I want to be an illustrator but I have 2 small children and a part-time job. Is it possible?
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Hello. Hi. Another good question. This is from Chelsea, who asks, or says, would love some advice goal wise for those of us still holding part time jobs and two small kids under five trying to transition to an illustration career. Is it even possible? I'm feeling impatient and a bit trapped.

Oh, that sounds like a tricky time of life to be trying to achieve anything, even helping the children survive or get dressed or brush your hair. So I think if you're going to try it, you should do it in a very low [00:01:00] pressure way. Little children are like more than a full time job. Yeah. Yeah. Most people go to work and say, thank God for that.

This is much less exhausting than parenting at home. So she has a part time job and two children. So the part time job, when you get home from that, imagine you come in the house, There's two children they've been looked after by somebody else, the house is a bit of a mess, food might be needed. You definitely can't start working then.

Maybe you'll be able to carve out a couple of hours in a week. Maybe you could set your goals very low. Like, instead of I am starting this career, maybe it is I will carve out two hours per week to make some work. That's what I'm thinking. Goal wise, maybe it's starting to just produce little bits of work for yourself.

You And, and allow that to build up over a year and see if there's a few pieces in there at the end of the year that you think roughly constitutes a portfolio or something I'd put on a website, but just maybe play for fun, relate it to your life. I [00:02:00] know that you probably won't escape from all of those things, but even if it is drawing the kids or listening to what they talk about and responding to that in illustration, that might be fun rather than thinking, I'll set myself a brief or I'll take lots of courses.

Yeah, being really kind to yourself as well, because I think it's so, when you said you're feeling a bit trapped, I think that's really common and people are scared to say it, aren't they? Because having small children, it's such a big full time, 24 7, you've always got to be their thing. You start to be a bit like, I just want to do my own thing again.

So being really kind to yourself, and yeah, like Tanya said, like carving out time. The annoying thing with that is carving out time is, you know, Wake up earlier, like, what? With a small child. Or stay up late, like, oh no, sacrifice, doom scrolling or Netflix time. Like, you need that. Yeah, sometimes I think you do need that, just zone out.

You've been in your part time job, you've put some food on the table, you do need to zone out and you have to accept that. Those are not times where you're going to [00:03:00] feel like working and that's fine. Also, little kids are not that, I know it feels like they're going to be little. Your life has completely changed, they're going to be little for a long time.

It's amazing how quick Yeah, it whizzes by. Time things move on. Before you know it, they're going to be at school and then you've got those hours during the day while they're at school. So, yeah, if I was you, I'd just do it in a very low pressure way. Don't set your goals too high, be realistic about it.

Don't give up on it though. It's definitely a plan and don't beat yourself up for not doing enough That's the worst thing if you if you ask too much of yourself, then you'll think oh, this isn't working And I'm never gonna be an illustrator But if you you know, it's a small bit of work Maybe you work 20 minutes every day and no more than that either on individual pieces or on a piece that you build up But perhaps just yeah keeping your drawing going at first.

I mean, that's the most important thing is sketchbooking and drawing. So you build a more confident way of visualizing and drawing. You get a voice for yourself that you feel more at ease with. [00:04:00] Chelsea in the question didn't mention what a part time job is, but that's a potential tweak that she could make if she, if the job she has doesn't allow for any sketchbooking, you could try and find a part time job that is either, you know, sitting around waiting.

Like I'm imagining like this is random, working at a petrol station or something, they always seem to be just sitting on their phones. I'm like, that's the ideal job for somebody's sketchbooking. You could be drawing everything around you or like a job where you don't use any brain cells. and you're just kind of on standby mode.

Yeah, there's a lot to be said for those kinds of jobs that don't sound very exciting, but they give you yourself back rather than doing a big, worthwhile, exhausting job. Like a receptionist. Ideal. What do they do? Nothing. A receptionist in a super quiet place. We're going to get so many emails, Katie. You, you can, you can answer all these emails from receptionists and petrol stations.

Hashtag not all receptionists. Yeah. I also remember, I don't want to. It sounds like we're all kind of saying, set your goals very low, this is going to be really hard. But I do remember when [00:05:00] Pi was born, it was one of the most creative times of my life. I remember just being so inspired by all the stuff she did and said.

that it completely transformed my picture books. Instead of being an illustrator who just thought about only the pictures and making the pictures as nice as possible and not worrying about the story. After reading to her, I realized, Oh, I know this sounds so silly. I've made so many books and it's a bit embarrassing to admit it, but after she was born and I'd read a lots of books, I thought the book has to work on all levels, who'd have thought the story and the picture have to, those pictures have to work together and be amazing.

