The Haters Said I Couldn't Do It
And they were correctJanuary 30, 2024
Inspired will be a bit different this month. As many of you are also subscribed to my shop newsletter, and since I did promise to tell you about my decision concerning said shop, I’ll be talking both business and inspiration.
My latest sketchbook spread. More on that lower down.
The bad news first
At the start of 2023 I decided that I would spend more time and energy on my print business, in the hope of it bringing 50% of my annual income. I was feeling confident I could do it!
So, I applied to as many markets, pop-ups, and shops as possible. I was accepted into some and rejected by more. The places where I got in didn’t bring in the money I was hoping for. One pop-up brought in £2.81 (after commission) in three months. Another pop-up did very well compared to the others, but it cost me a juicy £200/month to be stocked there. Two markets brought ZERO money in. One of those was over a weekend. That’s two days of standing there and having no-one interested in what I was selling… fun times.
It wasn’t great for my confidence, as you can imagine. What made it worse was seeing posts from people selling in the same places as me going “doing a restock!” because they sold out.
When I realised at the end of the summer that markets and pop-ups weren’t doing great for me, I thought “right, I’ll put more energy into PR.” I subscribed to a PR platform where I could upload my product images for journalists to download and, small mercy, that had some success! Encouraged by this win, I paid (a VERY steep price to) another PR platform to have access to a list of journalists to pitch for the Christmas Gift Guides. I pitched to 40 publications, I got into… none.
I also moved my online shop to Shopify, a £25/month cost, because it offered more features like discount codes and overall looked more professional. There’s been 6 orders placed on it since then. My Etsy, which I make no effort to promote because I want people to come to my website, has had 7 orders.
And so here’s a summary of my revenue versus the related costs through my product business in 2023:
Let me do the math for you: that’s £249 in profit for the year, before deducting taxes and all the other expenses. Yeeeah… I knew it hadn’t been a good year, but sitting down to do the above exercise at the beginning of this month was depressing, to say the least.
Even though my decision (we’re getting to it!) had been taken in late November, I felt sad again. But not as sad as when I realised that not enough people were interested in my products for me to live—even partly—from my art. So, I decided (there it is) to stop actively selling. I’m not doing any more markets, I’m not going to mention products on Instagram, I’m not going to reach out to magazines. My online shop will stay open for a while because I still have some stock at home. Thankfully, I don’t print the full run of my limited art prints in one go for lack of space and cashflow reasons, so I don’t have that much.
There’s been some grief attached to the decision. Going from “this will make up 50% of my revenue” to “I’m closing shop” in less than 12 months will do that to you.
Where this post’s title comes from. It really made me laugh! Although, so far, none of my haters has come forward.
And now for the good news (and inspiration)
Following an initial feeling of grief, there’s been one of liberation. I can now create for myself! Not that what I was creating before was to please the masses, clearly 😂, but the pressure of thinking about selling was counter-intuitive to my creative flow. It was always there at the back of my mind, telling me I should be doing more marketing, adding new products on my website, writing more shop newsletters, approaching more stores, attending more markets, trying to get into trade shows. And every time I didn’t sell as much as I was hoping for, it knocked my confidence. Not only wasn’t I bringing in enough money, but it was hard not to feel it was because people didn’t like my art. Now that “you must be selling more” voice has disappeared, I’m left free to create as I please.
Coincidentally, I also happened to visit two amazing exhibitions the same month I took my decision, both about the drawing practice of famous artists: David Hockney and Pablo Picasso. Listen, I’m not fan of Picasso as a person, but you have to admire his body of work. There were 400 drawings in that exhibition!
Some of Picasso’s drawings
Some of Hockney’s drawings
As for David Hockney, visiting his drawing retrospective made me want to read the book Spring Cannot be Cancelled. Written by Martin Gayford, it’s a collection of his conversations with Hockney around the time the latter started to live in Normandy, right before and during the pandemic. It was very inspiring to read about how an artist thinks, how he looks at things, what he finds inspiring. I remember that the lockdowns made me look closer at nature. Hockney seems to always have done just that: look closely. And it makes sense. To be a good artist, really observing is the key.
This book, the exhibitions, and my newfound creative freedom inspired me to start a new daily drawing practice. The roughly one hour in the morning I would use before to chip at a bigger piece, I now use for one quick drawing. The aim is to practise my art and explore without having to be productive for my shop or polished for social media. I also realised that I really needed the satisfaction of finishing something quickly. My illustrations and paintings take so long to create, I longed for shorter projects.
I began with ink, because you can’t erase it so I couldn’t waste time starting over and over again until it was ‘perfect.’ I’ve now introduced pencil, colouring pencils and gouache. Sometimes I spend two mornings on one drawing, and that’s alright too.
A few spreads from my sketchbook
More spreads!
One of my goals for the year is to have more art in my life. Visit more museums and galleries. Read more about art. Paint more. Draw more. Just generally create more. Let’s see if I can make it happen!
Judith xx
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Here’s to an inspiring 2024! ✨
But first a look back on an inspired 2023December 19, 2023
It’s year-in-recap time. That’s one good thing about posting your work: it makes it easy to track what happened in the past 12 months. More often than not, in spite of all the shit life throws at us, looking back makes you remember all the things that actually went well.
I started the year talking about my amazing godmother and rethinking where to find my life purpose (if there’s such a thing). It’s an ongoing battle for me not to fall back into thinking that work should be it.
I wrote a lot about evolving my style. The first time I mentioned it I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to adopt the new style I was experimenting with. The second time, eight months later with the new style fully adopted, I wrote about how it might not be what people want from me.
As an aside, this led to a very interesting conversation with an artist friend who thought I shouldn’t have given in to the client’s request. It also relates to having a graphic design background and the balance between art and design. I might go into more detail on this in a 2024 post as it’s a recurring conversation for me and it’s worth exploring.
I inadvertently made an illustration in time for Women’s History Month with my homage to Gloria Steinem and all the women who’ve been fighting for our rights. It was my second drawing in the new style, so I felt surer of what I was doing. I still like this one a lot. Also, yay for representing older women!
I reappraised my past work for the better. It was a nice discovery and a lesson to never throw away old work.
I tried to get into the publishing industry through an illustration competition… and failed. But I learned from it, so this is still sort of a positive… right?
Inspired turned two! 24 months of writing this newsletter, I consider quite an achievement. I celebrated with an older illustration and fabulous photos from Louise Dahl-Wolfe.
I made my first gouache painting! It was based on an idea for a new series of illustrations/paintings, all about friendship. In Café Euphrosyne (the title of the painting) the friends are hanging at a coffee shop and they’re having a blast.
Finally, I presented my second gouache painting and walked you through almost all the decisions I make along the way when I create. It’s easy to forget once a piece is finished how much thought went into it, so it was fun to go back and remember.
Speaking of decisions, you might have seen on my IG stories that I took one regarding my art print business. Tune in next year for more details 👀
With that, let me wish you a happy holidays and New Year! May your 2024 be filled with time spent with loved ones, good health, and enough money to live comfortably (the cost-of-living crisis is no joke). ✨❤️
Lastly, let me tell you how happy I am that you take the time to read this newsletter/post. We’re all time poor, so I don’t take for granted that you choose to spend time with me. See you next year lovely people!
Lots of love,
Judith xx
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Decisions, Decisions
A journey through how I art direct my, er, artNovember 28, 2023
Now, I know this painting is absolutely not seasonal. To be fair to me, I did start it in early August. I’ve been slowly working on it most mornings and some weekends since then, bar the whole month of September when I was mostly away. Even counting the fact that I didn’t touch it for a whole month, it’s still very slow. I wish I was a quicker painter/illustrator but I’m not. There’s a lot of time spent zooming out or stopping and looking at the piece, thinking about what should be done next but not actually doing it. In the case of this painting, since it’s my second gouache painting ever, that stopping was probably a procrastinating tactic because I was afraid that I would mess it up. Even though I could (and in fact did) paint over the mistakes, it scared me to commit brush to paper. There was also a lot of procrastinating looking at Instagram, but that’s just a general problem!
Naiades
I’m continuing my Friendship series with two friends by the pool. The inspiration comes from having lived in Montréal as a young adult: meeting friends at the public swimming pool after work and spending time there. We’d go in the water to cool down and come back to dry on our towels multiple times, and just generally hang out together. Didn’t have to always talk, some could just be basking in the sun while others were reading.
Giving the characters a personality
One thing that drives a lot of the decisions I make is the characters’ personalities. I wonder if that comes from when I played RPGs (role-playing games) as a teenager... Have I mentioned that I’m a nerd? Anyway, in an RPG you have a character sheet that helps you built the character you’re going to play: attributes (social, physical, mental); abilities (talents, skills, knowledge); etc. You get a limited amount of ‘points’ that you distribute between the various characteristics, based on how you imagine your character to be. This then informs how you’ll behave while playing. My friends and I would even write very extensive background stories for our players 🤓For Naiades, I decided that one woman liked to be in the sun while the other preferred the shade (like me! ). And probably because some images from the 80s and 90s are still very much ingrained in me, it felt somewhat subversive to have the blond woman as the one hiding from the sun instead of wanting a tan.
I gave the white woman a short haircut and asymmetrically cut swimwear, imagining her as being more unconventional. The pink nail polish didn’t really fit with her personality, but a darker colour would have thrown off the colour balance. Sorry to betray you, imaginary lady!
The Latina woman in the sun is being sensible as you will notice from the SPF 50 sunscreen 😉. I imagined her as a very stylish person, but that’s somewhat hard to convey from the few elements you bring to a pool! I gave her bold sunglasses and a chic straw bag.
Close-up on the details
I thought about making them wear earrings, but would that make sense if they wanted to go in the chlorinated water? I decided they had taken them off. Another element I was humming and hawing about was the phone coming out of the bag. Should there be a message on it? Should it be left blank? In the end I chose to write something that’s not legible… Only because I can’t write that small! But in my head I know what it says: “J’arrive bientôt!” (On my way!) Another friend is coming to meet them.
The colours
I roughly plan the composition and colours before I start on any piece. I give myself leeway to change, add or remove elements as I go along.
Colour study on iPad
One of the painted over mistakes I mentioned earlier was the shadow the parasol projects onto the ground. If you look at my digital colour study, I wanted the shadow to be blue. The colour palette was a little bit more limited and stylised. But when it came time to paint, the blue just looked wrong. I then tried to make it more yellow…which ended up looking green (basic colour theory, who would’ve known!) and therefore even more wrong. And so I had a third pass at it, this time with a dark yellow with a very subtle blue undertone. That’ll do pig, that’ll do.
Stupid shadow colour…
The book
Although I have a whole collection based around actual books, I didn’t want this one to be a real one. Which meant I had to come up with an idea for a title and a cover. I thought back on my previous painting, Café Euphrosyne, and it became clear to me that the title should also be a Greek goddess! Or in this case a bunch of minor goddesses, as the Naiades were the nymphs of rivers, streams, lakes, marshes fountains and springs. Surely their protection could extend to swimming pools too, right? I also liked that they were nurses of the young and the protectors of girls, overseeing their safe passage from child to adult.And thus, my book and my painting had a title.
Close-up on the book
Nobody has ‘perfect’ skin
If you remember my last painting, you’ll know that I’d forgotten to add marks and moles on the characters. Not this time! I decided that showing so much skin was the perfect time to add stretchmarks. And let’s add some moles too. And the very pale woman should have freckles. When searching for reference photos, I found many where the freckles were not just contained to the nose and cheeks. Let’s embrace the freckles!
Close-up on the freckles (and the illegible phone message)
Objects
As usual, a lot of research went into finding every object and detail. I’m aware there’s no way for the viewer to ever know this (bar reading this newsletter), but most of the objects are from sustainable and ethical companies. It would be boring to enumerate them all, but I’ll mention this cute bag because it’s from a small business and I really like quilts at the moment:
Bag by There were probably other smaller decisions taken along the way, but these were the major ones!
Judith xx
Monthly inspiration
While painting this piece, I started to think maybe I was doing gouache wrong? I felt that most people use it to create flat colour, not semi-realistic skin like I do. But then I came across these:
Clearly, I can and should be using gouache as I please! For giving me permission to do so, Rebecca Caridad is my inspiration this month.
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Learning From my Mistakes
A case studyOctober 31, 2023
Last time I said I would talk about my next painting but, unfortunately, it’s not ready yet (hopefully next month 🤞🏻). Instead, I’ll talk about a commission that didn’t go as well as I expected. As much as I’d like to blame the client, it was entirely my fault.
I obviously won’t be showing the actual illustration as that wouldn’t be fair to the client—nor super professional—so instead I’ll use previous work as examples. They/them/their pronouns used throughout for more anonymity.
My style in 2020 (left) compared to my style in 2023 (right).
When your style changes…
My style has evolved in the past few years, and even more so in 2023. In my quest to add texture, light, and shadows, it’s become more realistic, less flat.
The client, who had commissioned me in the past, reached out this summer for a new portrait. When they emailed me in August, they sent the previous illustration as an example of what they wanted, along with a reference photo for the clothing and colours.
I thought “okay, they want their portrait done” and disregarded the example they sent. Because it’s clear to me that my style has changed, I just assumed that they also knew based on my latest posts and that they wanted a portrait in my new style.
Narrator: They did not.
After sending them the final illustration, the client came back to me to say that they didn’t like the ‘sharp details, shading and darker areas.’ They showed me the example of what they wanted again, saying they wished for the illustration to be “a lot softer in style with lighter lines.”
My first reaction was to feel angry and discouraged. But then I thought about the example, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I hadn’t followed the brief, which was very clear. It’s not their fault they didn’t know about my new style, I hadn’t mentioned anything to them!
So, I set off to amend the illustration. The clothing was easy to adjust as there were just a few parts to make lighter. I had to redraw the face and hair though, and it was weirdly hard. A style that was mine just two years ago was now difficult to re-create! There’s a chance that starting from my new illustration style made it harder. I’d like to think it would have been easier to draw in the old style if I’d started again from scratch, but then again maybe not. Maybe I’ve changed too much in the past two years—as a person and artistically—to access my past style with ease.
Morph for comparison. To be clear, they’re portraits of two different women.
At first it didn’t feel good to know that I hadn’t done the job I’d been hired to do, but it was a useful lesson. Don’t assume that people know where you’re at in your career—or your life for that matter. Even with social media, and in my case a newsletter or two, not everybody will see or read the posts in as much depth as you think! Next time I’m commissioned for an illustration I’ll make sure we’re all on the same page about what’s expected of the final result.
Judith xx
Monthly inspiration
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
How cute are my new concrete pumpkins from Ruby Melo?If you like to create, in whichever capacity, you should read this book! Even though at times Rubin’s pushes too much the idea that ‘art is the most important thing and if the inspiration strikes you should stop whatever you’re doing to pursue it.’ That gave me ‘man abandons wife and kids to pursue dreams’ vibes. But it remains an excellent read that’ll make you want to create. It’s a bit woo-woo (all ideas come from Source), but I’m a bit woo-woo so I liked that aspect of it.
Rubin introduces the book by saying to take what serves you and leave the rest. Turns out that was good advice as it was a more thought-provoking book than I realised. Even more reason to read it.
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With A Little Help From My Friends
Or finally finding inspiration for a new seriesSeptember 26, 2023
My phone showed me one of those ‘on this day a year ago’ photo memories last week, it was from my ‘artist retreat’ in Cornwall last September. The one I created for myself as a way to take time to experiment with mediums outside my iPad screen, without the pressure of creating something ‘good.’ I played with acrylic paint, watercolour and pencil – with varying degrees of success.
Although the retreat didn’t make me switch off my iPad completely, it did make me want to carry on doing more physical art. But instead of sticking with acrylic or watercolour paints to try to improve my skills, I decided to explore yet more mediums. One of them being gouache (pronounced goo-ash).
Café Euphrosyne
I’d wanted to start a new series for a while, but inspiration was elusive. It finally came through thinking about what brings me joy.
My planner has a weekly section called GRATEFUL FOR with three blank spaces. For the past four years, every week I fill one of these spaces with the word ‘friends’. And since the pandemic, seeing a friend gives me a feeling of lightness. Like I’m breathing easier afterwards. As an introvert, I didn’t think social interactions gave me energy. Turns out seeing people you love will do that!
As much as I love my husband, a partner isn’t enough to fulfill all your social and emotional needs. That’s one of the reasons why I hate the suggestion that women need to get married to be happy, but that’s a story for another time. Besides, it’s proven that having good friends makes you live longer than having a partner!
So I decided to start a series on friendship. I thought about various places where we meetup with friends. The first one is at a café, which I named Euphrosyne: the greek goddess of joy and mirth. Since the women seemed to be having such a blast, I wanted the title to reflect that.
Illustration close-up
Why gouache?
To be honest, although I DO believe that digital art is real art, it’s hard to ignore that the world at large still doesn’t. And since I’m trying to make a living – at least in part – from my art, I thought adding physical pieces to my shop could help with that goal. 🤞🏻Also, I was once asked if I sold ‘originals’, which don’t exist in digital form unless you sell only one copy, I guess. Or NFTs, but f*ck those.
This led me to gouache. Why gouache as opposed to other types of paint? I can’t quite remember now, but I was probably inspired by Bijou Karman and Laura Callaghan. And maybe by my friend Katty Maurey (again)!
The process
I did a rough sketch on my iPad for composition and colours. Of course, gouache pigments aren’t as bright as what can be produced on screen. A fact I knew yet I was still surprised when I couldn’t find the exact colours I wanted in the arts & craft store. Didn’t help that I bought a cheap ‘starter pack’ to begin with… I quickly realised that I needed to invest in better quality materials.
Initial rough sketchAs you can see, the women were more dressed up in this first iteration. I decided they needed to be more chill. They were only at a café, not a bar! This next sketch is the updated version, closer to the final piece.
Second rough sketch
A few inspirations came from sneaky pics I always take when I’m out and about and see something I like: a woman’s hair at the coffee shop (incidentally), or a woman’s face on the tube. Other inspirations were researched based on what I wanted the character’s style and personality to be like: one more casual, one more dressy. Which type of top, jewellery, footwear, or tattoo. And some inspirations came from researching ethical/sustainable small businesses, because that’s important to me. All the elements were curated through my taste though, obviously.
Two of the independent businesses found in the painting: a bag by Amstein and a necklace by Ray Makes Things. You might have noticed on IG that I actually own that necklace now!
As the scene is set in the morning, I wanted to show the presence of a low morning sun. A great way to incorporate more light and shadows into my work. I struggled when it came time to figuring out how the light should hit the people and objects, as I didn’t have any references, but I’m happy with the shadows on the wall.
I’m already onto my second painting of the series, which I’m hoping to show you next month. I’ll then put both in my shop and be able to say I’m selling originals, yay! I’ll probably also offer a more affordable version as limited edition art prints.
Judith xx
P.S. I realised that I forgot to add something important, so I will have to go back to the painting! The women’s skin is too perfect, they don’t have any moles or scars, which is just not realistic. I’ll have to fix that
Monthly inspiration
I went to see the Chanel exhibition at the V&A last week. It wasn’t the best exhibition ever – and Coco Chanel’s involvement with the Nazis was murky at best – but I still found many things inspiring. The craftsmanship and details of the garments, and how she materialised her ‘revolutionary’ idea that women should always be comfortable in their clothes. I also liked that her career spanned multiple decades and survived a 15 year hiatus. Plus, she started again at age 71, when she went on to create that famous Chanel tweed twinset.
Did you know there’s a chain at the hem of many Chanel jackets? It’s to create a weight so the jacket drapes perfectly after every movement.
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