Remember drawing for...fun? 😅 what is that?

Deadlines... yeah yeah yeahhh, but what about doing illustration stuff just for YOU!?
This week we chat about squishing in personal projects when client work always feels much more urgent.

We are gathering ourselves after a very exciting Illustration Business Club launch. 

Phew! Definitely time for fun non-worky projects around here.

(Rough) Timestamps if you want to skip to a certain bit

• 00:00 Question: “How do you make time for personal artwork?”
• 01:00 Why deadlines are easier than self-led projects
• 02:00 Fine art drive vs. illustration mindset
• 03:00 Projects we have managed to finish (and why)
• 05:00 Creativity that doesn’t look like ‘work’
• 07:00 You’re probably doing more than you realise
• 08:00 The power of art clubs + sketching friends
• 09:00 Big projects that turn into ‘scratch records’
• 10:00 Permission to make things simple (or stop entirely)
• 12:00 Sorting hat trick for choosing ideas
• 14:00 Productivity
• 16:00 Parking ideas and bullet journaling
• 18:00 Craft supplies, hoarding, and deferring projects
• 20:00 New paints, new studios, more art clubs
• 21:00 Psssst...you’re probably already doing more than you think

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

Sept 4
===

[00:00:00] 

welcome, welcome. This week we've got a brilliant question and it goes, um, I am very motivated by other people's expectations and deadlines, but I find it hard to prioritize the ideas and projects that are more for me. How do you three make room for more playful personal artwork? Hope you haven't tackled this already.

If so, I will re-listen. Would love to hear about studio spaces too. We did studio spaces, talked about that. Couple of podcasts back, but let's tackle trying to do personal projects. Yeah. I'm very motivated by other people's deadlines and things as well. Maybe all illustrators are like other, yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Publish a deadline, editorial map deadlines, and your actual event deadline. Yeah. Yeah. But I dunno. Yeah, I, I go through phases of being able to make work for its own sake and then I'll run out of energy or like that idea that I had that motivates me to do some self mated, self-motivated, self mated, self [00:01:00] motivated stuff.

I like, it runs its course and then. I don't do any for ages until something like really, really grabs me. I, nothing's grab me like that for quite a while. I mean, I have vague ideas that I would like to do, but am I in deficient? So that's my excuse. Can you can't, you'd so newly iron deficient. You just newly I know.

I'm gonna blame it on that. Everyone has to first have their iron levels checked. Yeah. Then, and then if you can't, don't worry. Just do the jobs. Yeah. But I think this touch is quite close to that. Awkward, fine art illustration division. The people who are really motivated to do their own thing, I think are more likely to be fine artists.

I know it sounds a bit kind of lumping to say that because there's lots of other aspects that make you a fine artist versus a commercial artist, but that sort of drive to pursue your own playful wackiness or particular ideas, [00:02:00] whatever it might it might be. Whereas like having come from that side in the beginning, and I really didn't like it when I'd finished my BA in painting and printmaking.

I say, I don't know anything about the world. I can't imagine what is really important for me to say. Strangely, for quite a gobby person, I didn't think I had a lot to say or to contribute visually and I didn't know whether I could make work just on that. And that's when illustration and design was like that.

I wanna work with other people. Solving a problem, working with them on a kind of, it made it more real to be involved in problem solving or working in partnership with other people. So it's really hard to go back to, my idea is enough. You know, I, I think in the world of picture books, my idea is the work.

Yeah. Like sure is. I'm so inspired by making that book that I don't feel the need to have something else that is more me on the side, because that is [00:03:00] it. These are two projects that I've got really motivated with on the side. Now I think about it, we're both kind of. Public facing too. So the walk to see sketch booking from life, I, I love doing it and sharing it.

Really, really liked sharing it and started that hashtag and everything. Yeah. And then the Childhood Illustrated thing, that was inspired by my childhood and wanting to investigate it, but also asking other people to join in with it. So usually if I have a really strong self, self-motivated project, I wanna get hold of, I wanna share it with everybody immediately.

