I've been doing illustration for a little over a year now as a full-time job, largely doing work for various clients, getting to know the art community better, trying to promote myself, and developing a particular style (which Illustration Fridays have been most excellent for). But things haven't progressed quite as quickly as I thought they might - not due to laziness or by any fault of mine (as it's often been perceived by myself), but as Meagan pointed out with a statistic, that it typically takes between 5 to 10 years for an illustrator to make a name for his/herself.
...So one year down.
That said, it's looking like I'll be going back to working with the rest of the world, part time or full time, I don't know yet. With that looming possibility, I was given the advice to take about a month and really push hard on one project, though there are many that could be worked on (which is why Illustration Fridays and blog posts were pushed to the backburner for a while).
The project that I decided to work on was Munch, the children's book story that I first began developing in my last year at school. I'd never been satisfied with the rhyme scheme or a large portion of the final illustrations. So I set to work on that story, solely. The first draft of the story, which is in rhyme, took about three weeks (almost my whole month!) to complete. But to keep myself sane, I took some time out of those three weeks to work on some illustrations for the book too - the ones I knew would be kept through all of the editing. Here is the first:
The final draft of the story still isn't completed (and neither is this illustration or any of the others), but I'm okay with that. It's better to take a little more time and fill in all of the potholes, so to speak. Particularly when working with rhyme. The goal now is to keep just as resolute to finish the project even if another job takes up time.
So now I'm back, more or less, though I don't know if I'll be attempting to keep up with things like Illustration Friday as regularly as I was. But I'll still be making the illustration rounds. For instance, and I'll leave you with this, I've just put up a couple of brand new illustrations on my website for another been-in-the-works-for-a-while kid's story. You can check those out here!
Enjoy, and until next time, mi amigos.
