'They keep asking me to tone it down.' Flying your freak flag in their faces 🚩

This week we're answering a brilliant voice message from @shanaramadesigns.

Shana asks about Russian illustrator Victoria Semikina: how does someone learn to draw in that gloriously exaggerated, expressive way? And why, when she does it, does everyone love it, but when Shana tries it, art directors ask her to tone it down?

NO FAIR.

Happy listening :) And hellooo to Victoria - we've been chatting this week and there *might* be a special video coming to the Freak Flag course from her. EEEE!

Watch this space! https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/freakflag

Timestamps, for the timestamp fans:

00:00 – Crying over Christian Robinson's new book 'Dad' (it needs a warning label)
01:30 – Shana Rama's question: how do you learn to draw in an exaggerated, expressive way?
03:30 – Victoria Semikina: fine art, printmaking, jazz parties, and accidentally becoming an illustrator
05:30 – Why drawing from life filters through your personality, and why that matters
07:30 – "Just be yourself even harder"
09:00 – Finding publishers who love you as you are
10:00 – British art education, the A-level folio problem, and Frieda's story
15:30 – The exam board vs actual creativity, and feeling for students without artist parents
17:00 – Victoria's sketchbooks the gap between rough and final is tiny (mmmm)
18:00 – Embodying a pose while you draw: Tania channeling Tudor barmaid energy 

Links mentioned:

🎨 Victoria Semykina on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoria_semykina/

📚 Christian Robinson's book 'Dad': https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/christian-robinson/dad/9781035088393

Byeeee for now!

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

p.s. Doors to the Live Illustration Course are now open for enrolment! This live round kicks off on 1st June. See you in there :) https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/lic 

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

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

Transcript

May 3 - Shanarama question
===

​[00:00:00] 

Yeah, welcome back. We've all been in tears this morning. Oh my goodness. I bought the new Christian Robinson book called Dad when I was in Waterstones yesterday, and I've just sat at the table and read it all out. We all had tears running down our faces. It needs a warning on the front leg. You will cry.

Yeah, it is so beautiful because it shows. Every aspect of being a dad, good and bad. Even the angry bits and the sad bits and the tears and the happy bits. It's such a beautiful book.

It's a very 360 human [00:01:00] dad view, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. And you know, and in interviews knowing that he said he was brought up without a father, when you know that and read the book as well, it's, it's so much more bittersweet and tender. Yeah. But it's lovely. It's beautiful. Even thinking about it, I'm like, oh, we're big fans already.

So to see that and yeah. Lovely book and makeup, you know? Yeah. Jealous. Okay, we got a question. Do you wanna hear it? Yes. Okay. So this is from, it is from Shana Rama, that's her name on Instagram. And she, um, explains that she has a Fantasia and that she listened to our elephant podcast, as we called it, and she has also has dyslexia.

And so she left me a voice message, which I've transcribed here. So she says in England specifically, because that's the only place that I learned art. Everything is drawn from real form. So I think she means like drawn from life. So that's how we're storing the [00:02:00] information. What I'm curious about is this, I, I admire lots of artists, particularly from Russia, like Victoria Semi Keener and another Elena Ellis, who I hadn't heard of before, but uh, did a search and her work is lovely.

Um, she says they're so brilliant at doing misshape and bodies with exaggerated features and arms and small heads. How are they taught are for them to be able to draw those figures? They are really emotive to us, really emotive to me. I would love to be able to draw in a more exaggerated way, but how do you learn that?

How do you break away from the more exact shapes of human beings? And how is that accepted? Because so often I or somebody else will show designers, art directors their work, and they'll say, oh no, that child looks a bit too old for their age group, and that looks really young. But yet, you know, when you have these kind of figures that are really amazing and they're accepted.

Yeah. So I suppose she's saying sometimes you're out, out directed out of doing those exaggerated shapes. [00:03:00] And she's saying that sometimes publishers make comments, like, all of your characters have got to have circus for eyes and dots, for eyes. And when she sees Victoria's work, the characters have all got different eyes and nobody's correcting her about that.

Yeah. So, yeah, and I think this question's really interesting, isn't it? Because there's the education part of it, and then there's the publishing part of it, and then there's your own voice and holding onto your own voice, and how do you do that? And confidence to just do your work as you do it and not be, I suppose it's harder maybe if you're starting out, isn't it?

Because you haven't got a proven track record and publishers. They just want a safe bet. Really, don't they? Well, they don't just want a safe bet. They want to know what they're getting. And maybe, 'cause Victoria has such a incredible career and she's got the fine art background and everything. I think that might be the key with Victoria.

