I’ve come to the realisation that everything is a draft. Every drawing I do, everything I write, and yes, even every printed book. I’ve published nine books now, and yes, they’ve all been drafts… for my next book, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Once you realise that everything isn’t final, that everything you do is a learning experience and, in most cases (unless you’re a surgeon), not fatal, the pressure’s off. Nothing will ever be perfect, even though, at the time, you truly believe you’re doing your best work. And you are, with the knowledge you’ve got so far.

Now, I look back at my body of work and I can clearly see how much I’ve evolved. How much I didn’t know back then is obvious. In order to do your best work, you’ve just got to do the work. Over and over again. Draft, after draft, after draft.

Watercolour, Acrylics, Oils, Pencils. Art supplies are alluring. They all have their own special qualities and challenges. They all produce different results and the potential can be overwhelming. So, which one should you stick too? The ultimate question – How to prioritise all this fun stuff!?

Firstly, I think it’s important to acknowledge how incredibly lucky we are to have this choice. That at any time, we have the opportunity to use all these different methods of expressing ourselves. I also think that, as adults, we have to learn to be OK with being a kid again. When we were kids, we picked up and experimented with ANYTHING – coloured pencils, markers, paint etc. and we were unashamed of doing so. As kids, we didn’t feel like we needed to ‘focus’ on just one medium so we could become experts. The joy was in the variety, in picking a medium for our mood, in playing until things ran their natural course, and then we moved on to the next thing.

Jack of all trades, master of none

As adults, we’ve been trained to value specialisation. At the end of high-school, we’re supposed to ‘choose a career’. Focus on one thing. Go for depth on a subject, not breadth across all subjects. And, for getting a job and money, this is generally a pretty good idea. It’s how people become surgeons, or how I became a software designer. To have achieved this, we probably let go of art, music, or any study that doesn’t help us achieve this singular goal.

Then, after focussing for so long and reaching a level of seniority in our speciality, we have the opportunity to play with art supplies again. But, we still try to apply this ‘focus’ mentality to it because we’ve spent so many years training ourselves to think like this. But we aren’t trying to get a job or money from our art. Our art is for us. It’s play. It’s enjoyment. So, we need to un-train ourselves. We need to be OK with being that child again and picking up whatever we feel like, playing with that for a while, and then, when we’re not enjoying it anymore, be comfortable letting it go for the next new thing that takes our interest.

This is fine if your focus is to enjoy and indulge in self-expression. But it also means we need to be OK with not achieving mastery. If mastery is the goal, (like we have in our jobs) then focus is useful, but whenever we try anything for the first time, as kids or as adults, I think we need to give ourselves permission to play, first. If we stumble across a medium that sucks us in, one that pushes and motivates us to seek mastery, then we can focus. But for now, I say just have fun.

*I’d like to dearly thank Zuzana for her question which prompted me to discover what I really think about this idea of ‘choosing which art medium to explore’.*

Whenever I write a story, I ask myself, does this story have a conclusion? And when I say conclusion, I don’t mean an ending. There’s a difference.

Author of Invisible Ink, Brian McDonald, describes a story as “A telling or re-telling of events leading to a conclusion.” On the surface, that sounds pretty simple. But what Brian means by ‘conclusion’ isn’t ‘the end or finish of an event, process, or text’. Conclusion, in Brian’s definition of storytelling, refers to the alternate meaning of conclusion, “a judgement or decision reached by reasoning.”

So when I ask myself, does this story have a conclusion, what I’m asking is, have I encouraged the reader to decide something? Have I helped them make a decision? Have I told or retold events whereby the reader has experienced an epiphany and received the true message of what I was trying to say?

When I think of conclusion like this, endings become less important, and it keeps me focused on what I was trying to say in the first place. It’s a handy tool to use when you’re deep in a project, and you risk losing the forest for the trees.

For more about this, listen to this episode of the Paper Wings Podcast.

Having now worked with several editors in the publishing industry, I can’t help but think that, to an outsider, the job title doesn’t do them justice.

