Helen Stephens chats to Prof. Martin Salisbury - Is your illustration style really yours? When influence turns into imitation 👀✏️

Ever worried your work looks a bit too much like somebody else’s? 😬 This one’s for youuuu.

In this episode, our Helen chats with the brilliant Martin Salisbury about plagiarism. The temptation to borrow a bit too heavily when you’re surrounded by endless beautiful work online is real. Hopefully this conversation helps you fly your own freak flag :)

Timestamps:

00:00 Hello Martin Salisbury
01:00 Instagram has changed creative influence
03:00 Art school before the internet
04:00 Drawing from life and finding your voice
06:00 Start with drawing
07:00 Materials, experimentation and “botching it”
09:00 How publishers and agents fuel sameness
10:00 Confidence, privilege and access
12:00 Competitions rewarding over-influenced work
14:00 Imitation and lack of awareness
16:00 Copycat styles
18:00 Learning from artists without copying
19:00 Taste, culture and creative voice
20:00 Everyday life and visual language
21:00 Sketchbooks and what’s behind polished work
23:00 School art and loss of originality
26:00 Finding your voice matters
29:00 Awkward work feels more alive
30:00 Writing and drawing from your own ideas
31:00 Trends and short-lived careers
33:00 What publishers want
35:00 Ambition
38:00 Helen’s journey and taking time out
43:00 Place and lived experience in your work
44:00 Moving on from imitation
45:00 Martin’s upcoming book

Martin Salisbury is Professor of Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, where he leads the renowned MA Children's Book Illustration Programme. He has previously chaired the International Jury at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, and been a member of the jury at the Global Illustration Awards in China. Mr Salisbury is the author of a number of books on the practice and theory of illustration, which have been published in numerous languages around the world.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Martin Salisbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profmartinsalisbury/ 

Cambridge School of Art MA in Children’s Book Illustration: https://www.aru.ac.uk/arts-humanities-education-and-social-sciences/cambridge-school-of-art

Martin’s book Illustrator Sketchbooks - https://www.thamesandhudson.com/products/illustrators-sketchbooks?srsltid=AfmBOorX15ljDyYAhbjtRgg0jWBuOL5Gpg0GWh2lMPDwQ5WvkvcGsITj

Martin’s books Children’s Picturebooks and Play Pen - https://www.laurenceking.com/products/childrens-picturebooks-second-edition?srsltid=AfmBOopfucbQXUzJtWZA1WTMWxKntifcuVquG8WpR7vk5GmmSECaHtn0

Find Your Creative Voice: Fly Your Freak Flag with The Good Ship Illustration - https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/freakflag

Byeeee for now!
x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

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✏️ @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

April 3 - Martin Salisbury
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​[00:00:00] 

Welcome to the Good Ship Illustration Podcast, and this week I'd like to welcome Martin Salisbury. He's the founder of the Cambridge School of Art Ma in Illustrating for Children, which I think has changed the face of the picture book industry. So many more diverse and interesting picture books. Have arrived in the world.

Thanks to this course. Martin's written a number of books including Children's Picture books, playpen, and My favorite Illustrator, sketchbooks. I've invited Martin on because a few episodes back we touched on the subject of. The elephant in the room, [00:01:00] which is plagiarism. And that podcast was one of our most listened to episodes ever.

We had a huge amount of chat and engagement and I thought, well, Martin probably knows about this more than anybody. So Martin, as our guest, welcome Martin. Thank you Helen. Good to be here. Thanks for asking me, I asking me to talk about this, um, thorny subject. Yeah, it is. Let's get our teeth into it. We'll.

Dive straight in. So we see so many successful illustrator styles being copied at the moment. Like when I go on Instagram, I see Sues of Rebecca Green's or Laura Carlin, lucky likes. I'm trying to think some of the others. I see lots of me paradise. Shes. Of course nobody does it as good as they do it, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Do you think that the internet and Instagram and how we can just feed our eyes with endless gorgeous illustration has changed how illustrators are finding their creative [00:02:00] voice? Um, yes. It must have done, uh, uh, I mean, I think it's had a, a huge impact and, um, I should say as well, I think that. Quite often when this happens, this kind of stealing, if you like you know, often I, I suspect that people are not entirely aware they're doing it.