'cause I did some, I didn't know a lot about her before we went to see that exhibition in Bologna, didn't we? And it was fantastic. But by then my brain [00:04:00] was scrambled from all of the gorgeousness in bologna. And I didn't do any reading, I just admit I looked at the pictures. I love it. So, and when we got this question, I thought, oh, I'll do a bit more research into her gorgeous work.

And I found this brilliant, um, Substack that's called Four Artists. And there's an interview with Victoria on there. And she says that she studied fine art in Russia. And then she studied printmaking in Italy and then accidentally became an illustrator when she posted some drawings from life on Instagram.

And a, I've forgotten the magazine book. Quite a prestigious magazine. Saw it and asked her to do a few pieces. So she, she accidentally became an illustrator. And she says that she really loves jazz parties and jazz dancing. And you can really see that in her work, can't you? It doesn't look like she's looking at other illustrators for inspiration.

She's come from printmaking and fine art and she loves jazz and jazz dancing. And she likes to draw from life at jazz parties. She likes to draw the band and the musicians, [00:05:00] you can really see that in her work, can't you? So she's not been, what did you, that phrase you used about illustrators looking at other illustrators like Oh, it is almost eating itself.

Yeah. Like if you look at, if you're just looking within your own thing, it's almost like inbreeding, like just you're not getting fresh influences into it. But also it means that, you know, we've talked about this before, the subject matter, the content, what she loves, she loves it so much that she wants her drawings to convey her love of jazz and the bit of jazz dancing she likes.

'cause you can see in the crazy gestures of the figures that she shows, particularly in this travelling exhibition that was in Bologna when we were there, a lot of that was to do with 1930s films like Charlie Chaplin, lots of body language and metropolis, which had lots of really kind of iconic shapes of figures and hairdos in it.

And she takes so much pleasure in all of those things that the content is what drives her urge to exaggerate the figures to convey what she loves about dance and [00:06:00] things like that. And I think if you're starting with something you love as your source material, it pushes your drawing ability. 'cause having been to a Russian school, she will have been completely schooled in technical ability.

Yeah. So, you know, they have very traditional fine art drawings. So she will have mastered that craft, which is kind of like a lot of people say, if I've been drawing from life for so long, how do I make that leap? But she's made the leap because she's got something to say and she's trying really hard to say it.

I think it's interesting when you see her sketchbooks as well, because when she's drawing from life, it's in her sketchbook. So she obviously. You know, when you interpret something that you draw from life, the way it appears in your sketchbook has a lot of you in it. You don't literally draw what you see from life.

It's filtered through your eyes. And her sketchbooks are already, they've already got that de that design aesthetic in there. I think drawing from life is really useful to see whether you have that, [00:07:00] like what your natural, what you lean towards naturally, and then be aware of that and exaggerate that. So I would say with the person who's written in this message to really lean into it, really go for it.

And maybe publishers are advising you out of it, maybe because they see hesitancy and they don't know that this is your strong visual language. I don't know. You have to be careful who you take advice from as well, don't you? Yeah, I think so. And I think when you see art directors who may seem as though they're behaving like art tutors by telling you that's not the way to draw something, then maybe they're saying, our publishing house prefers it to look this way.

And if in that case you kind of don't wanna be with those people it, they may be not the right publisher for you. It's a bit like dating. If you're being advised to do something that isn't natural to you, then they're not gonna be great bedfellows in terms of, the visual aesthetic. Yeah. You want somebody who loves you 'cause they love your work, they love you as you are.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just be yourself even harder, please. Yeah. I I think [00:08:00] if you really lean too into it and you're really sure that's who you are it would be very difficult for somebody to ask you not to be that. Yeah. I imagine the more you lean into being yourself, the less likely it is for an art director to try and talk you out of it.

And half the part of illustration is just carrying on, isn't it? And if you're doing something that just comes naturally and you feel so strongly about doing anyway, then it's gonna be way easier to have that longevity if you're doing what you love. I think because she's a fine artist as well, she's always been told you, you provide the content.

If you're the artist, then you know what you're working about. A bit like a pitch book illustrator in many ways. If you're an illustrator and an author, you are driving the content and the content will be attuned to what you like drawing and you like drawing what you are into in life. So it kind of sinks together.

Whereas I think if you're an illustrator, like, I'm a pen for hire, have you got a story for me? What would you, what would you like me to draw? It leaves you [00:09:00] susceptible to being swayed by what people want in terms of style. Yeah. I, I can't think of how else to describe it, but you know, you can she draws what she loves and there's this fervour to get it over to people.