To someone from outside of publishing, Editor seems like a pretty self-explanatory job: someone who edits. This brings to mind tasks like:

1. Removing erroneous or incorrect words or sentences,
2. Checking grammar, and
3. Looking for spelling mistakes.

But Editors do far more than ‘edit’. Here’s how it works in a very very simplified way.

The author (let’s say me), has an idea. I think it’s a pretty good one. I might write some words and draw some preliminary sketches to get my idea into a shareable format. That first ‘share’ probably goes to my agent. It’s nice to have a second set of professional eyes go over a piece of work and provide feedback on whether the vision is clear enough yet to bother an Editor about it.

Once my agent and I are happy (likely after a few rounds of drafts), we’ll share it with an Editor. And this is where it veers from ‘editing’. The first thing they do is appraise the vision. They seek to answer the fundamental question – Is this something the world needs to see? If the answer to this is yes, they’ll acquire the idea.

In acquiring the idea, they’ll provide some suggestions for how it could be improved to make the vision clearer. These are not ‘copy edits’, these are big picture ideas. For example, in the very first version of Queen Celine, Celine ‘went back to school’ after she built the wall. She then returned to find the wall had been torn down by natural forces. Logical, yes, but it gave Celine absolutely no responsibility for fixing the situation. My editor, the lovely Nancy Conescu at Walker Books saw this before I did and brought this now obvious weakness in Celine’s story to my attention. Celine is the do-er. If she built the wall, we need to see her bring it down so the readers can see that she’s learned the valuable lesson. This is no copy edit. It required a fundamental re-thinking of the character and series of events that Celine would experience to reshape the story.

Book Editors are the expert, objective, and third-party brain that an author uses to enhance their vision. Editors are experts at seeing the tangle of threads that exist in a creator’s head. They know which threads to pull on to strengthen and enhance the story. And, don’t get me wrong, I still had to do ALL the work. The Editors I’ve worked with so far provide suggestions or direction for improvement, but in the end, it was up to me, the creator, to take that feedback and convert it into something even better than I was ever capable of doing on my own. Something that ensures the original vision remains clean and crisp.

I can only imagine how off-putting or de-motivating it would be for new people to the creative field to have someone change the fundamental shape of your work. The fear of it deviating from your original vision or the sense of losing control over your ‘baby’ would be frightening. But the proof is in the pudding. Editors are in this process for a reason and have been for a VERY long time. They are exceptionally smart and creative people in their own right. Their experience and training means they know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to telling stories. I’d be crazy not to relish any opportunity for the expert feedback. Even if it meant, ‘going back to the drawing board.’

The creator needs to rest assured; every best-seller, every classic, every book that children hold dear or that ever got to market, had an editor – a shepherd to guide them in making what, in the end, everyone wants; the best possible book that a group of humans can make.

Ten years ago, society decided that we all needed supercomputers in our pockets. They promised that it would make us more efficient and free up time for more important things, human things – connecting, socialising, leisure activities and creative work. So, the question is, what are we doing with all our free time, now?

I don’t know about other people, but I feel like I’m busier than ever. I’m always looking for the next app, tool or technique to make me more productive and efficient so I can spend time being… Hmm, more productive and efficient?

Something’s wrong here.

Why is it so hard for humans to prioritise human things – those ‘more important’ things that businesses tell us we’ll have time for if we use their app, their tool, or their product.

Last week, I installed yet another tool on my phone. And, it’s certainly made me organised and focussed. So, because of this, I should have more time, right? In fact, I do. But it’s not the app, tool or technique that’s going to make me use that time to do more creative or human work; it’s me. All I need to know is what’s truly important to me and then stop making excuses for not doing those things.

What’s important to you?

