It’s Complicated

Long time no see! There’s been a lot going on, and I missed this space and staying in touch with all of you.

I hope to be slowly updating you with the latest events, struggles, breakthroughs and little victories as we catch up over here.

So let’s have a look at a few of the most recent things, this time around focused strictly on illustration stuff. And don’t forget to leave a comment, I’d love to know you’re on the other side of the screen and hear back from you:)

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Now, let’s play a game! If you’re an illustrator/visual artist, read the following and tell me how many of these sound familiar:

• Switching careers from office jobs and/or freelancing projects to a full-time illustration business and having 0 idea where to start, what to do and how to do it.

• Building my own portfolio from scratch. What do I even put there? How do I present it? What sells? What others want to see?

• Social media? No idea how to show my work, constantly afraid of criticism / appearing unprofessional / comparing myself to illustrators who seem to have everything under control, land all the best projects and seem to be ahead of me all the time.

• Where do I even find illustration clients? Where are they? How do I let them know I’m here?

• Will my first clients think I’m unprepared and inexperienced? Is there anything I should know? How do I even work on an illustration project? What does it take?

• I feel stuck with my work, I feel like it doesn’t represent me anymore , something is missing… What now?

• I feel frustrated because I’ve worked months on a project and the pay barely covers a month of rent? How do others do it?

• Everyone has an agent, should I have one? Why do I get rejected by agencies?

• I think that being a good artist and running an illustration business are two completely different things…

• Getting stuck between “making art I love” and “making art that pays”. Feeling trapped by the style that gets me clients.

• My work is all over the place. I like so many things, what should I focus on? Everyone has such a distinctive style, how do I get one?

• Learning the hard way that unclear contracts, never-ending revisions, payments delayed for months - they all can be prevented with enough experience and are crucial for running my business, preserving my mental health and peace of mind.

• Feeling pressure to turn every hobby, sketch, or personal experiment into “content”.

• Trying to figure out if I should pursue publishing, editorial, advertising, licensing, entertainment, children’s books, merch, commissions, teaching, Patreon, or all of them at once?

• Feeling awkward promoting myself because self promotion feels egocentric/ arrogant/ fake

• Losing confidence after one bad client experience or rejection from an opportunity I cared deeply about

• Underpricing, overdelivering, burning out, losing inspiration, getting stuck, feeling unmotivated…

• Feeling like everyone else knows the “rules” of the industry except me

Wow that’s a long list, and I could keep going on and on! Those are all the things I’ve been through and very probably you’ve been there too. And weirdly enough, finding help, answers and support with the above is not an easy thing to do.

There are a couple of reasons for that: illustration is such a niche career, the resources are there but are limited, and ultimately, your situation is often a very unique and personal mix of circumstances and consequences.

That’s why generalized answers or “solutions,” even though well-intended and often correct, can be so hard to apply. And this is the main reason behind my why I started doing one to one coaching program, so artists can get help and support from someone who has gone through those struggles herself.

So, as a brief reminder, you can apply for coaching with me if you feel like you need help.

And a new thing: for the first time, I’ve opened Portfolio Reviews. These are 60 minute sessions focused entirely on reviewing and discussing your portfolio while taking into account where you want to be and what your goals are.

After every Portfolio Review, you receive a summary of the session together with the actionable plan we discussed and the steps on how to get there. This is a one-off, no-strings-attached session, after which you can still choose to start coaching with me or continue solo while taking your portfolio to the next level :)

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Illustrator’s profession can be very lonely. Some of us deal with this better and some look for communities, artist friends or just professional circles to talk shop. Cause I’m sure not many people in your circle will relate to client/artist struggles or simply to the reality and lifestyle of a creative profession.

For these reasons and many more, something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time is to organize a big open channel for illustrators. In the past I gave Patreon a try, then moved to free and open Discord, and briefly stayed on Slack.

What I’ve envisioned is a small comfy space for a community of illustrators to exchange ideas, problems, experiences and everyday life stuff. What I learned is that if I wasn’t actively moderating and constantly running the channel, the communication between members would slowly disappear completely.

It’s not a complaint though! It was a valuable observation and a good trial run, to realise that The Creative Draft community should pause (at least for now, it’s still something I’d love to) and focus entirely on individual support - I’m still practicing setting my priorities and do so very carefully to allocate my time as wisely as I possibly can.

To reflect this very focused path, The Creative Draft got a brand new website, oriented entirely toward individual 1.1 coaching for illustrators & artists, which is something I’ve been offering since the beginning.

There, you can find all the information about coaching possibilities with me, how to apply, what the process looks like, and what to expect.

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7 years and 7 editions, that’s how long Our Planet Week has been going strong :) It’s quite impressive, isn’t it? For 7 straight years, we’ve all been coming together online to create illustrations for nature and the environment.

We planted trees, created awesome art and discovered so many incredible artists along the way.

This year’s edition was pretty successful. Hundreds of new artists joined in and hundreds of artists we already knew from previous editions decided to follow the prompts once again.

The Our Planet Week host team also did an amazing job supporting and cheering everyone, while creating beautiful pieces themselves. Thank you again to all the amazing hosting artists and all the incredible participating artists who once more dedicated their time, talent, and creativity to OPW!

For this edition, I wanted to create something a bit more interactive that could be used in homes and schools, and that’s how the idea for educational illustrated bookmarks was born, featuring 5 incredible animals that matched our prompts perfectly.

The bookmarks are free to download, print, and use (note: this is for private use only, not for sale, reproduction or on products or paid training materials), and each one includes a fun puzzle or crossword that I made myself!

Funnily enough, the illustrations were super quick to make. The puzzles and graphics on the other hand, took me a ridiculous amount of time! Suffice it to say: this was a one-time project :D

Don’t forget to check out the hosting team, as well as some of the numbers and impact we’ve had over the past editions, at www.ourplanetweek.com and set a reminder for next year, because we’ll be back in April 2027 :)

Feel free to grab all 5 bookmarks for free from www.asiaorlando.com under Downloads.

Thank you for reading, it’s good to be back:)

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