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.

As anyone who has a regular art practice knows, learning from those gone before you is as critical as the amount of time you spend drawing. So, when the Australian Society of Authors advertised an online workshop with Australian picture book legend, Ann James, I jumped at the chance.

I never go into these webinars thinking I’m going to come away with a million bits of gold dust that will instantly make me a supercharged performer. In any workshop I participate in, I’m looking for one thing (maybe two) that I can carry with me as I evolve as an artist. Curiously, in this one by Anne James, it wasn’t necessarily her personal advice that struck a chord. It was an anecdote she shared; some sage advice from another illustration great, a friend of hers, Leigh Hobbs. He said,

You’ve got to let the line breathe.

Ahhh. Feels nice already, doesn’t it? One year on, I’m still thinking about this idea, so I thought I’d write some notes to my future self (with some reference pictures) to remind me of what on earth this means.

Breathe in…

What Leigh was talking about was related to the bold, striking style we so dearly associate with him – pen and wash. See, as it turns out when you’re adding watercolour wash to your pen work, you’ve got a choice about how precisely you ‘colour in’ your lines. You can choose to bring your colour riiiight up close to the line, so it touches it, or, you can bring your wash near (but not touching) the line. The latter is what Leigh means by ‘breathing room’. It’s the space that an illustrator chooses to leave between the wash and the line that has some exciting characteristics.

Why bother thinking about this? I’m glad you asked. You know that saying, less is more? Well, the less you colour in, the more you leave open to the viewer to fill in the blanks. This means you’re producing a more fulfilling experience for the viewer and doing less work in the process. Any way you look at it, it’s a win. Here’s what happens.

Increase energy and movement in your illustration

Even if you’ve got a really expressive line (think width, shape, brokenness), giving that line some ‘breathing room’ lets the pen and wash work together to ‘jiggle’ the image. It gives it motion. The space you leave is filled in by the viewer, their eyes move back and forward as they try to close the gap themselves. Whether they realise it or not, it’s exciting.

Provide a stronger indication of light

The best way to paint light is to paint only the shadows. By leaving some whitespace between the line and the colour, the viewer will read it as the brightest part of the image. They just cannot avoid this. It’s a bit like magic. You can simply suggest the colour of the surface, and the viewer does the rest.

Extend an invitation to interpret

If you have a pen and wash image that’s a little claustrophobic (coloured all the way up to the lines), there’s less to intrigue the viewer. They can see the line, and the colour you’ve applied, and so it’s read as a complete, finalised shape. By giving the line a bit of breathing room, there’s SO much more for the reader to interrogate. They can question what the true colour of the object is. They can read the light source. The angles between the pen and the shape of the wash can indicate contour. It merely makes each image slightly more interesting, and, well, fun.

Reveal the human behind the work

A picture book on a shelf in a bookstore is pretty perfect. It’s nicely finished. Perfectly bound. If you buy one, you’re expecting ‘quality’ for your money. But, as humans, we’re drawn to imperfection. No one is perfect, and for some reason, we like to see other humans being imperfect too. So, while we want our picture books not to fall apart the second we buy them, a breath in an image helps the reader imagine the artist who made the contents. They imagine the process by which a human put brush and ink to the page. They probably imagine someone sitting at their crafty desk, surrounded by all of their beautiful art supplies. It’s an endearing and highly sought after job after all. It prompts them to question things, too. Why did the artist not ‘finish’ colouring in? Was it a mistake? Was it intentional? The questions increase engagement and participation, which, in the end, is what being an artist is about.

Breathe out

Letting the line breathe is a beautiful piece of advice and not one I see anywhere on the internet when ‘pen and wash’ is discussed. The technique is rife in some of our most accomplished illustrators. When you start looking for it, it’s everywhere.

I’m a serial project starter. I come up with ideas that always feel like the best idea I’ve ever had. I’m motivated and excited by what this thing could be. It’s energising and all-consuming. Then, I start the work.

