Does anyone really know what to do first?

Everything has to start somewhere, right?

Everything has to start somewhere, right? Otherwise nothing would ever be a ‘Thing’…

So I am doing the Thing that I’ve said I would do for a few months now, and making a start.

I am sure so many of us are perfectionists - I certainly am (to the point where I look at myself and sigh with frustration quite frankly) - but there have been so many things over the years that I haven’t done because perfectionism has held me back. There is that great saying ‘Done is better than perfect.’ So I better get going, eh?

If you’re reading this, thank you and a big warm welcome to ‘Studio Snippets’. This is my little area of Substack where I will be chatting about all things illustration, freelance, and probably lots of other random things in-between. Like the fact I’m a big fan of Silent Witness… just putting that out there! (If you would like to know a bit more about me, check out my ‘About’ page).

Since graduating from my Illustration degree in 2013, I have spent all of that time working on my drawing, my professional practise, and learning all sorts - good and bad - along the way. Almost seven years of that I have been working as a full time freelancer, and seem to be doing at least one thing right.

I would love to connect with like minded people and chat about all kinds of creative practises, share knowledge, and maybe make a virtual cup of coffee with you all!

I’ve got fair few Blog posts that I’ve written over the past 9 months or so that have just been sitting on my hard drive not doing anything! There is a mixture of topics, but they stem from ideas and tips I have found really useful, projects I have worked on, and other things like how I came to create the hashtag #ShowYourSketchbook, the questions I often get asked, and a few industry insights too.

Honestly, I have no idea if they’re the kinds of things anyone would like to read, but you just don’t know until you try things out, right? Whenever you start anything new, there is always a tendency to wonder what you should be doing, if you’re doing enough, at the right time and in the right way. But ultimately there isn’t a right or wrong way to do things, it’s just your way.

I would love to say that this new Substack of mine is going to be really well organised, and posts are going to be in categories, and all of the things that make it feel ‘Professional’ will be there. Truthfully, though, I currently don’t have a complete plan-of-action. There are certainly things I would like to add here, and things I would like to write down, but that is about it.

What I do know for sure right now is that Substack seems to be the platform that allows you to add text, visuals, and voice all in one. I’ve been a reader of many Substacks for nearly a year now and I really enjoy the freedom that it is giving people. Something that say, Instagram, perhaps doesn’t work as well for, or as freely.

We all know in an ideal world, platforms want you to feed that greedy algorithm at such a fast pace that posts with large in-depth text often don’t get seen or don’t get pushed to the front like they used to, and I really like getting into the nitty-gritty of things.

Instagram stories for me have never been a winner - in fact I tend to lose interaction when I do use them. Maybe it comes across that being ‘front facing’, chatting to the camera as it were, doesn’t come naturally to me. Either way, why carry on doing things that make you feel uncomfortable and just a bit miserable. Square peg, round hole anyone!?

If you do work for yourself, then you know that - aside from the quality of your work - you as a person and your personality are just as much of a pull to a prospective client. However,  it can be hard to show ‘you’ solely through your work - aside from how you like to make images.

Delving deep into the why and how, especially when it comes to art materials, art practises/processes and experimentation - that is where I really thrive in the discussion and the chatter, but there are not many places you can find these discussions about illustration as a discipline. Especially open and honest chats about the business end of being freelance in a creative industry.

I’ve been finding in recent years that, as my experience grows, so has my passion! I often find myself being cut short by limited space and character counts when I actually have so much to say about so many things.

So I best get started. Actually, I will make a coffee, and then come back and get started because does anyone really know what to do first? Even if they do, it doesn’t matter, I am starting here…

And with that, I should probably sharpen some pencils.