So maybe that's the illustrator in me, I don't know. Yeah. But communicate a bit. I want to do it with other people. I always forget that bits when you look enviously at picture book illustrators who have birthed the whole idea, especially author illustrators, you're right, that is entirely your idea. It's like being a film director.

The self-belief required to sustain you throughout the production of a book and all the people behind it who luckily will support you and [00:04:00] they're the ones cheering you on, you working with them. But it is. Purely your idea, isn't it? You're satisfied. You don't need to do anything more. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing I really like doing on the side and always do do on the side, but I don't consider it work, is making flags and silly tapestries and like needle worky things.

I feel like that's just meditation on the side that's not work related, and I don't feel the need to show everybody that. Yeah. What about you, Katie? I don't even know. I'm sitting here like, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the work that I do with clients is very not personal, fun project, but then I think I get the funness out of like writing more and more.

Like even just writing on substack and doing, or like doing a silly, drawing a sketchbook and then taking a photo book and put it in Instagram. Is more fun than anything else. And it's not planned. And I'm not like right now I am making time for fun. It is time [00:05:00] to do the fun work. It's like it just spills out and I can't help but do it.

And I think if you've had fun doing it and then you share it, people can smell that. And they can smell that you haven't, it's not convoluted and you've spent ages trying to have a good time. But I do wish I drew more for fun 'cause I used to draw more for fun all the time. It's difficult when drawing is your business.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's really difficult to say. Right. Let's have some, some fun doing it now. When you think I'd probably like to go, what? So a flag or ferment some. Cabbage or whatever it is that Thank you, enjoy doing. But your other thing, Katie, is learning lots. You're always doing courses. I mean, for the rest of it, it's like, oh God, of course I've got a limber up to it.

And then not forget about it and leave it. But you, you just consume them. Yeah, I do. And also the way I read, like, uh, so somebody talking about reading with a packet of post-it notes and a pen beside them, and I've started doing that and it's, it's so much fun. You are always excited by learning and you are [00:06:00] excited by creative tasks, like making a real, like really short little editing jobs where you make something funny.

And I feel that sort of thing. Like try and like communicating something in a new way. Yeah. Or, or learning a thing and making it easy, easier to understand. I think that's the theme of all my work is like, yeah, taking all the big information and then spit it out in a way that's less overwhelming. Which is creative.

So like this is another avenue your creativity is used. I think we've all got a certain amount of creativity in us and we use it in different ways. This communicator. So I, with this person, I feel like this person is actually feeling bad for not doing their stuff on their side, but you probably are without realizing, yeah.

Maybe you are a reader or maybe you're a course taker like Katie who loves learning and passing information on. Maybe you're so in on the side and you've talked about this, Helen, like you can't not be creative. Like even if you take time off, yeah. You'll end up channeling your creativity and Yeah, I'll decide, right?

I am gonna make, uh, [00:07:00] banner and I'm supposed to be taking time off, but the creativity just like sneaks out or like just gets out somewhere else, doesn't it? It's pretty exciting. In Tanya's house and like everywhere in the house, you can see that Tanya has had fun, like the, like we've got a tour of the plant shelf and Tanya's Illustrated plant is.

Enormous. And there are tools hanging on the outside of her house now that look exactly like a Tanya illustration. And I said, Tanya, look how you've hung the tools on the side of there. And she said, oh, do you think? I said, they look exactly like one of your illustrations. It looks so good. You maybe homemaking is is some of it, isn't it?

I think it is. You know, yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm wondering whether this person asking the question wants some good solid ideas as well. Mm-hmm. And the other one that I've noticed with a friend who, um, or illustrated friend who used to say, I don't know how you can have, how do you have the energy at the end of the day, even though you really want to, the spirit is willing.