I think that this question is REALLY hard to answer. It requires us to know ourselves; our values, wants, needs, and what truly makes us happy. The problem with hard questions is that they’re hard. Humans don’t like doing hard stuff. So, instead of doing the hard work to find these things out, it’s easier to open Instagram or Facebook and scroll for a while. It’s easier to turn on Netflix and binge-watch a couple of episodes until it’s bedtime. And, then it’s bed-time, so, “I should probably go to bed, now”.

Even if we are strong-willed enough to answer what’s important to us, this alone won’t make it happen. We can make a list, sure, but then there’s the hard work of doing it. I don’t mean ‘making time’ for it, which is a phrase I used to use a lot when I needed to ‘make time for my creative work’, but prioritise is. Make EFFORT to do my creative work. But, as we know, humans tend to naturally avoid effort, and businesses are great and giving us ‘tools’ to help us avoid as much effort as possible.

I’m not too busy, I just don’t care enough?

As Debbie Millman once said, “Busy is a choice.” In the end, it comes down to how we prioritise things. I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to kick myself out of the habit of ‘being too busy for that’ is to re-phrase that excuse. Instead of saying, “I’m too busy…” I changed it too, “It’s not a priority…” or “It’s not important to me…”. Look what happens when you do this.

• “I’m too busy to call mum right now” vs “It’s not a priority to call mum right now”
• “I’m too busy to eat good food” vs “It’s not important to me to eat good food”
• “I’m too busy to write my story” vs “My story isn’t important enough to me to write it”
• “I’m too busy to go on a holiday” vs “Going on a holiday is not a priority for me”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be the person that doesn’t prioritise giving mum a call.

Making more time?

We don’t need to make more time for creative work. We’ve already got plenty of time. And, if the promise of the supercomputer in our pocket and all the productivity tools out there are true, we’re only going to get more of it.

But, no one is going to do the hard work of making sure that what’s important to you is prioritised in your life. You’re the only one that can do that. It’s hard. REALLY hard. We’re battling multi-million dollar organisations of thousands of people whose sole purpose is to have you scroll through their feed and spend all your time in their app so they can sell your time to advertisers.

The question really becomes – Are you too busy to control your own time or, is it just not important to you right now?

I’ve been reading an incredible book about feedback, how to give it better, but more importantly, how to get better at receiving.

If art is anything, it’s a lesson in receiving feedback. Anyone who makes anything will always find a willing audience to pass judgement. But, it’s sometimes difficult to turn the positive and negative critique into something you can use. This is where the ACE model of Feedback, described by Sheila Keen in her book, Thanks for the Feedback, comes in handy. This journal entry is a concise summary, and if you’re interested to find out more, I highly recommend reading the book. It’ll help you in work and in personal relationships, too.

Appreciation feedback

“I notice you. I get you. You matter.”

We all need appreciation from people. The weight on which we stake the opinions of others about ourselves is phenomenal. Just look at the problematic phenomenon of our ‘like’ and ‘follow’ culture on social media. We interpret every new like or follow as ‘appreciation’ feedback. Like it or not, we want to know that we matter, that people are seeing us.

Ignoring social media, as an artist, appreciation-style feedback comes in all sorts of ways. Being asked to do a new project or book by a publisher must mean you’re doing something right. Having a gallery agree to display your work or, a passing comment from a stranger on Instagram that says, “Nice work!”. It all comes back to satisfying that basic human need for acceptance. Knowing when you’re appreciated (and not appreciated) is important. It stokes our fires to produce better work. However, it’s often hard to remember to celebrate the appreciation in the face of the other types of feedback, coaching and evaluation.

Coaching (and Evaluation) feedback

“Here’s how you can improve.”

Ah, advice. Is there any artist reading this who hasn’t heard some coaching advice. It usually goes something like, “I love what you’re doing, but if you just did X, you’d sell a lot more.” Or, “What if you tried using a more limited colour palette. It would look more refined.”

Yikes. Coaching is a slippery slope. Part of the problem with Coaching is that there’s always an ‘Evaluation’ element implicit in the advice on how to improve. Someone has seen something (your finances, your art practice, your studio setup), evaluated against something else (how much art other people in your category are selling, the way another artist works, the studio of some other artist), and, instead of just describing their understanding of the two approaches against an objective, fixed criteria, they jump into being helpful with some ‘coaching.’ Ways you or your work could be more like the other thing.