Soon enough, the initial burst of energy fades away, and I end up puzzled. That thing I started is just hard now. It’s boring. I’ve had a million other ideas in the meantime, and they’re all much more exciting than the one I’ve slogged away with over the last few weeks. The temptation is to drop what I’m doing and follow the new shiny thing.

But if a project is never finished, then no one can ever see it. And if no one can ever see it, then why did I spend all that time at the start doing it? Sure, it was fun. But what’s less fun is having one hundred unfinished projects laying about the house. When you see that work piled up, it can be quite de-motivating. Suddenly, even starting something new starts to lose its lustre.

When something is finished, when it has an end, it’s something that people can begin to respond to. No one can say you wrote a great story if the story only has a beginning and a middle. No one can love your painting (even you) if you’ve stopped at the underpainting.

Just. Get. To. The… End

When people respond to a finished work, it means something. People either hate it, love it, or they aren’t moved by it all. And that’s all OK. The response might guide you to your next project. It might be encouraging. It’s feedback to say, “Do more of that please, that added value to my life. I enjoyed it too.” And if you get the opposite response? Find out why? Art is subjective, sure, but maybe the viewer has some excellent insight into your work that you never saw while you were making it. It might be the key to unlocking your next project or taking your practice to the next level in some way.

So, when you start something, finish it. It sounds simple, but practising getting to the end is a skill that takes effort and time. And when you see someone else feel the way you did when you first started the project, well, that feeling becomes addictive.

Wow, do I take my vision for granted?

I’m writing this having just finished being part of a storytime by the incredible Feelix Library at Vision Australia. I was asked to read my book, Eric the Postie, to children with vision-impairment and then spend some time engaging in some fun, letter-related activities designed by the team at the Library.

There are certain experiences in life that challenge how you engage with the world so deeply that they leave a profoundly lasting impact on the way you view the world from then on. This one was one of those moments.

I take nothing, let me repeat, NOTHING, for granted more than my vision. And I suspect most of us with two working eyeballs are the same. It’s the one underlying assumption about human function that has shaped systems and processes that we use every single day.

How do you know which is the hot or cold tap if you can’t see it? How do you drive (or navigate public transport)? How do you know you’ve arrived at your friend’s house? Or the right workplace when you get into work in the morning? The weight by which we rely on our visual system is immense in everyday life, let alone some who makes picture books.

As a picture book maker, visual literacy is core to what I do. I spend hours on end studying how to improve it and push its boundaries. But how does a reader engage with a picture book when, well, they can’t see it?

Reading to kids who can’t see

I’ve never read to kids who can’t see. I’ve lived such a privileged, first-world life, that I don’t have any friends or relatives who suffer from vision deficiency to this degree. When I run workshops with sighted kids, I’m used to saying things like, “Can you see what this character is doing here?” Or “What do you think about this colour?” I engage them using vision-based language. It’s an auto-pilot thing that, in the context of a storytime with low-vision children, seems, well, offensive in some way.

I’ll admit it, as the kids started to arrive, I did my introvert thing and went into my shell. I had to learn how the adults who spend their lives around vision-impaired children engage with them. I’m not trained in this; I didn’t know what was ‘normal’ but I knew I couldn’t just point at something across the other side of the room to draw a child’s attention to it. I had to learn to see without using my eyes.

Engaging all the senses

At an intellectual level, it sounds easy. Well, you have four other senses, use those. But vision-based habits run deep, and it takes a lot of mental effort to prioritise the other senses. The good news is that once the penny drops, things become more comfortable and, well, somewhat magical.

Sounds come first

Sound is our obvious fallback. We yell, talk, and whisper to each other all the time, even if we’re sighted. Objects make noises too, sounds that (as a sighted person) you’ve probably never thought much about. The kids loved the dongs and dings of dropping PVC pipe on the floor or ringing a bell — the sound of plastic animals slipping down plastic tunnels, the sound of braillers chinking and chunking their impressions and indentations on paper. Sound, when you’re seeking it out, is everywhere. In fact, overwhelmingly so. For us sighted folks, it’s incredible what we’re ignoring on a day-to-day basis because we prefer to listen to the story that our eyes are telling us.

