Do You See Problems Or Solutions In Your Illustration Career?

Sometimes when you’re so involved with your art and every little detail involved in trying to make a career out of it, it’s easy to overlook the progress you make along the way.

I don’t necessarily mean the improvements in your level of skill or draftsmanship, I’m talking about that all important confidence and self belief.

I recently had one of these lightbulb moments while talking to an artist friend about the BBC Wildlife Artist Of The Year 2011 competition. I had already decided to enter and my friend was thinking about it.

My friend creates their work in ink and adds flat planes of colour digitally, but upon realising that the competition doesn’t allow digitally created work to be entered, started to have doubts.

I suggested using gouache or acrylic to add the flat planes of colour that they would usually add in Photoshop but I could already hear the negativity creeping in and the walls going up. A few days later, I got a message from them saying that they decided not to enter.

So, what was my lightbulb moment?

Until a number of months ago, how my friend dealt with the additional challenges would have been exactly how I would have dealt with them. I would have given up.

The piece I’m creating is going to be the most challenging image I have ever made, for a number of reasons:

• It’s about 10 times the size of any collage I’ve ever made - approximately 600x400mm
• It will be the most detailed image I’ve ever created
• The subject of my piece is of one of my favourite and one of the most majestic birds in world - the golden eagle but it feels daunting to do it justice
• The background needs to be as much a character in the image as the bird
• I have no idea how a traditional cut paper collage will be received by the judges of the competition (it may well be a first)

Previously, I would have had ‘that‘ voice in my head - dwelling on all these challenges, convincing myself I couldn’t pull it off and procrastination would have well and truly set in by now.

But you know what? This time, I haven’t heard those voices once and I’m totally ready and excited to take the challenge.

The only thing I’m thinking about are solutions to the creative challenges and for me that is a huge change in my mindset and one I’ll be celebrating (and thanking my friend for making me realise this).

Creating an illustration is all about making numerous creative decisions along the way, one after the other, to produce the strongest piece of work possible.

You have a choice…are you going to let those decisions and challenges cripple you and stop you in your tracks - or will you embrace them and grow as an artist by choosing to overcome them?

If you’re interested in finding out how my golden eagle collage takes shape, I’ll soon be sharing the progess in a post as part of zero2illo Process Of Illustration series next month.