The joy of not finishing (all) your online courses

Quick note before we start:
In this episode we use the words "women" and "creative women" but we know these things don’t just affect women, and not everyone relates to binary gender labels. This chat is based on our lived experience and isn’t meant to exclude anyone. You’re always welcome aboard, however you identify. WE LUV YA. 

xx Good Ship

How many unfinished online courses have you signed up for and then abandoned or forgotten about them? 

👀 

Yep, us too. 

Oh well.

In this episode, we’re talking about why creative women often don’t finish - or even start - the online courses they sign up for. 

Before you run away, please know this: it’s not laziness. It’s ✨life✨. And maybe the course still helped by osmosis, even if you only managed to watch one video.

• The guilt of not finishing courses (and why it’s rubbish)
• How art courses can still be useful EVEN if you just skim them
• Community, confidence, and cheerleaders
• Why we’ve never ever chased people to “complete” our Good Ship courses
• Our 1:1 mentoring competition winners (congratulatioooons Rachael, Emma, Jacqui & Catiebell!)
• Bias in picture books
• Thoughts on why creative women sign up more than men

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Soooo… do you finish your art courses?
• 01:30 – Skimming, skipping, and still getting value
• 03:00 – Courses as permission slips and energy boosts
• 04:00 – Lifetime access = a soft place to land
• 05:30 – The joy of community (and a few sneaky sales mentions)
• 07:00 – Meet the new picture book mentees!
• 08:00 – Why women take more courses (and don’t finish them)
• 10:00 – Editorial vs picture book world: who gets seen?
• 13:00 – AI, weird shall illustrations, and missing credits
• 14:00 – Where are all the obvious places illustrators get seen now?

See you soon!

x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania) 🚢

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

May -  Why Creative Women Don't Finish or even Start the art courses
===

[00:00:00] Hello? Yeah. Hi. I just read a really good substack. And it's called Why Creative Women Don't Finish or even Start the art courses they bought online.

I thought this would be brilliant because we've all bought courses and not finished them, haven't we? I've got cupboards full of them. I'm still buying courses and not finishing them and you know, I'm not even sorry about it. I was gonna say that. Do you worry if you don't finish it? 

There's there's part of me that's always like, I should make a list of all these courses I've joined so that I remember I've joined them and go back to look at them. I don't think I feel bad 'cause I always. I sign up 'cause I'm really [00:01:00] excited about something here. Maybe just one element of it, it's the energy of it.

I'm like, oh yes, that's really cool. And then I'll do a bit of the course and then life happens or I get distracted or, but I always feel like I've got something out of it, even if I've only done a tiny bit. Yeah, me too. I've signed up for courses and not finished them, but I've done enough of them that felt ah yes, this kind of, what's the, I was gonna say quenched the itch.

That's not right. Is it your arms? You're right. It does quench the itch. It quenches the itch, but sometimes it, like, it affirms your commitment to an idea and something you want to learn or do a bit like sharpening your pencil or buy buying new kit. It's a really expensive way sometimes of affirming your commitment to an idea.

But if you just start and you do some of it and it gets you on the road, that's fine. I did that really brilliant Menekse Stewart, um, SEO one, and it was a brilliant course, but I kind of surfaced, like watched it quite quickly [00:02:00] just taking off the stuff that was quick and easy for me to understand and did that and then never looked back at the course, but it felt worthwhile.

I felt like I'd skimmed off what I was capable of doing there, and then I put it into action. Seems to be working good. That's all you need. Yeah. You done. It's fine. I didn't wanna dig any deeper than that. I didn't wanna hurt my brain too much. I got what I wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, you know, they're a cheerleader.

Um, Manka is, I think for three of us, she's a cheerleader in that sense. I've signed up for it said, a year of content in one day. Did you do it? Well? I think I, I did. Well, hell, I creamed the bits off the top, but it was great because I worked out a strategy. It kickstarted me into doing something instead of being overwhelmed.

And she was like. Yeah, it, it was good. I didn't do it all, but it's all there and I will go back to it. Famous last words. Do you go back to half finished courses ever? I do. I think it's like favorite books. I have favorite courses or so like Leoni Dawson, uh, I love [00:03:00] the way she teaches and anytime I'm feeling really stuck or in Leone's words, got my head up my butt about something, I'll just go and watch like anything, anything from it.

And then I'm just, it like releases whatever. I was like, Ooh, I need to do it perfectly. Like that just is gone and I can get on with what I was doing. Well, I think I need, yeah, I might need a leoni bit of advice, but I've never completed, I don't think I've ever completed a course. Wow. Yeah. We have lots of people on saying, I'm back for the third time and I never got to the end, but I've got further each time.

And that's kind of the perfect course for you. And it's a, it's a nice recommendation for us. Yeah. That someone says, I will keep coming back to you. 'cause that's just what you're saying about Leoni. If there's a kind of touchstone for your life, someone who'll connect you back into your, in your intentions just by being in their orbit.