Touch is powerful and important

For sighted people, Touch is a less intuitive way to communicate. Touch is such an intimate, vulnerable sense. Society tells us that we should generally avoid touching anyone else, let alone children. It’s reserved for exclusive relationships — loved ones in particular. As a male I can’t even sit next to an unaccompanied minor on an aeroplane such is the fear in society we have of touch.

But touch is a critical input for kids with vision impairment; more so for kids with no vision at all. I spent a good 20 minutes dancing with a child where physical contact was so crucial to their sense of enjoyment and fun. Vibrating, swaying, and spinning – they’re all such positive things. Feeling momentum, warmth and moisture on skin, the way the breeze picks up and drops locks of hair as the head moves back and forth to the sound of music; it lit these kids up, and for good reason, touch is simply powerful. As sighted humans, I bet we barely notice when it happens to us. I know I don’t.

Taste and Smell are intertwined

Any young child uses their mouth as a primary sensing organ to engage with the world, but they grow out of that quickly as vision takes priority and our parents make us aware of the dangers of putting the wrong thing to our lips. Our noses are one of the most direct lines we have for input into our brain. But again, in the absence of vision, taste and smell become imperative. Fruits and snacks after storytime are a sensory stimulant and, pairing that with sound, provides a starting point for conversations. Kids with impaired vision learn sweet, sour, savoury. As a sighted person, you can see a child eat a strawberry which can begin a conversation about how it feels, what it sounds like to squish it in your mouth, and what it smells like before you swallow.

It makes sense

In the end, the sensory world is rich and diverse. In some ways, for those of us with vision, our ability to see is holding us back from truly experiencing what it’s like to be human. We simply tune-out the other senses. And, we’ve built a world where we prioritise sight over anything, and now we’ve made it difficult and disadvantageous to have any other way of completing many of the rudimentary tasks we need to live a productive, fruitful life.

As humans, we owe it to ourselves to challenge each other when our underlying assumption of vision overrides our decisions. It’ll make a better, more inclusive world, and those of us lucky enough to have working eyeballs may even learn something along the way.

There are very few old-timey painters of Australian landscapes that I swoon over. In fact, Arthur Streeton might be the only one.

I’m a fine art Luddite, ashamedly so. As a child, my parents never entertained activities as ‘high-brow’ as painting, literature or poetry. Who does when you’re busy trying to get food on the table for three kids? But, it did provide the opportunity for me to enter an adult life untainted by early childhood opinions of Monet, Les Murray or Dickens (I think most kids think they’re pretty boring anyway). It also meant that my journey into painting only really started when I myself began painting, as an adult.

In my quest to understand watercolour and how it could be used to brilliant effect, I inevitably followed threads that led me to artists pursuing other media, like Arthur, with oils.

Oil painting, for me right now, is too much effort. I’m far too lazy to deal with the cleaning up. I don’t have enough room, and quite frankly, I don’t like the smell of painting with oil paints. All those solvents and thinners completely remove the joy I find in laying brush to canvas for fun. But boy do I appreciate a fine oil work when I see them.

When I first met Streeton

What I’m about to say may sound insane to anyone with a minute bit of art history knowledge, but I first came across Arthur Streeton’s work in 2017 (I know right?!) I was speaking at The Adelaide Festival of Children’s Books that was hosted at a beautiful heritage property in South Australia called Carrick Hill. While I wandered the grounds and the beautiful historic house that gives Carrick Hill its name, I noticed a flyer for an exhibition of paintings from someone called “Arthur Streeton.” It was happening there the following week. I put it in the back of mind as something I should probably pop back in to see. I like exhibitions anyway, and some of the work on the poster looked nice.

Anyway, the day arrived. I Ubered (is that verb now?) my way to Carrick Hill and paid my entry fee for the exhibition. I cloaked my coat and began to explore. Suffice to say; I was immediately arrested by the colour and light in Arthur’s work.

