Issue 211
Hello!
After 6 years in Arizona, I packed up my home and studio to start a new life out in Richmond, Virginia. Yes, the Parker’s have moved again.
My wife and I have moved our family around the country a lot since we’ve been married, making homes and friends in California, Texas, Connecticut, Utah and Arizona. I think the places we live are a lot like the friends we've made over the years. Some places you move to for a reason, some you move to for a season of life, but every place leaves its mark. Whether you stay or move on, it’s always a part of you.
One thing you don’t realize about moving until you are in the thick of it, and this is what makes it so exhausting, is you have to weigh each and every object in your possession on a scale of emotional attachment and practicality. Once the object is weighed and found worthy of keeping, you are faced with a series of fatigue inducing decisions.
By the time you’ve loaded the truck every item in there has been lifted and carried not just by your hands, but your brain, and your heart too. It’s a truck carrying the weight of a life being lived.
Now that I’m in a temporary studio while we hunt for a house I wanted to get a newsletter out to you.
Let’s jump into it!
STAYING IN THE LOOP:
🚚Follow our move here: LINK
📼New Video: Illustration Truths No One Is Telling You
🎙️3PP Podcast: Illustrators: Don’t Sleep on Branding!
🎙️3PP Podcast: Why Most Artists Stay Broke (and How to Escape It)
1)Why you need more than one Sketchbook
From the Drawings Unit
I have not been faithful in keeping a sketchbook over the last few years. I noticed a decline in my sketchbook drawing tracked with my increasing workload of graphic novel and illustration projects. I started to think that drawing in my sketchbook was a waste of time. Why should I be drawing in a sketchbook when I should be working on a paying gig??
When talking to other artist I found I wasn’t the only one who felt this way but I also ran into other reasons people don’t do sketchbooks, even though most artist like the idea of doing a sketchbook. Here’s a list of common hang-ups some artists have with sketchbooks. Any of these sound familiar?
Fear of “wasting pages.” Some artists want every page to look good, so they freeze up instead of experimenting.
Comparing to others. Seeing other people’s beautiful sketchbooks online can make yours feel inadequate.
Expectation of consistency. Feeling pressure to keep a unified style/theme through the whole book.
Intimidation of the blank page. The first mark feels too important.
Too precious/expensive. Buying a nice book, then being afraid to use it.
“This isn’t real work.” Believing sketchbook drawing doesn’t contribute directly to finished art.
Decision fatigue. Overthinking what to draw each time instead of letting it flow.
Boredom or lack of challenge. Using it the same way over and over without purpose.
No clear purpose. Not knowing if it’s for studies, ideas, doodles, journaling—so it becomes nothing.
If you have one or all of these hang-ups with sketchbooks you might need to try something I’m calling the multiple sketchbook theory.
Over the last 6 months I’ve had a shift in understanding of what a sketchbook should be and why you need not one, but at least three.
Instead of having a catch-all, draw-anything-and-everything-in-one-book sketchbook or a too-precious-to-mess-up-finished-gallery sketchbook, or some combination of the two, sketchbooks are best when they’re simply workspaces for growth, exploration, and ideas.
Instead of forcing one sketchbook to do everything, I realized I could use different ones for different purposes. Here’s the three different sketchbooks:
General Sketchbook: a catchall for ideas, notes, and inspiration.
Garbage Sketchbook: a private place for studies, experiments, and bad drawings you’ll never show.
Project Sketchbook(s): dedicated to specific books, comics, or films you’re developing.
This system solved a lot of the hang-ups I used to have. My general sketchbook doesn’t feel too precious anymore, because I know it doesn’t have to carry the burden of every type of drawing. My garbage sketchbook keeps me honest about practice. And my project sketchbooks give me momentum on big ideas without drowning them in random doodles.
The truth is, a sketchbook isn’t about making every page look good. It’s about giving yourself the right spaces to grow. Once you stop treating them like galleries and start treating them like workshops, you unlock their real power.
If you like what you read here, I actually ended up making a video about it: How comic artists should use a sketchbook (5 Best Practices)
2) Full-spectrum starfighter runs on color
From the Toy Department
Found this rad little scout ship made by LEGO builder Mason Martin.
More here: LINK
Mason’s Flickr: LINK
(Via The Brothers Brick)
3) A Kaleidoscope of Influences
From the Illustrators Division
Lili des Bellons is a French illustrator and graphic designer based in Paris, France. Their style is a kaleidoscope of influences—from European, Japanese, and Chinese medieval iconography to African art, comics, and French painters.
Don’t let the simple line work fool you into thinking what’s happening here is easy to create. The compositions, color palettes, and subject matter are transportive. Lot’s to learn from this artist.
More here: LINK
Instagram: LINK
Behance: LINK
Art Rep Site: LINK
4) What do you do with a painting this big??
From the Arts and Culture Unit
Fascinating read from the NYTimes this week about an N.C. Wyeth painting I didn’t know existed. I came for the painting, but stayed for the family drama. This article had a little bit of everything in it.
In short, there was a time period last century where something like this was possible: A president of a bank commissioned an children’s book illustrator $270,000 (in today’s money) to do a massive mural for the wall behind the bank’s tellers.
Have you stepped foot in a bank lately? Their vibe has more in common with a Courtyard by Marriot hotel than they do with a museum. I would’ve loved the tradition institutional murals to have survived the 20th century.
As tastes shifted and the painting went out of style it was rolled up and forgotten, until now.
Read the story here: LINK
5) On Editors
From the Inspirational Thought Unit
In this age of the artist-entrepenuer projects and self-publishing one might think of editors as a excessive luxury of an out-of-touch publishing industry, an expense easily ejected from an already tight budget. At worst, some might think them a stifler of creativity, at odds with your creative vision.
In my experience a great editor is none of those things, but exactly as Michael Crichton describes here:
Hire a good editor, or at the very least, recruit a crack team of trusted creative friends who shoot straight and call ‘em like they see ‘em. Your work is too valuable to be left to your own myopism.
That's all for now. Thank you for reading this newsletter and hope you have a great weekend!
-Jake
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Like you, I dropped my sketchbook practice for various reasons chief among which was time spent playing versus earning. However, have realised that playing is the engine of my creativity and without it, I’m no more than a wage slave. So-several sketchbooks on the go, permission to make one crap diary type drawing every day ( I stop on my morning runs and spend five hot and sweaty minutes drawing whatever looks interesting. Badly. No pressure to make beautiful images, just five minutes of focus, being present 100% and playing.
Also, thanks for the podcast - it’s like a chat round the photocopier/watercooler.
My wife's family has the largest collection of NC paintings. 30+. They're on loan to the museum at Texas Tech.