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.

 

I want to do illustration. I don't know how to draw and I'm past my mid 20's. What should I do?

I answered this question for a Quora member yesterday. I'm posting it again here, as the response to my answer has been overwhelmingly positive.

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First of all I would chuck aside ANY anxiety about being in your mid 20s. This is irrelevant. Professional colleagues of mine have started in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties; after a whole career; after two careers. This part doesn’t matter one bit. A client couldn’t care less how old you are - just whether your work fits what they’re looking for.

Secondly I would look hard at what being an illustrator means. In a nutshell, it means to Someone who makes images to help sell, embellish, explain, decorate, highlight or communicate an idea, a text, story, product, song or concept. You’ll be working as what used to be called ‘a commercial artist’ - that is, your work will first and foremost be ‘doing a job’. The job of your illustration might be to decorate an eyeshadow box or whisky bottle. It might be to sit on the front of a greetings card. It might to explain a difficult idea - one that photography wouldn’t work very well for, for example - in a scientific magazine. It might be to draw readers into a short story in a magazine. Or it might be on a book cover, to get people to pick up that book and buy it, while giving juicy clues about the novel inside.

While you will most probably always be doing personal work - that is to say, work that isn’t for a client, but for your own amusement or development, ‘off the clock’ if you like - as an illustrator you’ll be be spending the majority of your time working for someone, usually within a company. As a freelancer, this can be for many people at once (my record is 18 projects simultaneously - this means 18 different ‘bosses’!) or, if you want to be employed, for example within a greetings card company, you’ll have one boss, but you’ll still enjoy a variety and breadth of work. So it’s worth thinking about how you like to work. Are you reasonably well organised? Can you keep track of projects and meet deadlines? Are you OK with lots of communication happening at once?

What you’ll need to be good at is ideas, and visual problem solving. A good drawing is a good drawing, and a love for and knack for drawing is still, in my opinion, extremely important to an illustrator. But an illustration is usually much more than that; it exists to communicate an idea or a concept, or create a mood, or tell a story. For that reason, the ability to draw is important, but not an absolute dealbreaker. It goes without saying if you ‘can’t draw’ you may struggle to get the broad range of work you might otherwise get if you CAN draw, and it will certainly strength and inform your work - but the likes of David Shrigley and Paul Davis, extremely successful illustrators, may suggest otherwise. (Note that there is an art to looking like you can’t draw very well - the folk-art look or ‘naïve art’ vibe often belies some serious skill with pencil; think of Les Dawson, one of whose most famous TV gimmicks was playing the piano appallingly badly. He was in fact an extremely skilled pianist, and needed to be in order to mimic the bad playing with conviction. If you don’t know who Les Dawson is, he’s worth looking up!)

One of the very best ways ‘in’ is to go out and absorb as many examples of illustration ‘in the wild’ as you can. Get off Instagram and delve into the shelves of magazines - which of them is using illustration, and how are they using it? - look at book covers; study album covers, the classic illustrators; look at how the rows and rows of pretty wine bottles in the supermarket are using illustration, the chocolate boxes, notice whenever illustration’s being used on TV in adverts. Ask whether you can see yourself fitting into that world. If you’re building up work while you do this, you’re starting to sow the seeds of a portfolio, and you’ll need a really strong one of those before you can show potential clients. If it’s not client ready, it doesn’t matter - if it’s feedback you want, Instagram IS a good place to get this, as long as you’re OK with getting some frank replies, and you’re honest about where you are on your journey! Follow the illustrators you like on Insta - but don’t think you have to compare yourself to them. You’re not them, and they have probably had YEARS of practice leading up to the work you’re seeing now.

If it’s just learning to draw that you want to do, then Sharon (who was another contributor to the thread, who offered some pretty granular step-by-step tips on learning to draw) in her previous answer gives some excellent advice. But to become an illustrator, you’ll need to combine this with idea generation, problem-solving, tenacity and a competitive spirit - along with good business skills. None of this is easy, but it isn’t horribly difficult either - as Sharon says, all of it is practice, practice, practice.

Interview With The Vampire

I received this email yesterday and it confounded me. How should I reply? Should I reply?

It's polite enough, and spelled correctly with proper punctuation; he knows my name, and my work very well (which all help ensure I make time to give an enquirer a reply).

But this is the email, and it stumped me. (Im)pertinent info has been removed.

