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Last weekend my charming assistant/husband helped me film this time-lapse video of yours truly painting a watercolor landscape. He also edited and produced it for me. Thanks, Jonathan! This is my first attempt at filming and isn’t my best landscape ever (the composition could be better) but it shows my painting technique and it’s (hopefully) interesting to watch it all come together. And without further ado, a painting from start to finish:

For the curious, pigments include:

Payne’s Gray, French Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Sap Green, Quinacridone Gold, Yellow Ochre, Pyrrole Red Light, and a touch of Quinacridone Magenta, probably some other stuff.

Brushes:

Synthetic 1″ flat, Winsor & Newton sable flats in 1/2″ and 3/4,” Raphael Sable round #4, Winsor & Newton rigger

Paper:

Hahnemuhle “Turner” watercolor block, 24×32 cm

Happy New Year! As usual, I started the year off with (waaay too many) goals and resolutions. One of those goals was to revisit my portfolio with a critical, unbiased (ha) eye. The 2016 SCBWI New York Conference is rapidly approaching, and since I’ve sunk over a grand into it, I might as well prepare to make the most of the experience. So anyway, here’s a little post on reviewing and refreshing the all-important portfolio.

Like the unicorn, the perfect portfolio is elusive. Supposedly my portfolio should be a showcase for the kind of work I want to do in the future, rather than a place for my old projects to gather dust. This is much easier said than done. With my skills constantly evolving and improving, my portfolio pieces seem to go obsolete faster than Apple products. Without resorting to time travel, is it possible to show a whole portfolio of consistent, strong work?

In general, our new work will (hopefully) be better than the older stuff. But having a few great new pieces is not good enough. It seems that the editors and agents can’t see my impressive new (imaginary) oeuvre. Silly industry professionals! Instead they are judging me on what they actually see in the portfolio. The weakest work in my portfolio, specifically, rather than the pieces that hint toward my future genius. I once heard Cecilia Yung, AD and VP at Penguin, blithely say that she only looks at the absolute worst image in the portfolio and ignores the rest. “If I can live with your worst,” she said, “I can work with you.” If that’s not intimidating enough, the better the great new breakthrough pieces are, the shabbier the old not-so-great ones look by comparison, and the less cohesive the portfolio becomes. What’s a poor artist to do?

Happily, I’ve come up with a handy two-step plan to tackle this problem:

Step 1: Make more art.

Step 2: Show them less of it.

Putting together a portfolio is an exercise in curation. I like to start by doing some super-honest portfolio analysis to get a clearer picture of where I am and what path I should follow. First and foremost, what should be in my portfolio? There’s no right answer to this, but if I were an editor I’d probably want to see evidence of things like this:

1. A mastery of technique with a consistent and unique style
2. The ability to tell a compelling story
3. The ability to draw a consistent character in a variety of poses
4. The ability to draw diverse characters, both human and animal
5. The ability to show action, emotion and personality

Sounds good, right? Now comes the “harsh reality” part. Go print some color copies of all of your pieces, spread them out on the floor or a large table, and take a look.

You can start with what I call the “cringe test.” You can do this alone or (even more illuminating) with friend or colleague. If you have a friend who is notoriously hard to please they’re perfect for the job. Regard each of your images, one by one. You will probably start by admiring the best ones. Keep going. Eventually you will run out of shiny new ones and come to one where you feel that internal “cringe.” You might pause and make an excuse or apology, or attempt to “explain” the piece in some way. Hallelujah, this is the sign you’ve been waiting for! It needs to go. Get rid of as many as you need. You might even get rid of the majority of your portfolio. That’s okay. It just means that your skills–and your critical eye–have improved. Pat yourself on the back, and go have some chocolate.

Now that the cringe-worthy pieces are gone, look at what’s left. If you like, you can analyze these images through the lens of the Five Important Qualities that I invented listed above. Are you telling compelling stories that make you want to turn the page? Do you have a variety of characters in different poses? What’s missing? If you’re having trouble being honest with yourself, pretend that you’re the editor looking at the work of someone you might want to hire. What gives you confidence in this illustrator? What concerns you?

Once you’ve identified the holes in your portfolio, you can focus on making new work, keeping those things in mind. It’s always better to have a few strong pieces than to pad your portfolio with filler, so don’t go crazy here. Think of this as practice. When I audited my portfolio I found that there isn’t as much action and emotion as I’d like, so that’s something I’m working on in my new portfolio pieces. That doesn’t mean these new pieces will necessarily make the cut for the portfolio. It just gives me a direction to head in.

