Can you grow an Instagram following without posting finished work? How can you start projects with confidence? And when are you good enough to teach? Jake Parker, Will Terry, and Lee White explore these questions in this week's episode.

ASK A QUESTION
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SHOW LINKS

KEY TAKEAWAYS

If your style is time-intensive, try working in different styles or consider a fine art path over an illustration career.
When just starting out, take time to find what you enjoy making and what you’re good at; knowing this makes starting new projects much easier.
Fail forward: use your thumbnails to create better thumbnails that can lead to successful finished work.
Have a specific goal for each step of your process.
If you want to teach it, you’ve got to be able to do it!

QUESTIONS

Kevin asks: “I do a lot of pointillism and stippling in my traditional work, and a single piece will take weeks or months to complete. I don’t know how to build a following at my current pace. I almost have enough finished work to start an Instagram, but I work 9-5 and can’t post new content as often as is recommended. I also make digital art in a very different style than my traditional work. Should I post digital work in between traditional pieces, or will it make me look inconsistent?”

You have a few options here. One is to stop doing pointillism; try creating the same images using different textures. Check out Mark Summers’ woodcut style and Chuck Close’s unique process and consider how you can tailor your style and process to meet your goals. You must be able to finish work on a competitive timeline to succeed in illustration. If you can't do that or don’t want to give up pointillism, try a fine art path. Make your stippling paintings so good you can’t be ignored, and let other people share your work on sites like Colossal, Hi-Fructose, and Juxtapoz. If you’re prolific like James Jean your work will sell itself without social media. If you start an Instagram after gaining that solid fan base, you can post sporadically and even give teasers of unfinished work, and it will be enough to keep them excited.

It’s ideal to post in a consistent style. Consider only posting your digital art, but working on your traditional art in the background. Once you have more finished traditional work, you can have a show or release it all at once on Instagram. This could have more impact than juggling two styles simultaneously.

Carissa asks: "Whenever I start sketching for a new project, all I can see is what's wrong. I never know what style to use when I start, and I only feel comfortable in a project once I'm in the refining stage. How can I change my mindset and have more fun in the exploration stage?"

This probably means you haven’t made enough work yet. Seasoned illustrators quickly know how to approach a project. When you know exactly what kind of work you do, it’s much easier to start a project with confidence, so take time to explore what you enjoy doing and where your skills are. While still discovering your style, watch how other artists solve problems in their work and use what you observe as a jumping-off point for your own projects.

Having a goal for each phase of your process is key to overcoming frustration. In the first phase, research ideas and decide what style you want to use. In phase two, use thumbnail sketches to identify good concepts and composition, and evaluate what's working and what's not. Each failed sketch leads you to create a better one until you arrive at the best version of your idea- one you can take to a finish.

Din asks: “How skillful should one be to teach art to middle schoolers? Do I need to have the same level of practical skills as head knowledge? How can I become a good art teacher if I just started drawing?"

While you don't need to be a pro, you should have a solid enough foundation to teach the fundamentals. You’ll want to be able to draw in perspective, start with basic shapes, and maintain correct proportions. You'll not only need to recognize problems in your students’ work but be able to demonstrate how to fix them.

A few tips to improve your teaching skills:

When you learn a new concept, teach it to someone else. This will reveal what you didn’t fully understand when it was taught to you, and it will help you take your work to the next level as you seek to bridge those gaps.