Hello, my name is Mr. Tom Froese and these are my thoughts on illustration. This is a bi-weekly podcast about showing up and growing up as an illustrator. Welcome to episode 21. So today we're going to talk about where ideas come from. If you've ever asked this question, where do ideas come from? Hopefully in this episode, we'll find some answers. So we asked this question, I think.
When we see unusual or extraordinary or surprising works, whether that's an illustration or a work of art, maybe a great movie. Maybe a stand-up comedian set. And we wonder, how did they think of that? And maybe we ask even like, why? Like, why did they choose that? Like, out of all the things they could have...
come up with, like, why did that get selected for me to experience in this way? So of course, it's natural that we identify such novelty or surprising... works these things that we never could have thought of ourselves or maybe it's like something so obvious but it's said so well that we're surprised that we didn't think of it ourselves before. We identify this with creativity and with genius, and we wonder for ourselves,
How could we get some of that? How can we do what that person did? How can we come up with ideas like that person? So this question of how do you come up with ideas I think is related to or maybe even better framed in terms of the question. How did they know to do that? Or how did they know how to do that? Like what drove them, whoever it is, whoever made the thing, to do what they did or make what they did and and to put all of their time in...
resources into that one thing? Like what led them to follow that trail? So this question of where ideas come from, this question to me does have a lot to unpack. And that's what we're going to do in chapter one. And then in chapter two today, I'll share my process for coming up with ideas, which I hope...
will help you break through in your own creative work. Of course, before we get into it, I just want to thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much to my supporters on Patreon, especially. You truly help make this podcast possible. If you're a fan of this podcast, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Consider joining as a drawing buddy where you can get exclusive access to my live monthly drawing meetups, exclusive podcast content, and more. Join today at patreon.com slash tomfroze.
Also brand new on my website, you can now leave me a voice message. If you have questions or comments for me or feedback on the podcast, you can head over to tomfroze.com slash podcast. And from there, you'll see this little orange tab on the right edge of the page. You just tap that and start recording.
Now this is just a bit of an experiment I'm working with, but I thought it would be fun to see how this can help enrich the content here because I might even feature some of your voice messages on future episodes. Now just one more item of housekeeping, a quick thought before we get into the actual episode content. I put out a quick announcement last week about my upcoming anniversary episode, which will be episode 22. We'll be turning one in December.
I invited you to share your stories to be featured in that episode. Now, up until this morning, I didn't get a single response
So I figured I was probably not really pouring enough effort into getting word out there that I was looking for your stories. I did a quick post here on the podcast and then I... posted a little thing on YouTube but other than that I wasn't really putting too much time into getting word out there and I actually think the call that I put out was a bit complicated the question that I asked you guys to respond to for this.
So what I realized out of all of this is that I just don't have time right now to put together the kind of episode that I had envisioned at first. So I'm going to put that on the back burner and... Maybe we'll do a little bit more of a slow burn here where I'll kind of gradually get your responses over time. And then when I have enough content, I can make a episode with...
you and your voices, which I would love to do. Anyway, what am I so busy doing that I didn't have time to make a proper anniversary episode? I've been working really hard on my composition class. So this is something that I have been trying to do for years and then I started with
a very concerted effort in the early part of this year. I was working some of those ideas out in earlier episodes here on the podcast and let me just tell you composition for me is a brain buster it's so hard to talk about because it's so broad and expansive but what I'll just say is Fortunately, after much blood, sweat, and tears, and some actually very helpful feedback from some Patreon supporters and from fellow teachers on Skillshare on my script,
I was able to really home in on a better script, a better class. And so I've just been working through the actual project that the class kind of centers around lately. It just takes a long time. I find composition is just A crazy, crazy topic. And hopefully, when the class comes out, you won't even...
know how much work got put into that because the class makes it look so easy. That's my vision for that class. So I hope that I'll have this class launched in December before the holidays. We'll see if that can happen at this point, but I'm crossing my fingers and doing everything I can to do this. I'm committed to making this composition class happen in 2023. Anyway, all of this to say, if you'd like to leave a recording about anything...