If we are that to someone. Oh, so you might, it's a good place to meet other people who want to do what you're doing as well. The community around that course might be brilliant. And make friends. You mean you became friends with Leoni from doing her course, didn't [00:04:00] you? We're gonna hang out next week in real life.

Go to Australia, Alice. So excited. But yeah, that's another, yeah, the community thing. And also I think being in courses like that where you do go back, you realize how nice it is to have lifetime access. Yes. Mm-hmm. And before we started this podcast, Helen was like, I don't want it to be a sales pitch. And it's not.

But the reason we're doing the lifetime access thing is because of that. 'cause we'd all done courses and had that experience where you think, oh, I'm ready. I've got some time. I'm gonna learn that thing now. And you go to login, it's like access expired. You have to pay another 600 pounds to see the thing.

Yeah. That just. The ick a lot. Never wanted to do that to people. Mm, no. It seems so unfair. And, you know, those, those communities have sort of built friendships, even though we are not a hundred percent comfortable about staying on Facebook, that group is working really well for people who do, who are prepared to go on Facebook and we need to find somewhere else or in another place to build community for the future.

But there's a good, good ship, good good ship community, isn't there? [00:05:00] Yeah, lots of friendship groups and people going out, sketching together and meetups and, and we've made so many friends from all of our students on a good ship as well, haven't we? We know when you're looking at. Like we've just done the one-to-one mentoring course.

We've just been looking at the entries and Tanya had selected a shortlist of people that she was excited about and we've just been looking at those and all the names were like, oh, we know, we know them from art club. From the early days, there were students who'd been with Freak Flag as almost founder members and you know, some of them are on Facebook groups and you see them submitting and trying and trying different things and asking the community, what do you think of this and how is this working?

And seeing people commit so hard to their work and be open for feedback is so lovely. Because that community is helping them as well as a one-to-one mentoring. And it was really hard to choose who to help. It was hard. We were supposed to choose three, but we've got four in the end. We've done that before with the one-on-one picture book mentoring.

I couldn't choose three. It was just too hard. We chose four and then [00:06:00] we've got a nice shortlist as well that will give those people a shout out. 'cause you feel bad about the people you didn't pick because there's so many amazing people we didn't pick because perhaps they just weren't at the right stage, like too far on and we didn't know how to help them.

They're just publishable now. Yeah. So I also wanted to choose people where the, their question, because we asked people to submit their work and a question where their question would be applicable to lots of people in the course.

Yes. So we, so it was nice to pick three. Very different, actually, we picked four in the end, four very different questions with four very different types of work. So basically I want, I just want people to know that we probably looked at your work and loved it, but it, yeah. Choosing the winners was just not just the best work we saw.

It was the people who we definitely knew we could help. And in helping them, we would help a lot of people in the course. Should we name the winners and we can make, because we've got them written [00:07:00] down, haven't we?

We could, couldn't we have, you've got this. I'm gonna find the piece of paper

it was Rachel Bay Hooray and Emma Trip.

We and Jackie MoVI. Yeah. Brilliant. It's a really good selection. Isn't, yeah, well done everyone. Yeah. And this runners up as well, so if you get runner ups ones those uppers, they're gonna be, we're gonna send an email. Yeah. And we're gonna put their work out on email. So if you want to see what the winners work look like, or the runner ups work look like, you can, you know, just sign up and we'll send it all out so everyone can see their work.

And even better, if you're in the Find your creative voice, fly your Freak flag course, you'll get to see the actual one-to-one session. 'cause we. We do the one-to-one mentoring with all four of these people and then we share it in the course so that everyone can benefit from it. Yeah, it's like a group tutorial, isn't it?

​

So going back to courses, part of that [00:08:00] article was about, it wasn't just, why do people sign up for courses, but why do women sign up for courses and not finish them? Which is interesting, isn't it? I wonder if you get more women sign up for courses because they feel the need for that badge of, I dunno, that you're not capable unless you've done the course.

Maybe not quite as confident to just go out there. What do you think? Like a confidence boost? Yeah, I would say, and maybe women take time out of their career more often than men do, so maybe to get back in, they like to. There's also the social aspect, like the community thing is really nice, especially for illustration and art.

Like you're by yourself, like just painting and drawing, thinking, oh, hope this is okay. Whereas if you've got somewhere to bounce ideas off people, that's helpful. I would've loved to have had that community when I lived in Hong Kong, it was really 20 years. I had a couple of friends who were illustrators, but it was quite a lonely environment, and that was a long while after college.

And all the time thinking, am I even pricing [00:09:00] things right? You know how just needing your work to have a bit of a kick up the bum by some interaction with other people, which is what we got when we all met together in Berwick. I was like, wow, community. This is exciting for the business side and for the creative side.

