The Good Ship Illustration

“Help! I found my illustration style… and I don’t like it” 😩

• The Good Ship Illustration • Season 10 • Episode 25

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Have you ever looked at your own work and thought… egh? When you work so hard to find your style* it can feel rubbish to realise you don't even LIKE IT 😅.

*We're not big fans of the word style...but we have to use it so you know what we're on about. We have a WHOLE ENTIRE COURSE about finding your creative voice & flying your freak flag.

This episode is allll about not-holding-the-bar-of-soap-too-tight.

It's also about:

  • What to do when your style feels a bit too safe or mainstream
  • Why being too “good at drawing” can trap you
  • How to bring more you into your work
  • Whether you need to know colour theory to be a proper illustrator


⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Lisa's brilliant question: “What if I don’t like my style?”
01:00 – Mainstream, safe, and not-quite-right: spotting the signs
03:00 – Flying your freak flag vs. pleasing the market
05:00 – Chris Haughton’s unusual route into publishing
07:00 – Why being “good at drawing” isn’t always helpful
09:00 – Getting stuck in the gun-for-hire trap
11:00 – Why clients want you, not your many styles
12:00 – Freya asks: do you need to know the colour wheel?
14:00 – Digital colour vs. painty messes
17:00 – How limitations can make your colour sing
20:00 – Create a family of colours (and avoid shouty guests)
21:00 – Final thoughts: soap metaphors & colour play

🔗 Links mentioned:

Plus, coming soon we have a Chris-Haughton-treat for your ears. Stay tuned for that.

Byeeee for now!
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 🎙

June -  Don't hold the bar of soap too tight
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[00:00:00] We've got a question from Lisa who says. I think I'm finding my style. This is great, but I don't like it. It's a bit too normal, mainstream, I think ga, I don't know. But I suppose my question is, what can you do if you don't like your style? Oh, I really love that question. Found my, I've found my style. I don't like it.

What a downer. After all that work. She obviously hasn't found her style 'cause you can't have found your style, but not like it. It's, you've obviously done a lot of work towards it, but you're not there yet. If you're still dissatisfied, there must be something about it wasn't there. That's not quite, that's gonna [00:01:00] be, she's at a staging post.

Yeah. All you gotta do now is figure out what it is you don't like about it. Yeah. And she said it was a, did she say she saw it normal? A bit normal. I love that word. Mainstream. Normal. It's a bit normal. I love the word normal. So good. Maybe, maybe there's been too much influence of stuff she's seen. Do you think that could be what it's It's a bit too normal.

I wonder if she's got exciting things that she would like to say and she d say them so it looks too polite or exciting ways of drawing that thriller. And for some reason she's scared of them. Because say a normal means, it sort of means safe, doesn't it? Does it mean safe? Yeah. So maybe she's just not, maybe she's worried about expressing completely what the work really is.

Yeah. Perhaps it's pe It's like people pleasing, I'm gonna be an illustrator, I've seen an illustration, it looks like this, and that's what I'm gonna make. And then you realize you, you've got yourself nowhere. So maybe you've gotta look at what is it that you don't like about it that. Like you said, either you're depicting things in a straightforward, literal [00:02:00] way.

Are you being too literal or is it that it's got no texture, for example, and you think, what if this was much more juicy with an interesting line or an interesting texture? So maybe go and look up those things and find out what you like. What is it you actually like, and maybe you're not doing it in your work.

It makes me think of two discussions that we had recently with people on the good ship. So when we were doing our one-on-one mentoring, we had that fantastic illustrator who does really graphic abstract, beautiful design-led color stuff. Was that Emma Polone? Yeah. Her gorgeous, gorgeous work. But then when we looked at her website, and she won't mind us saying this, 'cause we chatted to her about it and she was, she said, yes, yes, this is spot on.

We looked on our website and in amongst all of the really brave, abstract, beautiful color, not all of it was abstract. Some of it was really beautiful, big chunky animals constructed out of collage. Anyway, there were [00:03:00] some drawings on the website that they're not there now. 'cause I went and had a look the other day to see if she took our advice that were ~they, ~they were normal.