You know, just go for it. Visit tomfroze.com slash podcast and hit record. You're allowed to leave a message, I think. up to five minutes in length. And if you have any feedback or stories about how this podcast has touched you or helped you in any way, perhaps I'll use your recording in a future episode. Anyway. Sorry for the false alarm about the anniversary episode, but I just want to make sure that I give that my due attention after this class is out the door. All right, chapter one.
So an idea basically is an opinion, a belief, or an impression about something. Idea is... a very broad word. It's hard to even define the word idea without using the idea in it like an idea is the idea of a notion that you It's hard to pin down. Think about it. How would you describe an idea? Well, the best definition that I've ever had of what an idea is, is from my writing teacher, Mimi from art school. And she said that if you can't explain
what you're thinking, you don't have an idea. You know, sometimes when we're trying to describe something, we'll say, I know what I'm thinking, but I can't explain it. Or I know the answer, but I can't explain it. But according to my instructor, Mimi, we don't have an idea at this point. Somehow we need to find the words, and once we have the words, that's when the idea emerges.
Now, in English, at least, there are at least two meanings of this word idea. I think there's this looser sense. So we're talking more about a notion or a whim. Maybe an intuition, a spidey sense. Maybe we get a flash of an idea come in our minds. But then there's this more narrow sense of the word idea. It's a little bit more focused and specific.
In this sense, an idea is a concept. We understand something well enough to put into words. The way I would say it is that it's a formulation of a truth. or experience that we can package up for others to understand. What I mean by this is that there's this thing that exists that we all can experience. And when we're able to put that experience into words,
or pictures in our case, for others to understand, that's an idea. So yeah, we understand something enough to put into our own words, and then we transmit it to others. so that they understand. In this sense, I guess I'm seeing idea in a very communicative sense. There's a idea I can't help but say there's this idea of communicating a thought experience belief or whatever it is
to someone else in words. So that was just looking at idea in a general sense, but what if we look more closely as illustrators, artists, and designers? There are two possible ways that people see ideas as creatives. This might even relate to two different kinds of people, like there are two kinds of people, each kind come across ideas in different ways. So the first... sense of idea here for creatives is that ideas come out of thin air or the ether or when lightning strikes.
Basically, ideas are the same thing as inspiration. We get our ideas from some source, some mystical force outside of us, and they come to us. This is both an understanding of what an idea is to creatives, and it's perhaps how certain creative people think about how they get their ideas. It's very mystical. It can be very spiritual. But for a lot of us, If we don't get ideas in this way, or it's very rare, I think it can be quite hopeless.
We just don't get good ideas because we're not a lightning rod for that kind of lightning, for that kind of inspiration. You know, every now and then we're going to get lucky. But mostly, we just don't have good ideas. I don't have good ideas. That's something that we might say to ourselves. So is there any hope for people like us who don't have this mystical... force this muse that comes to us and gives us our ideas from on high. Well, let me then lead into the second.
kind of idea or the second kind of person where it comes to how they come up with ideas. And this is more around the idea of, I said it again, the idea of concept. So in the general definition, I talked about how a concept is, you know, our ability to put a thought into words to describe an experience and that kind of thing.
In order to get to a concept, if we're talking specifically about creative professionals, illustrators and designers, artists maybe, we develop concepts through some kind of a process. And that's the opposite of waiting for inspiration to strike. We don't wait for inspiration to strike. We work until the ideas shape up in front of us. They become clear as we go. So this is definitely more my style. This is how I come up with ideas on demand.
It's based on a process. It's based on a routine, on, I wouldn't say a formula, but there are steps that I take in order to come closer and closer to whatever ideas I end up coming up with. In a way, this removes us from that mystical... notion of the artist. We're just subject to the whims of the universe and ideas may or may not come.