I am a cartoonist and creative entrepreneur based out of *** (home/school). This week and next I will be making a hand drawn calligraphic website banner for ***'s new *** creative magazine The ***. 

During my research phase I came across your poster for ***. I really enjoy the *** and plan to use the lettering for "***" as a template for my own lettering. If you have a minute, I want to ask you some questions regarding your experience with the poster: 

1. What did you use as a reference to come up with the lettering for "***"? 

2. What was the format and medium for the poster design?

3. Which inking tools did you use? Pens, brushes, digital?

4. Did you use any stencils to render the letters?

5. Anything else that you would like to share about the creative process behind this poster. 

I have attached a copy of the poster to let you know which one I am talking about. 

Now, these are the kinds of questions I get when someone's writing a thesis. A PhD, a dissertation. I've received, and fulsomely replied to, countless emails from students and still-learning illustrators about just about everything over the years - promotion, methods, working practice, fees and so on. I'm usually happy to reply, and use my two and a half decades of experience to lend my opinion to those already offered to a student by their tutors and peers. After all these students are the future of the industry - well, some of them will be, I'm always aware not all will pursue their chosen subject - and mine will be only one of several voices chiming in. I won't tell you how to make your work - only you can do that - but I can suggest how you market it, promote it, refine it, sell it and so on.

But this was an email from someone referring to themselves as a CEO, essentially i) telling me they are going to copy my lettering for their own piece of work - work they intend to take to market, and ii) asking me how to do it, implying in the process that I copied it in the first place.

Was I wrong to interpret this as a politely-written request for a set of instructions on how to re-create the work they want to mimic? Sure, I pulled on all sorts of specific historical references for the work in question - four A3 sheets full of clippings, sketches, photos; my old books and their ornate spines, type books by the likes of Louise Fili, Steven Heller, my Letraset catalogues from the 70s - did they really not have access to the same stuff as me? Maybe they just don't know what to Google, what typographic books to dig into.

I didn't know where to start with it. My first thought was bemusement, then I was a little breathtaken by their cheek, then cross. Then the opposite. I started to think 'OK; just a student, they're learning, and that includes learning protocol and etiquette, I'll just talk to them about their approach'.

But then I saw their website and that as well as being a student, that they're calling themselves a CEO - "the position of the most senior corporate officer, executive, leader or administrator in charge of managing an organization". 

That bothered me. I'm a Company Director, but I don't call myself that day to day - you'll find it on legal paperwork but that's about it. It's a legal status regarding how our company's set up - it doesn't give me any special hierarchy or status. And yes, I guess it's technically possible to be a CEO and be  student - many people go back to study after first careers, or set up fully operational companies while they're still undergraduates.

So what was it about that that bothered me so much?

My thoughts moved onto wondering whether this is 'Just How People Learn Now'. I thought about this for ages - all afternoon in fact, as I did my work. Work that was original, on paper, created afresh, without anyone else's work in front of me, just some references of the particular ancient ethnic henna tattoo style I was taking as influence for the very specific content of this book.

Hang on - how was what I was doing any different from what this person wanted to do?

I recalled a colleague recently talking about an email he'd had from another, presumably newish, illustrator wanting to know his short cuts, what software effects he used and how he could make work like his. My colleague was very cross with the enquirer, as they'd implied that Bob* (not his real name) used some kind of filter, software effect or short cut, when in fact he hand-draws individual elements by hand in hundreds of layers to build up very complex illustrations. Bob was happy to tell the enquirer this, in what we shall call a Firmly Worded Reply. The essence of his reply was, There Is No Short Cut.

As much as I can understand a student's eagerness to just bloody well know how to do it, and quickly please because I live in a world where everything happens NOW, I can also understand my colleague's umbrage. One day you find yourself ten years into a career, and you've built up certain skills through years of trial and error, you're working long days, longer nights. Then you find yourself 15 years into the same career, a little more confident, faster maybe, but still learning, and you're a bit more knackered, the days seem longer. One day you hit 20 years, which you can't believe because only yesterday it was new Year's Eve 1999, and you're adept, busy, confident (ish), and, possibly, well established and well known. Maybe a bit less tired, because some things might have become easier, and still learning. Nobody who reaches any of these chronological landmarks, nor any in between, having spent the entire time working in their craft, likes to believe that anyone thinks their work's just 'knocked out' using filters or effects. We might love our largely anonymous existences as creators of images 'behind the scenes' - we don't get into this to be pop stars - but we are just as vulnerable to pride, fear of eclipse and puffed-out-chests. So we do time-lapses, GIFs, step-by-steps, BTS and WIP Instas to show how we do it; to prove we have skills and what that unique set of skills comprises. We might, as I did in the middle years of my career, share and teach the very thing that's making us unique and marketable at that time - in my case, my lettering work. As early as 2000, I was showing students how to use myriad pens and nibs, create styles like mine, and explore how lettering can be a standalone thing, its enormous creative potential.