It's just such a bombardment of, of imagery out there. There's some that you think, well, it must, this must have been very deliberately done, but. It's tricky because I don't think there's any legal recourses though, because although we call it plagiarism, I don't think within law it can be seen as that because it's just seen as, as sort of, you know, a similar so to speak, style.

But I, well, you know, when I think back to when I was a, a. Student a very, very long time ago. And of course there was no internet at all. I, I was hardly aware of anybody's work. I think I probably was slightly influenced in my [00:03:00] drawing by, um. Paul Hogarth, who had, uh, been a teacher at Cambridge, not with me before my time, but things like that, you know, in terms of composition, but not actually, you know, really trying to copy people.

Um, I mean, what about you as a student? I mean, you were very much a sketchbook person and to me it's, it's, that's where, you know, you start to form your, uh, your voice. Yeah, I was at art school in the nineties, so pre-internet, and when I look back on it, I th I think I, I didn't really know what other illustrators were doing.

You didn't really see them anywhere. You could go in a bookshop and have a nausea at some book covers. I used to go and buy them, or actually not buy it. It was too expensive. But look at the cover of the new scientist and. I just didn't see a lot of illustrators. That's not where my inspiration came from.

I think I used to like trolling through charity shops [00:04:00] and buying books of painters, and sometimes I'd go to the library and they'd have a. Like a, a dead stock bit where you could buy a library book for 10 p and it might be a book of photos of children's doing children doing PE wearing woolly shorts in the 1940s or something.

And I would take those books home and add them to a library of reference of like people doing different things so that I could get the movement right. Um. Yeah, I think influencers came from all sorts of subjects, and yeah, the other part of it, apart from looking what other people do is drawing from life because I think you can discover so much about your natural taste, particularly from drawing from life, because you have no time to overthink.

The, usually you're drawing from life. You're either drawing people and they're moving quickly, or you are out in the wilds and it's about to rain. So the last thing you're thinking of is, oh, what [00:05:00] would, what would my, I'll use the word style. What would my style be? When you're drawing from life, you can't do that, so you get a really good insight into what your natural voice is.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, and it's, I think it's not just that, it's also, you know, when you're drawing from life, especially people in, in everyday environments, you are. You are having to look in a way that, that you don't look when you are, when you're just looking rather than drawing. You know, it's such an intense process of studying behavior, movement, gesture, all that kind of thing.

And, and unconsciously often you are, you are sort of finding out the thing the little things that particularly are important to you, you know? So through that kind of process, I think that's how individual people evolve very differently and evolve their own approach. I mean, that's, that [00:06:00] was the. My thinking behind how I originally designed the, the structure of the MA course in that the first 30% of the course, we don't think about children's book illustration at all.

It's drawing, drawing, drawing, and then thinking about sequence. So, you know, it, it's, it's a way of avoiding diving straight into some sort of preconceived idea of what. Children's illustration should look like, but it's harder for people now, I think. I think that having a preconception of what children's book should look like is something we see on the Good Ship course quite a lot.

And I think taking inspiration from other places, like, I dunno. Album covers photography, your own childhood painters. Where else do we take inspiration from? Things we like, collections from our childhood fashion, weird [00:07:00] obsessions. I think those are all the things that make up make up your style. So I think there's like half of it is who you are as a person and all the things that you like to feed your eyes, not necessarily other illustrators.

And then. The way that you make marks on the paper. I, I always think it's really interesting not to go and learn how to put marks on the paper. We really discourage everybody on the good ship course from going, looking up how to use watercolor, for example, or how to use ink, because I think if you just botch it along yourself, you are gonna have a different voice to somebody who's learned a technique.

So I think botching together, this is the great thing about art school as well is that I had no money and so my art materials were made up of a set of really cheap kids paints and some bingo dabbers and anything that would make a mark. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I know what [00:08:00] you're saying. And I, mm-hmm. I think a lot of our students, uh.

What's the word you used? It's, um, it's a, the botch approach, um, uh, do mix media that, you know, are not technically supposed to be mixed, but yeah, I think the key thing is to, to not be afraid of making bad work. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, or, or sort of fumb fumbling your way through it. But I suppose that leads to another thing whereby a generation or so brought up on, um, digital programs where you can achieve an apparently professional looking kind of finished effect very easily.