The important thing for an artist when they receive some ‘coaching’ advice, is to pull out some more detail from the giver so you can contextualise the coaching. For example, if someone says, “You should make the character’s head bigger on page 4, 6 and 7.” You can ask why. Is it because they think the character’s head is too small on these pages in comparison to the other pages? Or, is it what they really want to see is more detail on those pages and they think that the solution would be to make it bigger? Humans are wonderful at offering solutions, but often, trying to understand ‘why’ the solution is offered is a big part of uncovering what the real problem is.

With coaching feedback, I find it most helpful to understand what they’re evaluating you against first, as an objective measure, which can then start the next part of the conversation; what you can do about it. It may be to follow the coaching advice you got, but often, there’s a different solution or the ‘coaching’ is really covering up some other issue.

Evaluation feedback

“Here’s where you stand, and what to expect.”

The best evaluators can articulate two things. An objective assessment of your work against fixed criteria, and, the likely outcomes that will result if that work does not improve in some way.

Take, for example, a folio evaluation. An example of fixed criteria could be that to be a working book illustrator, you need to do the following:

1. Be able to draw the same character, consistently, from different angles and in different situations.
2. Be able to create characters that display the full range of human emotions (Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, Sadness and Surprise) whether they’re animals or humans.

With the criteria stated, you (or your folio reviewer) can then objectively assess your work against it and have better conversations about where you’re achieving, and where you’re falling short.

So often, the criteria by which you’re judged is fuzzy. It’s in your power to clarify it. Ask questions. Once you know the criteria, and are clear on how you’re meeting or not meeting the requirement, it becomes far less emotionally confronting, less vacuous and you’re better equipped to work out how to improve. More importantly, the process of feedback becomes a positive experience for both giver and receiver. In the end, that’s really what’s standing in our way as we’re all trying to be the best artist we can be.

Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. Follow your passion. Find your purpose.

What were you ‘passionate’ about at five years old. How about ten years old? 20 years? 30? 45? 60?

I’m guessing that at every stage of life, you, like me, were probably passionate about different things. I remember at ten years old; I wanted to be a Vet. I was ‘passionate’ about animals because I had a dog, some hermit crabs, some guinea pigs and some mice. I wanted to look after them all.

At 16, I was passionate about golf and becoming the best golfer I could be. I was on my way (and had the opportunity) to pursue a career as a golfer if I was willing to work hard enough. Spoiler: I wasn’t willing to do that.

At 20? I was ‘passionate’ about getting a job that paid a lot of money so I could move out of my parents’ house and live independently. I was also ‘passionate’ about travelling.

At 28, I was passionate about design. I was passionate about the power that good software could wield to change the way we live.

It concerns me when I read the ‘advice’ on social media and other news articles about finding your passion, doing what you love, living your best life. It concerns me because it reinforces a romantic, mystical idea that every human being was put on the Earth to do one thing; to be the best at that one thing. To discover some hidden talent that lurks in some mystical fibre of their being, if they only look hard enough. If they could only find it, it’ll change their life and the lives of the people around them forever. When they find ‘it’, they’ll find ‘happiness’, fulfilment, they’ll be able to live a life of no regret. They’ll die happy.

The problem with this advice is that people change and life changes with them. A person may meet different people, live in different places, discover different interests, or change their socio-economic status to name a few. If you ask a new mother what they’re passionate about after giving birth, I’m sure many will say the new life they’re now responsible for. If you asked them the same question 10 years before giving birth, before that new child ever existed, I’m sure the answer would be different.

Passions and purpose change. What’s important to you at ten-years-old might be less important to you at forty. For me, at 28, I was a passionate designer and fully-focussed on being the best designer I could be. At 35, I still love Design, but I also love, with an equal (maybe more) measure, the opportunity to share stories with and improve the literacy of children through my writing and drawing now that I’ve worked hard to create that opportunity for myself.

