Identity + rejection: when your illustration work *is* you 🥲

0:00Okay, you too. What would you do if you weren't illustrators? Who's going first? I thought Tanya. I have thought this a lot, but it's like looking over the edge of a cliff. I've got no idea what would I do. They're a bit too interrelated to be a designer or stuff like that, but that's too close. But I did have this brainwave if it was just about how would you bring the money in, because I could fathom around the rest of the time. I'd be quite happy now just trying to sort the house out because I've ignored that for 20 years. And obviously the garden, which is where we're all headed in our later years. That's what I would do. I'd run into some stack that made me enough money that I could just do the garden.

1:03Would you want a hip-winning? My money, mate. This is a good one. I don't want everyone to start copying this because I'm going to trademark it, but my beloved neighbour, Natasha, died a couple of weeks ago. And she was like a bet-linked character and she only wore leopard skin and black and a bit of glitter. And I said to her daughters about what they got planned for. And she said, I've managed to find mom a furry leopard skin and I couldn't stop thinking about this because it was so Natasha for her ashes to go in a leopard skin and I'm thinking, where did they find that? There must be a custom made earnmaker out there. So as there will always be needs for death, I think I'm going into the custom made earn business. Brilliant. Have you seen that shop in Edinburgh? Go as you please. They've got a giant iron brew coffin. Oh, I have seen it. The whole industry and brilliant death stuff. Yeah, there was a program on channel four a couple of weeks ago called the Fabulous Funeral Home. And it was in Liverpool and Natasha died in Southport and she came from Southport.

2:05And I was wondering if the daughters had gone to this specific place because it was the most fabulous funeral directors you could ever imagine. There was waterfalls in there and butterflies flying around and all sorts of things. But yet coffins and earns. I think you're on to something though because my friend's dad wouldn't let her go to art school because he said you had to go into a trade that humanity needs such as building. Because you always need a shelter. Farming because you always need food or hairdresser. But you need a shelter. You need food. But if the world is about to end hair, it's low down on the list of priorities isn't it? What would you decay it if you could do illustration anymore? So is this like now with my current brain just cut out of the illustration bit? Yeah. Okay. Like I really enjoy writing and marketing stuff but then pre this lifetime when I was in my 20s I really did be in a nanny. So I would just go back to that. And as always in the back of my mind, the caveman bit of your brain that thinks everything's going to go wrong in a minute.

3:11It can be a lanny and people always have children and some true. It's one of those jobs. Yeah. Somebody wants to go to work with a child, guarantee it. I'll be there. So you've got childbirth and death as I mean, and Helen's just in the corner writing about stuff on her sub-stuff. What would you like to write? Just the boring stuff like I do now. And Jillian, I put Jillian Omara and she was saying she loves it as well. Even if you're talking about house renovations. Yeah, just the dolled stuff that we all do every day. I'm really, I'm just so nosy, so I love reading about that. And I like writing about that. I would do the garden. I would make flags or so sewing of some sort, like protest flags. Maybe do more protest in with my flags. I would like to do that. Do a bit more activism. So I could keep the show on the road with the customers. And then I could just devote myself entirely to activism, because it's always a, it works always a get out. It's no, I can't go on that much because I'm too busy. Like illustrators live basically hang around,

4:15dropping everything because you get off at a job. I don't just think the last 30 years were like that. Always working at weekends and taking on as much as you could undercharging and then doing too much work and saying, no to people that you can come out and see them after all. So now I think the idea of the earns would keep me in money and I can just go out the whole time, not sitting front to the computer. Actually got a point there because the babysitting is quite a time suck. So maybe I would set up a babysitting agency, like an any agency, and then I can not do the babysitting. But that's a bit you liked. What's the babysitting was? Yeah, that's true. I don't know. You'd be good at setting up an agency though, because you're really good at marketing and that kind of thing. I do that. And then I'll just take on the really nice children, like push families with one child and a beach house. And my job is to take them to the beach else and three hours of angle home. But with you think about this, when it becomes famine time in your job and you don't hear anything for days, or you've put something out there that you thought would bring interest on social media and nothing happens,

