Play, OR ELSE 🎲 | Summer camp sketchbook week 4

Pssst, this episode was originally published in 2023 and we’re sharing it again as part of our Good Ship Summer Camp series. It’s one of five episodes to help you fly your freak flag this summer. If you’d like to join in properly, there’s a free workbook an' everything!

You can download the workbook here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/workbook 

Feeling stuck? Procrastinating wildly? Hiyaaa this week's episode is for you.

PLAY!! It’s not optional. It can trick you into making your best work, and we are going to show you how to sneak it into your creative routine (even when you’re hiding from your sketchbook).

In this episode:

• Why play isn’t just fluff, it’s a very necessary illustration fuel
• Sneaky ways to outsmart your inner procrastinator
• Fake deadlines
• Making up your own artist residency (Tania-style)
• Colour workshops, art clubs, and triple reverse psychology
• Getting into “the zone” via flags, bush digging, or hot chocolate
• One treat per timer session 🍫

Want to join in with our summer camp?
Download the free workbook here

Timestamps:
0:00 – Welcome to Day 4: Play, or else!
1:09 – Why play is the secret sauce for good work
3:04 – Fear of starting and how to ease into it
4:15 – Urgency, novelty, and fake deadlines
5:16 – Tania’s Barcelona residency (ahem, made-up)
6:09 – Playing with colour: the colour workshop 🎨
6:42 – Being kind to yourself vs bullying yourself into work
7:08 – Treats, timers, and starting small
8:12 – Getting into the zone (flags, bush digging, Blindboy)
9:31 – Action step: do an art club session with us!
10:22 – Course doors close soon + one-to-one feedback info
11:04 – Last episode of the series tomorrow!

Links mentioned:
📖 Download the free workbook
🎨 The Colour Workshop (free)
🎧 Watch an Art Club on Instagram
📺 Watch Art Clubs on YouTube
📚 Find Your Creative Voice – Fly Your Freak Flag course Doors are open right now! Come on iiiiin! Be lovely to have you sailing with us.
🎧 Blindboy Podcast

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 🎙

Transcript

Tania  0:00  
Hi. We are the good ship illustration, and we run online courses to help illustrators and image makers navigate a creative career. We are Tanya

Helen  0:09  
Katie and Helen. We have about 70 years experience between us, each of us working in a different area of illustration.

Katie  0:16  
Welcome to this mini series. Find your creative voice. This week, we're digging into practical, powerful steps to help you find your way of working, finding your creative voice and your confidence and fly in your freak flag, if you like what you hear. The doors are now open for our eight week online course, find your creative voice, fly your freak flag, and would love to see you in there. Just visit www dot thegoship illustration.com/freak, flag, or you can just Google freak flag course and ta da, there we are, and you can read all about it. Hello, welcome back. This is number four, and it is play. Or else

Unknown Speaker  0:49  
that sounds fun, you're

Tania  0:52  
gonna make a really good parent. Katie, no, play is key to everything, isn't

Helen  0:59  
it? Oh, it really is play mindset, like tricking yourself into ways of doing things that feel more fun. Is it's just like the key to everything in life generally,

Katie  1:09  
isn't it? Yeah, and when you see something good that you like, chances are the person who made it was having fun when they made it, because that oozes out of the work. Like sometimes,

Tania  1:17  
yeah, we always think that work has to be something to be endured, and that's why it looks so tired out and gloomy. This

Helen  1:25  
is, this is all my part of my plan at the moment is to try and make life like a holiday. I'm just all the time trying to tell myself it's a holiday, because I've just taken two months off work, and it was just a lovely, relaxing two months. What happened was other bits of creativity just popped up because there was no pressure. So I got into gardening more, and then I made those good shit flags, and now, like I've just done all these other creative things just popped up around the edges. And so I'm now trying to pretend my whole life is a holiday, and the illustration of pop up kind of more. I'm making no sense,

Tania  2:00  
but we would have to say as well that Helen just works and works and works and not just works, multitasks constantly. So it was quite radical to see her take two months off and not do anything. It was quite a revelation. Right To Do

Helen  2:14  
lists. I went on holiday and lay on a sun bed for 10 days. Didn't move from the sun bed. She never does things like that. Yeah, it was really good. Oh, it was really good. And, you know, I could live like this forever. Now I add this my plan. Is my plan. I saw my agent the other day, and we worked out how the rest of my life can be a holiday.