I don’t know what it’s like for other people. I can only reflect on my own experience. But my journey has shown me that it’s possible to have multiple passions and multiple purposes, either simultaneously or as you change and grow as a human being. That seems OK to me. Shouldn’t we be changing anyway as we learn new things, meet new people, and have new experiences that shape who we are?

So, maybe better advice is to follow a passion or purpose for as long as it’s important for you to do so. Chances are, as you live, you’ll have more than one passion, and that’s OK. Maybe the advice should be to stay open to new experiences, take some pressure off yourself, follow your curiosity, and enjoy the ride. Do we really never want to work a day in our lives, anyway?

As a storyteller, it’s my job to build believable stories. This means believable characters and believable worlds. What makes something believable? It’s the details. Details need to be grounded in some form of reality, so us lowly humans instinctively know the rules and have a way to connect with the people and places in them. In the end, it’s about building stronger empathy.

Figuring out Queen Celine’s kingdom

If I tried to describe the beach in either words or pictures from the comfort of my home studio, I’d probably do OK.

I grew up in Sydney and spent a lot of time at the beach. We surfed, played football, beach cricket, and combed rock pools. I’m largely familiar with the sea and its surrounding landscape. I could probably draw a beach from memory, or a type of fish. They’d be ‘averages’ of these things, but you’d know it was a beach or fish if you saw it.

But, I don’t want to give any reader an averaged experience. I want them sucked into this world that I’m creating. Like the best books have a habit of doing, I want a reader to forget they’re reading a book. One way to do this is to find the real thing, in its time and place, and use the tools that words and pictures give us to describe it there and then.

How does the beach make you feel?

In Australia, we have some harsh sunlight. There’s probably no better place to experience this harsh sunlight than at a beach. It’s bright and overexposed. The sun bounces off the surface of still water and reflects the sky like a mirror. If the water is rough, the surface sparkles like diamonds (or emeralds, see page 10 of Queen Celine). It’s hot at the beach, too. It’s not unusual for Australia to experience temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s Celsius. It gets so hot that walking barefoot on the sand can be uncomfortable.

But often, you don’t notice the non-visual details in a home studio. They come from experiencing the real thing. A place is more than just how it looks. It’s multi-sensory. As storytellers, it’s our job to engage all the senses for a reader, not just their vision. When it comes to building this detailed picture of the world, the real ‘suck-me-into-your-world’ stuff, nothing can replace being there.

Surprise people, but don’t

If I asked you to describe Paris, you’d probably think of a few things straight away. The usual landmarks, maybe the food. The stereotypical stuff; croissants, baguettes, snails, Eiffel Tower and so on. But the weird thing about people and places are that people notice different things. I’m fortunate enough to have visited Paris twice. For me, Paris’ real character comes from their beige streets with steel-blue roofs. All those little window boxes in attics. It’s not the baguettes that I love about Paris; it’s the Pain Au Raisin. It’s the sweet, warm, golden smell of the bakeries, not the bakery items themselves. I love Parisian chocolate, especially drinking hot chocolates standing under red awnings in the rain. I love their enormous roundabouts. When I tell people that I like these things, they’re surprised, but not. While they didn’t notice these things themselves, the descriptions are somehow familiar. It completes a picture, or at least, adds to their version of Paris.

In world-building for stories, the difference between what I see, and what others see matters. There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just different. A Google Image search for “Paris”, just like with a search for “Rockpool”, will give you a view of the world that everybody else has already captured. And yes, you could use these things, but they shouldn’t be the only thing. It’s the other details that make a more high-resolution picture in people’s brains, things that matter to you.

For Queen Celine, it was the reflections in water that were so striking to me. It was the weed. It was the mass of gulls and plovers. It was the barnacles of all shapes and sizes stuck to rocks. These inert-looking shells look as though they aren’t moving until you get up very close and sit a while. Then you realise that each one is a slow-moving, little living creature.

