Q&A 13: beginning a career

Aaron Cloutier writes: 

"My son is an aspiring illustrator (in college) and has been drawing every day since he was around 4. Is there any bit of wisdom you wish you'd had as an artist just at the beginning of your career?"

I'm in the process of packing up my house to move, and I've been looking at some of my artwork from 1995-1997, comics I made in the summer breaks between finishing school and finishing university. There aren't a lot of them, and the thing that strikes me is not how far I've come, but how short a distance. 

This is pre-Bobbins work I'm talking about, with no destination other than to be shown to a few friends, most of whom had no idea why I was making comics at all. I made it just because I felt like I had to make it. The comics I made in the years immediately after university are quite a lot worse-looking, I think because I was making them in spare moments around work and socialising, and not really paying attention to what I was doing. They're very, very raw. But I published them anyway and they're why I'm here now.

(To clarify, when I started, I was drawing with pen and paper, completely traditional work - at the time there was almost no other option. I began colouring on the computer in 1998.)

So at the start of my career, I knew nothing useful, worked in an entirely slapdash, rushed fashion, constantly looked for ways to cut corners on work that was already being drawn with a hot pen, and had little or no skill for the medium. All I had was enthusiasm. The energy of wanting to make something must be what animates them, because it sure as hell isn't my draughtsmanship or my spectacular writing.

On many occasions I've wondered what I'd do if my current consciousness was catapulted back into my 20-year old body, what work I would make with the benefit of the decades of experience I've gained since. It's tempting to think that I'd run down to the art shop, buy the correct paper, the correct pens, maybe one of those technical lettering guides with the little plastic wheel, sit down at my easel, and begin to crank out genius work. 

But let me be honest here. Since 2002, I have patched over every technical failing in my artwork with the help of expensive post-1998 technology. I draw on the computer. 

Very aware of this fact, every few months I get out the correct paper, the correct pens, one of those technical lettering guides with the little plastic wheel, and sit down at my easel, and begin to crank out a comic inferior to anything I would actually put my name to now. It's better than I would have made in 1997, but that's not the point, and it usually ends up in the bin. If I'm unlucky, I get a tension headache. How's that for time travel? 

I'm no better an artist than I was 26 years ago. In fact, I'm arguably worse, because everything I have learned about being technically correct has made it impossible for me to return to the innocent state in which I released my raw early comics. 

When you start your career, what you don't know is so much more powerful than what you do, because that absence is the space into which you begin to express yourself without fear or self-consciousness. By the time you reach your teens, even a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That's why so many teens stop drawing all of a sudden. 

I'll never forget a teenager who came to a portfolio review with me about a decade ago, who had rubbed out one eye on all his characters because he couldn't get it in the right place. He just left it blank, a rubbed-out hole, every time. He knew it was wrong and that was enough to mean he couldn't finish a single figure.

So advice to my younger self is unnecessary, because I was quite capable of letting myself off the hook long enough to work through my art problems and find a path that suited me. But that's the only advice I can give. Draw that second eye, kid, even if it's in the wrong place. Let yourself off the hook. 99 times out of 100, just finishing is enough.