Um. But also you, I think, I think accidents are really important, you know, learning from accidents, and I think with digital, the tendency to immediately erase an accident before you've had time to really learn from it, uh, is again, another great [00:09:00] temptation to towards quick solutions. But yes, the a a another issue that occurred to me when you first asked me to talk about this was.

I do think that sometimes that this problem is exacerbated by some publishers and by agents that represent huge, certain agents that represent huge numbers of illustrators. And I imagine probably you get each of them one or two jobs a year or something, you know. And where the, the, the illustrator's work is barely distinguishable from each other.

Um, so you have these kind of sues of illustration with the same shaped eyes and all the rest of it. Yeah, there's, there's an awful lot of things contribute to the issue. I'm thinking about how about that point of some of it coming from the publisher and it, it makes me think about, so [00:10:00] when you get your first meeting with a publisher, if you're lucky enough to get that first meeting.

Um, the publisher wants to be persuaded that this is a good idea. Like they want to have confidence in the person sat in front of them that this is a good idea and they want to feel excited about it. They want to feel like, oh yeah, we really need to do this book. They want to be excited by it. And because then they imagine that the readers will be excited about it.

And so then you think, well, so for the person in the meeting. They want that person to have confidence and to be able to talk about this idea and engage the publisher. And then, so then my thought goes to, so who are the people who are most confident arriving in those meetings? And those are probably people who.

Had time, space, and money as kids to experiment and explore who were supported in that. And [00:11:00] yeah, given a sense of self-confidence in that work. They maybe had tutors at home. They maybe talked about creative and, I dunno, arts and stories and creativity around the dinner table. Maybe they had visitors in those industries.

And so then that means. There are a whole s swat of people, maybe people maybe we're talking about. The people with the confidence are people with more middle class upbringings, um, and they can persuade more easily. So where does it leave all of the people with different stories, new ideas, people pushing the boundaries, stories we haven't heard before.

So I feel as if. It's like a it. I don't really know how this is a problem we can solve. But to do with confidence perhaps? Yeah, definitely. Um, I think a lot of publishers want to, they're very frightened of taking on [00:12:00] something very new for all sorts of reasons, uh, you know, to, to do with getting it past the sales people, uh, who have so much power in, in publishing companies.

But also probably a bit of a jump from what we were talking about, but I think that I've noticed as well in, in big competitions wouldn't, I won't name them specifically, but uh, where there are juries selecting the best. Apparently best work. And I've done a fair bit of that myself over the years.

But I, I'm seeing some things shortlisted that are very clearly I won't say plagiarizing, but are over influenced, shall we say. And I wonder whether some of them, some of the jury members, some of the publishers do actually have the. Knowledge and or the visual literacy, if you like to, to know what they're seeing.

Sometimes [00:13:00] because when they do select something that is so strongly influenced, then it, it's almost like giving a green light to people. There's one very, very big incident. Incidents of that currently hap happening that I didn obviously name, names or anything, but I was absolutely shocked to see a piece of work that, uh, was in that category.

So that certainly doesn't help. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm thinking that if we are seeing those books shortlisted. I see so much of it on the internet. I'm starting to think when I was at art school to be accused of mimicking somebody else's style. It was, it felt like a huge crime. It was really humiliating.

If you, you might not even be conscious, you'd done it. But if somebody pointed it out it was like it was a terrible crime. And it seems, yes. Um, I don't wanna make people feel [00:14:00] shamed, but it seems that that feeling isn't there anymore. Well, I wonder whether people do point it out. Maybe it is just the elephant in the room, you know?

Mm-hmm. Um, I'm sure a lot of people would be hugely humiliated if it, if it were pointed out. I mean, again, going, going back in time. Um, I mentioned Paul Hogarth. I mean, he, he was, um. Course leader here in the late 1950s and early sixties, and he had an amazing group of students, uh, including, um, Peter Flu and John and, um, Roger Law, the Luck and Floor, and David Driver, who became, uh, art director at the Times in the Radio Times.

But I've looked back in our archives at some of the publications they did at that time, and they were all drawing like Paul Hogarth. I think because he was such a powerful, uh, character. Um, but they eventually sort of found their own way. But when, when I was at Mastone College of Art, the late seventies, the, the [00:15:00] course leader was Gerald Rose.

