Austin: The Poet, in 22°C.

I spent last week in Austin and on my last day there, with a few hours to go before my flight home, I did the walk from deepest downtown over the bridge all the way down South Congress to the legendary Allen’s Boots, Jo’s Coffee and Güero's Tacos. I wanted to visit all three, in the sunshine which we had been warned all week was about to be replaced by a humdinger of an ice storm.

There was a lot to love about Austin; the art, the food, the bats, the grackles with their mad eyes, the architecture, the weirdness, but mostly the people. I’d been told all my life about Southern Hospitality; by my Mum and Dad especially, who were adventurous travellers ‘til only a few years ago, and particularly loved exploring the quieter towns and side-streets of the States. I’d never been to Texas, but we’ve recently been gorging on a few Westerns, reminded of how much we love a good TV gun battle, an outraged saloon bar woman with 60s hair and a bit of Clint side-eye. So yes, when asked, I had to go.

I talked to people almost non-stop, in the lift, in the shops, on the street, in the bar, in the Uber. EVERYONE chatted, in the most welcoming and friendly way - and usually before they heard the British accent, which can often amusingly be the trigger for a friendly and curious chat. I can’t remember the last time I felt to welcomed by a bunch of people I’ve never met before in my life. Every face and voice different.

One such chap was Adam. Parked outside Allen’s Boots with his little black and gold typewriter on a tiny table and wearing a hat with jewel-coloured eyes underneath, he asked if I’d like a poem writing for me. Yes, I said; yes, I certainly would. He asked for a topic to get him started. Hmmm. What to request? I pondered. I’d spent most of my walk reflecting on how, within the same ten minute space, I’d become newly fixated on the Waymo driverless cars I’d seen all over the city (Austin being among the first to implement them), desperate to ride in one, all eye-widening invention, haunted tech and firmly reaching back to us from A Joyful Imaginary Future, while simultaneously sobered by a conversation I’d had with a Planned Parenthood lady on the street with whom I’d discussed the ongoing impact of the rollback of Roe vs Wade in her state, and the work her organisation was doing to push back on that. There you go, I said to the poet; forwards, and backwards, all in one walk and thought bubble. That’s your topic.

Here is the poem he wrote. I think he did very well.

I paid him for his creation, of course, and we chatted for another ten minutes or so before I went into the boot shop and browsed the beautiful hand-made boots and hats I would never buy and couldn’t afford even if I wanted to. But I could try them on, so I did, and felt like a kid for a bit, taking a goosey selfie in the changing room, and thinking that this is what travel is anyway, isn’t it? You try a place on, see how it feels, and you take it off again, taking a little piece of every place with you and absorbing it into your being. 

Clutching my poem, I headed into Jo’s Coffee and stared at their famous wall as I waited for my Cortado. And despite all of the reasons why I might not have, all the reasons I was warned against going, and never at a more urgent time to be reminded of the joy of meeting humans outside your own little sphere of existence, I felt it in that moment. I really did.

Why I don't do competitions.

~ New York Society of Illustrators Awards, 2008 (two prizes) ~

I'm at the tail end - seeing the 'light at the end of the tunnel' - of making a brand new website, starting totally from scratch and focussing on all the things that are currently missing from the current one. 

I've been meaning to do it for a couple of years, and much as I adore social media for sharing and enjoying each other's work, there's nothing like an online Mothership for telling the world who you are and what you like to make; a central place where I can put everything that's 'me'.
In the course of doing this, I chose to re-visit my FAQ section and where necessary (which as it turns out was 100% of all of it) write my thoughts afresh. After all, the types of questions I get asked have changed in nature, and mostly now come increasingly via Instagram messages and Twitter messages rather than via email, as they used to.

FAQs feel a little 'noughties', but they remain useful: it's still the case that most of the things I get asked are similar in nature and are thus given a similar answer. Though I'll endeavour to answer EVERY query I receive, as soon as I can, there's still an argument for having a 'first line of defence' which provides the answers to the most commonly-asked questions, so that the enquirer can check there first and if necessary, compose a more granular question to fire my way.

One of the answers that remained pretty much the same was this one. I expand on it here as it's something I've been meaning to elaborate on for a while. This is that 'elaborated' version.

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Q: I don’t see any awards or gongs on your website, why’s that?

A: I do have some, but they’re not on the site. I honestly don’t think they’re that important, or would influence whether a client thinks I’m suitable for a job. A client will look at the style of my work, the colours, maybe the medium; they'll look at my profile in terms of whether I've created work of this nature before, and if I haven't, they'll ask whether the work on show suggests I could take a run at the project they have in mind. Finally, we'll talk, and they'll assess my availability, process and timescales, and finally-finally decide whether I should do the job (or, it might be me that makes that decision).

Never in my working life of 27 years have I been asked by a client, or any of my agents, whether I've won competitions, or whether I have prizes or awards. Yes, there's a lot more to committing to a creative vocation, as it can be more than 'just' your profession, job or trade, and a client or agent asking this question is not the only set of circumstances in which competitions might be relevant to that vocation. In an educational setting, for example, doing well in awards might be part of a wider landscape of professional achievements being sought out, alongside qualifications and experience, especially where an institution has a policy of putting students into competitive settings.

