens through which to think about a story, but it’s a usefu one.

It’s weird to think I’ve been working in watercolour for almost 8 years now. I’ve learned about, and now love, so much about the medium – it’s ‘happy accidents’, its luminosity, the way that I find the less I seem to fuss over it, the happier I am with the result.

But, watercolour does have its limits.

Doing light over dark isn’t easy (it’s kind of not what it was designed for, although there are still some beautiful examples of artists pushing this to its limits). Strong, vibrant colours are, again, not its strong suit. You can make it work but watercolour loves light transparent colour.

And so, the artist is faced with a challenge. Do I continue to explore the depth of watercolour? Invent new or perhaps interesting techniques to produce the images I can see in my head in this somewhat misunderstood medium? Or, maybe it’s time to try something different.

Digital has always struggled to find a place in my practice. I spent a lot of time on computers during the day so spending more time on computers for ‘art’ purposes was not very attractive. But, time changes things, and things might be different now.

Like an astronaut exploring the far reaches of the universe, the art medium landscape isn’t constrained but is infinite. And so, in this short life, perhaps I owe it to myself to explore a few strange and different planets for a while. At the very least, I’ll learn something – either enjoy something of a new medium or return whimpering to my safe place of watercolour. The thing is, if I never go, I’ll never know and so, in the end, I probably only have one choice – to approach it with curiosity and an open mind, as I’ve always done with this art journey, and see what comes out the other side.

Making art is full of barriers. Amongst other things, art requires time, patience, space, focus, an acceptance of vulnerability and a generosity of the self. Our hyper-capital world is already being incrementally optimised away from the conditions of making thoughtful art and the last thing any of us need is the additional cultural barrier that we (in Australia and New Zealand in particular) call “Tall Poppy Syndrome.”

To financially support my art practice, I’ve worked as a software designer servicing many different cultures across Europe, the UK and the USA. And, even though I’ve been doing that work for almost 20 years, I’m still almost always surprised at the differences in attitudes towards celebrating successes of others in these different countries.

Australians are, generally, a self-effacing people; humility is one of the core tenants of ‘being a good bloke’, as they say. Talking about your success ‘too much’, or expressing confidence and belief in yourself is more likely to get you labelled as ‘a wanker’ than have you and your friends celebrating success together. Generally, that’s not been my experience in other parts of the world.

In the US, for example, telling people you are number one is important, and it matters. Sure, not everyone may agree, but it’s less likely they’ll ‘cut you down’ for it. And that constant cultural threat of being cut-down in Australia makes art-making, and more importantly, sharing, much more difficult because, after all, ‘no one likes a tall poppy’ here.

Achieving income through art is difficult at the best of times; yes, skill and technique are important, and so too are ‘connections’ and ‘networks’, but there’s no denying that luck is also a part of it. One can increase their chances of a ‘lucky break’ by doing two things: making the work, and telling people about it. In Australia, I feel like some of us are behind the 8-ball because telling people about the great work we’re doing as artists is where it gets difficult for fear of being a tall poppy.

No one likes a show off

The idea of ‘marketing’ one’s work, as an Australian, is fraught with the tall-poppy effect. In order to give your work the best chance of success you really do need to try to tell as many people as you can, “Here, I made this, I hope you like it.” The more you tell people, the more likely your art will find a place in the world. But Australians tend to shy away from ‘over-sharing’ for fear of seeming over-confident or worse – the mortal sin in Australian culture: lacking humility.

The thing is, it is possible to show humility and tell people about one’s work. The catch-22 is that the more people that hear about one’s work, the more likely you are to run into those who feel that, maybe, you need to be taken down a notch or two.

Sharing art is one of the scariest things an artist can do. It’s a step toward vulnerability. The critical eye for whether it’s ‘good art’ is difficult enough to overcome. The Tall-Poppy Syndrome adds another wall that, yes, is important to acknowledge, but shouldn’t stop us from remembering that in other parts of the world, sharing the gift is celebrated.