Wonderful picture book maker, but he never showed his work to us at all. And it may have been partly because he didn't want to influence people, but I think it was more because he well he actually told me in later years when I reconnected with him that he, um, he feared being. I dunno, not being respected because at that time it was all about punk illustration and unless you were drawing prostitutes or whatever, it was not taken seriously, you know?

So it's interesting. I mean, I think, um, yes, there are sometimes course leaders and teachers who exert a very strong influence on people, but it is I would say much more to do with the wide availability of imagery now. Mm-hmm. And it's thinking about that subject. Sometimes you can look at a course or you can look at somebody's work and know what course they came from.

I was thinking [00:16:00] about, um, not just courses now, but we have a lot of illustrators run Patreons patrons. Patreons. I never know how you say it. I have no idea. Yeah. And um. Yeah. I'm wondering if that's had an effect as well, because they teach what materials they're using, what paper they're using.

Inevitably, that's gonna have a lot of copycats. Yeah. It's hard to know how many illustrators, uh, or, or aspiring illustrators are. Using those things like domestic and all the many online courses, yeah it's very difficult to know in terms, in terms of sort of how styles, Hmm. I think it's, you know, you, you can avoid that to some degree by teaching, but also, you know, sometimes you get a student whose work is particularly impressive to everybody and there's a sort of.

Gradual, unconscious sort of [00:17:00] following or a particular process or medium? I do think that here at Cambridge, you know, because we have such a great printmaking resource, um, some people have said to me that, that there is a sort of a stronger printmaking element in the work, um, that influences it, but.

Hopefully, you know, with students coming from so many different backgrounds and, uh, being older, um, it's offset by, they have kind of more of their own experience to bring to it. I know there was, we had one instance that I can think of a few years ago, uh, when there was a student, a very good student whose work seemed to be becoming more and more like one particular well-known artist.

And, um, we wondered whether to say anything or not and eventually mentioned it very gently. And that student was absolutely mortified. I had no idea. Mm-hmm. Um. So, as I say, sometimes it's [00:18:00] just, it's often not deliberate. There's been periods where I've tried somebody else's hat on for a while, so I remember really early days.

Really getting into Sope and really wanting to understand how he made those really complicated images. But your eye was drawn to exactly the point he wanted you to look. Got quite, I remember talking to you about this. Yeah, I got quite obsessed with that. And I think tried his hat on for a while, but that, I think then it just became amalgamated with all of the other influences.

It PA got piled on amongst other things, of course. But that was, I mean, as I remember a conversation we had about it, and I've always remembered it 'cause I often, I. Um, mention it to students, you know, and about how he, he drew the eye to a particular point, and even in a very complex image, there would, he would leave a little bit of white space around, uh, the key character and stuff like that.

But I mean, that sort [00:19:00] of thing is, is the right way to learn from great artists, but it's not a stylistic thing, so it's a kind of compositional thing, isn't it really? I liked how, um, I was watching one of the Grace and Perry series. It might be the one on channel four, about, maybe it's about class and taste.

Do you remember that series? It was really good. And at one point I remember him talking about taste, and it made me think of visual voice. He was talking about how. So if you go on holiday and you eat something tasty on holiday and you come home and you want to recreate it, but when you get home, you don't have a recipe and you make your best guess about how it's made.

And when you go to the shop, you can't get everything. So you buy what you can and then you come home. And you botch something together that is a bit like you had on holiday and it's absolutely delicious. And he was saying, [00:20:00] this is how culture is made. We take a bit from here, we take a bit from there, we get stuff wrong.

We half as it, we botch it together, and then you get something new. And I think exactly that's how we are finding our creative voices. Sounds very much like the absolutely brilliant signature dish of mine, which is a version, a version of lamb pasta that I used to get in a market in Italy. Um, but yes, I can see the analogy with, with artwork.

It is. And culture generally, yes. You build on things and you bring your own, your own particular take on it. I was thinking of, um. Edward Artone when you were talking about that and how he had a little bit of academic kind of painting training, mostly in evening classes. But his unmistakable work, I just kind of grew out of.

Obsessive interest in in [00:21:00] everyday life, you know, just what people were getting up to. And he would mostly draw from immediate memory, but he was always looking. But again, yes. I wonder what Azeri would've been like if he'd had Instagram. Would he have been on Instagram? That I'd really like to think about that.