Yes. They were kind of not as exciting as the other work because. It looked like she'd looked at the world of picture books and thought, I,~ um,~ publishers want backgrounds and therefore I need to,~ um,~ she'd kind of overworked some drawings and we asked her whether she felt that's what publishers will want rather than what she does.

And she said that was, that's exactly it. And we said, take that off the website. 'cause I think publishers you, that might be your perception, but I think publishers will be much more excited about the work the way it is naturally. And I think that's a trap you can fall into, isn't it? Of thinking you're working towards what you think the market wants.

Yeah. Rather than being truly yourself and having fun and making images. You want that. The market goes, oh God, that's interesting. That's exciting. Maybe you could try and squeeze that into whatever it's editorial or picture book, but [00:04:00] you've gotta make the work and signpost it first rather than trying to please art directors.

That's what the freak flag's all about, isn't it? Like flying your freak flag is being yourself first. Yeah. And you being so yourself and so comfortable is magnetic. Yeah. Rather than being like, do you like this? And we were talking to Chris Horton the other night, weren't we? On the, on the Zoom call And he was saying that when he first decided he would like to get into children's books, he went to Bologna.

And he saw that most of the UK publishers at the time, and I remember this 'cause I was starting out then too, ~were ~were quite safe. And a lot of it was watercolor and ink. And he knew his work wasn't like that and he didn't think he could fit in there. So instead of thinking, well, how can I change my work to fit in there, he just went and looked on a wide, for a wider.

He, he looked at publishers from all over the world instead of trying to fit into the British market. So he got his first book published with a Korean publisher and then. A British [00:05:00] publisher saw it ~and, ~and was willing to take the risk. It was completely different, really different to anything else that was being published. Very unusual, but they took the risk and so he's, he's remained himself, he's kept his voice and he hasn't tried to be something, but he wasn't.

I love that it was so clear cut, because Chris's work was completely different to what was in the market. You knock, like you say, you knock on enough doors until the Korean, the kind of creative progressive Korean publisher says, yes, I'll do it. Then it appears on all the markets I wrote, and no one can get enough of Chris's work.

Now he's almost redefined what Children's picture books can be. Or based on what you might think would be quite an abstract approach. And in many ways it was like Emma's work. Mm. That the woman we were talking about earlier, her, those images were very singular. Like just an elephant made outta bits of paper or just a coffee pot.

And those were the ones that worked very kind of sophisticated but playful images that you wouldn't immediately think would be in Chi Children's picture books. [00:06:00] And Chris is,~ um,~ Chris is much the same. So really doing what you love and what's playful and what excites you. You know, it shows through the work and that's what people want to use.

It stands out as well so much, doesn't it? Like Chris's work is unmistakably Chris's work. Mm-hmm. ~Like ~if he'd tried to be what he thought the publishers might like, probably wouldn't have heard of him. ~Mm-hmm. ~Yeah. It's a mindset thing, isn't it? When you approach illustration as a vocational career rather than approaching it as creativity.

And then, I mean, that's why we do freak flag on its own first, no talk about business. 'cause the moment you let those thoughts creep in, and like you say, am I doing it right? Do you like it like this? Would you use me if I did it like this? If I changed it a bit more? Perhaps you'd give me a job. Those thoughts just kill the creativity.

So you kind of have to do it in secret, in a cupboard where no one can see. And that's where the, you know, the exciting work comes from. So back to the, ~the, ~the question originally, what is it you would want to [00:07:00] do rather than making yourself into an illustrator that's market ready? Because that's just not really gonna work, is it?

Mm mm. Yeah, that's just such a good question. It's really like the way she worded it. What was the other bit? It was,~ uh,~ I used to think that I just needed to be the best drawer and then I'd be able to be a picture book illustrator, et cetera. So about that thing of what is good, do you have to be the best just, and what is a good drawing anyway, have to be the best drawer?

That's a really good question as well. 'cause,~ uh,~ it is difficult to know whether that person means, do they consider good drawing to be technically correct, drawing or realistic drawing. What is good drawing? That's a massive question. It's like when you show a relative and they're like, oh, that must have taken hours.