And I've noticed now he's joined a sketches club and they're all guys of a certain [00:08:00] age and they all go out drawing and they go on holidays abroad, drawing only four or five of them. And they say, we have great chats, which is really nice. 'cause men need great chats at a certain age with, with other men.

That may not be you, dear question asker, but I think teaming up with people you like just to, oh, oh, that's a really good idea. A kind of fun, even if you don't draw that weekend, but what, or that Wednesday afternoon that you put aside once a month to go out with your mates drawing. That's a good way of kind of, it's like going to the gym with a friend, isn't it?

It's like art club as well. Yes. I love it when we decide to do an art club because we draw and we're drawing with everybody, so it feels really good fun and it's really low pressure. Yeah. I've got, um, a, an albatross project that Katie and Helen know about, and the other day they told me, why don't you just not do it?

I was just outage. I thought, are they trying to double bluff me? They're trying to provoke me. They've planned this because it's something I've been banging on about for ages and as an illustrator. Obviously you are looking for commercial [00:09:00] projects. I'm like, this is my big retirement project that will make money.

And I'm engaged with it and I like the creative aspect, but I've turned it into a big thing in my head, which it really doesn't need to be. I need Katie and Helen standing behind me going, make it easy. Just make it. Sometimes that happens, like I became absolutely certain that I was gonna learn Procreate Dreams.

You took. Yeah. We all believed me. I was desperate to. I really wanted to and I just didn't. And I didn't. And I didn't. And now I thought, I dunno where that came from. I don't, it wasn't. Was, maybe it was something I felt like I should do or maybe it's because I said I was gonna do it, then I rebelled against it.

'cause I do that quite often. Yeah. You rebelled against yourself publicly. I want to do it like some of the air is let out of the balloon then like it's almost like I did it because I said it and everybody admired me for saying it. That was it. I didn't need to do it. But you think you're holding yourself accountable by telling everyone, so it guarantees it will happen.

All is just sound like a scratched record in your own head and [00:10:00] people say, how's that map going? Oh, I've just really only done the black and white bit so far after two years. Was it? My version of that is a mural in my studio when I moved into my first studio. Four years ago, I was like, I can paint something on the wall.

And then I moved into this new, bigger one. I'm like, I can paint something on the wall, but it's the same thing. It's a scratch record. I'm like, I'm never gonna do it. I should just stop saying that to myself or just do it today or that afternoon. Just like this afternoon. This is it. Exactly. And I try and talk about it with Cameron and he is like, Ooh, I dunno.

And I'm like, no, you right. No, it's not the helpful discussion I need. Oh, well, I realized this weekend I've just turned into a lady Sunday painter, and that's where I'm getting my creative buzz. Sit in the garden with an asters and do a little water cart. It feels nice. Those Anter paintings. Yeah, they're lovely.

It felt really nice doing it. I just said, is it actually as simple as this like art club is? Mm-hmm. All you need is 20 minutes and some stuff around and have a bit of a scribble. And the other one. [00:11:00] It's like maybe you could take a holiday or go on a residency. That's the other version, isn't it?

Urban sketches I used when I lived in Newcastle many, many years ago. Urban sketching was amazing. Was it, did you get motivated by being with them and doing that? Yeah, because again, it's the, it's like the gym thing. You know? People are going there. You feel weirdly like you should turn up. Yeah. Because you said you will.

And then you get there and you have to start drawing and then 'cause you started, you actually enjoy it. And because it's buildings, I felt that really, like the building is there and I will draw this building. I can see you've got the direction there. Yeah. Like Noss. Although, yeah, buildings and Nats are easy.

It's human bodies that really let you down. Mm-hmm. Of course. Avoid the people. I think the thing that makes me really sad when I see illustrators asking each other, say in the Facebook group, you often see people saying, how do I know which idea I should do? I get so many ideas and then I get bored of them and I don't, or I lose faith in them and I don't believe anymore.

