Are you good enough?

Illustration's a tough game, pal. Oliver Jeffers did warn me 👀

Once upon a time I went to a talk by a famous children’s book author-illustrator. I won’t tell you who it was, but he’s an Irish, successful picture book man, and his name ryhmes with Foliver Fjeffers. WHO COULD IT BE!? 🤣 I know, such a mystery (it was Oliver Jeffers).

Ahem.

Anways, a delicate illustrator in the Edinburgh College of Art crowd put up their trembling hand and bravely asked something along the lines of:

“h-how can I become a successful picture book illustrator, Mr Jeffers, sir?”

His booming response? (Read in your best confident Irish man accent plz, thank you.)

“Are y’good enough? Do you really think you’re good enough for this industry?”

**cue internal screaming** I held on to the edges of my velvet church hall chair as the room sort of swung sideways.

“RIGHT. That’s me away home now, lads. This trying-to-be-an-illustrator thing has been nice. But oh well.”

Packing up my things and going home to have a little cry about it felt like a good idea.

I sucked. I knew I wasn’t good enough, and Oliver Jeffers had just reminded me that I should absolutely, definitely give up right now.

Over in The Good Ship Illustration, we’re aaaalways referencing this quote about ✨The Gap✨. Here it is:

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.

-Ira Glass

a photo of baby-illustrator me, painfully aware of how much I sucked 😆

Back in 2016, I thought Oliver Jeffers hated all illustration students and wanted us to shrivel up and die. (Maybe he does, we’ll never know).

But now, I realise he might’ve said:

“Get as good as you can, keep improving, and have some self-confidence in your value as a creative, you little snivelling Art School shits.”

And I can get on board with that. Thanks, Oliver Jeffers.

The age old ‘am I good enough*’ question can be really productive.

…ARE you good enough though?

If that question makes you do a little sick in your mouth a bit, why?

What things about your work are making you think, ‘Oh shit, Oliver Jeffers, you’re right. I’m NOT good enough.’

*Note to add, YOU ARE DEFINITELY, ABSOLUTELY ENOUGH. But we’re talking about a creative career here, not your enoughness as a human. The sooner you can untangle those, the better.

These are just questions to help you pull some good nuggets of life-changing knowledge out of your own brain.

Is your work good enough?

Is your attitude & approach to illustration good enough?

Is the way you talk about your work good enough?

Is your looking-after-yourself good enough?

This ‘good enough’ question can take you down so many different alleyways, and only you’ll know the ones that make most sense to you right now.

I dare you to actually get a pen out and write down the answers. It’s just good. Light a candle and make a cup of tea while you write if you’re into that kind of thing.

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I didn’t write this post to be a big sales pitch for the Picture Book Course, but it’d be very silly of me if I didn’t mention that one of the best bits of ‘knowing’ you suck is that you can LEARN STUFF and improve! It is my favourite thing.

Ahh.

The doors to the Picture Book Course by our Helen of

Pencil Pals

open tomorrow (14th Feb - Valentine’s Day)! ❤️❤️❤️

You can read all about it here:

And if you’re still here (hello!) here’s some fun stuff coming next week:

Fun thing #1 - Picture Book chat
Helen and I have written 2 books about Salty and his pals - that’s Salty in the image above this paragraph - and they’re being published by Walker Books, wahoooo!
We’ll be talking about the picture book creation process live next week on a Zoom call.

It’s free, you just need to be getting The Good Ship Illustration emails which you can do here.

Fun thing #2 - “How to anchor your picture book ideas so they don’t fizzle out.”
Early birds who join the Picture Book Course before Monday, 17th Feb at 10pm will get instant access to a top-secret shiny new workshop bonus our Helen’s made, all about how to anchor your picture book ideas so they don’t fizzle out.

Fun thing #3 - Art Clubs!
Loads of Good Ship Art Club are coming up. We’re going live at 7pm UK time this Friday and next Friday too! See you there if you fancy carving out some time to be creative while shutting your inner-perfectionist into a little cupboard while you have fun :)
We’re @thegoodshipillustration on IG. That’s where Art Club happens.

Final word: In case I didn’t make it clear in this post you ARE good enough.
No spiralling allowed. That was 2016-Katie’s job, ok? 😅 I’ve done enough spiralling for all of us.

x Katie