It's so good. It's good because it took ages. It's not good because it's quirky or really related to you and how you see, well, it's drawing language, isn't it? And if even if you don't draw, it still goes back to someone like Chris Horton or [00:08:00] Emma's collages. There's not a huge amount of drawing in Emma's collage.

It's If you look at people who are drawing through, ripping up bits of paper, their images are visually exciting because they're brave and playful. They're not trying to depict reality perfectly.

It's a, it's an attempt to reinterpret reality through your, you know, through how you feel about what you're looking at. And. I think perfect drawings just kill things, don't they? Mm-hmm. You don't need to be ~a, ~a literal, technical, perfect draft person to make illustration. In fact, it could really hinder you.

Yeah. Well we have a lot of people who arrive on our Find Your Creative Voice course who can draw technically, brilliantly. They've maybe learned it at art school and, but then they've come out of art school stuck. 'cause their work looks like everybody else who can draw perfectly technically. Um, it's just boring and they feel trapped by it.

I'm not saying that that work is generally boring. There's some great work like that. But if you feel [00:09:00] trapped by it, if you don't feel like you're expressing yourself, then obviously it's not right for you. And we have quite a lot of people like that in the course, don't we? Who come to try and wriggle out of that trap of the work is only good if it's drawn technically correctly.

It's finding that bridge, isn't it? Yeah. Like you say, wriggle out of the trap and find the bridge between, what is it you want to say? What images do you want to depict and how do you bring your personality into that? Are you just saying, here, look, here's a picture of three people by a fountain with a dog.

~Mm. ~Or is this a, a picture of three, two weird people and ~a, ~a beautiful kind of playful child and the dog jumping into the fountain action is happening. ~Mm. ~Impossible. Things that you couldn't necessarily draw and you are bringing some new dynamic to it, some new creativity. It's finding your creativity, isn't it?

Beyond drawing. ~Mm-hmm. ~There's that thing as well. If you get really good, if you are technically really good and you can't do any style, and you fall into the, the trap or whatever, the thing of when a client is like, oh, [00:10:00] you're really easy to work with and you can do anything, we'll just get you to do this now.

We'll just get you to do that now. But it's not got the satisfaction of being contacted because you are the person who does. X, you're just like, what they call it a gun for hire. Like they'll just be like, we need somebody to draw a picture. So and so's on the books. And it's been easy to work with. I dunno, I think people that I've spoken to who are in that, they're like, yeah, I'm getting a decent amount of work, but I'm, I feel so unsatisfied.

I feel like creatively trapped. ~Mm-hmm. ~So the failure, your freak flag and flapping, it can help you get out with that thing as well. I think the idea is to obviously to be clearly yourself so that you can't be asked to bend into all these different, all these different shapes for art directors in Hong Kong, that would happen a lot.

And there were certain illustrators that had four or five styles that they did really well and they were what you'd think expensive premium styles, very airbrushed, very kind of technically correct. And they could offer all of those. And it's almost like quite an old fashioned [00:11:00] model of illustration of being a commercial artist.

But now I think you need a brand, you need a personality in your work that's very clear and super memorable. Yeah. And also clients knowing what they're gonna get from you is helpful. Mm. Because if you've got loads of stuff going on on your website and somebody gets in touch, then you panicked, don't you?

~Mm. ~Or which, which thing did you like the look of? ~Mm-hmm. ~It even within your own work, it's always good, isn't it? To say, can you tell me which image made you contact me? Yeah. Because we are all slight variance, micro variance, even within our portfolio. And you want to know ~what, ~what style of you do they want or what version, but you Yeah.

Going back to the question, you don't need to be the great drawer ~to, ~to do well in illustration, if anything, if the drawing is holding you back. And that might relate to the first question as well, that she feels her style is boring. Is it? ~Is, ~is I'd love to see the work we need to see properly to answer this and be useful, but I'm just guessing.

Have we [00:12:00] got another question? Yes. Let me see. This is a good one for you Tanya. It's from Freya, and she says, do you need to understand or use the color wheel or color theory to be an illustrator? I feel like lots of how-to books talk about color wheel theory, but I tend to just work intuitively and have never looked at a color wheel.

