Let the artwork lead

and other thoughts...

Don’t forget - A discount to celebrate my third book!

To celebrate my third illustrated book, I am offering 50% off my paid subscription for a year. The discount is available until September 12th (which is the day of my book launch!). I won’t do a discount again like this for a while, so grab it while you can. I really appreciate every single paid subscriber (and if you are already subscribed, thank you, from the bottom of my heart). All subs help support me to keep making more illustrated books, and help me continue to create posts here on Substack. And I love this growing community I am building here - it’s been so great getting to know you all - I’d love it if you wanted to hop on board! And why not hop on board with a discount? Toot toot!

---

Hello everyone,

I’m so sorry I am behind on my Substack posts. As you might have seen, my third illustrated book published last week, and I have the launch party this week. I also have artwork due on my next book. So it’s all GO!!

I always promised you (and myself) that I would keep this corner of the internet real, and right now, although I know I am so lucky to be in this position. It is all A LOT. It is emotionally draining, my brain feels just full to the brim, so many things to think about. I don’t think our brains (my brain!) are built to multi-task like this. So I am admitting defeat/giving myself a break, and have decided I will take another month’s pause on our regular Art Club and Picture Book Club, and instead I will post a few from the archive. I have set up a few paid posts with videos looking through sketchbooks that I have’t published here yet, so keep an eye out for those.

In the meantime, I will start with this, a free post for everyone. It’s a piece of writing I did for my Patreon, before I had quite a big operation in the summer of 2022.¹

Just to put this post into context a bit. It was the summer after I graduated, a time where I had more freedom than I had had for a long time, no module deadlines, no tutorials to prepare for, and so it felt quite dizzying. I found that setting myself projects helped a lot. They gave me a channel for all of that left over energy from the MA. I had previously done a #100dayproject² the summer before my final term, so it made sense to to a #50dayproject, in that liminal time after graduation. My #50dayproject started getting (by my standards) quite a lot of traction on instagram. I was getting about 100 followers a day, and gained a few thousand followers by the end. But it didn’t feel right somehow. Although I love drawing from observation, I wanted to be an illustrator, and didn’t want to be known solely for my observational location drawing. So I decided to stop, despite the traction I was getting with instagram. I felt a bit lost, and like I needed to find myself a bit I think. Make work for myself, not thinking about likes so I started a project I called #meanderingmay which was all about me doing work by following my nose, for me and no-one else, for better or worse! I wrote a long post about it here. You might want to read that before this post… It’s a nice accompanying dish/glass of wine to go with this post, if you will!

NB. After #meanderingmay, I did one more project I called #50daydrawpeople - at that point I was waiting to start on my first book The Night Before Christmas and I knew I would have to draw lots of people, so I decided to do a project to draw people everyday for 50 days. I just note this to extoll, yet again, on the benefit of personal projects.

OK, on with the post.

---

…let the artwork lead!

Let me explain.

As a beginner (and indeed, through your creative journey) you are constantly sidetracked by other people’s work. You feel not good enough, behind, unskilled, uncreative, clumsy... Comparison is huge at this stage - it can be so powerful that you stop, after making even a small drawing, because you are so disappointed. But I just want to remind you that this is exact time you need to keep going! It is a sad fact (or you could say a joyful fact!) that to become the artist you want to be, you need to put a lot of practice time in. And that means both practice - the practice of making art - making marks on a page or other surface, learning skills, trying again, repeating over and over, much like a musician or footballer. And time - time spent - over days, weeks and years making art.

I say this as someone who went through the experience of being a beginner relatively recently, and feeling too afraid and unconfident to make art.

When I first started drawing again after a long break after art college - about 15 years or so - I was so frustrated by where I wanted my drawing to be and where I currently was, that  I wanted to give up - many, many times over. My wonderful friend Tor Freeman coached me countless times, and I remember her telling me about the “taste gap” from Ira Glass.

These are some of my drawings made on holiday in Tenby, 2015, from my Instagram feed (hence the picture of the book, and window).