But yeah, I think a lot of women who have, you know, who leave work to have children, that that gap then makes 'em consider what it was they wanted to do and it's harder to get back into. What you were doing after having children. Mm. And it kind of, it's the perfect moment, isn't it? To reconsider. We have a lot of people who are at art college probably went into a quick job to do, do something, to bring in an income life.

Took them off in that direction. They had children and then they're like, Hey, didn't I do an illustration ba at some point? Maybe I should try and get back to that. A lot of women say that. Mm mm We, we hardly had any men sign up for the course in the beginning. Do you remember? Yeah. Barely any. I would get big look, look a man.

What's going on? [00:10:00] How did he get, we had that man who joined one of the Zoom calls early on and said, Ooh, lovely ladies or something, didn't he? He was removed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we've quite a few. Yeah, it's good. We're getting more of a mix now. Yeah. It's nice and it's nice to see how. Weirdly, the work is slightly different.

You can see different concerns coming through in male illustrators and female illustrators. I'd love to know like how much of it is like just the way women are socialized growing up and how much is like an actual thing that you, you just are. Mm. What you mean in terms of doing the courses or the, or how it impacts on your work.

Do courses, your work, like just what makes men and women different? I dunno. It's fascinating because, I mean, illustration courses as I remember them, were at least 50% male, 50% female. Mm-hmm. Possibly more male than female, but now I think. The numbers seem to have changed a lot. It seems a more female dominated career, but I dunno whether that's because we are looking at it quite often through the [00:11:00] prism of picture book, world Picture Books is definitely, there are a lot more women making picture books, but proportionally a lot more men getting the attention and winning the prizes.

Oh, there, thats a whole podcast in its own. There was a brilliant post about that, wasn't it? There was it? Oh, it was so good, wasn't it? I'll link Who started that chat on Instagram? It was on the Orange Beak Instagram, but she'd shared it from somewhere else. Okay. And I've forgotten the name of the person, but we'll, we'll put that underneath the podcast. But that was a brilliant chat, really good chat about the possible reasons why within Picture books, the very few men that they are, get a lot of attention and win a lot of prizes.

Yeah. Really interesting challenge. And also the, no one really knows what the fees are like and whether there is equality in fees between Yeah, I would love to know. Yeah, I think you see a lot more men in, um, editorial or you would do, but the fees are, the fees in editorial a lot though are now, and I think a lot of illustrators used to see magazines as the place to, you know, break, [00:12:00] start your career.

'cause you get the public, you know, you get the exposure from magazine credits, but now the fees are low. It's not a, a living wage kind of activity. You've gotta mix it in with other stuff. So you see a lot of men in, um, working in design areas, you know, illustration for design. Illustration for packaging.

I wonder whether you do get your name out there as an illustrated by doing editorial now because, um, printed, yeah. Media doesn't get, there are magazines on, don't have the distribution they used to have. I don't know whether even it's a, I mean it's a bit of experience, but you probably.

Um, don't get the, what's the word? The exposure. Exposure that you would've got in the nineties or two thousands. Do you still, do you still read magazines of any type? No. Do you Katie any print magazines? Nope. But there was, I was a Cameron's Granny's house and she had a People's Friend magazine and I was like, oh, these are really inter, like, not interesting, like interesting in a bad way.

Illustrations. I was like, I wonder who these are [00:13:00] by, and there was no credit for any of the illustrations, but it turns out they were all ai, ai. And I was, I felt a bit sick for like a week after that because I was like, people's friends used to be like watercolors and quaint old lady images. And that was just like an AI generated thing of a, you know, snow cap.

Swiss Shalls. Shall Yeah, shalls. Um, if that's, if they went straight to AI that quickly, imagine what their fees would've been prior to that. It's probably like 15 quid for an illustration. I've already saving like 20 quids, but using ai. Do you buy any magazines, Tanya? No, I don't think I do. Oh no. We do actually we do have, um, Jerry buys, um, a, a printmaking magazine.

It's called Pressing Matters. He loves it. He loves that magazine. He reads it in bed. Yeah. Monthly. So where do credit. Presumably, I mean, I see it in The Guardian and I'll check the credits, digital online newspapers. When I [00:14:00] buy a paperback, I'll often, if it's got an illustration, I'll look and see who it is.

I like reading Creative Boom online and they often feature illustrators, but that's more like about illustration, talking about the illustrator. It's not like an article. Mm. So you're right. Really, the old world of editorial being a free calling card Mm. Doesn't really happen anymore. Wow. I was reading an old illustration that, is it The Fundamentals of Illustration book?

And it was like, you must be in an annual, and I was like, I don't remember the last thing I saw. I do. They still exist. I don't know they exist anymore. This would lead us to our next podcast. We went, the question sent in from Emily who said, uh, yeah, where do you. How do you find clients? And she said, you know, using, um, annuals and things like that.

So let's talk about that on the next one because this is really interesting. Mm-hmm. Where have all the obvious places gone where illustrators names get seen? That's good. We'll talk about that next week, shall okay? Yeah. Alright. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye bye.

[00:15:00]