What I Learned from a Week of Showing Up

Reflections from a week of playful, purposeful studio time

Hello!

Just a note to say this is too long to fully view on email, so if you want to read the whole thing, you’ll have to click through to the full post.

I recently attended a virtual Summer Writing Retreat hosted by Hattie Crisell the idea being that you work on a personal project (virtually, via Zoom) for two hours per day for a week, once in the morning and once again in the late afternoon.

A bit about Hattie for a minute, because she’s so brill and worth knowing about! As well as Hattie’s super Substack, she hosts a brilliant podcast also called In Writing where she has interviewed a host of super funny and talented writers: Posy Simmons, Michael Rosen, Jessie Armstrong, Jon Ronson, Cressida Cowell, James Acaster to name a few, including the wonderful Tor Freeman, my best friend and brilliantly talented illustrator and comic book artist. Hattie recently published a book In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation which brings together insights from her conversations on the podcast. It’s really brilliant, and I’ve been dipping in regularly when I’m feeling stuck, finding it super helpful each time.

I decided to attend on a bit of a whim, thinking it would be a good chance to bring some focus to personal development work, which can often get sidelined for the more important work. It was a revelation! What began with a feeling of I may as well, let’s see what happens ended with a profound sense of how much you can develop with a little bit of sustained and regular practice.

I wanted to write about it here. I always find that writing about things helps me gain a greater understanding and perspective on my work, and I’m hoping it will be interesting for you to read about too, so here goes.

Beginnings

Because I joined on a bit of a whim, I didn’t have much of a sense of what I wanted to do. I know from past experience that it helps to give yourself a goal or set your intentions somewhat before beginning work. I’ve written before about how I like to work intuitively, but I also know that in order to work that way, you need to give yourself some limitations, parameters, or intentions, because without them, it can become a little bit too meandering (although I do love a meander!).

I could write about this all day – I’m endlessly fascinated by how your practice informs your result. Too much intentionality (for me) can lead to feeling trapped and stuck, too worried about the result. Too little, and I can go round in circles, making without a clear sense of why.

At the same time, having time to make with no end in sight, purely for the sake of making, can have its merits. Apart from anything else, I believe you have to be able to enjoy your practice and give yourself time to indulge in the enjoyment of making. It also gives you space to make the happy accidents that are so important to me. Dipping your brush in the wrong colour, accidentally spilling water on the page – these can be discoveries you bring to your practice. These are the sorts of things I explore in Art Club – I love it!

So I decided I would keep in mind that I had an illustration fair coming up, and make some work for it. This is the Kings Cross Illustration Fair - this will be my fourth time doing it. I always share a long table with various friends. This year I’ll be sharing with Tor Freeman, Ruby Wright, Emma Farrarons, Sharon King Chai and Lisa Stickley - so fun! If you’re in London, do come along and see us. And paid subscribers get 15% off everything (just let me know you’re a paid sub, and I’ll apply the discount).

My initial idea was that some paintings of ceramic animals might be quite good, so I fished out some images from my vintage ceramics books and painted away. I quickly became dissatisfied with the results. I think this is not surprising in retrospect, and I have found in subsequent weeks of making daily work that the first few days are more of a warm-up. But it was a start.

Moving on

I then decided that I would tackle a still life. Along with self-portraits, this is something I’ve been wanting to develop as part of my practice. I grew up obsessing over and admiring still life paintings – from Mary Fedden to Picasso, Morandi to Van Gogh – and I’m in love with this one by Christopher Wood. One of my long-term goals is to make and sell original artwork, but I’m still feeling my way around what that looks like, so this felt like a good use of my time. With these two, I was playing around with backgrounds. I wondered how it would work to drape fabrics behind or add objects, like this pink crate. I ended up feeling that it didn’t enhance the images at all, although I always enjoy painting a browning banana.

And another hop…

So I hopped onto – you guessed it – self-portraits. I did these two, if memory serves correctly, at the beginning and end of the day. I remember I hadn’t slept very well and was feeling a bit fragile, which I feel you can see in both of these. The first one (on the left) I was treating a bit more “illustrationally” (for want of a better word), and the second was an attempt at a more faithful painting. We’ve been doing self-portraits in Art Club recently, so I felt like I was already on a trail of thought with these ones. Of everything I made in the week, these are some of my favourites.