So you've got to watch yourself. The industry and how it is both taught and learned has changed radically in the time since my own graduation. Hours are shorter. Expectation is higher. Software must be learned, or the course risks being seen as not delivering. Courses are paid for - grants in the UK at least are no more than a wistful look in an over-40-year-old's tired eyeball - so skills must be handed out, quickly. How do we know what these learners are being taught? Maybe they're encouraged to contact their favourite illustrators directly with exactly these enquiries, rather than waste time experimenting or playing about with materials. After all, a full time course is no longer a full time course - my own experience of teaching degree level has illuminated the squeeze on teachable, on-site hours.

So back to my confusion. This person was only asking me things that a student might have done, face to face, in a workshop. They just 'need to know'. They have a deadline. There had to be something else behind my initial discomfort.

I've thought about this email a LOT since it came in, and my conclusion about my own reaction to it is this. Their email was polite, kind, well-worded, and correct. What they are asking is, technically, and perhaps even morally, perfectly reasonable. What I realised is at the root of my discomfort is the sense of laziness, and my judgement about that. From a position of wanting to have it both ways - being taken seriously as a CEO but wanting to be shown the patience and insights a student would be given - there's a waft of entitlement in the email that suggests I'm expected to hand out easy answers, solutions and instructions to cut out all of the exploration, experimentation, cock ups, embarrassing went-wrongs, wonderful went-rights and messy playfulness that go with working it out for yourself. That's the GOOD STUFF. It's the gritty, awkward, painful side of this work that's hard to engage with, that takes time, and which ultimately makes for a better, more original, more authentic product. I still struggle with that myself. Daily. But to jump that bit and go straight to Go is to do yourself a creative disservice. And I'm not even sure it's possible, if longevity is something you desire.

I'm a professional and I'm experienced, but this makes me neither The Expert nor immune to the struggle to create something new. Maybe that's why it rankled. I want that person to go through what I did - perhaps borne from a misplaced sense of 'fairness', and 'earning' your position...earning that CEO title. They didn't mean, I'm quite sure, to come across as rude. I'm pretty confident they think there's nothing at all wrong with their email; and maybe there isn't. Maybe the difference here is simply that he told me what he was going to do, instead of just doing it without me knowing. My work is copied all the time - as is that of my colleagues - we see it, you know. We just accept it if it's in the context of exploration and learning as we expect that learners will move on and evolve, like we feel we did.

I want CEO Cheeky to go ahead and try the poster without my help. They'll probably do a damn fine job. I hope it doesn't look like mine. I hope it looks like theirs, for better or for worse. In the end, we can only ever do our own thing, and I'm all occupied keeping that fresh and alive. Lord knows that takes enough energy all by itself.

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" - Einstein

Yes, those are spud prints.

Addendum:

I replied to the CEP today. here's my email. I'm really hoping he'll be as willing to share his work with me as he hoped I would be with my process.

Hi *****

Thanks for your email. I hope by now you’ve got the piece of work done and handed in for the deadline, and you enjoyed the process of creating it. I’ve spent many years helping students with their progress - through Masters and Degree level lecturing, through workshops and seminars, talks, through judging competitions, one-to-one sessions, in further education and by email, and yours was a most politely worded and well written email.

I am flattered that you sought to base your work on mine; I actually wrote a blog about the process of making this poster, which you would probably have found if you’d spent a bit of time on my website and blog. (I’m not sure where you found this piece of work, as you didn’t mention that).

Your email got me thinking about a few things. I’ve had plenty of people copy my work, but never had anyone tell me they’re going to copy my work, and then ask me how to do that. So I spent some time thinking about my own response to that - it’s very unusual - and put all my thoughts in a blog which you can read if you want to ('names have been changed', of course).

Your email presented me with an opportunity to ruminate on a few topics, and I’m grateful for that (there’s no sarscasm there).

And I would be interested to see the work you did, if you are willing to share it? I would be happy to give feedback, if you still want my input.

Best regards

Sarah.