Katie:

Hello, welcome to the kitchen 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 and Katie Chappell. And there's Helen Stevens and Tanya Willis two, we are celebrating our flagship course find your creative voice, fight or flight being open this week. So we've got lots of episodes all about finding your creative voice. Welcome back, we've got another question about finding your creative voice. This one says I've done lots. I've done a lot of observational drawing over the years now I'm learning and growing, I can see my drawings improved. Whenever I started drawing from imagination, though, it's still so hard. And I saw just like how they look, it's almost as if, when drawing from imagination, I can only draw the way I did when I was a child. And I don't feel freedom to change how I draw. There's this weird or common? And how do people tackle this? Is it just a matter of doing it more? Or do you have any tips on

Helen:

how to approach it? I love this question. It's not weird. It is common. Like when we first launched the freak flag course this was a question we got asked more than anything else, we ended up making a whole module about it, it's really good to hear that you're doing lots of observational drawing, now you're doing it the right way around, it's absolutely absolutely the right way around. Because that observational drawing is really going to feed your illustration work, it's going to make your illustration work much much stronger. So you're doing it the right way round. So I

Tania:

think it's, you've got to try and take photographs in your head, how many to draw from imagination, it depends what you define as imagination. Because it's, it can be kind of, you have nothing to work on. If you don't give yourself a little bit of help, you need some visual reference to go to the imagination section. Maybe you should try drawing, taking your observational drawings, and then going home and redrawing them when you're not actually there. I mean, that's one way of training your brain up. Another one is, if you need something like a bicycle in your drawing, have a quick look at a bicycle, make it really small on the computer screen or outside of the world. Imagine you're taking a photo of it, then go back in and draw it. I mean, they will they'll be a bit cranky to begin with. But that's just how it is. Isn't it charming as well. Yeah, they do have their own charm. But they no one likes a perfectly drawn horse or bicycle.

Helen:

The problem is, is when you've got when you're drawing from life, it's so you're against the clock in some way you're against the clock, because if you say you're drawing a bicycle, somebody could get on the bike and ride off any minute. Or you might be another people's with it. You just might there's always a sense of urgency when you're drawing from life. And so those drawings will be full of energy. And then when do you decide this is those dreaded word final illustration. That is all I have to make the bicycle really good now. And that's the death of that bicycle drawing. So you need to sort of click Keep your playful hat on to be able to do that. And

Tania:

now I was thinking I said photographs. And it's one of our golden rules, isn't it don't draw from photographs. But all we mean is have a quick, a

Helen:

quick look and then look away and then draw it, maybe even draw it with the wrong hand like just do something that makes it feel easy and playful, quick look, look away, see what you remembered. Draw it again, choose the best out of five very fast drawings,

Tania:

or squint at things or look at things from a very long distance all the detail is cut out. And you just get an overall impression that's really good for drawing people if you overcoming the fear of drawing fingers. Give yourself as little information as possible. So yeah, long distance and squinty eyes always works. You're always getting

Katie:

muscle memory, don't you like and sometimes I really struggled to draw something and then I'll draw it from observation. And I'm gonna go to draw it on a job, but I don't have that observation. In my brain, I can kinda remember what it looks like when my hand remembers how to do it. Really perspective and stuff. Like a compelling of an example. Sometimes I'll see a really nice roof in my brain. I'm like, Why didn't draw on the roof. Like when I used to play guitar, I'd be like sitting there like I'm practicing guitar, but I wasn't doing as it's in my head.

Helen:

I do that as well. Sometimes if I see something really lovely that I would like to draw, but I don't have my sketchbook and pencils. I draw it in my head. The lines are in my head. I'm imagining how I would draw it.

Katie:

I'm thinking specifically of like rooftops in Amsterdam,

Helen:

you'd be all

Katie:

roughed up, but like no sketchbook

Helen:

I'm thinking of when pie was small when she was little in the gorgeous shapes of toddlers heads, you know, the lovely, the bit the back of their head and the shape of their cheeks and everything and be staring us I think I should be drawing this and I haven't got a pencil. I'm just gonna draw it in my head. And I would imagine how the pencil would move.

Katie:

I think it still counts. Yeah,

Helen:

I think it does. It's practice in a way.

Tania:

So it's really memory, isn't it? It's trying to improve your photographic memory. It's like exercises in the gym. Just sort of keep training up try and remember things.