Am I missing out? Also, do you decide on your color palette or mix watches before starting a piece of work, or do you just work intuitively? Thanks. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. It relates really well to ~the other, ~the other questions as well about, ~you know, ~figurative color and painting things. ~The color, ~the color that you see them.

But in answer to your question for you absolutely don't need to know the color wheel. And it's helpful if you do, and it's super easy. The whole thing, the, the language and the way it's termed makes it sound like it's something hugely complicated and scientific is not at all, is very simple. ~Um, ~but you can do without it.

And I think having lots of, having an [00:13:00] intuitive sense to color. Is part of your personality and part of your signature style, but sometimes it can lead you a strain. You end up bringing more and more color into an image because you haven't got a plan, like anything like composition or like sketching out an image.

You have to have a plan first. So I think it's a really good idea to have some swatches and decide what feeling your illustration needs in terms of color. That's what I would always do. I'd either think, I love these colors on this bag I bought the other day. How can I force them into an illustration? So I'd either be inspired by something I own or.

And doing maps. There's an awful lot of blue and green in a map and it keeps returning to that. So I was always trying to find ways to avoid that. So I would plan color specifically, and if the map, obviously maps are about places, and I would think about the feeling of a place like Mexico would feel really different to Norway and I would create color swatches based on [00:14:00] the, what I was trying to convey about that landscape.

And it's quite inspiring, making some color swatches and playing around. It gets you all kind of revved up and ready to work. But we talk lots about color on both courses ~and, ~and, uh, color courses actually planned as well where you can develop your own color identity. And you've got a, there's the free workshop too, isn't there?

Oh, of course. Yeah. We've got the freebie color workshop. If you go onto our website under freebie's, there's ~um, uh, ~yeah, the color workshop that I inflicted on Katie and Helen. But we had so much fun inflicted, oh my God, it was so brilliant. That workshop. After we'd done that workshop, I just lay white awake at night for like three nights just thinking about color.

I just couldn't stop. It was just running through my mind all the time. I was so excited by it. 'cause I've always just worked instinctively, just used a, I'd pick a really minimal palette, sticks with it, stick with that palette for the whole book, obviously, so that all the spreads hang together. But I'd always just chosen it.[00:15:00] 

Kind. Well, not a random. I always chose a, a red and a yellow and a blue, and anything I could mix from those three tubes of paint. That was it. That's what I always did. ~Um, ~but after your workshop I, oh, it just blew my mind to see the kind of neutral colors that seemed like nothing. Yeah. And then when you stick them with, um, so at one point we were mixing blue and orange, for example, and then you get some neutral kind of grays and you stick those grays next to the orange or the blue, and it's like, whoa.

They really pop. Was it mushroom colors, wasn't it Bob? Yeah. Oh, nice. Incredible. So now, yeah, I, your color workshop changed everything for me, like for the next book after that I was like, workshop I need to put into action. And it's not difficult either, is it? It was just, I just had my eyes open to this other way of looking at color.

I think it, it's a really simple way of looking at it, but also because everyone sort of says there's so much digital work now and you can pick any color in the [00:16:00] sweet shop that you want. So the usually you would think, well, I want all bright clean colors, or as strong as you can get them, please. Yeah, put them all together.

And it's like being trapped in a room full of shouty people and you wonder why they're not working. But because you don't mix digital color, you don't get dirty colors and it's quite hard to decide to choose a dirty neutral so you don't trip over these accidental color combinations that you would if you are painting and you haven't got much paint left and you can't be bothered to pour more out.

So you mix another color that's already there and end up with an accidental grge. ~You'd, ~you'd use that because you have to, 'cause it's physically there. So I think our approach to color is entirely changed based on digital color because no one will willingly pick those kind of things. So there's, you don't see quite, you don't often see in digital painting really organic, natural colors the way you would see them, I dunno, on an old textile or a Moroccan [00:17:00] mosaic, because that was all that you could get.

