Hi everyone! I’ve been listening to the Three Point Perspective Podcast for a few weeks now (obsessed!) and this is my first post on the forum. I don’t know if Introductions are a thing here, but they have been in other forums I’ve taken part in so I thought I’d start off by saying hello.

My name is Veronica Mui, I’m coming from a traditional art background, no college art education though. I got married young and have three kids 10 and under. I ventured into illustration about a year and a half ago and am figuring my way around, working towards a consistent style, building a portfolio, learning about the business and how to create a book. My first love before art as a child was writing, so it’s been wonderful to start writing again and express myself that way, but I still have a lot to learn.

I’m excited to meet new friends here, especially now when restrictions in America are keeping people from gathering like usually (I miss my art people!!)

I’m obsessed with Jessie Wilcox Smith, Alphonse Mucha, Komako Sakai, Taro Gomi, Ludwig Bemelmens to name a few inspirations.

I’ve been an oil painter for years and really hit a rut when I when to my first illustration class and was encouraged to try watercolor...whew, that was a mess I fussed with it for a year before I realized I just didn’t enjoy it. So I chased printmaking and found monoprinting which is just fabulous so I’m exploring and pinning down what exactly it is that I love making - what moods, what poses, what lighting, what colors, et.

I would love to see your work and where your inspirations come from, or if you have images that show how you built your style over time, that’s absolutely fascinating to me. I recently found an incredible illustrator who I really admire and scrolled through his instagram feed (which was LARGE) and it was so interesting to watch his progression over the course of three years - you could basically watch his voice become clearer and clearer and see what he decided to follow and what he chose to drop.

Feel free to share your work here showing the progression of your artistic voice, with or without images of your greatest inspirations!

Here are a few of my recent pieces.

Here are some earlier works

And two of my biggest inspirations, Jessie Wilcox Smith (whoops, it was pointed out to me that this is Elizabeth Shippen Green, not Jessie Wilcox smith , how embarrassing, I should pay more attention... thanks, friend!) and Komako Sakai

Just finished this piece up.. posted it in my first post introducing myself on this forum before I realized there was a post like this...sooo....I’m gonna leave it here too because I love looking over artists shoulders

Not sure if I’m going to do slowvember...it sounds really relaxing and I could definitely stand to spend a long time on something to improve, but I’m doing NanoWrimo this month so not sure I want to take on another month-long activity.

Right now I’m working on stylizing characters. I’ve always had a hard time changing things from reference photos (any left-brainers out there?!) and honestly thought I just wasn’t capable, but I had a break through in that respect last month, so I’m chasing those results!

I’m super inspired by Maurice Sendak and recently bought a collection of Little Bear and I’m just blown away by his handling of characters, emotions, and backgrounds, so I’m studying that hard and trying to emulate his mastery of those.

This is one of the first real scenes that I’ve been able to produce and be happy with! Background is pretty much pulled straight from Little Bear. It’s not finished yet, I will be adding more and darker line work on the characters and some throughout the grass and tree. I’m wishing I didn’t go quite so dark o the cat because now you can’t really see any detail - the pencil doesn’t show up on that gray. Their skin is a bit too pink and I’m thinking I’m going to have to look for a tube paint that has the exact skin colors I want (probably not going to happen, but I can dream haha) because mixing them is really a tedious guessing game.

This is a piece I just did which I’m considering a pinnacle piece - I just love everything about it, the pose, the lines, the colors, the suggestion of background. I’m really proud of it. Pieces like this help me pull through the days when everything I make seems like trash hahaha. Gives me hope for what I’ll be able to create one day.

Keep creating beautiful art everyone!!

Christmas portraits have taken over my life. I attempted nanowrimo last month and added about 15,000 words before I had to stop because I ended up with more commissions than I’d expected, which I can’t really complain about. No time for novels or illustrations until after December I think.
These are two that have been finished.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling burnt out from December....just been in a funk this week, so I’m just taking it easy and toying around.

This is what I’m currently working on - I sketched the girl on paper and scanned it into procreate, then I’ve been messing around with scanning and clipping textures from my mono prints. The sunflowers and the background are from seperate mono prints, and the textures on the clothes and skin were clipped from others and I patched them all together. It’s been fun to see what I can do using digital tools to change traditionally made images/textures.

