Hello, welcome to the Good Ship Illustration podcast. We're here to offer no nonsense advice to illustrators and image makers navigating a creative career. In the good ship, there are three of us - I'm Katie Chappell and there's Helen Stephens and Tania Willis too, we are celebrating our flagship course find your creative voice fly your freak flag being open this week. So we've got lots of episodes all about finding your creative voice. I have a question people asked me, and I never know how to answer it. What is your style? When I'm asked this in conversation, I never know what to say. How would each of you describe your own style? In words? What do you think people want to know when they're asking this question? We've struggled so much before pressing record on this whenever we hear this question, I wriggle out of it, don't you? Yeah, totally. Before we recorded, and we discussed it, I thought there is a good personal answer to this question. And I racked my brains and I still can't come up with it. It's like someone say, what kind of music do you like, then once you taste it almost feels like an attack. Do not to me that just want to say bugger off? Yeah, I didn't. When I describe my work, I never describe the sound just like I describe what I do. Yeah, that's easier, isn't it? But then when I do that, if I say or I write and illustrate picture books, they look a bit dreamy, like, oh, and then they say, wouldn't you like to be JK Rowling? Always, every time I get that all the time, I just hand them a spade and say keep digging. making it worse. I think you're right, that you can only say what you do and hope the pictures are made in their head. Because art is so subjective. We don't really have the language to describe it. And if you use illustration language, it can be really alienating and pretentious or late, like undermining using it to cartoony doodlee style. Yeah, people mean well, as well, I think that's the thing. So this question asker if we haven't got the name on there, but alright. said, What do you think people want to know, when they're asking this question? I think they just don't know any better. I think it is well, meaning. It's just, it's just a way to have a chat with somebody you've just met. It's the same thing. Sometimes I get friends or family or say to me, Oh, I'm sure I saw a cushion with your drone. Really, oh, send me the link or whatever. And they'll send it and I'll look at it I'll fill in salted is nothing like my work. But they're just they don't realize that they're not visual people. And they're just being friendly. Or they're trying to help me out by saying you want to sue them sue? I don't know what it is. But it's the context, isn't it? If the context is just social and making constant and they're genuinely interested in your work, is much easier to describe where it's seen and how you use it rather than saying things, you know, using terminology. But then I think if it's a client, and that's a valid question, they wouldn't ask it because you show the work. Everyone is like dancing about architecture. You can't do it. You can't describe the stuff. Exactly. That's the thing. I would say if somebody really wanted to know what my work looked like, I'd be like, here's my website, have a look for your own eyes. Interpreted don't let me know made me describe it. It's weird man to enter conversations for me because they say what do you do and I go are writing illustrate children's books. And then I kind of glaze over and look the other way while I wait for them to work out what that means. I feel like it ends the conversation unless I ask a question back. Yeah, it's a lot I get a lot is less I describe what I do. Like because I'm at a live event illustrator. I adore pictures at events and they go are like a court reporter. And I'd be like, oh, yeah, grasping for the nearest thing. And it can like it sometimes I was like, yeah, just to make it easier. But yeah, but I do think maybe she can't reach it or carry around like a set of little business cards that you can flick over, you know, 10 in one. Click okay. You just have it on your phone and show them because people just lie about job or just lie about your job. But don't say you're a doctor or a lawyer, because that'll keep them there. It's so much easier to see you a nanny than seeing your children here. Yes. You know, what? What do we got next? Now, we've just nailed that question in the most brutal way. Do we have another question? Yeah, yeah. Got. So yeah, go for it. How do you not fall into the trap of trying to imitate someone else's art when your art isn't getting isn't getting the attention? You need to make an income? Do you make it more marketable? Or do you just keep doing you wonder why it's not getting the attention? Like there are many reasons for that aren't there? There could be you know, the expectation of fast results and that, you know, it takes a while to build up not just following but for people to get used to your work. You might be looking for it too quickly. What do you think about the notion of attention? Yeah, like that. That's it remains As many of you know that I was just talking about this the other day, you know that thing where there's a real way, you've got to give your toddler the same meal nine times before they'll try something new. There's is it seven times or nine times, something like that. And I wonder if you know if your work is really individual and new and different, it needs to be under those eyes a few times for people to get used to it and read it and understand it. Yes, there's a lot to be said, as well for like the business side of things. And in these podcasts, we're talking about the freak flag course and finding your creative voice, but on a, because you mentioned marketable, and this part of not getting the attention you need is more related to your marketing, your ability to communicate your value, talk about your work, even learning about things like search engine optimization, actually, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, so it could be that you maybe, so obviously, we can't see your work. We don't know what we're talking about in terms of that. But it might be that your work doesn't need to change, you don't need to adopt somebody else's work. Maybe you need to focus more on your business skills. Under the right eyes, maybe they're not sending out enough samples, maybe they're not attracting enough people to their website. And