~And our, ~and our mixing abilities gave us a, a different set of choices that can actually be more beautiful, more creative, have more sense of humanity. I dunno, they're just more organic. Digital can push you into a really fake technical color range, which is great if you're dealing with images that require that.

But if you're trying to convey something else which is softer or more gentle or more natural, I. It's quite counterintuitive to try and do that with a digital palette. That's why you have to make swatches so that you train yourself and say, I'm not going to move beyond these force watches. I'll keep it limited, as Helen says.

So a book can remain consistent. Or as an illustrator, your portfolio remains relatively consistent. But if you can choose anything in the sweet shop, you can often roll out of control. So maybe it's a good idea if you work digitally to mix the colors on a piece of paper in the old fashioned way with paint, and then maybe take [00:18:00] a scan or a photo of that and then use your eyedropper tool to take out the colors that you're gonna use.

Yeah. Do you do that? No, I have done that. Yeah. That's what I've been thinking. To avoid the digital trap. Mm. I mean, you can do lots of nice things with digital, but with the color workshop showing you how. Neutrals are actually nice. If you can take that in your brain to your iPad or to Photoshop and remember to practice it, you get, yeah, you can get those nicer colors.

Well, nicer. That's a bit subjective, isn't it? It's so nice to get off your screen though as well, isn't it? Get your pencil andro around, make a palette and then take it into the iPad or whatever if you want to. Yeah,~ it's,~ it's a good way, just rather than saying, let's pick all the juicy bright colors from the color wheel.

'cause I can Yeah. But even just starting with the color wheel is, is a really, is an interesting place to play with colors because if you just say you can only have diagonal, uh, what, you can only have what's opposite on the color wheel to begin with. And then next time you say you can only have the neighbors [00:19:00] on the color wheel and you can create different palettes that way.

I remember when we were at college, we were taught. And I'm gonna do this. I think on the color course you got blue and an orange and you had to mix 10 little percentages of each till they met in the middle. Mm. And it took a whole morning. Mm-hmm. I remember sitting in foundation course doing this thinking, why are we doing this?

This seems so, but it was a brilliant discipline and to learn how complimentary colors to meet in the middle and what a range you have between. And it makes them all harmonious. And you can use all of the colors that you've created from two, just two paints. You can use all of those in one image and it will hold together and not, not kind of jar.

~Mm-hmm. ~Yeah. I like that. 'cause I think, um, if you limit your palette, 'cause I work, well, I'm back to working now. I did go through quite a big digital phase, but I'm back to working on paper again. I really like to limit my palette to three tubes of paint. And then if I want green, I can't then bring in a different yellow or a different [00:20:00] blue.

To make that green, I have to use the yellow and the blue. I've got. And if that's too bright, then I need to take the edge off it with the red or the orange or whatever my warm color is. And so, 'cause you're not bringing in another pigment from somewhere else, you can mix all of the colors. If I'm picking one blue, one orange, one yellow can mix all of the colors.

But they've all got together, they've got their own kind of palette and you can't leave that palette. And so they all hang together, EV, every color you can mix from them hangs together. Yeah. So nicely. Which is why when you think of painters like. Bonard and VR as well, who all used, you know, they had limited, limited paints.

They probably, I would imagine as painters, they could probably buy any pigment they wanted. But you can see those paintings work because they have worked from a core group of pigments and not invited anything from the outside. It's like family, isn't it? You create a family [00:21:00] of related colors. ~Mm. ~And uh, it will jar if you bring something totally unrelated into it.

Mm-hmm. So what was the question again? Do you need to know the color will? Yeah. So you, I think learn the glance at the rules. Yeah. Do the color workshop because it's free anyway. And then forget everything you've learned. Carry on. It's like with everything you say, Katie, don't hold the bar of soap too tight.

Yeah. Let it wash over your brain. And then you probably remember some good bits. I think we show the color wheel on that for about. All of four minutes, then you're done. Yeah. Then it's 25 minutes just mixing paints and having a lovely time and coming up with great ideas from your colors. Mm. We'll put the link in the show notes so you can look at it.

~Mm, ~yeah. Okay. Bye-Bye. See you next week. Bye.

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