Yeah. Like some of my favorite illustrators of the past. What would they be on, on Instagram now? Would we be seeing, uh. Their mistakes and their mess and how they didn't arrive in the world fully formed. It'd be really interesting to see that. Yeah, I suppose, I mean that, and that was one of the reasons behind, um, my book on the illustrated sketchbooks that you kindly in because I think a lot of people don't realize what's underneath.

Those beautifully printed books or pages in a magazine. And, you know, there were lots of, um, people's sketchbooks that surprised me, you know, and how differently people [00:22:00] thought about them, like Edward Gory, who. I mean, he's wonderfully grumpy about it, you know, and that he, he hated actually using them, but he was just terrified that his ideas would escape.

And so they were more like notebooks, you know? But yeah, the whole spread of observational drawing, um, quick notes, imaginative drawing. It's where it all kind of, coagulates, isn't it? You know, and gets started. But I don't know what, what, how one can address the, the issue overall other than try to make students aware of it in a general sense.

And, constantly talk about the importance of sketchbooks. Research real world I've been watching and they won't listen. Will they? We'll shame them, Martin. We'll shame them. Let's bring the shame back. I'm just thinking about, um, I've been watching my daughter go through school. She's we [00:23:00] live right on the border and she's on the Scottish side.

Her school is on the Scottish side of the border, and so she's been doing na fives and hires and um, I've been watching the way that she learns art at school, and it's been really interesting because.

They make a big emphasis on passing the exams, but my daughter Pi wants to go to art school. In fact, I'll just have a little show off. She's just got unconditional offers from everywhere she applied. Lovely. Yes. And. But what happened was all of the emphasis is in passing the exams and there are certain things needed to pass the exams, which is not a lot of expect experimentation.

There's a lot of drawing on the iPad from photos. There is not a lot of room for mistakes or your own voice. And so when it came to time to make a fo a folio to apply to art school, [00:24:00] the stuff that she'd made to pass her exams was mostly irrelevant and not, not great to put in her portfolio. So she'd made other work at home.

That school didn't really like and she filled her folio with that and showed the teacher, and the teacher advised her to take some of the amazing drawings at the zoo that she'd done from life really quickly. Um, lots of drawings done with non-dominant hand and all of those lovely experiments that you do.

Advised her to take those out, but PI is very headstrong and would not agree to it, and came home very angry about it. And then applied to art school and she's got in and now it's exam time again. She's about to take the exams and the teacher is now completely dismissing all the stuff that she used to get into art school and asking her to make all of the work for the exam.

Um, very, very similar to each other, so there's not much sign of experimentation. It's [00:25:00] been really interesting to watch because. It looks as if schools need kids to get through the exam so that they achieve what they need to achieve, but they don't really look forward to what an art school is gonna need or that student's creative career ahead of them.

So I feel as if the problem is starting way back in school. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we hadn't really touched on that, but I've. I was starting to see when we were interviewing, um, for applicants for both BA and ma I was shocked by the kind of portfolios I was seeing, which were much more about sort of art appreciation and, and.

You know, young kids being asked to copy Matisse or you know, do studies on particular artists whose work, I don't wanna sound, I'm patronizing, but, which they couldn't really begin to understand fully at that age until they'd started to draw and paint [00:26:00] themselves. So, I mean, one thing that you hardly ever saw, uh, was just personal drawing.

Um, and I have done odd days of teaching at, um, other art schools just to come and give a talk and then maybe do a few tutorials and, um. At undergrad level, and again, I've been astonished at the lack of drawing. And so what it leads to is, is a kind of big outbreak of manga and pre-existing stylistic formula.

So yes, it's something of an epidemic I have to say. And a very difficult one to, to tackle in the broadest sense.

PART TWO: Okay. So, grabbing somebody else's style might feel like a really easy shortcut. It might feel like that's the quickest and easiest way to get your career [00:27:00] going, but it really, you're selling yourself short, aren't you? I mean, you're not gonna have much fun in the long run if you are doing an impression of somebody else.

So what are the benefits of finding your creative voice? I mean, I suppose it's, it's perfectly possible to make a living, you know, by constructing a a stylistic approach that is sort of borrows from other people and hasn't got a. An underpinning of drawing or whatever. But yeah it's partly a case of, um, you know, what would you get out of it long term.

