Creating art is a process with so much to think about. While I think I improved with the new versions, there will always be a few things about the old ones that I loved that I miss. What do you think? Do you have a favorite version? 

Don’t forget to check out the print shop to get your own dragon portrait prints. 

When I was really small my mom took us to the library quite often.

I loved it, and it stuck.

She used to say we couldn’t get our own library cards until we were able to drive ourselves to the library. (She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep track of all the books we would check out.) But I wore her down and she let me get my own library card when I was in Junior High. I used to ride my bike to the library where I had one favorite section of books. I checked out as many books as I could from it, and took them home to pour over them some more. 

“Which section,” you ask.

“It was the J-398s of course.”

“Of course!” You reply. I love the J-398s. 

“Don’t we all,” I say as we both sigh a happy sigh.

Wait! what?…you don’t know what the j-398s are? That makes sense actually. So sorry, I got distracted there for a second.

The 398s are the part of the library where folklore and fairy tale stories live. And the “J” stands for “juvenile”. 

So, to recap, I used to go poor over the fairy and folk tale picture books. 

This is where I discovered P.J. Lynch, Trina Hyman, Kinokyo Y. Craft, Ruth Sanderson, and so many other amazing picture book artists. It’s also where I hatched my dreams to create art that told stories.

At first, these dreams looked like me making beautiful fairy tale books like these illustrators made, but it’s expanded into telling all kinds of stories with my art. I draw things that inspire me, some of which are inspired by those illustrators, and I tell stories. 

Sometimes it’s hard to love what you love.

There are times when I feel silly loving fairytales as an adult, not because it’s silly to love fairy tales, but because other adults, even artists and creatives don’t get it. (Other people think it’s silly.)

Once, on a date, when my gentleman caller asked what my favorite movie was I said, “oh, um there are so many good ones. I really like a lot of Pixar movies.”

He laughed because he thought it was a joke.

I didn’t go on a second date with him. (I’m actually not quite sure how I ended up on a first date with him.) For the record, I married someone who likes Pixar movies and also has most of the Lord of the Rings memorized.

I’m not here to convince you to love fairy tales, or even help you understand why I love fairy tales. It’s here to give you permission to love what you love.

You love certain things for certain reasons and that’s important. When you express that love by creating art, stories, or anything you might find people who understand, and your creation might help them out.

You know when it feels like everyone knows something that you don’t?

When I was in college I had to take a few classes in digital illustration. This was a relatively new thing. When I started college in the year 2000 photoshop was ten years old so it was just starting to catch on, and I was in one of the first digital illustration classes the college offered. 

And I didn’t want to be there. I was very happy drawing with my pencil, sketchbook, and Prismacolor pencils, and painting with my watercolors. But, the class was required for illustration majors. I’m so grateful it was. However, that’s a story for a different day. This story is about Macintosh computers. Up to this point, I’d never used a Mac.

The computers of my childhood

I’d grown up using computers. My dad got one in the late 80s or early 90s, so he could more easily do his drafting work. If I remember right it wasn’t a Mac or PC (the great debate of today) but something else. He used to amaze the whole neighborhood by creating, and printing out personalized word searches and bringing them to parties. Our neighbor’s minds were blown when they found their own names in the puzzle. (It was a different time, what can I say.)

There’s a Gap in My Knowledge.

So I was no stranger to computers I’d been using them for at least 10 years. But Macintosh computers were a new breed. 

So one day, about halfway through the semester I made my way to the computer lab to do my digital illustration homework. The art building and the computer lab in it were brand new. As were all the iMac computers inside. At this time the all-in-one computer had a white dome base with a monitor sticking out of the top.

Up to this point when I needed to use one the computers had always been on. I usually just picked one, signed in, and got started. But one day things were different. I sat down to use the computer and it was turned off. No amount of mouse wiggling would make it wake up. I needed to turn it on. But where was the on switch? I didn’t know, I couldn’t find it. 

I looked for probably 15 minutes feeling stupider as the time ticked by. Who doesn’t know how to turn a computer on? It should be easy, right? It wasn’t I couldn’t figure it out. I had to bite the bullet. 

Feeling incredibly stupid, and turned to my friend Mike —who I believe worked in the computer lab— and said, “I have a dumb question. How do I turn the computer on.” 

Mike, who is luckily an incredibly nice person, said something like: “That’s not a dumb question. Apple likes to hide them. The button is here.” He showed me the place on the white dome, in the back, where the sneaky button blended into everything around it. 

I’m always going to appreciate that he didn’t, at that moment, make me feel stupid. (I was doing a  good enough job of that on my own.) In fact, he validated my frustration. 

So here’s the thing. It’s ok to ask questions.

It’s ok to ask dumb questions. To this day I still use a Mac computer and I know how to turn it on. (Few.) But, that’s not really the point of this story. The point is that some things may seem like dumb questions but they actually aren’t. And even if they are, why not ask anyway?

The worst that can happen is that someone might make you feel silly. If they do, that’s on them.