At the end of the day, I hope you can create your magical unicorn portfolio where you adore each and every image and it reflects what you love to do and what you’re capable of. It’s no easy task, so don’t get discouraged. Every new image you make is a tiny step forward, and every weak piece cut from your portfolio raises you a notch in the illustration world. Only you know how to take it from here.

Do you ever find yourself struggling to remove the white paper-textured background from around your images? I used to, until I learned this incredibly simple method using the “Channels” function in Photoshop. Here’s what you need to do, step by step.

1. Open up your image in Photoshop. Today I’ll be using this bicyclist illustration. Click the “Channels” icon (circled in red below.) You should see four rows: RGB, red, green, and blue. (Unless your image is CMYK, in which case you’ll have a channel for cyan, magenta, yellow and black instead.)

2. Depending on the dominant colors in your image, one channel will likely be darker than the others. I like to start with that one, but really any of them would probably work. In my case, the darkest channel is the the “Blue” channel. When I click on it, I see a grayscale version of my image. I’m going to copy this channel by dragging it down to the “copy” icon in the channels box. (See red arrow.)

3. Now there should be a fifth row in the channels box called “Blue copy.” You can re-name it if you like. While this channel is active, go to Image -> Adjustments -> Levels. Use the sliders to adjust the levels so that everything you want to be deleted (the background) is white, and the image is black. Anything that appears gray will be semi-transparent.

4. Once you’ve adjusted the levels on your channel, use the brush tool to clean it up, making sure the interior of the image is completely black if you don’t want the background showing through. (I didn’t want my cyclist’s mustache to be transparent!) When you’re done, click on the “RGB” composite channel so that your image appears as normal.

5. Exit the “Channels” view by clicking back on the “Layers” icon. Now it’s time to make the mask. To do this, go to Select ->Load Selection.

6. You will see a pop-up box something like this. Choose your “Blue Copy” channel, and click the checkbox for “invert.” (If you forget to do this, you can always just go to “Select -> Inverse”)

7. Now your background should be selected. To make it transparent, make a mask by clicking on the “Add a Mask” icon in your Layers box.

8. That’s all there is to it! It’s super easy. From here you can add any background you want, or just leave it transparent. Here I’ve added a blue background so that you can see how my mask turned out:

Hello, dear readers! Today I have a mishmash of a post to share with you, so I hope you’ll bear with me. (Ha.)

I have been on a bit of a quest lately to loosen up my technique. If you also struggle with this, know that you are not alone. It takes an enormous amount of practice to get the “quick and effortless” look instead of the “catastrophic disaster” look, so we watercolorists often get very tight and controlled in order to compensate. Of course, there are many different ways to work with watercolor and some artists do the “controlled” thing extremely well, but if you’re looking to loosen up, here are a few techniques I’ve stolen from other artists over the years that I’ve found helpful:

• Using brushes that are much larger than I find comfortable
• Minimizing the number of washes. The entire background of this image was one big, wet wash, not twenty-seven separate washes detailing every single leaf and bush
• Using a lot more water and paint than seems reasonable; enough that I often end up having rivulets of liquid draining off the paper
• Getting to know the paint. Many colors lighten in value or lose saturation when they dry, so it needs to be even darker than you think when you paint it on
• Waiting for a wet-on-wet wash to completely dry before moving on to add details
• Varying textures. I used some dry brush technique in the trees to simulate pine needles
• Painting lots of really bad paintings that will never, ever see the light of day. I plan to burn these so that no one can accidentally find them when I die
• Working as fast as I possibly can
• Occasionally closing my eyes. (Just kidding! Or not…?)

I hope those help someone out there just as they helped me!

In other news, copies of The Story I’ll Tell are here, so I can also do that second giveaway that I promised you several weeks ago.

The post office didn't do the best job ever on this one

Fortunately, the books are unscathed!

Leave a comment below if you’d like a chance to win a signed book! I’ll announce the winner next Wednesday.

I had so much fun doing the last portfolio rehash that I decided to do another one.

Back in 2013 I did a series of mouse illustrations. They were an experiment into using bolder colors and different materials. While I learned a lot from this phase of my illustration journey, it isn’t exactly representative of the kind of work I really want to be doing. Something just felt… off. So I posed the question to myself: can I re-do some of these pieces, and bring them to the next level?