But I don't feel they've ever played a part in my myriad clients' decisions to hire me for jobs, nor do I feel they should.

Of course, I'm not saying NO-ONE should enter competitions, or that they shouldn't exist. Not at all; that's up to the individual. But I know that from the very beginning - starting in the second year of university - the pressure was on to compete: with each other, and with total strangers, by entering competitions, and with ourselves. The latter I had no problem with - putting pressure and high expectations on myself is something I've carried about in my 'holster of burdens' all my life - but the first two, competing with my peers, friends and colleagues or people I'd never met - always felt a little off, and distracted from the main focus of being in the educational environment: to experiment, play, evolve, develop, and learn.

That's not to say our course wasn't abso-fucking-lutely hardcore. It was. 9-5, 5 days a week, with stuff to get done at weekends and every single holiday; 26 fully completed, handed-in projects in the first 11-week term alone; crits every week and a ball-breaking amount of written work to go alongside it all. The pressure from that was enough, without a tutor arriving with a pile of photocopied competition briefs ready to add their name to the winner's certificate as 'supervising member of staff'.

The weird thing is I had a love-hate relationship with competitions. I hated the pressure, and my friend and I would quite literally break into a run in the opposite direction from a tutor striding down the corridor with what was so obviously going to be another competiton for us to enter. But I also loved the challenge. I hated pitching myself against my colleagues, but I loved the thrill of everyone disappearing to their rooms every night and scheming on a solution, knowing we were all doing it at the same time and to the same deadline: what would Simon's work be like? How would Mel answer this one? Is Michelle going to go for gouache, or try something else?

And I won things. I entered competitions and I won them, or got runner up places, or some other kind of recognition because of them. And obviously, I loved that, too. 

But alongside those positive feelings was the uneasy awareness of an inflated sense of security, the success feeding the erroneous notion that I might have 'made it', before I'd barely begun. In fact, the 'success' I was having generally on the course and via competitions caused me to have the closest thing I think I've ever had to a little breakdown, coming home one Christmas and declaring that I was spent, all my ideas were gone, I'd done all my best work and how on earth was I going to be able to carry on from here?

It was silly of course and, as my Mum very quickly realised, I was just exhausted and a bit emotional at being home. TV, sleep, tinsel and good food quickly sorted out my terrible twenties angst.

But competitions entered later on, as a working professional, continued to make me anxious with a big dose of self-doubt if I didn’t get anywhere, and when I did do well, I could feel the outcome giving me that same inflated sense of security and maybe a little internal gung-ho. Perhaps, I thought, success in competitions meant I didn't need to try so hard, all the time, because a group of people I've never met have decided my work ticks a set of boxes, or it's been passed in front of the subjective opinions of five different people. And if I entered and got nowhere: the opposite: maybe I'm a fraud. Why am I even trying. Why do I bother. Am I actually a failure and everyone else can see this but me.

Note those were statements, not questions: all those evil, niggling little dialogues spoke up because I'd thrown my work into an unknown vat of work by a hundred or thousand other people, which didn't scratch the particular itch of whatever the judges were feeling on the day.

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I continued to enter competitions, but over time I started to become totally ambivalent about them. Those tended to be ones I'd paid to enter - and that scenario made me uncomfortable, too. WHY was I ambivalent? If I didn't care about the outcome, why was I bothering to enter? I realised it was out of a sense of duty, and very much born from the notion that 'that's what professional illustrators do'. And we don't, not all of us, just some of us. Competition gongs are most robustly not a signpost that you're a working, professional, busy illustrator: they're just a sign you like entering competitions.

Coupling all those realisations with the fact that I was paying hard-earned quids to enter, knowing that in some cases thousands of people would be paying the not-terribly-modest entry fees (with winners paying additional fees to display work on top), and my decision came into focus: just don't bother. The time I would spend choosing work, formatting and uploading it and filling forms online could very much be spent doing something more productive - something with a definite, positive, guaranteed outcome, like a piece of work, or doing some admin, or cooking something tasty, or reading the book I'd allowed to get dusty through repeated late nights working, even if just for the hour it took to enter that comp. (And where were all the fees going?)

Even during my many fun hours spent being a competition judge, I would struggle to reach a decision and, channelling my early-career experiences as a lecturer, I wanted to write to every single entrant and tell them something positive about their work, along with a suggestion or two on how they might improve. But I had to pick a first, a second, a third. I loved the process of looking at all the wonderful work, and I'd do it again, but I felt mindful of all the entrants' reactions whether I were to award them or not. So I finally made the decision to stop entering competitions myself a few years ago. If I was happy with a piece of work, and my client was happy with it, then it ended there.

And that was that.