5:19what do you think when there's no work about? Do you care? Every illustrator cares about that, don't they? I saw a thing the other day and it was like one day with no enquiries. Oh, I can have a little rest two days with no enquiries. Maybe I'll clear out the shed three days with no enquiries. Oh, like it's time to retry. What have I done? I'm a bad illustrator. I'm about to definitely feel that I feel like I should be wise enough. It's annoying because there's part of my brain. It's like, it's fine. You're going to be fine. And then the other part of business is that I'm a bad illustrator. I'm a bad illustrator voice that's interesting, isn't it? Because this is how your identity is linked to your job. So, especially as an illustrator, it's quite rare how our job is so integral to who we are. Like, good illustrators use their life in their work all the time. It's really integral. So how do you cope with a rejection? It's of the work was rejected, but it's very easy to tip that into I was rejected. But I think actors must feel the same as well, because you're putting all that life experience into carrying a character over.

6:27So it would be a rejection of you. And they're always going for castings and trying things out. And illustrators are constantly pitching for jobs or putting themselves on naked and on show, saying, please hire me. It's quite a vulnerable position to be in the whole time. So when people are talking about going for interviews for full-time jobs and they get upset after about, you say, four or five rejections in the first month, you're like, come on, try being an illustrator for a couple of months. You'll be fine once you go back to a salaried interviews. They'll be a doodle because they're not that easy. You do have to sit and talk with people. We don't have to talk. It's a light touch exchange, isn't it? Someone calls you up or they ignore you. It's as simple as that. But we're constantly trying to connect with different clients and publishers, even if it's not quite as painful as having an actual interview. Then there's the opposite. It's the end of the spectrum where you've just got so much work. You've barely got any life all you're doing is working and it's like working out that balance.

7:27It's so hard, isn't it? And then the thing where you're having a good time works really busy, you get a lot done, but you don't do any marketing. So then when the work finishes, it stops and you're like, oh, where are all my clients? I haven't done anything. And sometimes I mean, again, the way the three of us work is completely different. So with UKT, if there's always new jobs coming through the whole time, so you notice the silence, if I'm working on a map with, I don't know, a charity or a castle or something like that, it's quite a long term relationship, but not as long as Helen's. So a gap that says long as the job took doesn't bother me. So if the job took three months and I don't hear anything from another client for two months, nowadays, I think, oh, that's quite nice, actually. I think I'd be like sent away by that point. Maybe three or two months silence, which would be just done for people trying to give me work as often as you do. I would be in a complete spin. It would be a nightmare. I'd be like, again, wouldn't batons and hammering them over my door and sniping my phone.

8:29No, just terrible. I get that exhaustion of being exposed to so many different clients and having to quickly build relationships with, I know you've automated it a lot, which is probably the only way it makes sense. Yeah, test if you're on boarding them every time, talking them through things, educating them and building trust every three times a week, that would just be too much for me. Yeah, I think I've got accustomed to that level. So like, when it does slow down, because I'm going to go, what's up, when it slows down, I'm like, what's happened? It's going on, if it was that pace, all the time, I'd be fine. Yeah. Make slowly. So maybe we need to take you into the garden with me and Kent Helen. Yeah, we're already out. We've got one foot out there. I have no interest in the garden, but I like except sitting in it while other people make a look nice. It's coming to job. Yeah, it is tough on the personage, especially in the early days, when you don't know what rhythm, your work life balance is really going to take. Everything seems to be a first time that you work for an agency and then you work for a magazine and

9:32different types of clients. There's no consistency or rhythm to it. And you don't know how hard you meant to work. Are you over delivering or under delivering? Yeah, God, the early days would have, I think that's the hardest time. I think it's really hard for a picture book maker early days now because advances haven't really gone up. When I first started, it was really easy. I lived in London. I could make maybe one book and a set of baby books a year and be absolutely fine. Have spare money, live an easy life in London. It was fine. But over the years, the wages just didn't go up. Luckily, about the time advances stopped going up, I had some really good sellers. So then royalties came in. But it must be hard for picture book makers now because I did feel like I was on a treadmill of making another book just to keep going like money wise as the years went by. But I always had the royalties coming in and without that, I think that's hard. So I think for picture book makers, having other streams of income is essential,