Uh, just as you say, kind of, you know, turning out the same stuff. And I think it's a lot to do with, um, authenticity, you know, a sense of. Uh, something that you have ownership of and which people can see somehow connects to your own personality and your own life experience. If that doesn't sound too grand, [00:28:00] I think 'cause of people can see yes, authenticity.

Yeah, I think other people can feel when something's au authentic, like you can just feel it in the work, can't you? Also, if it's authentic, it means that your brain is like a big treasure chest that you can dive into and find stuff in there all the time. But if you're doing an impression of someone else, where do you get that inspiration from?

It's like a dead end. Yeah. It just becomes a sort of, yeah. It becomes a sort of a technical process really of creating something that looks professional and, um, finished, but usually, uh, it's gonna be a bit lifeless. I think it's quite difficult to, to to, to articulate what it is that, that gives something it's life.

But I think it is partly to do with, uh, um, you know, you can still see a sense of searching for something within the drawing rather than something that is terribly well finished and [00:29:00] almost technically too good, you know? Oh, I really like that. Yeah. Some of my favorite drawings in the long term of the ones that I've done where I felt.

It at the time while I was doing it that there was something still not finished about it, and it might have even made me feel uncomfortable. And then other drawings that I thought, yeah, brilliant, I've got that. And I look back and actually the ones where I feel like I got it are actually a bit dull. And the ones where I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable with it are the nicest drawings.

Yeah, it's really hard looking at your own work, isn't it? Especially immediately after you've created something. It's so. Hard to be objective about it. But yes, I think when you come back to it sometime later and you can see why something that was perhaps more of a struggle actually feels more alive.

Trying to think of some examples. I mean, I always think of, um, John Birmingham's work as, as [00:30:00] kind of awkward, like he doesn't quite know what he's doing, but it's just so you know from the heart. Yeah. So yeah, it's all those things really, isn't it? Katie and I have been writing some stories together this morning and we are really enjoying writing together.

And I know I'm talking about writing and not illustrating, but I feel like it comes from the same place. And, um, these stories are inspired by bits of our own childhood, bits of our kids' stories. Things that we've seen and remembered, and we've laughed at it and it's just lodged in our brain a bit. And these stories are turning out to be so easy to make because they're so completely sourced from the stuff in our brains that it feels like an endless pool of ideas.

And I think if you are trying to do that in the style of somebody else, it's, it's too self-conscious and it would be hard [00:31:00] work and there wouldn't be any fun in the story. No. No. And I suppose people generally think of illustration or have done in, certainly in the past, as, you know, commercial art and, and, uh, something that you do to commission, um, with a particular goal in mind.

But now I, especially with so much authorial picture book making, it's evolved into something that is more personal and more. Connected to writing, I think, isn't it? So it makes this, this question of, of originality or at least authenticity, more relevant perhaps than it was in the past. I dunno, thinking on my thinking on my feet, really in terms of clear career longevity as well.

Yes. If you pick a style say something is trend. I'm not talking about pick picking one particular illustrator, but if [00:32:00] you pick a style that's really in feeding your eyes on your feed all the time, it's just you see that type of work turning up all the time. And it might be an idea to think, oh, well if I do that, then I'm gonna get work, because that's really fashionable at the moment.

But as soon as that work goes outta fashion, where does that leave you? Absolutely. I think, uh, back in the 1990s, I would say late nineties, early noughties, I think illustration became very illustration generally, not just children's books, but became very style based and it felt like that, that what was fashionable.

Kind of came and went in cycles about three or four years, you know, and, um, certain illustrators would emerge from art colleges, universities, and, um, have a blazing career. [00:33:00] You see them everywhere in the newspapers and advertising and, um, and then they were next minute they were gone, you know, replaced by something else.

So I think that should be a, a lesson to us all as well. Yeah, and I think when you see work done authentically in somebody's own voice, it's just exciting, isn't it? You can feel it, and I think publishers can feel that as well. And actually when I, it's been really reassuring when I've been interviewing publishers for the course, they've all, in the end said, we want somebody to be themself, and we really want to know who that person is.

Which has been really good to hear. Well, it is good for me to hear that because, um, you know, I often wonder. We, you know, whether publishers really do want that. I remember being asked years ago to give a lecture, I think it was in Spain and they said, [00:34:00] yeah, could you come and talk to our students?

