My "Purposeful Practice" Illustration Challenge Intro

Getting better, faster (& measuring it)

“Purposeful Practice” is a term I read years ago and it stuck with me. It’s practice “with a purpose”. Seems obvious, right? But back then, when drawing, I wasn’t considering what I was working on, or why. I knew I wanted to get better; I thought sitting and drawing the first thing to pop in my mind for hours would get me there. (Fame and fortune were but a stack of sketchbooks away) Sure, eventually I would see improvements and make stylistic connections, but actually building a PLAN for the practice time would help me improve in specific and measurable ways—Wow. What a thought. How was I so late to this concept? (Maybe I should have played more sports as a kid.)

After recently finishing a long picture book project, I was feeling a bit stuck. My brain could only think in that specific way of working. And if I approached every upcoming drawing and project from the perspective of ‘Christmas boat parade’, there might be a problem. I needed to reset and remind myself what I like (and more importantly what I don’t like) when illustrating.

After listing the main goals/focuses, I needed to create a few parameters. How can I get a good variety of approaches involved? How can I get faster and build confidence? What would I even draw? These answers needed to be simple enough not to overwhelm me; something I could sit and start doing at my desk with minimal fuss.

There are infinite ways I could have gone, but here’s how Round One took shape.

Limiting the subject to ‘birds’ simplifies the “what should I draw?” question.

Rando bird + Rando style + 40min timer

📌 Parameters:

1. Subject: Randomly select a bird from “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds”

2. In the style of: Random “inspiration” from my Kidlit Pinterest board

3. Timer: 40 min (just feels right)

4. Quantity: 14 illustrations

What’s the purpose of this practice?

That goes back to the initial goals/focuses.

1. Speed - I finally realized I don’t love spending hours and hours on one piece. That mentality has been holding me back from making the amount of work I’d like to make. Plus, imo, with great speed comes great line quality. (Isn’t that what Uncle Ben said? 😄)

2. Intuitive and confident choices - I’m tired of constantly second guessing myself, my marks, my shapes, you name it—yet another reason it takes me ages to make anything.

3. Loosening up - I think every illustrator I talk to struggles with this. There’s always more life in the sketch than in the final. This kind of goes hand in hand with the previous two points. If I can work faster and not second guess myself, there will be more life in the final. It won’t look as stiff or overworked.

4. Resetting my brain after a long project - After finishing a long, picture book project, my brain is stuck that mode. I need to remind myself there are other ways of working and a whole slew of approaches.

   

   This is what we’re here for!

Do this straight away! —while the thoughts are fresh!

How will I analyze and measure progress?

• Write out a paragraph or two reflecting on the piece after finishing it. It’s important I do this right after finishing the piece.

• After completing 14 pieces, lay them out in chronological order. (admire all of the work I did 😊 this is an accomplishment)

• Take notice of changes or similarities as I progressed.

• What choices did I often make? Was that because it was easy, or because I wanted to?

• What aspects of the process did I like and what did I dislike? Why?

• Ask friends and family (whose opinions I trust) to look at all of the pieces. What do they notice? Which are their favorites? Why?

Please read!

I won’t be selling prints of these and I’m making it very clear that I looked at work from other artists and tried to illustrate a bird in their “style”. This exercise is purely for learning and pushing myself as an artist.

Tell me if you’ve done a similar challenge or if this inspires you to try one! I’m nosy and want to follow along!

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What to expect and where

I’ll be sharing a short reel for each piece on my Instagram approximately 2x/week for the next several weeks. (there are 14 total) Here is today’s! (1/14) The New Guinea Harpy Eagle in the style of Lydia Nichols.

And, because I don’t want to feel spammy by sending out 14 individual Substack posts for each piece, I’ll be grouping them into sets of 2-3 for further process chat, detailed video breakdowns, etc. (expect 5-7 of these) Bonus idea I just had: I could share the upcoming pieces in the chat a few days beforehand to gather any specific questions to answer. What do you think?

These take a while to produce, eventually I’ll take them into my paid subscribers section, which leads to the next bit of news…👀

Putting effort into what I actually want to do!

I’ll be launching a section of this Substack for paid subscribers soon! (actually it’s already launched, I just need to make the official announcement 😬) I’m liking it here in Substack World; it’s fun to have a place where I can put together challenges, process breakdowns, answer questions, make videos, etc. and share them directly! I’ll still be sharing updates and my illustration musings on the free side too!

If you have a question, leave it here and I’ll answer it in the official announcement post!

P.S. Everything in the ‘paid’ section here will also go onto Patreon. If you are interested in subscribing, but have a preference of one over the other, you can choose! I might regret this, but I don’t think it will be too much extra work…(famous last words?)

Coming Soon and Updates

• The third and final part of my illustration retreat recap with Viv! (Here are parts One and Two)

• Episode 3 of The Odd Podcast; where Viv and I discuss sketching and trying to bridge that gap between the sketch and the final piece. (Here are episodes One and Two) AND I have a better microphone now. :)

• “Christmas Ahoy!” written by Erin Dealey, illustrated by me, comes out this summer (yep, Christmas in July!); I shared the cover here with some close ups! I worked in an extreme digital/traditional hybrid process on this book. More about that process coming closer to the release date! In the meantime if you want to preorder you can do so here!

  

  A Christmas counting boat parade!

• Querying—I recently left the The Bright Agency (no hard feelings, just moving in different directions) and I’m gearing up to query literary agents! I have a favorites list and a manuscript to share. Wish me luck!

And now I have to go update my website, because it’s been way way WAY too long.

Thanks everyone, chat soon!