Here are some of the things I liked about this piece:

1. This has a fun “hobbit hole” or “wind in the willows” feel to it
2. There are lots of charming details that enrich the mouse’s world
3. This is the sort of thing I would’ve loved when I was a kid

Here are some of the issues I defined:

1. The mouse lacks personality and narrative. He could be pushed to be a more robust character.
2. The piece feels stiff. It would be stronger with a looser, more painterly feel. (Easier said than done, am I right?)
3. The perspective is a little too extreme and is causing some distortion in the foreground. The high horizon line makes us feel a little distant–the exact opposite of the cozy moment I had in mind.
4. The stairwell behind the mouse is dark and ominous. I keep looking up those stairs waiting for something to creep in from behind. Not good.

The mouse’s lack of character was the biggest problem, so I went back to the drawing board and spent some time coming up with a simple story to add context: a little mouse goes on a wintertime visit to his grandfather’s house. With two mice, this cozy scene would be a perfect family moment.

I redesigned the piece with a round, egg-like composition in order to enhance the safety and stability of the scene. I made a special effort to keep things loose while still including many of the same details of the original. Cold pressed paper and a messier technique helped to add texture. Here’s the final result: (Click to enlarge.)

One of the most important qualities that an illustrator must develop is a critical eye to see room for improvement.  I went through my portfolio recently and found an illustration that had been there for ages, since the very beginning of my sojourn into illustration. It was originally an exercise for the weekly illustration challenge called “Illustration Friday.” The piece just wasn’t working with my portfolio anymore, but it had enough strong points to be worth a second look.

Here it is, in all its glory. Circa 2010.

Here are some of the things I liked about the piece:

1. The magician’s personality was unmistakable.
2. There was a lot of dynamic action.
3. The composition was fairly strong, with the character well framed by the window.

Here are some of the issues I identified:

1. Was this really a piece for a picture book? It seemed more like middle grade subject matter. It would be more appropriate in black and white, displayed in the middle grade gallery.
2. What exactly was the story here? An interaction between two characters would create more narrative.
3. There were several issues with the perspective and technique.

After my analysis, I decided to remake this piece using my black and white style. I chose a portrait format in order to enhance the drama of the magical ribbons. The open door in the background was the perfect place to add a young observer, someone to witness the magic. Here’s the final result:

Have you ever redone a piece in your portfolio? How did it work out?

Welcome to part four of my series on the making of The Story I’ll Tell. (Read down to the end of the post for the first print giveaway!) And now: color.

The Story I’ll Tell weaves a lyrical tapestry of fantasy and reality, and I wanted the palette of the illustrations to match the lush, dreamlike quality of the manuscript. I noticed early on that the story alternated between daytime and nighttime scenes, and I knew this would become an important element in the illustrations.

Reference images were the starting point. These Ukiyo-e prints were the inspiration for the blue nighttime pages. Matching the color was not a priority so much as capturing the mood of the image. I tied to imagine how it might feel, physically and emotionally, to step into these peaceful nighttime scenes.

Left: "Moonlight, Soochow," Elizabeth Keith, 1924. Right: "Moon at Arakawa River," Hasui Kawase, 1929.

Once I knew what I was going for, I made a detailed color study for each image Photoshop. I find this useful for getting the value range correct. (For those not familiar with art terminology, value is the measure of how light or dark something is. Not to be confused with saturation, which is a measure of how vivid the color’s hue is.) Ideally I want the illustrations to read just as clearly in black and white as they do in color, and good value organization is essential. Coloring an image in Photoshop is such a mindless activity that I listened to quite a few audiobooks during this phase. Then I made a full-color, printed dummy.

I ended up lightening the value of the background for the final art in order to make the figures more visible.

Finally, I painted color studies and chose an overall palette for the book. I wanted to use similar pigments throughout the book, and I needed a blue that could work either with a warm (daytime) or cool (nighttime) color palette. I tried quite a few combinations before I settled on Holbein’s French Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow light, and Winsor Red, with other colors as needed. I went through a tube and a half of blue.

Experimentation is key

Okay, you’ve been waiting for it: it’s giveaway time! Leave a comment for a chance to win a giclée print from the book. (It has to be a real comment. If it’s about Louis Vuitton handbags or search engine optimization, I’ll delete it.) Winner will be announced this Friday, October 23. And if you don’t win this time, you’ll have another chance next week with my final installment in the series.