And, most people are kind. Which means, you never know what you might learn. 

She also said we should keep a sketchbook, and told a story about another one of her art students —we’ll call her Sally because I don’t remember her name— who drew everyone at church. And someone in the congregation said. “Be careful, if you fall asleep at church, Sally will draw you.”

I wanted to be like Sally. I wanted people to know that they might secretly get drawn if they are around me. I’m sure there were two motives for this, one was to get better at drawing. The other was of course to feel recognized by others.

And thus I started to keep a sketchbook. I have sketchbooks going back from the time I was in 7th grade all the way up to today. My sketchbooks also tend to have a lot of head drawings in them. Many of those drawings I did while I was at church. 

My sketchbooks have become a sort of visual journal of people I’ve met, landscapes I’ve seen, and ideas I’ve had. I also take a lot of notes. Church notes, class notes (when I was in college), and random notes. 

My sketchbooks have a lot of ugly pages in them, although they are getting better, little by little, year after year. They have a lot of unfinished ideas and drawings that just didn’t turn out.

You don’t get to see those.

Not sharing drawings I don’t like is important. 

But, when I do share things from my sketchbook they are the drawings that I rather like. Drawings, that I think you will like as well. Because while there are a lot of ugly pages in my sketchbooks there are also a lot of drawings I’m proud of.

Being an artist of any kind doesn’t mean you always produce great work, and one of the things I like about keeping a sketchbook is that it gives me the chance to try things and be bad at them when I need to.

I love the process of trying. Shooting for the stars and sometimes only landing on the moon, or a cloud. Luckily if I fail there is always another day, another drawing, and something new to try in my sketchbook.

“Oh my holy heck, you can draw? I wish I could draw. My brother (or mother or aunt) can draw but I didn’t get that gene.” 

If you are an artist you’ve definitely heard something like this before. I can’t even tell you how many times people have said similar things to me. (Although, I admit they might not have said “holy heck”). Recently I’ve started to think that the people saying things like this don’t completely understand what they might be giving up to have the artistic talent they wish for. 

The Struggles of an Artist

When I was in 4th grade we did a spelling bee. I thought this was going to be fun but I remember it as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. The spelling bee was held in the school library which had a sunken area in the center where all the kids could sit on stairs that were also seats. It was a small carpeted amphitheater.

So there I was packed onto hard carpeted stair/seats with, who knows, maybe 80 other fourth graders. This is where we watched the spelling bee and waited for our turn to go up and spell something in front of everyone. I had practiced and I was hopeful I was going to do a good job. 

When it was my turn I made my way to the bottom of the amphitheater with a small group of kids, and we all had the chance to spell a word. I got “container”.

I took a breath. “Container. C o n t i a n e r” 

“I’m sorry that’s incorrect.” 

I was disappointed in myself as I started to make my way back to my seat as multiple kids from my class called out to me. “It’s A-I Manelle, A-I!” 

I was mortified. It felt like I had made a mistake that no one else would have made. They all knew how to spell container and I didn’t. 

I slumped back to my seat with a bright red face. It was definitely one of those moments where I wanted to be anywhere else.

And that wasn’t the last time my poor spelling abilities made me feel inadequate. I got kicked out in the first round of my sixth-grade spelling bee too. And we aren’t even going to talk about the time in second grade when my teacher made me feel dumb because I couldn’t remember how to spell “was”. (Just in case you were wondering that is not a word you can “sound out”.)

On the bright side, I do remember how to spell container now. 

Is it true that artists can’t spell?

Now I’m not saying that all artists can’t spell, but well, most of us can’t, and I know many artists who are dyslexic. 

When I was in college I overheard one of my art professors talking about how he remembers which hand is his right, and which is his left, —his right hand was the one he eats with—  and I felt a sense of belonging. Up to that point, I thought I was one of the few crazy people who couldn’t seem to remember which hand was which. 

Being around lots of artists over the years has helped me realize that while many of us excel at interpreting shapes and colors and emotions we also tend to struggle with things that other people find easy. And it got me thinking that maybe our brains develop this way on purpose. We have to give certain things up to excel at other things. I’m not a brain scientist this is just something I’ve observed.

Remember you have something that others don’t.

It’s now time to quote the bible. In 1 Corinthians 12:17, it says: “If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?” It’s saying different parts of the body provide different functions, just like people do.

The thing is, we need people to be proofreaders, just as much as we need big-picture storytellers. We need people who can look at the world and turn it into art just as we need people who can look at drawings and turn them into bridges, or buildings. 

Next time you are envious of another person’s strengths think about what you would have to give up to have the same strengths as them. I wouldn’t give up my drawing ability to be able to spell better. Maybe you’ll realize who you are, and how your brain works is good enough.

It might be one of my favorite things especially if there’s chocolate. 

A few months ago, while I was still building this website and planning a class for illustrators I found solace in an evening of tv watching while drawing in my sketchbook. To be clear, watching tv while I draw is nothing new. I’ve been doing that since I started watching Commander Mark’s Secret City. A show where a man named Mark Kistler taught kids how to draw. I remember watching it religiously, it started airing in 1985. I was four. So I came by this habit honestly I guess. I’m not sure when the chocolate entered the equation.