And, I found it really, really inspiring. It was hard to get a lot of work done, but it really, really fed my brain and I came out the other side of it a better illustrator because of it. So you got a PhD in picture book research, basically, and that's valid, isn't it? Call the reading of the storybooks at night, ask research.

Yeah. But then I wonder whether the, the person who's asked the question, when they're talking about a [00:06:00] career as an illustrator, I wonder what career they want, do they mean picture book or? Did they mention? They might've said editorial. Did they? Yes. That rings a bell. Yeah. Let's open that question again.

Or did we imagine that? Have a look. Let's see. Hmm. Hmm. No, just an illustration career. Oh, okay. So that could be anything really. I'd say with two small children, a part time job, avoid editorial. Yeah, I was thinking that. Anything with short term deadlines and quick turnarounds. And low fees. They're not great fees in editorial, I think.

So I think it's like, what is building your career as an illustrator? Presumably this is the Building your skills in it as an illustrator before you build your career, because if you, unless you've got a portfolio that you're ready to show and look for work, I wonder which stage she's at, because it would be easier to be building up your work, wouldn't it?

Spend a little time, you know, you could do one week, say, where all you do is look at color. and you create colour palettes [00:07:00] every night. Just nice, low pressure, easy things, but it's super valuable. You could do all the freebies on our website, because then we're just leading her by the hand to these small projects that don't take very long, but keep her hand in.

That's a good idea. Yeah. Uplevel your colour palettes, lay out a picture book. Do a character workshop. Yeah, go on the freebie page on our website, and there's something for all different kinds of illustrators and lots of little projects that all kind of link together. And just take as long as you want to.

Maybe you just do half of a project one evening and the second half another evening. It could also be that thing, you know, when, when you are squashed for time and you've got a lot of pressure on you, sometimes you get really motivated and that's when you do your best work. So, I remember, so, My child, try not to say her name, is two and a half now, but we did the business course, that was what, she'd be one and a half and the only way for me to have time to like make the course or get anything done was to get up at five in the morning [00:08:00] and go into the studio.

I was really, I was buzzing to do it and it was. It felt like that was like stealing back my pre baby life a bit and being like, yeah, go, go, go. And then just like talking about business and then going back to, back home for breakfast with everyone, which is now saying it out loud and that's mad. I think so when you've got a goal like that and you're really, really motivated to do it, and you know that this is short term, this isn't going to go on beyond like three months or something.

When you've really focused, those kinds of goals can be really achievable. If you carried on trying to do that forever, you would have a nervous breakdown. When it's a short. motivated period of time. I think that's good. Also when Pi was born, before Pi was born, when I had all the time in the world to illustrate, I took all the time in the world to illustrate.

Yeah. A book would take me forever. The whole flat was basically a studio. Every bit of the flat was, there were bits of paper on the floor. I would stand on little bits of paper I'd cut out and get into bed and the bed would be full of bits of paper, like my whole [00:09:00] life and everything was just work. But then after she was born, that was not possible.

And I had to fit my work into very, Neat little sections of time. I had a friend who had a baby at the same time, she'd come to my flat, take Pi out for a couple of hours, I would do the same for her, and we knew we had those couple of hours to swap where we could work, and I worked so hard, never did as much work in those couple of hours.

than I did before Pi was born. So it's, it can be useful. Yeah. Because I think projects expand to fill the time you've got. I noticed when I was doing, when I was a regular contributor to a magazine and I did this map every month, I would finish the map at six o'clock on a Friday. It would just naturally finish.

And I think I started to learn my capacity to do things in a given time. And after a few times saying, yeah, I'm only going to do three days on this, you start to work that way. And you don't give it any more time because you haven't got that. [00:10:00] And that's a much better way of working, instead of thinking, this could be better, I'll give it another day, I could improve it, it could be better than this.

It's kind of the worst mindset, isn't it? You need less time, and do what you can with what you've got. Yeah, that's really good advice. Do what you can, in the time you've got, with the skills you've got. That's it. That's all you can do. That's doing your best. Yeah. Who's the the lovely illustrator who draws stories about her little boy and she's on our picture book course.

Is it Polly Dunbar? Yes, Polly Dunbar. Love her stuff. That's a really good example of trying to, of combining your life, the life that's around you and your desire to draw and to tell stories. Yeah, look up Polly Dunbar's work and her little drawings of her son on her Instagram are just beautiful. They're brilliant.

Yeah. Okay. Well, good luck. Maybe, maybe you could let us know how this goes. We want to know what happens. You could do it unless you don't want too much because you don't have to. Maybe don't get up at five. Yeah. Okay. Bye. Bye.

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