During this time, I remember finding it all pretty humiliating, as I felt I was “behind” everyone else, and didn’t like feeling that I was “bad” at something. But the truth was, I did need practice. I don’t necessarily believe that you need drawing skills to be good - by drawing skills I mean basics like tone, colour, composition, proportions, perspective (they help of course) - but I believe what helps the most, and I have experienced this first hand, is gaining fluency. When you make work regularly, you build a library of knowledge that you have gained by making experiments. “Ahhh, so when I do this, that happens, but when I do that, this happens. I think next time, I’ll try…x”, you begin to learn what works for you, and what you like and don’t like, and slowly, your hand on the page (or surface) moves with more ease, and less hesitancy. I truly believe it is this that you gain with practice.

Drawings from my Instagram feed, in 2019, when I was drawing every day, all the time, on the train, at supper, on the tube...

When I first began drawing, I used to just do it during the (mainly summer) holidays, and then pack it all away again until the next year, and even then, I think it helped to practice daily for a few weeks every year. But it was when I made it a daily practice that I really made progress. It is a painful process, I won’t lie, but if you try to put aside if it is good or bad, try and see it as data - information learned about yourself - and simply keep going, you will get somewhere. Let the artwork lead!

Making some progress from my drawing practice, and beginning to work in colour. 2019

And during the "observation and experiment" module on the MA, when we had to spend a term drawing as much as possible.

The other time this comes up for me is around money or you could say legitimacy or career - making work through a need or desire for something. My metaphor for it is that when I am in this space I feel like a dog chasing after cars. But the trouble is, that when you are in this space, you often stop making actual work. Or at worst, you are making work, but lose sight of yourself in the process.

Let me explain...

This comes up for me in a few ways, the first is quite simply, a need to make money. I panic that we are going to run out, and frantically start about three extra ventures at once that take up all my time, and before I know it, I am no longer making art. This is often when I have to remind myself (and sometimes my wise friend Tor steps in again) that the work leads. When this has happened in the past, it is like I suddenly have a moment of clarity and I come back to myself.

My go-to thing to do at a time like this is to start a project like a #50dayproject/#100dayproject/#meanderingmay! It may seem like I am doing them for someone else (the instagram audience perhaps?) but when I start one of those projects, I always do them letting the work lead - good or bad, big or small, confident or scared - I just do the work. As a side note, I will say that for me, posting on instagram seems to have a magic power of holding me accountable - if it doesn’t do that for you, then don’t do it on instagram. The important thing is you find the thing that holds you accountable to keep doing the work

some of my artwork from my #50dayproject on Instagram. You can see it all at #ellamorella50days (NB. lots of other people have used that tag for their own 50dayproject too!)

And so, after letting worry about money or legitimacy distract me for a while, I come back to the actual art making, which, ironically, becomes the thing that actually helps create the money and legitimacy I wanted in the first place! Through doing the #50dayproject and #100dayproject I have made zines and prints. Through #meanderingmay I have made cards and artwork, and through all of those, I have increased my fluency and learned new things.

some of my artwork from #meanderingmay

I have learned again and again, that by making the decision to stop chasing after cars, and just make the work, you actually progress the most.

I also want to say that making that decision feels like it makes no sense, it feels wrong, not sensible, scary. But it has been in my experience anyway, always worth it.

I did this in a bigger way part way through the MA. My husband and I looked at our earnings and expenses and made a super tight budget, and agreed I would stop doing freelance design work. It felt really scary, but it meant I had the time to fully commit to the MA. I’m not saying it’s always been easy - we have got to the point of pounds and pennies more than once, and have lived with no frills or treats.

And, just to add a little bit of magic to the mix - or synchronicity, as Julia Cameron calls it - almost as soon as I made that decision, I actually got some lovely opportunities that came my way. And this is how it seems to work - by making that space, and stopping chasing, you allow things to come to you. I know this sounds a bit woo woo, but it has happened to me multiple times!

³So, I say to you again: let the artwork lead!

So that’s it! I hope this has been helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

I’m off for my operation now for a few weeks, but I’ll pop by and say hi after the operation, and let you know how I am.

Ella xx

1. I had a hysterectomy because I had a large (thankfully benign) fibroid in my uterus.

2. a project to draw every day from observation for 100 days, and post on Instagram for accountability. If you scroll down through my Instagram to the summer of 2021 you can scroll the whole thing!)

3. I have closed my Patreon now, and this is now where I post and host evrything.