The colours of underwater worlds struck me. They had a luminescence that I struggled to capture in watercolour. Especially those we visited in aquariums. You can see all of these ‘features’ of the beach, and rock pools, in Queen Celine. And you’ll probably be surprised that they’re there, but also not surprised at all.

Building empathy through storytelling

In the end, this is all about empathy. Expanding your perspective of the world through the way others describe it. This is why people share and read stories to each other; to find out what matters to others and to enhance the construction of their world. It’s fascinating, beautiful and, well, so very human.

One of the most fun parts of illustrating picture books is the early stage; the one where a publisher has contacted me because they think I’d be the right fit for a text they’ve just acquired.

Reading a new, unpublished text, is a thrill. There’s something so energising about the potential that lives within a new text. Yes, of course, there are the words on the page which tell a story, but that’s just one half of the puzzle. No matter how prescriptive a text, there’s still another half of a story to tell: the picture part.

I’ve recently been reading “Understanding Comics“, by Scott McCloud. I can’t speak highly enough of the guidance and analysis of ‘sequential art’ in this book. I already consider it one of the most influential books I’ve ever read for my own practice. And even though Scott is talking about how sequential art pertains to comics, I couldn’t help but think of picture books as another form of sequential art. The same rules apply. It’s all about how you combine words and pictures in a sequence.

In the book, Scott gives seven distinct categories for word/picture combinations.

When I’m working alone in my studio, I often find I get stuck on an idea or a spread. Or, I simply love a drawing I’ve got but deep-down, I know that it’s not working. These known categories are a great tool to free up my thinking. I can either use them on a live text or, for practice, on any piece of text, original or otherwise.

Let’s take some text, “The cow jumped over the moon.” Here are seven ways one could illustrate that text using Scott’s framework.

Word-specific

Words provide all you need to know, while the pictures illustrate aspects of the scene being described.

Picture-specific

Pictures provide all you need to know, while the words accentuate aspects of the scene being shown.

Duo-specific

Words and pictures both send roughly the same message.

Intersecting

Words and pictures working together in some respects while also contributing information independently.

Interdependant

Words and pictures combining to convey an idea that neither would convey alone.

Parrallel

Words and pictures following seemingly different paths without intersecting.

Montage

Words and pictures combined pictorially.

How to use these combinations

With this simple but beautifully articulated framework for word-picture combinations, it’s easier than ever to force myself to think outside my own biased frame of reference to produce the best story possible.

So, this is weird. As I get deeper and deeper into the world of playing with developing a beautiful, inky drawing line, I’m discovering that the world of dip pen nibs is complex.

This isn’t a post about which ones are my favourite or my most hated though. No. This is about cleaning your nibs with potatoes.

That’s right. Cleaning your nibs with potatoes.

Stick your nib in a potato

As it turns out, when you purchase a shiny new nib, they don’t come ‘ready to use’. The manufacturing process of nibs means that nibs are often coated with a thin, invisible layer of oil. If you try to use your shiny new nib without preparing it first, you’re likely to get an inconsistent flow on to the page. Then you’ll end up with ink blots or a scratchy, rough line. The ink tries to slide off the nib to the paper, but it does so unevenly.

At first, I didn’t believe this. Why would manufacturers be so stupid as to risk their reputation on nib quality by not telling artists, “Hey, creative person! Wash your nib first.” If you didn’t know this, surely you’d try a nib (as I have), see the uneven flow, then take to Google Reviews with a vengeance.

But anyway, I digress.

How to prepare your nib for immediate, free-flowing, luscious use? Just stick it in a potato. No, seriously. Do it. You don’t need to waste a whole potato either. Just slice a bit off and stick your nib in. Right up to where you think you’re going to be immersing it in ink.

Wait 15 minutes, then remove the nib, give it a rinse with regular old water, dry thoroughly and voila! You’ll be a smooth (nib) operator.