10:36essential now. So having those thoughts of what would I do if I wasn't a picture book maker is actually really healthy because writing on substack or doing something else, having an online shop will make being a picture book maker so much less stressful. Yeah, because it stops you saying yes to everything as well, which is the other track, isn't it? If you haven't got another income stream to prop you up a bit, you could spend weeks on a project that you don't like that wasn't your core activity anyway. And at the end of it, you don't use it in your portfolio because you don't want to be commissioned for anything like that again, but it paid the rent and too much of that can be a real downward spiral. Yeah, you want to get to the stage where you're taking on jobs that pay well enough. They've got a bit of breathing room afterwards to do maybe a bit more marketing or to regroup before the next job because yeah, when you're in that trademark, it's horrible. A lot of people put one day aside, don't they put purely for marketing so that they know they'll,

11:36but it's quite hard if a job, if the deadline on a job is a bit intense, then all those carefully organized structures for your business life go out the window. Yeah, and you're just working seven days a week to get this thing done. I used to put a day aside for a few years. I would put a day aside every Friday, I would go and draw from life. So that I would know what my next picture book was going to be because I never, I've always been very lucky that I never had a gap like a period where I got no work, because books take so long to make and I had some books that sold well. So there'd always be another publisher or my publisher saying, can we sign you up for next year or the year after or the year after? So I never had a follow period, but I did have periods where their ideas were followed. So they would be wanting the next book lining up, but I would have just come off the back of one book and had no idea what my next ideas would be. So I did go for a few years, every Friday, I would go drawing from life or do something, like go and visit an exhibition or do something creative where another idea might,

12:39I might find something else like artist states. Yeah, like our exactly artists, it's exactly that so that my brain would be fed with ideas rather than just sat in my studio working on the previous book. That must be stressful. If they're like, come on then. Yeah, I think that's why every now and again, I made a book that I really wish didn't exist because that need for when what's the next one going to be? What's the next one going to be? What's the next one going to be? It's quite hard call that. It's really hard. Again, that points out that different areas in illustration, picture book author illustrators are a different beast to a service illustrator. So it's a bit of a kind of, it undermines the activity a bit, but we're always working with other people's content, aren't we Katie? Exactly, I was thinking that I don't have to think of the ideas. I've got to think of the ideas in terms of making it look interesting, but they're seeing the words. It's a bit like that father-todd thing. It sounds really nice being a picture book author illustrator, but that's a lot of work. That's what you mean, you've got one idea and you have to have another idea and keep going like that. When you've just finished a book as well, you feel absolutely,

13:42it's like you just gave birth to me along with somebody else's this one. When you're going to have the next one then, when you're going to knock the next baby, is that like a midwife code, aren't you? You've given birth two hours ago and you're like, have you thought about contraception? It's exactly that. I'll never need that ever again. Are you mad? It's exactly that. It is so different. It's so all-encompassing author illustrator world. You're the real deal. I shouldn't say that, but I think you are. I'm shaking my head. It doesn't feel like any real deal. I wish I did. That would be nice. I'm going to take that in and try and feel like the real deal. Yeah. Thank you. No, it is because you have that... It's like, fine art. You have decided the content. It's all come from you. Whereas most other aspects of illustration is collaborative or servicing the author or someone else's content. It is collaborative after you have the first idea. After you have the first baby. Yeah, so you have the idea and you get excited.

14:44And you do your development work. And then you go and see your team, your designer, your editor. And they get excited. And now you're working together. But you need to go in with something from you. Yeah. Otherwise, if it wasn't from you, if it was from them, how would you make that excitement last over the next year? I think that's why I find it so hard to illustrate anybody else's text. Yeah. Unless there's something about that text that really hits me inside. I can't get excited for more than the first few weeks. Like, it's that difference between I should do this and I really want to do it. Now, I think that's why I very rarely illustrate anybody else's work. Even so, when you talk about picture book world, it makes me feel so jealous. I look at the authors and editors and a team of people to work with. That's another aspect of illustration. It's quite lonely. And the art directors that I work with, I've never met them. Hong Kong, I did know some of them because it was a smaller world