Tania  2:33  
But drawing playful drawings all the time,

Katie  2:36  
I'm sure it's all fun. And then when you do make new work, it's gonna have sun beams play goodness, exactly yes. Did we get

Helen  2:45  
questions? Yeah, this one we have you've got a question. How do you get over the fear of starting a new image? I feel like I procrastinate. I can't say that word. I feel like I procrastinate a lot before I actually get going. And then it feels like a massive deal when I do, yeah, we've all been there

Tania  3:04  
like, you know, kind of imagining someone having to go on stage. And they say, the nerves that you feel as you stand on the wing, stand in the wings, or throw up in the car park, or whatever it is, before you have to do this thing. But then there's no choice. You're shoved in. But when you're sitting in front of a piece of paper, you can just keep going, oh, I'll just go and wash up and take that washing off as well and hang it out. You kind of need to force yourself into it. So there's either the brutal shoving into the drawing or there's play isn't there, which is a much easier way in.

Helen  3:35  
I always think it's when, whenever we get messages like this, I just think, go and press play on one of our art clubs on good ship, Instagram and do that, and after art club, that's it. All your worries will be gone. You'll want to get on with your work. You're in

Katie  3:48  
the zone. Your hands are warmed up. Yeah, it's like sneaking up on yourself, isn't it? Because if you're having fun messing around, and then you just slide into the work that you're supposed to be doing. It's magic. Maybe

Helen  3:59  
change the place you do the work. Like sometimes in the winter, if it's cold, I put the electric blanket on and I work in bed, and it feels like it's not work because I'm in bed. And then it's really good. It's really nice. You're warm. Sometimes you just change the place where you're working. Sometimes that's it, that tiny

Katie  4:15  
bit of novelty, yeah, can be all you need to kick yourself into work mode, like even going to a cafe or something. And I was like, most people think I'm doing something serious, but I'm drawing pictures, and it's my job. That's always really a nice thing to do, if it's was it novelty or urgency? So if it is, yes, and that's annoying, because with fake deadlines that you set yourself, you have set them yourself, so you know they're not real. But if you can somehow get other people like accountability, maybe something, then that's not very playful, is

Helen  4:41  
it? I really like it. When my publisher give me a deadline, I really like it, and I don't want to know whether it's fake. I don't want them to give me I want them to give me a fake deadline, but not tell me it's a fake deadline.

Tania  4:53  
I can only work to deadlines. So there's a project that I really want to do at the moment, and I can't get myself to sit down. Do it in the same place where I do paid work two deadlines. So I've been applying for arts residencies, and it's like, I'm going to give myself a huge treat if I can get a residency. I've made a fake one up as well, which is going to house it for someone in Barcelona. And I'm going to pretend it's a named residency. It's three weeks.

Speaker 1  5:16  
What you going to name it? We need to think of a good you can come up

Tania  5:19  
with some dark name, and then I have to get the work done in those three weeks. But I really get this question, because I feel my confession would be that I don't do anywhere near enough playful drawing when I do. I really love it, so the only way I can get myself to be playful is when I attend art club. So if I'm at the other end and I'm drawing and not on the comments section, I'm like, Oh, this is brilliant. I totally get why you say I couldn't stop after now. So I stayed after art club and drew for another half an hour. Also. The other thing is, colour workshop is a great way, if that's what I do at the beginning of a job, is just playing with colour, because then I don't worry about what's supposed to be in the images. I just get myself all revved up by putting lovely colour palettes together, which is what we made into the colour workshop, which you can download from the good ship illustration. If you Google good ship illustration, colour workshop, it's free, and it's us playing with colours for an hour. And you it's really good because you basically solve your your colour problems. It makes colour palettes really easy and really personal. They're not off, although it's a kind of theory. It's simple to grasp, and it's not off the peg. You can make your own personal colour palettes from it. And while you're doing that, you just can't stop it's it's super play.