that's such a good point, because it is a numbers game this like this percentages. So if you send an email to 100 people, for instance, the official percentages are like, less than 1% of Fi percent will buy if your marketing is really good, and an email. But a lot of the time we're not even getting 100 people to see the thing. And we're like oh, failure, it's not working. when really you're still above, you're above the average, we just haven't hit the numbers, to get people to hire you to commission you. And that applies. So those those percentages are even lower on social media. Because you know, for yourself, social media reach isn't great in this you're doing whatever the algorithm wants you to do that when it's about kind of building up your audience, not necessarily on social media, you know, away from there, build your mailing list. Get your website up to scratch with good traffic. Hope you have a website sometimes, actually, I'm surprised how many times we speak to people, and there's no website. And they're just they're just working from Instagram, which is literally throwing the interest into thin air, isn't it? Because they haven't got that website to double check on and have a proper look at your portfolio? Yeah. And it's soul destroying. If you spend loads of time on a piece of work. You think it's brilliant, and you post it and you get one lake and it's your mom? No offense. Oh, everyone hates me. Why should they bother? This is me on LinkedIn. By the way, like I posted this morning, I had one late because me it was it was tagged Hanuman. But it doesn't build up, doesn't it? I mean, he did takes a while. But I think that's the soft end of the question. The other end is codner. Don't copy anyone else. Absolutely. This, you've got to be yourself. Faking it in any aspect of your life is really uncomfortable and awkward and unsustainable. And eventually, you do get caught out. There's a lot of people copying certain illustrators, who we really like. And you can see that work everywhere. And I'm thinking, we all know that we can see it people can see when you copy someone else, and if you adopt that style, and suddenly you get a lot, you could get work from it, but you're lying. And it's really, I think that's a really dangerous path to go down. Because suddenly you get bigger and bigger until you get more exposure, and the whole thing's of AI. And at some point, someone will say to you, you know, your work really looks like and are you ripping them off. And it's it's the ethics of illustration. And I think the ethics are really important. Whether it's charging properly for your work, not undercutting people, but most importantly not plagiarizing. Trying to be like somebody else that chances are that person's work is pretty. In your face everywhere. At the moment, you know, it's out there is a successful illustrator, there are property loads of people trying to be like that Illustrator, she just going to be one and amongst loads of people working in a similar way in which is not a long term plan. Is it when that work goes out of style because everybody's imitated that Illustrator, where does that leave you? Yeah, totally, then you would, then you've got to reinvent yourself. And if if your mind is attuned to understanding your own work as a cop, as it's slightly being a copy of someone else, you'll probably you'll be it feel a bit lost when you're searching inside yourself for your own creative voice. So it really has to be about you and developing your own visual language and spending time learning about what you love and what really excites you. So it might be that you're in the early days of your career. And it isn't realistic to expect attention at this point. I mean, I don't know could be completely wrong, perhaps a 10 years into their career. But if you just build yourself and build your own visual strength, then you you've got the fuel to run for years and years. Yeah. And that's what we talk about in our course, isn't it? It's called Find your creative voice fly your freak flag. And it's all about really, really digging in Figuring out what work feels best to you how you best work, the stuff that makes you feel really good to put out into the world. And in that course, we actually kind of abandoned the business side of things. People not to worry about commercial, commercial, commercial marketing and commercial stuff, because you want to kind of put that on the backburner. Find your voice. And then once you feel really good, and you're like, Yeah, unapologetically yourself, then you can move on and kind of mess around with other nerdy business stuff. But I think people crave authenticity at the moment. And as the world moves towards a digital slurry of ai ai as your as you coined it, Helen, it's such a good word now. Because you don't even have to have the conversation. You just say digital slurry with a look on your face like, and everyone knows what you're, what you're talking about how you feel about it. But I think for analog illustrators and digital illustrators, developing your creative voice is more important now than it's ever been and being authentic in a way that can't be second guessed by a machine. I mean, the remains would have never existed, if there was AI, lots of weird stuff would have never come about the weird stuff that we love. Now, that is part of our culture. Part of it was alternative. But now it's mainstream. Those things were weirdos doing their thing. And that's really why we did fly your freak flag, weirdo. It's when we first made the course, they'd never been a bit of time to be yourself. But now even more, isn't it like, yes, stand up even more, if you are yourself and embrace all your weird stuff. It grabs eyes, because we see that sheen of three dimensional digital, visual culture everywhere, and polished up photography and AI, until we're so blind to it, that when you see some, something that's genuine and unique, and wow, let me go look at that, that looks really interesting. And we help you uncover that. And of course, because we really dig into all of the stuff that you've always been into stuff, you know, it's very easy to take your, your kind of history and your influences and the stuff that's made you who you are, take it for granted, and just not value it at all and just kind of forget it. And once you've got a you know, once you're a grown up, and you've got all those responsibilities, all of those weird hobbies and habits