I'm thinking about the, I, in my experience watching my daughter go through school, I feel like there's. At least in British education. There's a problem with this right? From really early in education because, um, we've watched her, it's really frustrating to watch actually to pass her exam. Her work needed to be a certain thing, and it was mostly realism.

And I, and I have nothing against realism, but it seemed like this is the way that you pass your exam. You do realism and you do it well. And then when it came time to apply to art school, we looked at her work and it's brilliant. It's very skilled, but the stuff she'd done at school wasn't really her personality.

She'd done all this other work at home that's incredible, really brilliant work at home. And so we were saying to her, you [00:10:00] need to put that in your folio. But her school were telling her, no, you can't put that in your folio. That's not good. And she'd done all these drawings from life at the zoo, and the animals moved quickly and she'd captured the energy, the animals, and she'd been drawing from films sitting in front of the TV and drawing while the, while TV was on.

Not pressing pause, just drawing and drawing these drawings were fantastic. We saw them and they were, she's not just being delusional, proud mom. I what? Amazing. I am delusional proud mom, but I think she genuinely is good as well. Uh, where was I going? Oh yeah. So school were advising her that that stuff wasn't good enough to put in her folio, but we could see that was where she is in her work.

That's where her personality is in the drawing is genuinely brilliant. So she had to work really hard to ignore school. She had to stop going into school at certain art lessons where they were getting the folio ready. We were advising her to do that and calling in sick for [00:11:00] her. I wanted to speak.

You're gonna get arrested. I wanted to speak to the art teacher, but she didn't want me to. And um, so she managed to make this folio, um, herself putting in the work that she really liked and carefully not showing it to the teacher until it was too late. And got into all of the art schools of, of her choice unconditionally.

She did brilliantly unconditional offers, and she's got into Glasgow School of Art. Obviously I am showing off about her. Too late. It's just brilliant. Really brilliant. She's done so well. But then she's got all these unconditional offers everywhere that she wanted to go, and now she has to get through her final exam at school, and they're now telling her to take the all back out of her folio because that is not what the exam board want.

And they need all of the work in the folio to link together in a very literal fashion. And it's infuriating. It's absolutely infuriating. And we've been advising her [00:12:00] to ignore it and not going to school. Luckily, she's pretty stubborn and she knows which work she likes. And she's fought her case, but, um, she's quite, yeah, because of growing up with two artists, she's gotten a, a really advanced understanding of what she wants to do and what her work would be about.

I guess the A level syllabus, which is quite limiting is spoonfeeding, observational drawing, still lives development of, I have to say, they've barely done any observational drawing really. They do. A lot of this is, um, in the Scottish system of, I've speaking to other people. Uh, I think the English system is the same.

She's barely done any drawing from life. I, in fact, I'm trying to remember if there had no, a lot of taking a photo on the iPad and drawing from the iPad. Oh yeah. And realism. Yeah. Oh my god, no. Having interviewed for Glasgow 30 years ago and interviewed for Chinese schools and plenty of places, I know that what I saw in your daughter's fo folder was [00:13:00] would've blown anyone away.

You would get into college. That's what they're looking for. They don't expect it because they know they're looking at a level syllabuses most of the time or work that's come outta that. But if they see something that's kind of personally driven yet, you'd definitely get in and it was the right thing to do, but I just, I dunno why it's a sausage factory form of prescriptive drawing in art.

That's that if it's not observational, if it's drawing from photos, that's just criminal, uh, for creatively. Yeah. I feel sorry for the students that don't have artist parents. Exactly. That's what I was just gonna say the same thing. Yeah. Imagine you, when you're at school and you're a good child, you want to please the teachers.

Yeah. You do what you're told. You follow the rules, you tick all the boxes, you get an A and you go, yay. And then you apply to art school and they go, eh, no way. We know a student that happened to, and she's really talented. Her work is incredible, but was advised that all of the work should be the realism, all of it.

And she [00:14:00] applied to a prestigious art school who I'm sure she, I am convinced she's talented enough to get in, but her folio probably just looked like everybody else who applied, who didn't have artistic parents or friends like you two because, um, Frieda came and had a chat with you, didn't she? And Evie about Evie's experience what our colleges are looking for and what that was so helpful.

Yeah. I really feel for kids who don't have that outside. Advice. And I also, you know, this isn't meant to be a condemnation of, of school art teachers either. 'cause they're aist and brethren really went to college. Yeah. They just do their job, aren't they? Yeah. They're doing a job they've been told to do.

