15 Mar 2022, 16:36

Griffin,

I'm in a similar boat in that I'm taking time off from my old job to work on a freelance career. However, I HAVE to make this work, meaning I have to make $$ other wise I have to go back to corporate world. That is terrifying enough to have me working 70 hours a week filled with anxiety, no sleep and a rather neglected family despite the fact that we moved during the pandemic, quit my job and now have my kids in a school they say they hate. The pressure is on and I'm in this all alone.

I decided to go the webcomic route and it's not bringing in the viewers I wanted which I was hoping would lead to Patreon subscribers. So I'm back at children's book illustration and reworking my portfolio. I listened to the 3 part perspective where Will talked about a friend reworking his whole portfolio in 2 weeks and he worked traditionally. I know I can bust out new work and I'm determined to be successful whether that's in Comics, Children's books or illustration work. Yes, I work digitally but it's not 'easier' It's just more tools.

I strongly suggest you make yourself a 'project' Jake talks a lot about working on a project. If you want to be a CB illustrator then pick a copy right free story and make it happen. Do the story-boarding, Make the character sheet turn arounds, create the environments and do 2-3 illustrations. You'll learn a lot from this process.

For me I took on Jake's challenge to 'draw 100 somethings' several years ago. I ended up drawing 200 scribble creatures. I've been using them as a basis for my portfolio work. Either people will hate them or love them. It's definitely not 'safe' work. LOL.

Oh and if you are a slow worker then challenge yourself to do gesture drawing or fast ink wash drawings. Get some cheep paper and do as many composition/value studies as you can in 15 min. So fun!

I hope this was helpful! Best of luck. Looks like this forum is a great place for help and encouragement.

Cheers
Katrina

Some quick value/composition studies I did last week.
studies.JPG

Some of my doodle creatures.
doodles.JPG