and stuff that you used to do can get put to one side. But as an illustrator, it's really important to value all that stuff. So we really dig into that in the cost only because special methods to we have an earth those things, you'll be like a princess and the pain, you'll remember weird stuff. You'll find that weird nugget of goodness from, you know, 40 years ago that you used to love when you were eight years old. And that's what makes us who we are, isn't it, you know, finding those that are cultural DNA and that creative DNA is often buried in the past? Would it? Would this be a good point to read out a brilliant testimonial? I was gonna say you don't have to take our word for it. Obviously, we're biased. But we've bought nice things people have said about the course. So show me this one. I'm pretend I'm not me refer to some of them. So glad I made the leap to join the course having believed for years that I can't draw at all, all the exercises, encourage exploration and make you think about drawing and painting in a completely different way. It's had the weird and Fab effect of spilling creativity into my real job. And folk have noticed this change. Wow. That's really interesting. That's the thing. I think a lot of the time you can forget what you're actually interested in. Like yeah, and you get swept up in day to day life and you just get on with it. Yeah, I remember early days me being an illustrator. I've done a few books, a few books down the line. And even working as an illustrator. As an illustrator as my job. I still felt like I put aside all that valuable stuff. It's like now a proper illustrator, I have to work nine to five and I have to be able to get on with it and forget the play. And for those first few years, I completely forgot to value all of that stuff that I was really into really interested in all kinds of useful play that I used to do before that drawing in sketchbooks and I was really unhappy and I had to take a step back and then come back to it remembering all the valuable stuff again and once I did that then I was rolling again. It's amazing that you could identify what you needed to do to get back to that it sounds now like I could identify it at the time. But you can only do that with with retrospect can't knew at the time it was just I can't bear doing this anymore. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I don't find it fun. What do I find fun? Well, I used to really like drawing in my sketchbooks at art school. I'll do that for a little while. So now I'm making sounds like it was a plan. Of course it wasn't a plan at the time it was just I can't be doing this if I don't go back to my sketchbooks I'm gonna go mad. And then it all worked out fine. But it's a good story now but at the time you don't know you're in it. Do you know you just blundering through I guess I do. Yeah. Remember a lot of time working on a tutorial. Especially for business Max. Or that so dry crew another man on a tight rope. Oh, finances Escape. Finding a way out of that we used to have a book, a sort of fake imaginary book in the studio where I worked and everyone say, oh, throw that cliche. In the box, we have a list of all the business cliches, really, every single found in a man called Dario Paniagua. And he specializes in helping live illustrators avoid cliches. And it's been so interesting, because he talks about all the cliches you know, like a light bar light bulb, yeah. And and he helps you work out different ways of approaching them and stuff. But again, the same thing, like play, figuring out what you're interested in bringing your childish, silly pneus to it and letting yourself be a little bit ridiculous. Not a lot ridiculous. The more ridiculous, the more your work stands out. And the more people are like, Oh, thank God, it's not another light bulb. So if you're feeling at that point in your career, and we've had lots of people on the call somebody who are very well established illustrators, and they just feel that they've been art directed out of shape, they can't feel their kind of core selves in their work, and more, they're unhappy with their work. And in picture because well, people have done full 360, reinventions and come out with work that they really love. But we've also got absolute newbies in there people who haven't drawn since school. Yes. And they've started to draw again, because they've just wanted to get back into it. And this has been a really good way for them to start again. Yeah. And it's a good way with people who are coming at it afresh, to signpost them in the right direction, because quite often, they think they should be doing things a certain way, which would just lead to, they're not being true to themselves, perhaps doing what they think industry expects of them, or doing something they recognize as illustration, which is already a sign that it's the wrong direction. If you recognize it already, anything I can, you know, I can create this kind of images. If you know it too well, then you're not making something new so we can divert them down the right path of finding themselves. You don't know what you don't know. I know, isn't that I love that phrase. But it does solve a lot. It describes a lot of problems. And then we have people in the middle don't wait people who are perhaps in the second or third year of their career, or people who have graduated from illustration, and maybe gone off to do another career or had kids and want to return in a different way. Or people that are like super successful are doing really well. But just know that there's something else that could be doing. You're having more fun with their work. They see them in there as well. And we have a great gang of data scientists. Yeah. And Helen's lovely, yeah. Yeah. The first launch, how many Helens are you called Helen? Come on, and if not changing? Well, if there's any Helens listening, but if you have any doubt, join us or data scientists. But the doors are open now. We'll put a link in the description and stuff so you can hop in. And if you've got any questions, we'll put links where you can get more information and where you can ask us questions and things. If your question is not answered on the other page, and we've got our club on Friday, already woohoo, we don't do our club every week. We do it now and again for fun. So if you're worried about missing it, make sure you're on our mailing list so you get heads up. So you our club yes either.