Some people love entering competitions every year, but not me. I get the round-robin emails of this competition opening and that deadline looming, and I don't feel tempted to yield. Years after deciding to ease back from them, I have chilled a little, and instead of a blanket ban have narrowed it down to one illustration competition I’m happy to enter now, which is the V&A Illustration Awards, run by one the UK’s oldest institutions. I don't make myself enter every year, my policy being only to enter something when I feel it would sit well in the setting of the organisation, and alongside company that that competition attracts. The process of surveying a year's work and identifying something to fit the brief is a useful and contemplative exercise, whether I win anything or not, and allows me an opportunity to ponder my trajectory, the historical world of illustration, and my place within it now, and in future. 

And of course, despite my decision-making, I totally reserve the right to enter anything I feel like, at a moment's notice - but only after I've run the full-body diagnostic of 'why' - what's compelling me to enter, and can those needs be met by an alternative course of action? I heck myself for signs that I might be being tempted by the dangled carrot of an ego boost, or a need for some professional reassurance, and think about what it is I’m really after.

Nice as competitions can feel, making a living as a freelance illustrator is competitive enough. It took me a while to realise I don't need a list of prizes to tell the world how much I've invested in the profession I love, and how much of my soul is already, in fact, shaped like a little yellow pencil.

  

A very, very old home-made website page! Back when I was a super-keen Dreamweaver.

 

Comfort & Joy - 'a journey'

It's definitely not too early to post this Christmassy book by Kristin Hannah - after the weekend we've had and the weeks we're about to have, I thought we needed an unashamedly seasonal bit of work!

I started this book cover in February this year, before the 'first' lockdown when Christmas seemed a lovely recent memory rather than an imminent but uncertain event. Such is the nature of Christmas-related projects - I can be working on those eighteen months ahead sometimes - but when I was making this cover I had NO idea, of course, that we'd all be anxiously waiting to see what shape Christmas would be this year.

This one's also a good example of a cover that went through a great many versions before the final was approved. In fact, the project was finally finished in May, while we were deep but freakishly sunny mid-lockdown, the talk was still of banana bread and clapping, and I was still running to the local graveyard to do my workout!

Art director Derek was keen for a brand new look for Kristin's books, which are mega-bestsellers. The author had seen a cover of mine that she'd liked ('Nightbird' by Alice Hoffman) so we started there - a rich surround of wintery foliage revealing a cosy-looking house in the centre. 

The work was done as pencil sketches on A2 paper - my plan was to really ink these in in quite some detail:

To this I added some colour, with a hand-made ink sky (captured on camera):

Now, this was pretty much exactly what the author wanted. It's actually quite unusual for an author to have so much say in a book - but I think because of her status as a high-seller, with a strong reader profile, this writer was allowed to have more input. However this sketch was quickly set aside for a more toned-down foliage-based approach - no flowers (which had all been chosen for their geographical and seasonal relevance), just foliage. So we tried that approach instead.

And the house? Less grand, please! So we tested out how that might look, in a quick all-green rough:

This wasn't the right look either - so Derek and I discussed some branch-only approaches. Just green, and just the branches of a pine tree - a few branches:

A few more branches - painstakingly drawn one needle at a time in Procreate - and in the blazing sunshine!

And then Full Branch Action. Note how the house has changed from the first one, too:

After drawing gazillions of individual pine branches, I learned that the author still wasn't keen. I don't think she was being ornery deliberately; she just knew what she liked - but only when she saw it! And...she hadn't seen it yet.

So we tried a more graphic approach, reducing the branches to mere silhouettes, more like a framing device. Pine cones are Works In Progress here!

This one I loved - although only loosely indicated here, it was easy too picture a holographic foil on the tips of these frozen branch tips, and a spot varnish for the moon:

But. These still weren't right. And I can't remember exactly HOW we got to the final version, but all went quite for a couple of weeks, before 'Overwhelmingly Patient Art Director Derek' sent me another piece of my previous work, and told me the author rather liked this one now, instead (my work for Bareminerals' Christmas make-up range):

And off we went again! Again using Procreate to sketch and do final, with the art then brought into Illustrator for careful vectorising, we got to an outcome Kristin liked. My little house survived for one rough more, but my lettering didn't:

And by the time we got to 'Final-Final-Final', the house had gone too. And my blue-ink sky was made red, with the simple magic of Photoshop, of course!

I can't wait to see this in the flesh as I understand there's gold foil action, and that's going to look extremely Christmassy. It's one of those jobs where the roughs took me hours and hours, with all the pine needles (all those 'bastard pine needles' as they were being called at the time) with the final art taking me a morning to complete - but that's how it works sometimes. My record for rejected roughs remains at 47 - forty-seven different, individual cover ideas for a single book, NONE of them used in the end (they used a stock photo) - and this was nowhere near that, so that record is safe...for now.

And it was all worth it (it almost always is) because Kristin says on her Instagram account that ‘for the first time, she really loves the cover’ on this novella. My work here is done!

I’ve saved every sketch, original bit of art and rough because you ever know — they might not have been Kristin’s cup of egg nog, but they could be someone else’s. Recycling, you know!

'Comfort & Joy' is published by Ballantyne, part of Penguin Randomhouse, and you can buy a copy here.