It’s the first Saturday of the month and that means it’s time for me to talk about my creativity.

These posts are meant to reveal a little bit more about me personally, but perhaps also to inspire you as a creator. Some of it is all about my philosophies and some of it is just sharing the stuff I’m hearing, seeing, and/or reading about from other creatives. 

Today I’m going to talk about something that makes everyone shudder when we hear it: style (if you’re an illustrator) or voice (if you’re a writer). I’m going to be talking mostly about “style” and using illustrator examples, but I think it’s safe to say that it applies just as easily (at least in my mind) to writers and “voice.”

I’m a big believer in critiquing to improve my work. I learned it in college as an English major taking lots of creative writing classes and seeing the fruit of it in my work. I’ve learned to have reliable critique partners and/or groups, as well as pay for professional feedback. I’ve heard both “style” and “voice” bandied about in these critiques of my work. I had a recent (very helpful) critique on my chapter book that encouraged me to find my voice in that field (which is admittedly new to me). I’ve had numerous critiques of my portfolio over the years that have talked about me finding my style. While these comments make sense (I get it! I do!), they also frustrate me. What does that mean? What am I doing wrong? And how do I fix it?

Well, I also attend a LOT of webinars. (Okay, I watch a lot of recordings of webinars because time zones are complicated when you’re a full time teacher in Alaska, but still.) I watched a webinar recently with illustrator Charlie Mylie all about style and it kinda blew my mind. It was yet another paradigm shift for me.

In his opinion, it’s everyone but Art Directors who are saying “figure out your style” (with an implied “or else you won’t succeed”). Perhaps this is helpful for new illustrators who are floundering with what materials make the best illustrations, etc. But when you’re an established illustrator, it pays to diversify your style. Mylie argued that the style should change to fit the project and used his own published work to showcase this. He had books that looked cartoony, others that looked painterly, and still others that looked like wood block print.

Perhaps this is what I was always wanting someone to say. This is what I have imagined to be true as a writer of a variety genres. I don’t want to do just ONE thing. I like to write nonfiction as well as fiction and poetry. I like to illustrate with bright digital colors as well as soft watercolors. Why does it have to be one or the other?

Yet I understand that there has to still be a honing of one’s craft. We write many manuscripts to get better at it. We revise and revise and revise to improve every single story (at least if you’re me–I’ve very rarely had a story perfect on a first draft). And then there’s the 10,000 hours thing everyone quotes. If you don’t draw (or write) or practice for an incredible length of time, you won’t get better, you won’t grow, you won’t succeed. At least that’s the underlying tone anytime someone mentions the “it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.”

I also understand that this is an incredibly flooded market (illustrating OR writing kidlit) and to stand out you need to have a signature look (illustration) or niche in genre (writing). So to hear Mylie explain his theory was refreshing. Follow that up with another webinar by author-illustrator Corrina Lukyen and epiphanies kept coming.

She talked about fear holding us back from creating, as well as the importance of play. She gives herself a week at the beginning of every project to do nothing but play around with medium, etc. to discover what is the perfect way to illustrate the story. Sometimes it takes her years to figure it out, but her philosophy is always “funN” (her spelling). She even quoted Ann Hamilton (an artist): 

“One doesn’t arrive — in words or in art — by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know….

But not knowing, waiting and finding — though they may happen accidentally, aren’t accidents. They involve work and research. Not knowing isn’t ignorance….

Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willingness to trust,

leaving knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as possible all manner of response. The responsibility of the artist … is the practice of recognizing.”

This was another mind blowing webinar. It was so fascinating to watch her work evolve, project to project as well as over the years. And for me, it dovetailed in my mind with what Mylie was saying: don’t worry about finding your style, instead find what the project needs the style to be.

This brought multiple things to mind. First, as I’m packing up my classroom before the end of the school and the end of the school year, I ran across a board book by Maddie Frost. I paused when I saw that name.

I recognized it as an illustrator I’ve interviewed in the past as well as someone I follow on social media.

But this wasn’t the same illustration style I’ve come to know from her work. I was stunned. Here was the perfect example of what Mylie was talking about.

I started to reflect on several other illustrators’ work. Brendan Wenzel’s THEY ALL SAW A CAT uses multiple styles in the same book. Matthew Cordell is mostly known for his loose ink work and cartoony style. BUT his latest book “102” is a fever dream (what a crazy concept!) illustrated entirely in a multi-color ball point pen. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’m excited to see it. And Charles Santoso! He fluctuates between cartoony work (like in his latest book THE UNDERWEARWOLF [coming soon to an interview]) and gorgeous “could be a painting” illustration. The signs are everywhere, despite what we might hear from critiques or fellow creators. This IS possible!

And I thought about something I read on Jacob Souva’s blog:

It’s not really about 10,000 hours (though yes, PRACTICE is important). That can sound slightly elitist and exclusionary. It’s more about “just getting better.”

I like his motto. I’ve written it on a sticky note over my desk. I love it! Especially when I’m exhausted from the crazy at work right now (which is in high pitch and killing my creativity). I can quit sweating the “OMG I NEED TO CREATE EVERY DAY” pressure or the fear that I’m not clocking enough creative hours. I’m still creating (wrote a new PB draft this month that I’m rather proud of actually), but it’s not going to be at the same pitch right now when every single spare minute is sorting, purging, and packing my soon to be gone classroom. That’s okay. So I’m going to try to remember: keep creating and just get better.