And again, it was, um. A set up a private setup of, of people learning to make picture books. And they said, could you give a talk on how to give publishers what they want? And, um, I said, no, I can't. I, I said I could give a talk on how to give publishers what they don't yet know they want. Because I think, I mean, there are different types of publishers aren't there.

There are some that are very safe and want to know exactly what they're going to get. But I think more and more with, uh, picture books, um, there are publishers who really do want to be surprised and find something that feels very personal and engaging and new. So, yeah, they're the, the better ones anyway.

Yeah. There's a problem with picking a style, A style that seems to be quite trendy at the moment is there's gonna be a hundred or more people like you, there are gonna be so many more people like you, and there'll be somebody like you charging less. [00:35:00] Yes. So, so they're always gonna be able to find somebody like you, but is a bit cheaper.

So you are completely devaluing your work. Yeah. I suppose to some degree it's, it's an issue of creative ambition. You know, how creatively ambitious are you? Do you really want to kind of find your own voice? Or do you want to construct something that is more of a, an amalgam of borrowed things and.

And of course it's easy for us to, to be, uh, sort of critical, if you like, but it is a huge temptation I'm sure for a lot of people to, to borrow in that way because it, it is hard. It's a long-term commitment to really try and find your own voice. Mm-hmm. You have to work hard at it. Sorry. Yeah. It's, um, like a life goal, isn't it?

It's like a long term life goal. Uh, it's like you learn more and more about yourself and that, oh, sorry. [00:36:00] That's my mom FaceTiming me. Um, where was I? Yeah, of, I mean, it's not dis time not dissimilar to finding out who you are as you get older. Is it finding your creative voice? It's an adventure and it, and it does give you confidence.

Yes. But it is definitely a long-term plan and that makes me think about people who've accidentally found themselves doing this. Oh, she's not taking the hint. I'll have to get the editor to I've got my screens on silent and everything. I dunno why it's coming through. Yeah, because it's such a nice long-term goal.

I'm thinking that people who've accidentally fallen into this, suddenly they're listening to this and they're thinking, oh no, that's me. It's fine because an illustration career is a really, really long time and you've got time to sort it out, and the benefits to doing it are huge. The feeling of [00:37:00] confidence when you really know what your work is, I feel as if you stop constantly.

Once you've worked it out, you stop thinking about it anymore. You need to draw something. Yes. You just concentrate on that. You don't think, well, how am I gonna draw it? How, what's, what hat am I gonna try on today? You, it just comes instinctively like speaking or writing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's like fe feeling comfortable in your own skill, uh, in your own skin.

It's, yeah, it is a long term thing and uh, I think it certainly was for me, definitely. Um. As I, I mentioned, um, before I, you know, it, when I was going through all this, uh, I wasn't bombarded by quite so much imagery through the internet, social media and all the rest of it. I must say I'm finding more and more students of ours, um, albeit at master's level who are trying really to shut out a lot of that noise.

[00:38:00] Um, and I think the younger generation are becoming, I know it's a huge generalization, but quite a lot are becoming very conscious of it and trying to tackle it in their own way. I think it was a long term thing for me as well, finding my own voice. It took me a long time, but I think I got into publishing before I really knew who I was, which was really great.

Well, you took time out, didn't you? I took time out. You to sort of, yeah, to have a, have a real rethink. Yeah. Which I always thought was incredibly brave because I mean, once you've started to earn money. From what you are doing, um, you know, it's, you've really got to be very brave to, um, stop and but you, you just felt it wasn't, it didn't feel right.

It wasn't, wasn't you, because I left art school and then wanted to be an [00:39:00] illustrator and felt like, well, I'll just do, I'll do anything to make this happen. This is what I want to do. Then when I went to see publishers and they gave me art direction, I was like a sponge. I sort of soaked too much. I just soaked it all in, like, yeah, well, whatever you tell me to do, I will do that.

And in one way, that was brilliant because it meant I got work all the time. But in another way, I felt as if I painted myself into a corner. Everything because their advice was at the time, this was in the nineties, I don't know whether they give this advice now, but at the time they didn't want a sense of of place.

So they didn't want anything that looked too British. I don't think this is true now, but at the time, that was a thing. Um, no, that was very much a thing. I wrote a an article for children's book, academic thing called No Red Buses, please. Mm-hmm. Um, [00:40:00] because I, I was getting to hear that so many of our graduates were being told when they were being, commissioned or having their books published to avoid all place specific kind of visual elements. So I think that's a ridiculous thing because, you know, when I was a, a kid, we had American school books and they had all those American barns and windmill things, and I thought that was great. It was just so different.