Coming back to ceramics

However… it felt like the still lifes and self-portraits had become a bit of a meander from my original intention, and I couldn’t see myself selling any, either as prints or original artwork (although let me know if you are interested! 😉). So I pivoted back to ceramics.

I thought I had had a bit of a breakthrough when I started combining flowers with them, and I could feel the practice I had been doing at Art Club, painting flowers, paying off. Looking back, do these feel a little too removed from ceramic figurines? Have they come alive on the page a bit too much, and therefore feel a bit out of time? I’m still pondering that. The line work was an experiment that, again, felt a bit too meandering, perhaps?

and finally

At the end of the week, on the last day, I painted these two (below). I often paint pieces together, after advice from Laura Carlin at a lecture on the MA – that painting more than one piece at a time gives you that extra wriggle room to play around and feel less afraid of mistakes. When I paint the artwork for my books, I always paint at least two spreads at the same time, often three. Sadly, I don’t have the luxury of the time to paint versions of the same spread at once, so I treat myself to it when I can in paintings like this. Withese I wanted to experiment with coloured or white background. Waht do you think?

These were a deeply satisfying end to the week. There’s not enough time, space, or words for me to go into the intricate detail of how they brings together everything I spent the week exploring, but I’ll give it a go at summarising!

With these it felt like I was bringing together how much line to use (I used a stick dipped in ink, which I had been playing with all week), I had been playing with limited colour combinations, and how much fluorescent to mix in as pops of colour (this might not show up very well in the pics; fluoro is very difficult to replicate, which is why it’s printed as an additional “spot” colour in books). The use of light and shade, mark-making, and a light touch of pan pastel. I’m nervous to write so praisingly about a piece(s) of work I’ve made, because experience has taught me that what I like best isn’t always what other people prefer. But… I feel strongly that, no matter what, these pieces feel significant to me, and therefore I find them, along with the self-portraits, my most – let’s say – satisfying pieces of the week.

And there you have it. A week’s worth of work, made in the space of 10 hours, broken up into 1-hour time slots. One hour, twice a day, for a week. I was sceptical about how significant such a short amount of time each day could be. But after this week, I’m utterly convinced, which is why I immediately created Accountability Club.

I’ve written about this before, but I find myself in somewhat of a transition time. Before, during, and for a while after the MA, sketching on location was my go-to development and creative playtime. I filled many sketchbooks, and nothing makes me happier than painting and drawing on location when I have the time. But that is the thing. Since I started getting regular commissions to illustrate books (including my own author/illustrator book, which I have just started work on!) I just don’t have the time to set out and paint on location. This might be a construction of mine; I’m sure I could if I really set my mind to it, but I’ve struggled to, nevertheless. I’ve written in much more depth about it here, so I won’t repeat myself (too much – ha!), but the point is I knew I wanted to put space in for development time, and doing this week convinced me that this was exactly what I needed. This feels like the natural next step for me; although observational drawing and painting will always be pivotal to my practice, I feel ready to stretch beyond painting on location. I feel the need and desire to make space for the sort of work you see in this post, but also the time to develop new ideas for books, and to make new work to sell at fairs and in shops. I’ve always wanted to have a go at book covers, and perhaps this will give me the time and space to explore this.

All of this to say, I want to make more posts like this, and I’m hoping this will be the start of more regular studio update posts where I share the development work I’ve been making, like this one!

I want to write some more about the work I made over the first two weeks of Accountability Club, as I’m hoping to bring some of it along to the Kings Cross Illustration Fair, and I want to show you all first. I know most of you won’t be based in London, so if you like anything you see here, get in touch, and you can purchase privately via me. I’ve decided to sell all my original artwork for £45 at the fair, and I’m giving my paid subscribers a 15% discount on that.

Get in touch here:

Upgrade to join Accountability Club here:

I hope you enjoyed taking a peek at a week of meandering, intentional work behind the scenes in my studio.

Until next time!

Ella xx