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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over the weekend, I completed a 14-frame short visual story and started working on a new graphic novella. The 14-frame short story wasn’t supposed to be 14 frames. When I set out to make the final drawings it was only supposed to be 3 frames – a beginning, middle, and end. It was my attempt at taking my own advice by starting small.

But, as I drew those 3-frames, new ideas came to mind. As I drew the character and saw (rather than just thought about) how she reacted to the scenario I had put her in, the scenario on the page felt lifeless and incomplete. So, I added another 2 frames. And then another 2 frames.

At 7 frames, I thought, “OK, that’s neat, I think we’re done.” But as she bounded off, stage left, blindly following her curiosity, I noticed that she left her lunch box behind. What to do with that? My protagonist was not a litterer, she simply made a mistake, as we all often do, when we’re excited by something.

And so, the story demanded to continue. Another 7 frames later and I had arrived a logical-enough ending (plus it was the end of the day and I was tired). So I stopped. But now, 2 days later, I keep thinking about the bench. What happens next? Where else could this go?

Responding to the starting

I’d been thinking about those 3 frames for a long time but, like with almost anything that seems like a good idea at the time, actually beginning – trying to get what’s in my head onto the page – is the difficult bit and so I procrastinate. I imagine how good it would be if I did it, and that’s almost enough to not do it.

But, I know now that when I start putting those first few marks on the page, I’m no longer in the driver’s seat. Instead, I’m being driven by what appears on the page – the characters and the setting.

Maybe all I need to do is insert the key and turn. Once the engine is humming, the characters and setting do the driving.

This feeling, of being driven rather than needing to drive, is enough motivation to pick another idea up off the pile and go again. So, the following day, that’s what I did. And now, having drawn 12 pages of Act 1 of a new graphic novella, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll knock off work tonight and keep drawing – not because I want to finish it, but because I want to see where this story will take me.

The Bench

It’s easy to get comfortable with our art supplies, our ideas, and our path – especially when what we’re doing has people’s attention. I’m a watercolourist, I tell people. I work in children’s literature, I say. My work is characterised by whimsy, humour, strong characters and quiet minimalism. That’s what people like, it’s what they expect.

But what if it wasn’t?

What if I created work with heavy lines and strong, bold colours? What if something I made was more serious and less humourous than ‘usual’. What if I started working in a different medium? Maybe this would upset a few people? Maybe people would stop paying attention? Maybe the cost of doing the unexpected is career-ending?

Maybe the cost of not doing this is higher.

I thought my critical-thinking abilities were an asset to my illustration career. For every book I’ve worked in the questions often begin the same way – “who is it for and how, what are we trying to achieve?” It’s become my core approach to everything I do professionally and the decisions I make in life.

And then I watched 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki and he said a few simple words that have stuck with me over the last few weeks – kids are illogical. And he’s right. They are. And so what might happen if I turned off my critical-thinking abilities and did something even more difficult than logic – what if I worked to get my imagination back?

What if things didn’t make sense, sometimes?

What would the world be like if fish were feathered? If cows could fight back? If the sky was blue not because of the way light refracted through the atmosphere from the sun but because of a faded stain left behind by a celestial squid. What if, for a moment, the world didn’t make sense. What if anything went?

The thing is, as an adult, I don’t really know how to develop more imagination. No one, it seems, teaches that. When I search online I get suggestions for improving memory – but that’s not imagination.

At the risk of using logic to solve this problem, if kids are illogical, maybe I need to do what kids do?

I know that drawing helps me, but not the sort of drawing where I set out to produce an image I can already see in my head. No, it’s the process of seeing abstract marks made on paper then making something of them *afterwards* has always been good for unlocking unusual ideas.

Thinking in ‘opposites’ may help, too – feathers and fish don’t typically go together. Neither do cows and combat. Perhaps a turtle can be as fast as a cheetah? Perhaps ladybirds are a mode of transport. Perhaps a spider’s venom is healthy not deadly. As I write those sentences, I find they are leading to more sentences. Intentionally breaking the rules that have formed the boundaries of our world seems useful.

And finally, there is, of course, telling fibs. Or, in other words, making up my own reasons for things, as kids often do. Instead of asking “why the sky is blue?” perhaps it’s more about asking, “why do I think the sky is blue?” and then just making things up, like I used to when I was a kid.

Of course, all these strategies seem so logical – a way for my adult self to unpack a problem and use reason to generate ‘solutions’ – but maybe imagination begets imagination? Maybe it’s not about throwing logic away completely, but building the imagination muscle so they can work together to produce something unreal that feels real, all the same, just as Miyazaki does.

How do I know if a drawing or illustration is any good? I could critique the character of the line. I could rationalise the colour palette – analogous, harmonious, complementary, and so on. I could critique the composition – is it dynamic? Does it adhere to the rule of thirds? Is the cropping suitable? What does the angle say?

The other way is to simply ask, is there life on the page? Because if life isn’t there, no amount of illustration or image theory will make it any better.

I’m not sure there’s a more useful, cheap, and versatile tool than a pencil.

I, and I assume like many others out there trawling social media, love to see the materials that other artists use and how they use them. I see someone painting with gouache and think, “ooh, that looks fun” and then I go down a rabbit hole of trying to use gouache for a while. The same thought process occurs when I see lino printing, watercolour, ink, soft pastels, wax crayons, coloured pencils and so on.

Yet, no matter what I buy, and how often I play, I find myself returning to the pencil. That small, humble, 50c stick of graphite and some cartridge paper has the ability to create worlds. There is no other material that produces something so quickly, so easily and without the feeling of committment. If I’m searching for a beginning in the uncertainty of an empty page, the pencil will be the tool that will help me find it. It reduces the number of decisions one needs to make in the mark-making process and yet its possibilities for putting life on a page (and just as quickly removing it) are infinite.

It may seem boring but the possibilities in a pencil can be, have been, life-changing.