Helen  6:37  
Yeah, it's playful, and it's calm. It's really lovely, it's just a calm activity to do before you start

Katie  6:42  
work. And it's that playfulness thing as well. If you are finding yourself procrastinating loads, it's so hard not to do because, because I've done it where you like, I just can't stop I can't start working. I'm such an idiot, like, why am I procrastinating? But trying to be kind to yourself in a playful way like that can help so much. Because I think when you beat yourself up, you get so much more resistance. And then much more resistance, and then it becomes a whole thing, and it's like, oh my goodness, I can never start there's something wrong with

Helen  7:08  
me. I like what you do sometimes is you, if you don't want to do something, you set the timer, and then you decide at the end of this time session, which might be 10 minutes or something, you've got a treat at the end, like a hot chocolate, or, I don't know, whatever your favourite thing is 20 minutes at your desk treat,

Katie  7:22  
yeah. And sometimes you start. Sometimes it can only be three minutes. And it's just the thing of getting everything together that I need to start was the hardest bit. Once it's all there, I actually quite like drawing. It's almost like I became an illustrator on purpose.

Tania  7:40  
You could do like, 15 minutes. Couldn't you say at the end of it, you can either walk out of the room, or you can stay and if you're really lucky, you could carry on drawing for another 15 minutes. Once you kind of double trick yourself into thinking you're not even supposed to be doing this. Just quickly draw for 15 minutes, and it leads you into the zone. Anyway, you can get into the zone, and you

Katie  7:57  
have to really mean it as well. So when you say, like, we can finish after 15 minutes, you can because if you don't feel like you were like, You know what, I'm it, you were like, You know what? Never mind. And I think that's like, then, you know, it's not just me tricking myself, like, I can just stop if I want. It's like, so much reverse psychology on top of

Tania  8:12  
exactly. It's double, triple reverse psychology. And once you're there, and you can't leave, and everyone's saying it's tea time, I just need to finish this drawing. I can't come down yet because I'm having too much fun. That's where you want to

Helen  8:23  
get I like that bit when we're doing art club and we go quiet, so at the beginning we're all excited. And here's what is it about? 30 minutes and both go quiet, just go silent, because we're both so in the zone,

Tania  8:35  
that the zone thing, do you want to big up your power? Blind Boy, the zone. Do you remember the one where he talks about the zone?

Helen  8:44  
I just absolutely love the blind boy book club podcast. Go and find them. Listen any of them. He talks about creativity a lot, and mental health, and he's just genius. Yeah, he does talk about his own but Tanya, I can't remember exactly what he's talking about. Just

Tania  9:01  
go to blind boy, Google zone.

Helen  9:03  
I think he talks about digging up a bush, about getting in the zone. Yeah, he spent ages and ages digging up a bush, and had never felt happier in months and months because his brain was only focused on one task, taking up a bush. That's like your

Tania  9:17  
flags, isn't it? Now you found a new zone just making flags, you'll be able to see the flags on our website when we put our new pictures up with Helen's flags. So the career

Speaker 1  9:26  
is all I'm doing for the good ship now, needlework flag maker,

Katie  9:31  
but yeah, your action step for the play or else is to play, of course, and a way to do that is to do one of our art clubs. So we were really nice, and we put them all on Instagram so you can watch them afterwards. But they're also on YouTube as well. Because I know some people, you might not use Instagram or whatever, or it's easier to watch it on a big watch it big, you know? I mean, we look like your

Tania  9:51  
friends, because if you put it on a big screen, our heads are the same size as yours, so it's really there.

Helen  9:59  
So we'll see on. On an art club. And also, we're collecting all of these action steps together, all of these steps from this week. We're putting them all into a printable which will be on our website.

Katie  10:08  
Yes, and there's a description to in. The description is a place to download it. And also the final, PS, I promise. It's the last 24 hours of the doors being open. We're very strict about find your creative voice, fly your freak flag. The doors are only open for a week closed,

Helen  10:22  
and we're strict, we're strict and we're lazy, because the admin of opening the doors to get one person in is an absolute nightmare. So when the doors are closed,

Unknown Speaker  10:33  
they're closed. Yeah, it's too decade.

Tania  10:35  
And we're going to have one to one feedback for the first time on this course, we're going to look for maybe two or three people and actually film one to one portfolio feedback, and we'll put that in the course. So if you're part of this, this round, it could be you, yes, you're

Katie  10:51  
gonna be in it to win it, yeah, and it's lifetime access as well, yeah. So we'll see in there hopefully. But there's still one more bit left in our mini series, so we'll see you tomorrow, or whenever you watch the next book, listen to the next bit.

Tania  11:04  
Okay, okay, bye. Happy. Play you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai