Before and After

As I work on the feedback community, I’ve been thinking about the feedback I’ve gotten over the years. The times that really stood out were the ones that gave me something I could really work with, not just for one piece, but for my work as a whole. The ones that pointed me in a clear direction and sent me on my way.

The first time this happened in my illustration career was back in 2018. I was at the Bologna Book Fair and had a brand new kidlit portfolio (my first!) and a full list of appointments.

This is how almost every review worked:

Me: *shows portfolio*

Reviewer: *looks through portfolio, finds something interesting, offers business card* ~OR~ *doesn’t find anything interesting, and doesn’t offer business card*

I walked a way with a lot of business cards, so I think I did pretty well. But did I gain any insight? Not really. Not until I met with an agent who spent a full fifteen minutes really talking to me about my portfolio. We’ll call her Cleo because I’m not 100% sure about her name and she’s not with that agency anymore anyway.

She was incredible! I got so much insight in such a short amount of time. She told me what was working and what wasn’t working, not just in each illustration but in the portfolio as a whole. She told me what she wanted to see more of and gave examples of other illustrators who were going in a direction she thought I could explore.

When I got home, I redid my portfolio, and soon after, I got an agent and landed my first book deal.

I struggled with whether or not to share any images, because at this point, even the After version is super old. My current work is executed with traditional materials, and I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. But I still like the compositions and thought it would be helpful to give some concrete specifics. I’m planning to take another stab at them, but if I waited to do that first, I’d never get this post out!

When I created the Befores, I was just starting to pursue illustration following a career in graphic design. I’d been working digitally for ages, and had done a ton of vector stuff in Adobe Illustrator. But I knew I wanted to bring texture into my kidlit work, so I had several hand-painted pieces in my portfolio, including the images here. I can say with hindsight that although the pieces showed some pretty good composition skills and a half decent understanding of light and color, the execution was very rough. I recall being influenced by illustrators with an organic, textured style (Katie Harnett comes to mind), and I just couldn’t execute on it. What’s more, I couldn’t see why I wasn’t nailing it. I was just too green.

Fortunately, Cleo could see where I was struggling, but also that my work had good bones. She suggested I lean into my strengths, tone down the texture, tighten up the shapes, and bring in colorful line to add the variation I’d been trying to achieve with brush strokes. The result was less organic than I was originally going for, but it was a much more marketable approach for me at the time and with my particular skill set.

Moments of clarity like the one I got from Cleo are so meaningful. Unfortunately, they’ve been few and far between. I can honestly say I wish I’d had more direction in the early stages of my career. I didn’t trust myself to commit to one style. And why would I? I still had a lot to learn and I knew it.

And I don’t know about you, but my brain lies to me all the time. Social media muddies the waters even more. There’s a big difference between making something good, and making something likeable. I know artists with a hundred thousand followers and no jobs. And many more who are busy with less than a thousand. Food for thought!

It’s taken a long time, but learning to trust myself has been a huge part of my creative journey. I know I’m much further along in my career, but good feedback is still just as important. I got some feedback recently from another agent that was just as meaningful as my review with Cleo, but this time, rather than telling me what to do, she validated a lot of what I was already thinking. It helped me realize I’m on the right track, that I can trust my intuition, and that I’m experienced and insightful enough at this point that I can set my own path, even when the world seems to be pulling me in a thousand different directions at once.

I hope to foster that kind of trust and clarity in this community, so others can skip ahead and not spend as much time as I did wondering what to focus on and chasing the wrong leads. (Or at least create sellable work while they chase them!) I have some ideas about how we might do that, and I’m always open to suggestions!

Now for some brief community updates:

I’m going with Mighty Networks. The main reason is it can do what we need it to, plus it has some really nice community features which will help in organizing critique groups. One thing it can do is show members near you. I’m part of a small community that uses MN, and met an artist in my city because of it. We’re so isolated as illustrators; anything that fosters real connection is a bonus!

I’ve decided not to go with Discord because I suspect trying to organize it for our purposes would be pure chaos. We’d have to thread everything, and those threads would clutter up the navigation. There are things I really like about Discord, but we’d have to jump through too many hoops to organize the conversation around multiple images, and I think the feedback could suffer as a result. Plus, Discord is going public, and they’ve already said that means more ads, so you know the enshittification is coming.

I’ve waffled on this one a lot, because the whole point of creating a community is to—well—foster community. But for now I think this substack will have to serve as the place for those who want to share in the feedback community’s discoveries but don’t have the bandwidth to invest at the moment. There might be a way to open it up down the road, but for now I’d rather take it slow.

Also, as a working artist, I need to be judicious about investing time away from my own work. Opening the platform to everyone will mean a lot more for me to moderate.

That said, regardless of whether or not there is a free section, I do want to create paths to the full community for serious artists who might not have access to the necessary funds. I want it to be affordable, but I recognize that that means different things to different people, and economies can vary wildly. So that’s something I’ll be thinking about and will plan to introduce after the initial growing pains.

Thanks to everyone who filled out the poll! That was really helpful, even if I did mess up one of the questions. It feels good to know there are so many ways to bring value to the community!

I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks building out the platform, and I’ll open the doors for a soft launch in September! I’ll keep you posted. Let me know if you have any questions!