Then I wait for another idea to come along. And I think that's the one. [00:12:00] That's such a typical illustrator's quandary, isn't it? And they're totally not alone. Mm-hmm. I find out that you feel you must do something, so you have loads of ideas. You don't know which one to do, and then they all sort of dissipate and I think a list is good for that. And sometimes I play that trick where I go, okay, I've written a list of things I have to do, so I'm gonna choose that one. And then immediately do I feel like disappointment. And if I feel disappointment that I selected that one, then that is definitely not the one and I've got to cross that out.

And if I don't feel like doing it today, I probably won't feel like it tomorrow either. So maybe that's like bottom of the list. Yeah. This is your sorting hat, it's kind of short of sorting hat. Yeah. It's like yesterday Pi bought, uh, this is my teenage daughter, she bought a bag for school and it arrived.

And I really know with her that if she doesn't immediately pack it with her school things and plan to take it to school next day, she will never use it. And she unpacked it and put it on the chair and then didn't empty her other bag into it. And I said, do you like it? And she said, yeah. And I said, are you gonna [00:13:00] use it?

And she said, yeah, I don't know. I said, do you wanna use it tomorrow? And she said, no. I said, we're gonna return it then, aren't we? And I feel like the list is like that. If we don't feel like it today, are we really gonna feel like it in 10 days time or so? Maybe you just forget about that one. If it's not a today job, maybe it's not a job at all.

That could be a really good service. Right. People just call you up. Yeah. I tell about things they're excited about. Tell one, one. Yes. You know, you just ask them all the how, the sorting hat questions. Yeah. And you get them to come to understand what they do. And don't do Tanya. Do Tanya, do you feel like doing the MAP project today?

You took too long to go. I've got some other plans, but you don't make me give up on it. I've invested so much time. Tanya, do you feel like, uh, Katie, do you feel like drawing the mural today? No. Maybe you do sleep on it. Okay. We're never doing either. I'm not doing pro great dreams either. I don't feel like it to do it.

It's not happening. Just lay them to rest and move on. Mm-hmm. And, and like, don't [00:14:00] beat yourself up. 'cause I think everyone feels like this, that we should be permanently motion and productive. And that Oliver Burman book isn't that we think if we are productive, it is a measure of our right to exist in the world.

Our value, our self-esteem. Yeah. Value and all of that. And it can get really tied up, particularly with women who. Sorry to the men that are listening, but our multitasking skills are pretty phenomenal and we can just exist like a whirling dervish doing everything all at once. At some point you've just gotta stop.

Yeah. I found it really like I took August off in theory, but I found it so hard to stop. Yeah. And I love time off. I love sleeping, I love having baths and things, but taking time properly off has felt so uncomfortable this month. And I think it's 'cause I was, when you're in that momentum of getting loads of things done and doing loads of things and being really busy and juggling all, and then you stop, you're almost like.

I kept feeling like, oh, I've forgotten something. And I was like, no, I'm off. I'm off. And I have [00:15:00] lost my entire identity. Yeah, like how much is tied up with like getting stuff done and doing the things and then when you don't have that, it feels really uncomfortable even with a small child who needs you all the time.

Which still blows my mind that you do all of those things and you're a mom. And so even when you stop doing all of those things and the small person needs you all the time, you still felt that discomfort of like, oh, do I even exist? Yeah. I mean she's, she's off now, so it's easier to not have my own feelings.

And when she was at nursery, I had too much time to think. So I remember you said that in your reel, didn't you? Something about Right. Let's stop work now. Oh God no. I can hear my own thoughts. Great. Let's get back to it. It's get back. Horrible. Don't do that. All the women I know are workaholics. I think society encourages it a lot and rewards it.

Yeah. Do lots of, lots of doing lots of workaholic things as well, but especially women who used to looking after kids and everything else. I'll probably get lots of hate [00:16:00] now. Sorry man. You do work hard too. Hashtag not all men.