Coming up next: Painting with Guts! The final art, and how to avoid being wimpy with watercolor.

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Color Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

Eventually there comes a time when the artist must figure out all the things that are happily ignored during the thumbnail phase: perspective, anatomy, facial expression, and the nitty-gritty details that fill the world of the picture book. This can seem daunting, but there are plenty of steps one can take in order to make this easier.

1. Reference images

I’ve found that it’s well worth my time to make reference photos or sketches for the poses of my characters. Sometimes I had to be pretty creative to get the right angle and pose. For the balloon page, I needed to draw the mother from above, running and dropping firewood at the same time. I put on a dress, bought some firewood, and made my husband photograph me from the second story of our house. It took quite a few tries and a lot of yelling through the window before we got it right. I’m sure the neighbors thought I was crazy.

Yes, I'm wearing jeans under the dress. But it was snowing.

Models are another useful tool. They can be elaborate or simple. Sometimes a bit of modeling clay and a scrap of cloth was enough to get the right position:

Fabric scrap + modeling clay + bowl = hot air balloon baby. Please pardon my dirty window in the background.

2. Perspective

If you’re working with perspective, it’s important to get it right. A few errors can throw the whole illustration off. I often find that my vanishing points are inconveniently distant. There are more traditional ways to deal with this problem, but since I’m a modern gal I’ve taken to using Adobe Illustrator to figure it all out.

The simple and quick method is to open the rough sketch and draw lines for your horizon and vanishing points manually with the line tool. If you have something fancy going on like a wacky three-point perspective or lots of round objects, you can take advantage of the built in perspective tool. I used this for my balloon page, making sure that all the round objects were correctly proportioned:

It looks chaotic, but somehow made sense at the time.

3. Putting it all together

With the perspective lines overlaid on the rough sketch, I projected the whole thing onto a larger piece of paper as my guide for the final drawing, keeping the other reference images nearby. Here you can see the transition from thumbnail to final drawing to final art:

As you can see, the cat transformed into dad at some point along the way.

For more on this subject, I recommend the wonderful reference book by Dinotopia artist James Gurney, Imaginative Realism. If you’re not familiar with Gurney’s work, he is truly a master of his craft. The book worth a read for everyone, but is especially useful for illustrators working in more realistic styles. (No, I’m not cool enough to actually know Gurney personally and he did not ask me to promote his book. It’s just one of my favorite references.)

Coming up next: Adding the Magic –  Color and light!

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Adding the Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

Let’s talk about COMPOSITION! Yeah!

Have you ever noticed that some compositions feel awkward, while others just seem to flow? There are many strategies for creating interesting and easy-to-read compositions. In order to keep from writing a super long, rambling post, I’ll stick to discussing only one method for today. When a composition really isn’t working, sometimes I like to turn to math: the Golden Ratio.

The Golden Ratio is a geometric relationship that you probably learned about in high school, where the ratio of two quantities to each other is the same as the larger quantity’s ratio to the sum of the two quantities. That can sound a bit confusing when you write it out in English words, but it’s actually incredibly simple when you see it drawn. I’ll refer you to this informative Ted Talk about Fibonacci numbers. If you create a sequence of boxes using the Golden ratio, you get a spiral:

Image via the Wikimedia Commons

The Golden Ratio/Golden Spiral is ubiquitous in nature: it shows up in sunflowers, shells, the shape of your ears, the proportions of your body, and the form of galaxies and hurricanes. I could go on and on. The Golden Spiral also happens be a handy tool for creating interesting compositions. Sometimes all it takes are a few tweaks–moving something to the left, lining a few key elements up, to take your composition from “meh” to “aah.” This isn’t a new concept. Artists have been using the golden ratio pretty much ever since it was discovered.

As much fun as I have playing with the composition of my illustrations, I also have to remember that each image is NOT a work of art in and of itself. The book needed to work as a whole, so it was also important to find harmony between the pages as well. This is where my editor and art director were invaluable, never losing sight of the project in its entirety, and keeping me from getting too attached to compositions that were not quite right for the flow of the story. (And also making sure I kept enough space for the text to be placed.) I made several physical dummy books myself so that I could experience the page turn and see the images together in sequence.

If you have another favorite method for finding interesting compositions, I want to hear! Let me know in the comments.

Coming up next: The Devil’s in the Details

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Adding the Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

The countdown begins for publication of The Story I’ll Tell, set for release on November first. In celebration, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts about the process of making the illustrations.