Helen:

When I was early days in my illustration, I'm always talking about this. But in that time where I was first working as an illustrator, and I wasn't I was taking so much advice that I actually wasn't really like Can my work anymore. And so I took some time out. And I remembered that the time I was happiest was when I was drawing in sketchbooks and I went and started doing that again. And then I thought there must be a bridge between this sketchbook work and illustration work for a book. And I don't like the illustration work I've done before. But I've learned so much during that I've learned what makes a lovable character, what kind of faces and eyes I like to use how I like to draw hands. But I don't really like how I'm doing it like I was, it was just getting flatter and brighter and flatter and brighter, because that's what I was being asked to do. So I had to work out a bridge between the observational drawing and the illustration, so that the illustrations still felt as free as the sketchbook work. So yeah, I took some time out and worked out a bridge between the two. And then in the course, we have a whole module about it, don't wait bridging the gap. It's called

Katie:

because it is a really common thing. And also like tricking yourself into doing final artwork without seeing those words, those words, death knell,

Tania:

you've got lots of tips and lots of our contributors in in the course give their own takes on that as well. The different techniques are used to create so

Helen:

to call them it is a film in the course. And that's full of good advice for that, isn't it? Yeah.

Tania:

And Marian do chars, do lots of them, piecing them together, all those kinds of things, and you can see how it works for them, people just develop their own ways you

Katie:

want to work around. So that's the fascinating thing about talking to other illustrators, is seeing how they've cobbled together their own way of working. And there were even ways of starting working like I remember, a friend Jules Patton talking about like, she would just do really, really loud music sort of distract herself enough to start working on a genius and it works like if he was best music really loudly. You can't think like, oh, I'm

Tania:

really scared to jump in a cold river. Straight outta control strap yourself is the adult version of the trunk and artist, isn't it? Yeah, because get yourself out of the way

Katie:

absent.

Helen:

Kind of removing yourself from it. I think that's why observational drawing is so much easier because because you kind of you, you're out in the wild and you're up against it, the weather might change, people might walk away, you kind of forget yourself, you're just like, I am here to draw, I've just got to get it down on the paper and you don't worry too much. And when, as an illustrator, I find I need to also get myself out of the way like send the critical eye the one that wants to finish everything too much send her out so that the other bit can get on with the playful stuff

Tania:

that's in that question, as well as the she's talking about hating what she does. And seeing that you do kind of need to get your bad voices out of your head.

Katie:

You need to play the really loud music to drown out there. But you can carry on making some work.

Tania:

Yeah, be kinder to yourself and fight and find the play in it as well.

Helen:

Because

Katie:

there's a there's two modes, isn't it? Does it making stuff mode and critiquing it mode and you're almost when it completely mute critiquing, while you're making it? Yeah.

Helen:

And that's a habit, that's something that you can learn and that that becomes a habit. So the way you work is always like that it's you switch into that brain mode in every interview that we've done with everybody for the courses, and we've interviewed loads of our favorite illustrators, almost all of those chats with start with the person saying, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what other illustrators do. So I don't know if I'm doing it right. Which is so good to hear. Because it means we all kind of learn these things in our own way. We cobbled together a method, and it works for us. And you assume everybody else has an answer, but actually everybody else is just cobbled together a way of their own as well. And

Tania:

comfortingly. Their ways are often the same. You know, we're all in the same ballpark. At the end of the day. Some people have yet loud music, like little details that make it different. But the way people do things and come up with the best answer is the way we all kind of do it. Yeah. As long as you do lots of it. That makes it work. Working out your mistakes as you go along.

Katie:

Yeah.

Tania:

Have you got that nice testimonial?

Katie:

testimonial? Yes. 100% recommend this course it has helped so much with creative block, and really enjoying trying new things again, and not worrying about messing it up. Hurray. Yeah,

Tania:

yeah, that's exactly it, isn't it? You've got enough drawings to not care whether some of them don't work. It really doesn't matter. Yeah.

Katie:

It's gonna be a good one in there somewhere.

Helen:

Was it you said? You said once to get your website? Yeah, get the bad drawings out of the way. Yeah, yeah. I

Katie:

gotta do so many bad drawings.

Tania:

It's like the no thank yous, isn't it? You've got to plow through the negative stuff and you're guaranteed you will get some winners out of it. Yeah.

Katie:

Do you think it's possible to draw every single day and not get better at drawing? It's probably not possible that it's not No, it can't be like just draw every day. No one has to see the next problem.

Helen:

Okay, so of course doors are open that close on Friday art club, and for anybody doesn't know we don't run Art Club. Every week we do special pop up ones. And if you don't want to miss our club, then join our mailing list and we'll always get a heads up.

Katie:

Lovely to see you there.

Tania:

Okay, bye bye bye bye