So yeah, just do the things you want to do. Helen said you've got permission. Only pick up the stuff that you're excited about. I like your car park idea as well. If your head is absolutely flooded with with ideas, what do you do? Just park it, put it in a car park until it, you'll come back to it.

And then if you don't, that's fine. But I used to love that about bullet journaling. I don't do it so much now, but I used to be obsessed and you know, every day make a list of what you're gonna do and if you don't do it, you carry it over to the next day. And it's brilliant 'cause by like day four of transferring this blimming task, you're like, why am I writing this out again?

It, why haven't I done it four days in a row? And it sometimes people are like, actually I don't need to do it. I'm not gonna do it. And just cross it out. And that was good. Mm. Yeah. I think I have mine bullet journal here thing it. I've been writing this map 150 times. I still don't seem to know that that's the [00:17:00] sign of a problem.

I just watched a YouTube video at the weekend about every weekend there's this thing on this, uh, she's called Spacemaker Method and she helps people sort out their flats and houses of stuff. They're not quite hoarders, but they're getting there. Yeah. And in the most recent one that I watched at the weekend, it was a person with absolutely loads of bullet journal stuff.

Oh no. Like she could barely move enough lap. Please send me the link. I want to watch this one. Did she have a kit that she bought to help the bullet journaling? Did she have what, when you say it was full, full of bullet journaling stuff, was it the stuff she was supposed to do or are there kits like crafters have to help their bullet journaling, like lots of books.

Books of stickers. I think all varieties of bullet journaling it and some of them had had one or two pages filled in and some non, she just had tons of. This lady had not no permission to film me. I did not consent to that film. How did she get into my studio? [00:18:00] That's really bad though. I didn't think bullet journaling stuff could take up so much room.

I thought you were talking about the results of No, not the, of the bullet bulletin and just the bullet journals, but also in these in, and I'll watch quite a lot about hoarders houses as well. It makes me feel like I'm really tidy. It does something good to me. It makes me feel like I've had a pat on the head at the end because at least I'm not there.

And um, it's amazing how many hoarders are near hoarder have collections of I can't find the word for it, but creative stuff for making things or craft, no, this is craft supplies. Yes. And candle making equipment. Huge amount of candle making equipment. And when are they doing it? Like a wet, a rainy afternoon and you've got all this stuff. Well, they're not doing it in the houses. I've gone really, really off track. I'm aware, but I'm doing, you should start watching it.

It's really interesting. It's obviously creative people. This is what made me think of it. It's always creative. People get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they collect in order to start [00:19:00] the project and then never do the project. Oh yeah. That's deferment behavior, isn't it? Mm-hmm. That you buy all the kit.

It's also the version of, what is it? All the gear. No idea. And then you feel like you fulfilled it. I know people very close to me in this house used to do things like that by professional level equipment rather than entry level equipment or any equipment at all for a new project idea. Oh. I mean, that's just mad.

I think it's just another category to get people to shift a load of money in the act of self-actualization, self-realization that you are more than just, there's the whole like gym equipment stuff as well, isn't there? Yeah. Buy all the equipment and then I'm gonna get fit and then completely ignore it.

Yeah. There's probably that, like the discomfort of not having work to do that uncomfortable feeling like stuff it with craft supplies. Mm-hmm. I couldn't like when you're talking about like, whoa, that make you feel back? Next exact. That's August for you next year, Kate. Wow. Well, I've just got a new big pack of paints from [00:20:00] Cass Arts, so I'm very excited.

I've got back to building up my painting equipment. We need to have an art club soon. 'cause to use it. Yeah. Now I've got a new studio. I'm buying Kit to fill it. Let's get some dates in the diary for art clubs. We need some art clubs. Yeah, absolutely. GPI is peeled. We'll email you about them. Yeah. Good luck with your personal projects.

Get down to them. If you can't ask Kalan to come and validate them. Good luck with your craft supplies. You're probably already doing fun projects and not realizing. Maybe it's, I like that. Get out clause. Yeah, you already are. Okay. For now. Byebye