The examination boards have decided that their interpretation of creativity and the ability to draw technically must be demonstrated through these exercises. And those exercises are reductive. They don't show anything about the child or about their potential creativity. And it's, arts schools have to look at that work and think, okay, I understand what this kid has been asked to [00:15:00] do, but can we within their CA few shreds of personality or individuality and character and drive.

Whereas Frida was lucky enough to be able to leapfrog all of that and with a strength of kind of, her stubbornness refused to do it and negotiate it carefully enough to get the two things she wanted. But I, I was speaking to teachers, they feel really frustrated that they're stuck in the system.

It's not individual teacher's fault, it's just a, a bonker system. They must be so cheesed off being forced to teach something that they know isn't genuine creativity, because that's what the, you know, the examining boards have requested as part of the syllabus or a few letters about the extraordinary, I suppose in reference to Shana Ram's question as well, it's kinda the same as a grownup as well.

Like, you think you're doing all the right things. You're like, I'm gonna do what the publisher tells me. I'm gonna do what this person tells me. When really, when you just do what you wanna do and fly your freak flag, bring it back to that as well. Like the, like Victoria's [00:16:00] work, she's just doing what she wants to do and everyone's like, oh my goodness, this is amazing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, she's, I mean she's literally one of the most popular illustrations at the moment. You can see why. 'cause it's just so full of character and excitement and, you know, that the, the other thing I like about it, we were talking about the sketches, was the gap between her sketchbook work and the final work is really slim.

Mm-hmm. You know, she just brings some, a bit of colour to it, but everything is kept with the same original excitement from the sketches. So there's not that huge bridge between, here's my sketches and then I bored myself silly by painting this in a very refined and overly rendered way to call it final artwork.

So she's also a great example of, it's like Joe, we did the one-to-one reviews and somebody's work, they had like gorgeous collage and it was all edgy and exciting. And then they did picture book illustration and it was, it looked like they thought, now I am going to do children's illustration. And you could see Yes.

And I think that's Victoria's work. She's, you can see she's not gone now. I will do illustration. It's just happened like by accident almost. Yeah. The work, [00:17:00] the work is the work. Even if it's sketches, it's only a small step into the final artwork. I, you know, some of it is just a matter of en just enlarging it.

I mean, her big painting was, she had so much great work in that show. If it travels near you try and see it. I can't remember the title of it, but, we'll maybe we'll get that in the show notes. Yeah, but you remember sometimes as well, Helen, you would say, if you're trying to get that feeling in a bodily gesture, in a drawing, and in fact I was doing it yesterday you have to stand in the pose and you have to feel it in your head.

You start feeling it and then you end up standing up doing it, maybe trying to photograph yourself. I need someone, I was pulling funny faces sometimes on a drawing like, or like trying to draw. Sad. It really helps, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Yeah. It really helps. It helps if you feel sad and pull a sad face while you're trying to draw it.

It sort of comes out through your brain, down your arm and into the drawing somehow. 'cause you have to exaggerate the body language as well to, to transpose the meaning. 'cause often [00:18:00] character-based illustration can only do so much without extra visual props to indicate this person is feeling this or this person is doing that, or there's another person and this is a interaction.

If you've only got one kind of figure to express it through, you have to use absolutely everything you've got. So I was standing up pretending to be a tutor Barmaid, who was really bad at maths and had been underpaid and ripped off by Garrison soldiers. I was, oh, did you want that be the image from this podcast?

I You must. I want your sketches. I want you. Okay. It's like a Tudor bet Lynch who failed O level maths and still can't add up and has been ripped off. Amazing. So yeah, I think standing up and doing justice is the only way to get that conveyed. Yeah. Hopefully that helps. It'd be good if you have a Russian background in drawing figures as well.

Technical backgrounds in drawing does no harm at all. As long as you can make that big leap into some, [00:19:00] into trans transforming those drawings and that knowledge into something else. I think it's really interesting that she studied fine art and that she's ended up doing illustration. It just, I, this is what I've been saying to Frieda about going to art school.

It doesn't really matter what you study there, just the experience of being at art school full stop. When you come out the other end, you're still a baby and you could be anything. Yeah, absolutely. And then there's so many people who come to illustration from the graphic design end where they were probably drawing, but it was still a lot more typographically or photographically, um, focused.

And other people who come from find out where they were drawing all the time. So many people meet in the middle in illustration, which is why Bologna's so exciting because there were loads of those people there. Okay. Okay. Lovely. Bye-bye. Bye bye.

[00:20:00]