My Detour into Illustration
💌 Ages 4 - 44 summarised
Dear Powells,
It is I, your long lost intrepid illustrator, recently returned from far away lands (Greece) where I fought my way through hostile environments (hotel breakfast buffet) and gallantly—bravely!— explored unknown realms to discover hidden treasures (cocktail bars).
I will not beat about the bush.
Recently I made a grand statement that I would like to retract, please.
On June 9th 2024 I declared boldly that I was going to write about my journey into illustration over 10 chapters. I've changed my mind; I don't want to spend 10 chapters dwelling on the past, I'd rather spend time dwelling in the present. However, people often ask me how I became an illustrator, so below is my story summarised.
If you’d rather have a summary of my summary it's this:
Don't listen to people who say you can’t do what you love. They will often be wrong. Instead listen to your heart, it will never lead you astray.
If you want the long version of the summary, continue reading…
Age 0: I am born at 5:55am on 5th April 1979. I don’t do much for the first few years.
Age 4: I decide the under-stairs cupboard would be a good place to spend time to draw.
Age 4 1/4: Dad turns the under-stairs cupboard into art den for me and finds a new place for the hoover. I spend ten years drawing and copying from my favourite books: Teddy Robinson, Holly Hobbie, Garfield, Pink Panther, Count Duckula. I'm very cool.
Age 11: Start an all girls secondary school and spend as much time as possible not making eye contact with anyone, including myself. I hide in the art room. At home, I draw horses or pineapples.
Age 15: I get an A* of my citrus still life in GCSE Art. I'm still drawing at home but now I copy models from magazines. I'm excellent at drawing eyeballs.
Age 16: I meet the school’s career adviser who tells me I can't make money from drawing and I should do graphic design instead. I think she's an idiot but I’m not a rebel so I do what she tells me.
Age 18: I go to college and study art foundation. I don't make eye contact with anyone. College, especially this one in downtown Birkenhead, is terrifying.
Age 19: I fail my art foundation because I’m permanently terrified. Have to resit the exam over summer. I pass, barely.
Age 19 1/2: I go to Preston Uni to study graphic design. I fail the first year because I don’t really want to be doing graphic design but I don’t realise that until 20 years later.
Age 19 1/2 to 21: I am drunk. And broke.
Age 21: Somehow, I get a first in graphic design.
Age 21 1/2: I get a flat in Preston that I can't afford and a job as a graphic designer in a design agency that is in a red light district, next to a prison.
Age 21 1/2 to 25: I am drunk. And broke.
Age 25: I've decided I want to go to America and do title design for films. I think I probably need a qualification for that so I apply to Kingston Uni in London to study motion graphics.
Age 26: I get in. Spend a year living in Kingston and, because I can do what I like, I make stop frame animations which are all hand-drawn and I love every second of it but I don't connect the dots.
Age 27: I am employed by a branding agency that specialises in rebranding TV channels. The guy that hires me says, ‘You weren't the best designer we interviewed but as you did a two week placement with us we know you aren’t an idiot’. It does wonders for my confidence.
Age 27 to 33: I am drunk, broke, and also crippled with self-doubt.
Age 32: I have an existential crisis. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I decide I want to be an animator and work for Pixar. In my spare time, I make a short animated film which is all hand-drawn…
Age 35: The film wasn’t short enough and it took me 4 years to finish the damn thing and by the end I didn’t want to be an animator anymore. I still don’t know what I’m doing with my life but I’ve remembered I love to draw.
Age 35 1/2: Christmas. Mum asks me what I would do if money was no object. I answer: Draw. Then I cry, possibly because of all the Baileys I’ve drunk. Wake up the next day feeling I know what I want to do with my life. Spend the day googling ‘how to be an illustrator’.
Age 35 3/4 to 36: Enrol in a night class to learn how to make picture books, meet my agent via the course and get offered representation, drop down to 4 days a week at work, spend the fifth day working on a portfolio.
Age 36 1/4: Hand in my notice at work to become a freelance illustrator but realise I’m broke and so retract my notice a week later. Save as much money as I can.
Age 36 1/2: Hand in my notice at work again and finally have the balls to leave in December 2015. Spend all my savings on a two week trip to a horse ranch in Arizona.
Age 37 (or thereabouts): I get my first children’s book commission in January 2016. I teach motion graphics at a London college and freelance at The One Show for extra money. More book work follows…
Age 37 - 40: Have several identity crises because I don’t know what I’m doing and I think everyone else does (turns out they don’t either), I switch from working digitally to traditionally and it changes everything, a picture book I illustrated with a very long title becomes a top 10 bestseller.
Age 41- 44: A global pandemic happens. I leave London when it’s over and relocate to Derbyshire. I realise I love writing so I start a Substack but then I get so busy I can’t work on it and I’m wracked with guilt because people are paying me. I have an idea for a kids book. My agent and I spend 8 months putting together the pitch. It goes out on submission and I’m commissioned to write a four book series with Walker Books: dreams do come true. Somewhere amongst all that I get married and a book I illustrated—The Swifts— becomes a New York Times bestseller, making me a New York Times bestselling illustrator (that deserves to be put in bold).
Age 45: I write my first kids book and deliver it the day before I’m due to fly to Greece. On the plane I remember that someone once told me I couldn’t make a career out of illustration. I cry but I’m not sure if it’s because I got up at 4am to catch a flight and I’m delirious, or because I’m relieved I proved her wrong. What I do know is… I’m not drunk.
Yours, aged 45 and a half,
Powell x
Why are we all told to become graphic designers...?!
I too am a recovered graphic designer 😅
This is so comforting to read. At 35 going on 36, I don’t know what my future holds at all or what path I should take. I know I have a hodgepodge of skills that can perhaps take me to one career or another, but it feels like I’m waiting for the world to carry me someplace instead of intentionally going for something.
Anyway, that is to say, thank you for sharing your journey.