When Your Plans Take a Detour, Just Roll With It
Well here we are almost exactly a year since my last post. 2020 and its life-changing effects just keep throwing my art life through all sorts of hoops.
I'm still very excited to get a Patreon membership and Twitch stream going - it's just been put on hold for a year. But as Jocko Willink would say, "Good." It means I get to do something else in its place.
I've ben given another great children's book to complete over the past year, and it's about to be complete this week! Of course the truth of these kinds of projects is that it's not really "done" for a while. There will of course be the variations on covers and sizes, and some formatting to handle as it goes to print and for eBooks, but the overall work is "done." and I have to say I'm very pleased with all of the growth I get out of these projects, every time. The amount of art that is required for a full-color illustrated children's book is usually pretty monumental. You have to set aside a lot of time and creativity for them, and it creates so much growth and learning. I've been playing with some new brushes and branched out into a looser style, which was just as creative as Andy in the Attic (can you believe that was over 5 years ago!?).
So while it's been a year of putting aside personal projects and handling commissions and the children's book, it's been full of creative experience and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to do another children's book. I've learned a lot about myself through the process too, just as I did on the previous books. Spending months on a single character and style forces you to face your needs as a creative person, focus in on your time and the value of what you love, and see how much satisfaction comes from completing such a project. I've never been happier than when I'm illustrating, and that's only become more and more obvious throughout the years of illustration work.
If you want to learn about the process, see the work as it was developed, and learn about what it takes to design and illustrate a children's book for a client, I'll be building up a bunch of member-only Patreon content as this project closes. I'm very excited to share the artwork and the book with all of you soon!