15:45and you physically met people functions and events. But in the UK, it's just a disembodied email. Well, there's no even art directors. I'm sometimes working with you. You're not. I could have assistant, so you would tell them, like, teach them about things. So how have you found the difference? Because Kitty and I, we've been writing together on some children's book stories, which will be out soon. Priya, you can do a pre-order now, actually. I'm going to make them talk about it on the next podcast to do all the beans. Priya does a huge help, but we'll come back to that. So the difference between working on this picture book idea with Walker Books and your normal client, what's the difference? Oh my god, where do I even begin? So the picture book writing experience was, we met up, had some ideas. Yeah, Helen was like, do you want to write something? I was like, okay, we wrote loads of ideas. A big pile of them went to Walker Books and basically, a lot of email them and they were like, we're like, their ideas come and see us. Went to see them.

16:46They did a Scottish reel. For us immediately as we walked in the office. That was a good saying, yeah. Am I being an Irish jig? It was an Irish jig. They put some Irish jig music on. They did us a dance immediately. And I looked at Kitty thinking, what does Kitty think of this? You have a human interaction. Oh my god, I mean, that alone, if I get interacting with other people while you do this work, it's a revelation. It's just baptism of madness. I was in like, place, this is excellent. And yes, then they gave us feedback and thought it was so excited to rework on them. And then, Helen did all the hard work of doing the illustration and now there's a magical, like the book is real. It's just completely mind-blowing, whereas. And we have a WhatsApp chat. There's a WhatsApp chat about shelves we've had put up, wallpaper, dogs, people getting married, Christmas, like really lovely chats and stuff like that. And there is, there's an actual team. Genuine relationship. The editors have been saying this

17:48and there are people with... Anyways, yeah, it feels like there's an army wanting this thing to succeed, whereas the one-to-one client work that I do for live illustration, it's more like they get in touch. The events next week are free. Yeah, they'll be there as much. Okay. You're ready. Yeah, basically. Okay, here's a form. Fill it in. Pay me. Okay, I've paid you. I felt the form in. Cool. Send me the link. Okay. Brilliant. I'll log in half an hour early. Okay, I'm here. Everything fine. Yeah, it's cool. Can you hear? Yeah. Can you see? Yeah. Okay. Done. And then, if it finishes, I'm like, there's the illustration. Thank you. And that's it. And then I'll see them again. And you don't even see the, you don't look at the illustrations again. No, the content isn't close enough for you to love that, baby. Unless it's really exciting, client or something, where I'm like, all that was actually fun. But yeah, like this morning, I was going through all my clients have worked for that I can find files for. And I was like, I do not even remember that job. And then, click on them and be like, oh, yeah, it was that. And then, click on other things.

18:48Because I was trying to figure out like what industries I work with mainly and stuff for marketing, but it's just, yeah. I know, I look through piles of paper invoices going back to 1995, endless financial magazines and those illustrations, I can't even, if you showed me some of them, I'm like, did I do that? Oh, I don't remember. I didn't have no recognition of the work. And again, there's a, then that's more service editorial illustration. Maps that I do now, I love and I'll keep, but a lot of editorial stuff. You wouldn't even put it in your portfolio. No. I think when I started live illustrating, I was really excited about it and loved it. And now it's a bit more like, it's just my job. And I'll do it and it's done. Whereas the book stuff felt really exciting and fun because I really enjoy writing. And then to see it in book form. And if we did talk about daughter and her laugh, it was like, yes. It's a real thing, you're interacting with everyone's lives. Yeah. You're expressing some personality and the feel ownership of it.

19:49And it'll be more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very different working experience. I have a feeling Katie's going to have a brain wave in a year or two. I'll be doing a complete, I don't know whether it'd be completely different or whether it's a pivot. I think you're going to do something different soon. You never stand still long enough anyway. No, I get excited. You'll find a thing. You're looking through your crystal ball. Yeah. What is it? Tell me where it is. But I think whatever we do, you just need community around you because we were talking about that loneliness thing as well. And all the tricky bits of being an illustrator. But I think if you can find people that you can just spend a bit of time with, even if you have to travel to go for a coffee with illustrators in another town. It was our salvation in the end, wasn't it? It would have been really hard carrying on enough. We had never met and we'd never done good shit and we're still doing these same things on our own. The amount of stuff we would not have learned from each other. Yeah, I can't imagine. It blows my mind how much I've learned. Oh, I'm so glad that you moved to Barrett.