So, without further ado, I’ll start from the beginning.

Once upon a time, I woke up as usual, had my coffee breakfast, and got to work when—ping!— an email arrived in my inbox. (It didn’t actually go “ping,” but that seems like a nice idea.) It was from an editor asking if I might be interested in working on a picture book. It sounded promising! Emails were exchanged, manuscripts sent and read, deadlines were set, and contracts negotiated and signed.  After the whirlwind of activity and excitement settled, it was time to sit down, put pencil to paper, and do what might be the most important part of illustrating a picture book: getting started.

With The Story I’ll Tell, I was fortunate to have a lovely manuscript. Ideas jumped up in my mind, begging for attention. I started sketching and writing down notes, and created a folder where I collected evocative images from magazines and the Internet. Where did the characters live? What culture were they from? What kind of world did I want the reader to step into? These were some of the many questions that had to be explored.

After the initial brainstorming, it was time to start planning out the book with thumbnails. Some pages were clear in my mind while others were harder to pin down. After seemingly endless rounds of sketches, I sent in a complete set…

…and soon after, received my first round of detailed feedback from my editor and art director. Lots of feedback. For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to adjust to so many notes and suggestions. But at every round of revision, my art director and editor pushed me to make the book into something far better than I could have ever achieved alone, and I’m so glad they did.

Some pages didn’t change much at all:

…while other pages changed quite a lot:

This isn't even close to all the variations of this page.

By the end of the initial planning phase, I had drawn hundreds of thumbnails. The vast majority ended up in the reject pile. In the case above we ended up changing the text slightly in order to change the setting of the illustration. Once we had the basic concept down, it was time to start working out all the details.

Coming in part two: Finding a harmonious composition.

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Adding the Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

The countdown begins for publication of The Story I’ll Tell, set for release on November first. In celebration, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts about the process of making the illustrations.

So, without further ado, I’ll start from the beginning.

Once upon a time, I woke up as usual, had my coffee breakfast, and got to work when—ping!— an email arrived in my inbox. (It didn’t actually go “ping,” but that seems like a nice idea.) It was from an editor asking if I might be interested in working on a picture book. It sounded promising! Emails were exchanged, manuscripts sent and read, deadlines were set, and contracts negotiated and signed.  After the whirlwind of activity and excitement settled, it was time to sit down, put pencil to paper, and do what might be the most important part of illustrating a picture book: getting started.

With The Story I’ll Tell, I was fortunate to have a lovely manuscript. Ideas jumped up in my mind, begging for attention. I started sketching and writing down notes, and created a folder where I collected evocative images from magazines and the Internet. Where did the characters live? What culture were they from? What kind of world did I want the reader to step into? These were some of the many questions that had to be explored.

After the initial brainstorming, it was time to start planning out the book with thumbnails. Some pages were clear in my mind while others were harder to pin down. After seemingly endless rounds of sketches, I sent in a complete set…

…and soon after, received my first round of detailed feedback from my editor and art director. Lots of feedback. For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to adjust to so many notes and suggestions. But at every round of revision, my art director and editor pushed me to make the book into something far better than I could have ever achieved alone, and I’m so glad they did.

Some pages didn’t change much at all:

…while other pages changed quite a lot:

This isn't even close to all the variations of this page.

By the end of the initial planning phase, I had drawn hundreds of thumbnails. The vast majority ended up in the reject pile. In the case above we ended up changing the text slightly in order to change the setting of the illustration. Once we had the basic concept down, it was time to start working out all the details.

Coming in part two: Finding a harmonious composition.

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Adding the Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

The art for The Story I’ll Tell is finally done (!) and now in the hands Lee & Low books. It was an exhausting April because I insisted on re-painting several pages that I had already finished in order to improve them. (Changes, in watercolor world, often mean re-doing the whole thing.) Eventually, though, I had to call it quits and just send it off.

Apparently the kitten wishes to be shipped as well.

I can’t wait to see how it will look when it’s all done. So far I’ve seen a preview of the jacket design and couldn’t be more excited to share it with you. Soon… soon.

Even though I don’t have any art to show you now, I do have some fun photos!

First off, the studio. Here’s where the magic happens. I only have the one desk, so I move the drawing board and put the computer there if I’m scanning stuff or doing things online. The board on the wall (far left) is blank now, but it usually holds the book’s latest thumbnails so I can see the whole project at a glance. I update the bulletin boards often for inspiration and reference. The large format scanner is a brand new addition. I feel so professional! (Compare to my studio setup five years ago, which involved a travel watercolor set, a folding camping table, and a hand-me-down PowerBook from 2002. And no scanner whatsoever–I took photos of my paintings back then with a crappy old digital camera.)