After a little research, I realised that this Streeton fellow was quite revered. Funny that! I also felt a little stupid, coming to the party so late. But since then, I’ve travelled to galleries in Victoria, NSW and the ACT to seek out Arthur’s work. The thing about seeing photos on the internet is that you don’t get to see the proper colour and light that was painted by the artist, nor the brush strokes that command one’s attention when you’re faced with one of the magnificent works.

As it turns out, our Australian galleries are awash with Streetons. They also contain many paintings by the group of Australian Impressionists which painted alongside him. But none of them could achieve quite what Streeton could.

What is it about Arthur Streeton?

Trapping light so it can’t escape

I don’t know why everyone else seems to like Streeton but what struck me about his work is his bold use of colour for the time. The first painting of his I ever saw, The Blue Mountains, has such a depth of complementary colours, exquisite and delicate use of blues and golds, that it felt as though the light was living in the painting. Artists talk about capturing light, and I often interpret that as recording light. But Streeton actually trapped it in his canvas. They aren’t colours I would have instinctively chosen, but to see them used in this way is incredible. I’ve certainly taken my lessons from viewing Streeton’s original works and introduced some of those ideas in my practice.

That Pink Ochre colour

Streeton also seems to have found the perfect colour mixtures for the soft interplay of granite, soil, and sand in our Australian earth. I can only think of these colours as ‘pink ochre’. It’s a lovely, blushing colour – probably something like Permanent Rose with a dash of Yellow Ochre in it. I’ve used a similar colour in my illustration work for skin (especially either young skin, or ancient skin) and also our dusky sky. But never for rock or earth.

Finally

Whether, like me, you’d never heard of Streeton because you’ve been living in a bubble that didn’t contain any reference to fine art history in Australia, or you’re a fine art aficionado, I think everyone who has tried to paint the Australian landscape will agree that Streeton had something special. It hasn’t been replicated or improved upon since.

You can find his work in the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Victoria or the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra… well, at least that’s where I’ve been. You can probably find him all over the place. The man was certainly prolific.

It feels like an epiphany, but it’s quite simple – my day doesn’t have to start with checking email.

For some reason, checking emails in the morning became a habit as part of my day job. I’d get to work, boil the kettle, and make a cup of tea. Then I’d spend the first 30 minutes of everyday clearing the inbox.

There are a few problems with starting the day like this. The main one is that it puts my day firmly out of my control. What I thought I was doing in that first 30 minutes was making a plan for what I was going to achieve that day. And, as I don’t send emails to myself, what it means is that other people are filling my to-do list for me. Once this cycle begins, it means I continually put off the things I want to do or need to get done for me. It gives my time away to those who merely spend a few minutes sending me an email.

So, I stopped.

Yes, that’s right. I stopped checking emails in the morning. And, you know what? The world didn’t cave in. As it turns out, tasks I’m asked to complete when they’re sent to my inbox aren’t that important to the sender. Email seems to have become a way for other people to send me a note asking me to remind them about something they want to talk to me about.

That’s. Crazy.

I’m not some human reminder machine. So when I ignored these emails, what I found was that when they were important, or became urgent, then I’d get a phone call about them. If it’s that critical, then sure, I’ll prioritise it for you. Happy to. Otherwise, I’ve got my own tasks to worry about.

Make in the morning, Plan in the afternoon

Over the years, I’ve discovered that the best time for me to work on crunchy problems is in the morning. It’s when I’m at my most rested; this also means my most creative and imaginative. By starting the day with emails, a generally rudimentary, logical and tedious task, I was losing the opportunity for doing my best work every single day.

So, now I check my emails at the end of the day. It means that I build my to-do list for the next morning at the end of the day and can fill my head with tomorrow’s tasks in advance. My subconscious can already get to work solving tomorrow’s problems while I’m preparing dinner or having a shower. Then, when I wake in the morning, I hit the ground running on problems I’ve already been thinking about (and sometimes, already have the solutions for). I get more done and the quality of the work is far better. It makes everyone happy. Even those people who say they need something ‘urgently’ but they only think to ask for it via email.

It’s a small but profound habit change, for me, and for them. It works.