It was fascinating. Again, it's, if it feels authentic, it doesn't matter where it is. Do you think, anyway, getting off the subject, do you think that time has passed? I do. I, I don't feel as if I'm ed with that anymore. No, I think it, I think it's definitely passed and run its course. And I suppose because everything is so much more international anyway, isn't it?

But no, just going back to, to that thing of, um, you know, trying to please too much. [00:41:00] Um, I remember when I first got an agent who, um. Did get me lots of work, but, and she, my first portfolio still had some student work in it and, and kind of reportage drawings and things and, um, I was given the chance to do this lovely job for the, what was then the London GLC, uh, grace London Council to, uh, walk down the River Thames and make loads of drawings of buildings and places.

Um, and they'd wanted me to do it on the basis of my student work, you know, and then I thought, I went down and started doing these drawings, and I just did the most awful tight drawings because I thought this is a real job, you know? Yeah, yeah. And in the end they said, no, it's just, it doesn't look like the stuff that we.

That we wanted you to do, you know? So that's the, confidence, right? Not having the confidence to, to just be yourself. So I've been there. [00:42:00] Yeah, I think it's, it is difficult. In the beginning, I definitely didn't know where the line was between taking advice because also I was brand new out of college and didn't know anything about picture books, and I did need to learn stuff.

It was an apprenticeship and I was learning. But then I would just let them direct me beyond what felt good for me. And then, yeah. So yeah, I took that time out and you said I was very brave to do that, but it didn't feel like it, it felt like, you know, one of those life decisions where you just, I just cannot do this anymore.

It was almost like one hand had to make the other hand draw, and I was like, if I have to do this anymore, um, I would rather just not be an illustrator. It was that kind of decision. And so then when I took time out and thought, what did I enjoy doing at college? Like you said, all the sketchbook drawings from life, I loved all that.

So I just decided to take what I'd learned in early years of publishing what I'd learned at [00:43:00] art school, build a bridge between the two. And so then I started putting a sense of place into my books. 'cause I thought. You use the contents of your brain and this book is gonna be set where I live.

And actually they did really well. They did better than the books I've done before. And I think the thing is, with some of my books, I've set them here in Barrick. In Northumberland. But when when you see them with other languages beside them, they, uh, this town now looks like a village in Italy or a VI village in Germany.

Um, uh. Yeah, I mean, we, we love those Roger Deza books that you know, are often set in Paris or somewhere. Um. I mean, they weren't, not pop, they weren't unpopular because there wasn't London or whatever. No, it's crazy. I mean, it's, it's whether the book just has genuine charm and the [00:44:00] feeling of, of authenticity is, is the key, I think.

Yeah. So, yeah, it feels good. I think when you find your own voice, it's worth all the effort. It feels good and it feels easy. It feels so much easier. Eventually. Eventually. Yeah. Yeah. But it can be quite a, a difficult journey, I think. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So we, we, we hope people will, um, will learn from our mistakes.

Don't do what we did. Do what we say, not what we did. Yes. Well, I think if you've fallen into that trap, I would just forgive yourself and move on. It's much better just to, yeah, forgive yourself. We live in a world so dominated by trends. It's an easy trap to fall into. 

Thank you, Martin. That was really good. I enjoyed that, Sharon, my pleasure. What's coming up for you? Do you have, are you [00:45:00] working on a new book? About to start one? Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think I'm signing a contract anytime now. Funnily enough, it, it, um, it touches more on some of the things we've been talking about.

Not about imitation, but about, uh, the craft as it were, you know, craft of, of materials and that kind of thing. Anyway, top secret. Can't give away too much. It might change once I start writing it. Brilliant. I'll be looking out for that. And if people want to find you online, you are on Instagram, aren't you?

I am. It's my new hobby. Yes. Lovely. Brilliant. Thank you. I really enjoyed this chat. Hopefully you might join us again for another chat sometime. Yes, and we'll keep an eye out for the imitation, um, epidemic, but hopefully we can raise awareness. Lovely. Thank you. Goodbye. You too. Bye now. [00:46:00]