The studio, looking tidier than usual.

Sometimes I think that thumbnail drawings are the most important part of the process. They don’t look like much and most of them end up in the reject pile, but that’s where it all starts. I love to draw these while sitting at a cafe.

Too many to fit in the frame.

I make my own dummies at various stages of the process to see how it’s flowing with the page turn.

The cat finds the dummies amusing.

More info about the project should be available soon. I’ll keep ya posted.

Over the years I have encountered a few creatures dwelling in my mind that can impede growth. Fortunately, these critters can be trained and kept in check. Below are my field notes from my experiences with the three most common species.

The Ego (Vanus Fragilis)

Habitat: Your mind
Diet: Flattery and attention
Habits: Strictly solitary

The Ego is a sensitive soul. It craves reassurance and takes failure quite personally. Desperate to convince itself that it is valuable, the Ego and will avoid situations where failure might occur. “Don’t enter the contest, don’t send the manuscript!” the Ego will plead, because it’s easier to say I didn’t try than I didn’t succeed.

Unfortunately for the Ego, failure is a necessary part of growth. We learn the most when we push ourselves out of our comfort zones and try new things. The best way to succeed is to increase our failure rate, and the best way to learn is to face our failures head on and look at what worked, what didn’t, and why.

Tips for Tempering an Ego:

• Avoid overfeeding. Egos gorge themselves on attention.
• Cultivate gratitude.
• Remember: The Ego is not you—it just lives in your mind.
• Set up a nice little Ego-cage in the back of your mind where it can stay out of the way.
• Stay away from junk foods like flattery, which lead to a bloated and irritable Ego.

The Critic (Incuso Virosa)

Habitat: Your Mind
Diet: Negativity
Habits: Venomous. Often nocturnal, brings up worries at bedtime.

A wild Critic can lash out at your work (or life in general) with potent venom. “You aren’t talented enough,” the Critic will whisper in your ear. “Look at this other person’s work. It’s so much better.” The Critic will dredge up your mistakes and mockingly parade them before your eyes at your moment of greatest weakness.

As terrible as it sounds, A Critic can be helpful if it is trained to come out only when needed. The Critic is handy when deciding which thumbnail composition is better and why, or editing that manuscript in the second draft. But if it starts telling you that everything you make is garbage or that you’re not nearly as good as so-and-so, it’s time to go back in the kennel.

Tips for Coping with a Critic:

• Use a muzzle to keep it from biting
• Feed it as little negativity as possible.
• Don’t let the Critic’s words become your own.
• It’s okay to tell it to settle down. (Yes, out loud. Try it, I dare you!)
• Critics shy away from laughter and fun. Remember fun?
• Surround yourself with positive, encouraging people.

The Sloth (Choloepus Languidus)

Habitat: Your Mind
Diet: Inactivity
Habits: None

The sloth really wants you to succeed. It does. But it would rather not give up its Netflix marathons and surfing Facebook on its phone.

The Sloth is the creature that will tell you that your first thumbnail is good enough. Why bother trying other compositions? It will discourage you from taking those figure drawing classes you need, because that sounds like a lot of work after all. If you have a feeling that you need to work on your craft but you never seem to get around to doing it, you might be contending with one of these creatures.

Not to worry! Sloths can be trained. When properly employed, a Sloth can stop you from becoming a perfectionist, particularly on the projects that just aren’t worth the time. If you’re getting paid a pittance for an illustration, it probably isn’t time to make the Mona Lisa. All it takes to train a Sloth is a little bit of priority shifting and the adoption of some new habits.

Tips for Training a Sloth:

• Track your time and identify distractions.
• If online distraction is a problem, you can use LeechBlock (Firefox) or StayFocused (Chrome) to limit the sites you can visit during specific times.
• Put your phone out of reach and turn off notifications.
• Force yourself to work on a project for just 20 minutes. Chances are good that the Sloth will slink away as you start to have fun with the project.
• Work at a consistent time. Find a schedule that works for you.

In a Nutshell:

If you have a Critic, Ego or Sloth, don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s normal! Identify the species that is impeding your growth the most, and take a small step this week to help tackle it.

—-

This post was also published on the Kidlit Artists blog.

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