I’m feeling more comfortable with characters recently, so I’m moving on to try and incorporate more backgrounds...then maybe some day I’ll start trying to tell a story.

I also made a tiny animated clip this month...not sure if I can share it here but I’ll try... it was really fun and I am hoping for the time to try my hand at it again soon.

Here’s what I’m playing around with this week. I was doing some master copies of Ezra Jack Keats and was having so much fun with the cut paper I decided to have another go at this months prompt (I don’t want to talk about the last attempt ).

I’ve also been working on putting together a dream portfolio and I noticed that there were reoccurring graphic shapes, a sort of randomness, and some neon colors, so I’m trying to mix those in here too. I’ll probably mess with it digitally when it’s all done to get rid of the shadows and such and smooth out the lines... Also, I don’t feel like wasting an entire piece of watercolor paper to make a perfect black border so I’ll probably finish that digitally as well.

Not sure where I’m going with the bottom left corner but I don’t want to make it draw your eye - maybe some rolling black/gray/blue hills rolling down towards the kid with a tilted table of candy in front getting thrown into the air? I may add another kid running towards us....or a couple...

I just wanted to share another one because I’m super excited about this! I’ve been working on discovering a process I love that consistency produces results I like. I’ve been deep diving into this for all of 2020 and usually I’m just slugging through making a bunch of trash BUT I every so often, I’ve been getting little breakthroughs that inform me, and today I feel like I got one of those! I made the image on the top right a week ago sort of by accident. I printed the background first and just wiped an area clean to draw the girl in and misjudged her height by quite a lot!! But I crammed her into that space anyway, and just really liked the result.. But I didn’t love how she had no color.. So next I tried the version under that one. I actually did about 5 prints before I got to this one which I liked somewhat, but the dress wasn’t doing it for me still. Today, I tried modifying a sketch I made yesterday to print. The sketch I did had pretty accurate proportions, but I wanted to try to replicate the short smashed proportions I had done last week by accident so I shortened her arm and dress by a fourth, and smashed her legs from above knee height to partial calf and enlarged her head. I tried giving color to her as well...And I feel like I nailed it! I’m just really happy with it. I ended up asking my three kids their thoughts also ( I do sometimes, but never with this much intention) after listening to an SVS ( I think it was? ) talk mentioning how in children’s illustration, adults might be the gatekeepers, but KIDS are your actual audience, and wrote their likes and dislikes under the image. They all had an opinion and made really good points! I’m excited to see if I can continue making consistent results in this way!

Here’s my day-late ‘fish’ I don’t know how long I’ll make it this year... this homeschooling is too much!

@dafoota Just wanted to pop in and give my two cents here because your comment hit home for me. I began my illustration journey about a year and a half ago and became increasingly frustrated - my style wasn’t coming together, I wasn’t able to finish a full illustration that I was satisfied with and even when I tried to tackle something more simple like just a character it was a fight! I did start wondering if maybe this just wasn’t the right fit for me, maybe I was just bad at illustrating. After a lot of navel gazing I finally realized it was the medium I was using! I had, without realizing it, put myself into a box - I am a traditional artist and traditional illustrations are done with watercolor. I was pushing away the things that were truly calling to me - what had been exciting me recently was printed artwork, collage, and mixed media! I was terrified to try those because I had no experience with them and was so scared that I would fail...But once I set watercolor aside and pursued the thing that was exciting (and frightening!) me, I found the joy in creating artwork again and that joy has been fueling me to keep going for the pure fun of creating! Try to pinpoint what gives you the most joy in the creative process, and think about what things are most important to you at the core of your being - what do YOU have that YOU want to share with the world. What feelings do you want your artwork and your stories to give your viewers. I realized that I want to share comfort, acceptance, mystery, joy, gentleness....Maybe a lengthy reply, but I hope some of my blathering helps! Best of luck to you.

Hi everyone! I have a question to pose: I am a traditional artist and have made oil paintings for years. About two years ago I began dipping my toes into illustration. I have had one Instagram account for all my art, but I noticed that when I flip back and forth between posting illustration and fine art work the engagement seems to stutter. I don’t love the idea of creating separate accounts partly because I don’t want to deal with the upkeep for two and partly because I don’t like the idea of ‘splitting’ my image - I am a creative person who wears many hats.

