3 things I learned after 31 Food Illustrations for #inktober2019
Some of my favorites from my #inktober food illustration challenge
When I was a kid, I probably drew every day. At my parent’s house I have notebooks upon notebooks of drawings, mostly half-finished doodles. Something I noticed about my past self was I often spent more time drawing things that were somehow connected to a story. I used to write up little short stories, one was about a family of bears (probably loosely based on goldilocks) one was about a fish trying get out of his little pond into the ocean, but when he finally did he realized he didn’t like salt water and missed his little pond- As a kid I guess I knew “the grass is always greener…” I think I’ve always enjoyed the magical combination of words and pictures.
A few years ago, I found the data visualization world through my day job when I was asked to “pretty up” some our research reports. From there I came to find greater satisfaction in not just designing things to make them “pretty” but to make them useful and clear for the audience. I’ve come to believe that all design, not just how we display data should convey something useful and clear to the audience. To hone in my data viz skills for the last year, I’ve been participating in these monthly data visualization challenges hosted by Storytelling with Data. It’s been interesting to work on data viz for myself. I’m starting to see what I gravitate towards and what interests me. One thing I’ve enjoyed on a few of the challenges was accompanying data visualization with illustration to further clarify things. Illustration is different than just creating art or pictures. It serves a specific purpose: it is an interpretation or visual representation of text, concepts or processes. Like data viz, and anything that’s well designed, Illustration is nice to look at AND is useful at conveying information.
I recently got my hands on an iPad pro and apple pencil. So, when this year’s #inktober came around I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to dive into digital illustration. #inktober is a yearly challenge where you are asked to draw something every day and share it on social media for the month of October. I decided to search deep within my soul (check what I had pinned on Pinterest) and found that I had pinned a lot of illustrations of food.
I’m passionate about food. I’m a “let food be thy medicine” type and believe eating well is the key to good health. So, I created a new Instagram account and got to drawing and sharing!
What I learned about illustration and creating art along the way:
At the beginning you’ll make a lot of stuff you don’t really like.
During this month I inhaled Lisa Corgon’s book “Find you Artistic Voice” in about a day. It’s a really approachable look at how artists had found their own unique style. She mentions a now famous concept from This American Life’s Ira Glass: The Gap. I actually saw Ira talk about this in Austin a few years ago. Here’s an Ira quote that sums it up:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
I know that beginner frustration well. As someone who is basically a “jill of all trades” and a master of none, I’ve come up across some tall walls where my skills are not able to bring me onto the other side, where my lofty “vision” of “artistic excellence” awaits. Part of this is probably ego, perfectionism and being a little too hard on myself at times, but it is really good to know that I’m not the only one who experiences this. It’s a common human thing! When I look at my Instagram feed of food illustrations, there are some I’m pretty “meh” about, but I kinda just take a deep breath, remove my finger from the “delete” option and take a look at the ones I like better, and focus my energies on what I like about those and try to be more consistent with it. This is the beauty of creating something new every day, you don’t have time to over-think or ruminate over your creative “failures.” You only have time to create more art.
2. You have your own inherent style, and with lots and lots of practice and art consumption you’ll perfect this style.
First off, what is “style?” Everyone knows a Picasso painting when they see it even if they have no idea what the name is or have ever even seen it before. Sure, Picasso is sort one of those well-known “iconic” artists but what made him iconic? He brought a distinctive style to his work. As I’ve started to learn at the beginning of this journey- EVERYONE has style. We live in a post-industrial age where pretty much we are often asked to choose between options, decide our preferences and can easily access any content or thing we want. What a time to be alive! To the clothes we wear, food we buy, places we live and art we like, we never are left with just one option. So that being said- you’ve already made style decisions for yourself every day. Take a look around you- how is your home decorated? What kind of clothes do you wear? What did you pin on Pinterest? Maybe these things aren’t in line with what you like to draw and create, but I found it’s good to see what you naturally gravitate towards when no one is looking.
I’d say the most valuable thing I got out of participating in #inktober was how much I consumed other’s art. Before I started drawing every day I checked google, pinterest and Instagram to see how others did it before me. I’d think “Surely I am not the only person who thought to draw a roast chicken.” I always looked to see how it was done before. I also started following other illustrators whose style I liked and bookmarking portfolios. I still don’t really know what my style is, but I definitely have started to see what I like. I think this is a super important step for any creative work. I think you can spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint this style, but with a daily challenge where you need to just churn something out, I found your style starts to develop naturally the more you create. With anything: practice will make you better at this “style.” If you ever want to be able to cross the Ira Glass “gap” into work you are really proud of, you must work on it consistently and a lot. Since Inktober has ended I have drawn every day- it might be in a notebook or some scribbles somewhere, but I am working these muscles. I highly encourage this to anyone reading this who is in the gap with me!
3. To stick with it, balance your “work” and “play” time.
I was often frustrated this past month. I couldn’t get something “just right,” or I got overwhelmed with how good other’s work looked compared to mine. To learn something new is exciting and energizing and I think is probably one of the best ways to spend your free time, but it also can be extremely mentally taxing, and sometimes frustrating. Sometimes It’s best to just take a breather and do something you already know. Some days I really pushed myself to draw more “life-like” or try a different style or more complex subject matter, but some days I just went to draw something I knew I like doing and could do it with more ease. To avoid burnout, I think it’s a good idea to strike a good balance of trying something new and just going with what naturally flows.
Overall, I’m really proud I made it through my first inktober. It was just the kick-in-the-pants I needed to cultivate some new skills and add to the ever growing “talent stack.” ::cough, things-I-sort-of-know-how-to-do stack::
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. You can check out my 2019 #inktober Food Illustrations and some work I’ve done since on my Instagram.
