November 16, 2025

In the past year, I've been doing a lot of research on illustration, careers, and portfolios.

We begin with the definition of 'illustrator' itself: an illustrator is someone who solves visual problems (or solves problems visually).

Therefore, if you want people to hire you, you have to be able to prove that you can do that in all sorts of ways.

I need a LOT of practice using my imaginaton to solve problems visually. I am well aware of this. I have the basic foundational skills down, and now I need to learn how to push myself to move past simply using them. I can't rely on my printed figures forever.

I've had some ideas of what to do for a while. This is a list I scribbled down one day while I was supposed to be working. (Don't get the wrong idea. I was definitely on lunch break. Ha ha ha).

I'm an extremely slow processor--which definitely explains why I'm taking so long to develop this "career"--and it took me weeks to actually use these ideas. Today, after moving my studio around AGAIN (this seems to be a common Sunday afternoon occurence of late) my brain was functioning enough to actually sit down and do something with them.

I did the dinosaur thing and created a basic list of prompts in excel. I was so proud of myself until my teenage duaghter came in my studio and saw what I was doing.

"Um, what are you doing?"

"Making a list of drawing prompts," I replied. To which she promptly laughed.

"Here," she said. "Do this," and lo and behold, she went and showed me how to turn my extensive excel page into spinning wheels using wheelofnames.com.

"I do this all the time at school for writing prompts," she said, when I expressed my admiration for her intelligence and asked how she had learned that trick.

It's an interesting idea. It's clumsy--I have to open five wheels at a time to accomodate every row I have written in excel. Simply sorting each row separately in excel works just as well, though it's a bit more time consuming. The time I lose doing that is balanced out creating five seperate wheels. So, you know. Six of one, half dozen of another.

This past few days haven't been great for art. I've mostly just done a lot of scribbling. I'm working two jobs for the next little while and I haven't been putting the time and effort into drawing that I normally do. We all want the chance to follow our dreams, but sometimes, making money takes precedece over the fun stuff (like being in my studio).

I've begun learning to draw my male main character and it's looking like crap, as beginning things always do. And honestly, that's ok. Someday I will make good work again. At least today I'm making something, even if I can't stand to look at it.

And so, on to the next.