Discover more from Ten Minute Artist with Adam Ming
☕️ I’m in an awesome position of living my dream of being a picture book illustrator, with a number of books coming out in the coming year, and a string more to work on for the year after that. I moved from aspiring illustrator to professional illustrator by following a plan, except for the last bit, my plan got me within striking distance of my goal. But to get over the line I needed to hear 3 pieces of advice…
The people that you most want to hear from, have the least time to tell you anything. But thanks to things like twitter, direct messages and email. You can often get a response.
3 Pithy pieces of advice
When I was starting out 3 pithy (short and sweet) pieces of advice made all the difference to me.
Two of them came from illustrators in the field I respected, and the third from an agent before I had one.
The first two were in response to the question.
When you were starting out, how did you get your first gigs? I’ve worked for 18 months to build a portfolio, and I don’t know what steps to take next. How did you start?
The two quick responses from different pros were:
Are you in contact with a lot of people who hire illustrators? If not I’d start there.
Have you even listened to ANY of my podcasts?
The third response was from an agent I was trying to get to represent me, who basically said:
I’m not feeling it.
These three responses gave me fuel and direction, when I felt stuck. In itself the responses don’t seem like life changing words but they were. And I think they made such an impact because.
They were extremely personal, being directed exclusively to me.
I was able to unpack the usefulness of each short sentence.
It got me from a place of ‘stuck’ to moving again.
What I’m trying to tell you is that maybe you’ve already been given some life changing advice, but advice doesn’t create change, YOU create change . Recognise advice as a map to the treasure you seek. If you’re willing to use the map, the map is as good as the treasure.
☕️ in the next newsletter, I unpack what I got from the advice and how I turned it into action to get my treasure! If you treasure this thing, I would love if you became a paid subscriber.