My question is this - am I wrong to want to keep these two very different media in one instagram account? By doing so am I making it more difficult for followers who are only interested in one or the other type of art?

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and creative new year!
Thanks for your help!

I love this, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am just like you in this way and it is exhausting. For myself I feel like I am behind because I didn’t go to an art school and I spent my 20s getting married and starting a family, and I need to fight to catch up. Recently, I realized that because of this, I wasn’t even enjoying making art anymore. This past year has been me trying to find the joy again which has meant letting go of media that I didn’t really like but felt like I had to master, and chasing whatever kinds of art excite me. Glad you’ve decided to chase joy too.

Look at your image reflected in a mirror to check if things still read or look ‘off’, particularly in figures and faces

@HeatherBouteneff looks so fun! Is the scbwi draw this still happening monthly? I can’t seem to find the prompts

@Braden-Hallett love the 1900s book cover vibe! I’ve got a whole Pinterest board dedicated to those

I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling burnt out from December....just been in a funk this week, so I’m just taking it easy and toying around.

This is what I’m currently working on - I sketched the girl on paper and scanned it into procreate, then I’ve been messing around with scanning and clipping textures from my mono prints. The sunflowers and the background are from seperate mono prints, and the textures on the clothes and skin were clipped from others and I patched them all together. It’s been fun to see what I can do using digital tools to change traditionally made images/textures.

I’m feeling more comfortable with characters recently, so I’m moving on to try and incorporate more backgrounds...then maybe some day I’ll start trying to tell a story.

I also made a tiny animated clip this month...not sure if I can share it here but I’ll try... it was really fun and I am hoping for the time to try my hand at it again soon.

@Chris-Philpot I second this - I, too, have messaged artists I admire on Instagram. Usually the trick is to get one who is higher leveled than you, but not so high that they won’t have time to read their messages. I find it helps to test the waters first - I will usually comment on their posts and stories and see if they like my comments or say anything back (stories are perfect for this because comments goes straight to their messages). If I feel like they’re consistently noticing my messages or responding in some way I may directly ask them for their opinion. Do always start with a sincere compliment and it’s always nice to give them an easy out (“I’m sure you’re busy and if you don’t have the time to answer, I understand!), then ask one direct question. It’s really important to think about your question too, not just “hey, what do you think?”.. just my two cents

@jsnzart I believe it! I keep that in the back of my mind all the time and I am treasuring these moments, I know the day will come when I will wish I could walk up those studio steps and sweep a little toddler up in my arms again. They always lift me up when I’m feeling down. Time marches forward always and each season brings its own sweetnesses and sorrows. Thank you for that reminder

@miranda-hoover thank you for sharing this! I just watched the video and it was really helpful. I like how he broke things down and his emphasis on the stories and emotions attached to the images. I do feel like my story is cohesive so I may leave things as is

@Braden-Hallett love it - what’s a 24 hour comic?

Great goal! Finding my style was my goal last year and looking back I feel like I made a lot of progress. The year before that after I had taken a children’s book illlustration course I felt super lost because I just wasn’t enjoying any image I was making and I wasn’t enjoying the process. I felt a lot of pressure being in the class also and felt bad that my teacher had to watch me struggle each week and his input wasn’t very helpful to me. So after the class I decided to explore different media and spent the entire year playing with different mish-mashings of media until I finally landed on something I enjoyed and liked the way it looked. Last year was mostly working on my drawing and stylizing characters and trying to push them into that media.

This year...I’m not really sure what my goal is yet for children’s book illustration. This year for me may be spent more on writing and oil painting. After painting a bunch of portraits for Christmas presents it’s really ignited my fire again for painted portraits. I want to be able to fit everything in and do it all, but homeschooling three kids under 10 does make it a bit hard to do everything they’re really the most supportive cheerleaders I could have asked for though! One day my son even said to me at bedtime “mom, you didn’t do any artwork today!” And when I replied something along the lines of how busy we’d been he’s just surprised and tells me I should have gone down to the studio and worked, I’ve got to finish my book! I’m so lucky to have these kids ️

Anyway, best of luck to you in finding your style! I listened to a ton of the podcast the creative pep talk if you haven’t heard of it. I enjoy his monologue episodes the best and he has some great introspective ideas into finding your style.

Happy new year!