20:52And you graduated art school and we met those times for coffee. I went, should we share this with other people? What do you think? Yeah, go ahead and have a wee shoot. Oh, it's lockdown. Shall we launch? I don't know. Katie's mom said she would join with nothing to lose. I went to see her mom as we did. My mom came to the AI workshop or she signed up for it anyway. Did she? I saw her and I thought, why did you need to stand out in the illustration industry? I love it. I love that. That's so brilliant. Because he just been asking us so much stuff. Yeah, she was. I had my niece staying with us doing some work for Good Ship Forers. She, on the morning of the AI workshop, got a text from her dad. It's okay because I don't think you'd listen. And I'm sure he won't mind, but he sent her a message saying, are you working with a Good Ship today? You should talk to them about how brilliant this is. And on Facebook that day, all the local builders were all put in AI generated images of themselves

21:52with all of their like builders. All of a sudden. All for caricature things. Yes, and he just totally doesn't know about the world of illustration. And he was trying to do a refaver for Holly to show us this. This caricature is so great. I spent the whole week looking at others and other friends who were designer Jason who were doing that. And I was like, why? You should know better. As a designer, why do you want to fall for Sam Altman's stupid caricature thing and burn up half a lake of water? To do that. It's just so pointless. He didn't realize that he centers it like half an hour before we were going live with our AI work. It's really good. I don't know. I have talking about, oh yeah, because you were talking about your mom at the workshop, but yeah. But before I came back to the UK, I'd just taken part in a group exhibition for the first time in ages with other illustrators. And it was such a brilliant experience. And I met so many people, so lots of work, felt part of a community.

22:53And I remember at the end of it thinking that is really significant. That is having such a massive impact on me. I don't quite know how to turn this into something later. But I know that it's profound for me personally. And really, all it was after 25 years of working on my own on a little island in, not even in a village. No one would be passing by to knock on the door. So it was really isolated. This was such a contrast that I was like, wow, there's another world out there with other people who are doing the similar things. And they might help you as well. So when I got back to the UK, I remember when we met up, kept thinking, I must remember to do things with people because stuff happens. And we did our Christmas fair, didn't we, in my house? Oh yeah, that was good. And it was our first sort of really dipping our toe into, okay, let's try and do a thing together and sell some of our pictures. And then we took over a gallery in town the next year. This was pretty good ship. We took over a gallery in town. And that was a huge hit as well. We should do something like this again. Maybe we should.

23:55It's good, wasn't it? Yeah. And then it ended up with this. I can't let you say it. I can't imagine what life would be like if we hadn't all joined together and thought we were brave enough to do some mad things that actually did happen. Even though back on that part of my life in Hong Kong, I was really happy. But that isolation is corrosive after a while. You just think this is it. Just bob along like this. Nothing will happen. So if you're feeling like that as an illustration, you're feeling lonely. Just look, there's so many platforms, whether it's AOI or Instagram or even the good ship Instagram. We have people in the courses saying things like, oh, I'm in Norwich. Anyone in Norwich? Well, I'm in Vancouver. Anyone in Vancouver? There's all these microgroups have opened up everywhere. Does that lovely group of illustrators that includes Sam? Pencils are collected. Yeah, pencils on toast, who have a little poll every week. There's lots of communities on Instagram, aren't there whether they're local or global? Ideally, you want something you can physically go to and hang out and make friends.

24:55Because I think the difference is phenomenal. It really changes how you feel about your work and your life. Yeah. You're more powerful with your band together, aren't you? Totally. I would never have been brave enough to even do a podcast now. If someone said, oh, you would do podcasts, I feel like nut on your life. That's never going to happen. Yeah, yeah. You go, what does it go, go together and you go further? That's the one. Go along. Go along and you go faster. Go together. Go further. Something like that. I do correct. But it's really true. It's probably completely wrong. Okay, okay. Bye-bye. Bye.