Let us now come back to the present, or at least the more recent past. I was working on my website all morning and spending free evenings drawing in my sketchbook. I didn’t approach each page with a plan just started drawing scribbles and sketching until something emerged. (If you want to see something cool watch how Iris Compiet does the same thing in this video) That technique turned into this page.

I have been calling it “The Wizard in the Tree” page. As you can see it does have a wizard and a tree. The title comes from one of my favorite childhood books by one of my favorite childhood authors Lloyd Alexander. 

As it turns out The Wizard in the Tree page has some lovely little sketch gems which I scanned into my computer, cleaned up, and printed onto watercolor paper. The tree sketch (Sans wizard but including the dwarf.) is one of my favorites so I turned that into a painting. 

I’ve been trying to improve my painting skills by leaving out details that don’t need to be there. Why?  It adds interest to the artwork by giving the viewer something for their brain to do. But I have to work hard at it because my brain wants to fill everything in when I’m painting. 

So, I went into the painting with a plan that I would not paint certain details. Watercolor landscape artists like Andy Evenson do it all the time. And when you have a watercolor painting with lovely washes not bogged down by too much detail it really makes the medium shine. So that was my plan, a shining example of a watercolor painting. 

It took me two tries. I wanted to show you the failed attempt but I think I threw it out. (Probably so no one would see it.)

Thanks to the miracle that is the modern printer, after I messed up my first try I printed my sketch again and made this more successful attempt. 

So next time you are creating an illustration, look for places where you can leave out detail. It will make the painting more interesting.

So here’s a story to help you when you know you should get paid more but you aren’t sure how to make it happen. 

Once upon a time my husband and I wanted to take the disposal out of our kitchen sink. Ours wasn’t running well, disposals kind of freak me out, and having them can cause problems in the plumbing lines. 

Some of you might think that’s crazy but it doesn’t matter. What matters is we got a quote from a plumber. They looked at the disposal and the pipes and told us how much it would cost to take it out. 

I didn’t think taking out a disposal would be a big thing. How much can it really cost to remove something? We weren’t buying new equipment or anything.

Apparently, it can cost a lot. I don’t remember the exact amount but the quote was over $1000. 

And here’s the important thing, the part to remember when you are giving quotes to clients. When the plumber told us the quote and we expressed our surprise. (Over a thousand to take out a disposal, seriously?) He said, “We charge $250 an hour for labor, so it can add up fast.” 

That was it. It was how much it cost. 

At this point, we had a few options. We could get another quote. Chances were pretty good that we could find a plumber to do it cheaper. But, these plumbers did fix the disposal we had. So we went with option two. Which was to leave the disposal where it was, and save our money. 

Afterward, I kept thinking about the plumber and how he just told us the quote, and I thought, how can I be more like that in my business? How can I help my students be more like that? 

Here’s the answer. When you are giving potential clients a quote, whether you charge a little or a lot, don’t apologize for your price. Just tell it to them. Tell them how much it costs and let them decide if they should take it or leave it. (You can do the same thing with deadlines, and illustration rights.)

Does it mean that some clients will go look for another illustrator, or that they might choose not to do the project altogether? Yes, it does. But, what are the consequences of getting paid too little for your work? What are the consequences if your client says yes?

What did you love to draw when you were little? I’m assuming you loved to draw. Not because all kids love to draw, but because if you are here, on this blog, reading this post chances are pretty good you loved to draw.

One thing I loved to draw was girls in pretty dresses. These characters often had large eyes, and long eyelashes, and their dresses had tons of decoration. In fact, I believe I spent most of my time drawing the dress designs.

I remember showing one of these drawings to my grandma. I was really proud of the work I’d done. She looked at it and praised my amazing skill (After all she is my grandma, that’s what they are supposed to do.) Then she pointed at one of the loops I’d drawn on the dress and said, “And what’s that? Is it her feet?”

My childhood mind was flabbergasted. The two little loops she pointed out were in the middle of the skirt. Of course, they weren’t feet. That didn’t even make sense. 

“No, that’s lace!” I replied with all the annoyance felt. Grown-ups are so dumb sometimes. (Ok I don’t know if I actually thought that. Probably not… maybe.) 

The point of this is not that we should be nice to our grandmothers. (But still do that.) The point is that grown-ups are dumb sometimes. When I was little I loved drawing pretty girls in pretty dresses. It inspired me and made me feel happy. And do you know what, I still like drawing pretty girls in pretty dresses. 

But the thing is, sometimes I tell myself that I don’t, or that I shouldn’t, or that there are more important things to draw. (See, isn’t that silly?)

But are there? Are there more important things to draw than those things that make you feel joyful? 

If you feel joyful when you work, others will feel joy when they look at your work? 

What did you love to draw when you were little? Maybe you should go draw that today?