In this sense, I think we're more scientific. I would say that designers, particularly, and illustrators who approach the creative process kind of like a designer, we're like little scientists. We're not doing big... biological experiments or weighing the force of gravity or whatever people do in science but we're using a method we're we're using some kind of
setup where we're asking questions and then trying to find the answers. So that to me is how ideas work. You've probably heard me say this a thousand times, but... As illustrators, we're visual problem solvers. The way we find ideas is by first understanding what the problem is that we have to solve. and then we use whatever skills we possess, whatever materials and resources we have on hand,
to go about solving that problem. Now for us as creatives, we're not just solving problems in our heads, these aren't just mental problems. These are problems that we solve with our hands. We're using our minds and our hands in concert. We kind of work out whatever is in our head, whatever experience is kind of intangible. and our job is to make that somehow tangible.
So like I said, I am way more of a number two kind of guy. What I mean is the second definition of ideas here. So there's the whimsical, I just get ideas from the air person, and then there's the person who has to work toward their ideas. That was the second one. I'm the second kind of guy. Now, every now and then, I get a little stroke of inspiration.
It's like an instant vision that comes to my head. I think we all have this. Maybe it comes as we're falling asleep or in the shower or something like that. In fact, often when I'm falling asleep, almost every night when i close my eyes and my head hits the pillow i start seeing like three-dimensional faces in my head like it's like imagine there's like a dark black stage and there's just heads or people sometimes it might be a full figure of a person
And they're real and I've never seen them before. And they just kind of show up in my head. I would never be able to remember what they looked like or hold that image in my head long enough to draw it. But... This is maybe an example of when we get these flashes of ideas and we're like, oh, that was interesting. What was that? I have no idea why that happens or if that happens with other people when you close your eyes and you see actual like really realistic.
lifelike people as though they're in your head. But anyway, when I do get ideas, sometimes I'll get like an exciting concept for an illustration or maybe even a podcast episode. But once I actually start to try and flesh it out, it fails. So most of my instant ideas fails. If I were to try to draw one of those figures or faces from my head, it may or may not be as powerful as it felt in my head. So instead of trying things and most of them failing.
I develop my ideas through a process. I don't trust. those instant ideas. I don't trust those instant ideas but I do trust my process. Now as an illustrator when I'm thinking about what an idea means it's both the concept around which I create an illustration. It's kind of like what the illustration is about and the idea is the final illustration itself. You can look at an illustration as a whole and say well that's a neat idea.
But you can also say that this illustration has an idea or it's about an idea. And in both of these senses, the idea comes from... work. We have to do some legwork to to figure out what we're illustrating about and we have to spend a lot of time and work to give that idea some kind of physical or visual form. That's this encapsulation of this experience, opinion, belief, or whatever it is. that we're putting into a visual format for someone else to understand, and they go, aha, I get that.
Now, this idea of how do you come up with ideas or where can I find ideas, this is so much related to the question of How do you know what to do? Like, how did they know to tell that joke? How did they know that story would work out and get people to laugh or whatever it is? The question isn't about how to come up with ideas and more about how do you know what to do. The next question is, what do you do? What do you do? Like, what is your way?
encapsulating ideas? What's your way of interpreting ideas for other people to understand? One of the first questions that I ask when projects come my way is, did this person decide that I was the person they wanted to give this problem to and pay to solve it? So much about the kinds of problems that we are solving. have to do with how we solve problems. And I'm not very good at solving every kind of problem, but I'm very good at solving the kinds of problems that
I do solve. In my style class I talk about how style is actually part of the problem-solving aspect of our job as illustrators. And for some of us, that problem comes solved before the project comes to us. For instance, maybe there's an advertising campaign and the art director needs to have illustrations that give a certain vibe and then use certain colors because it works well with the brand that they're trying to advertise.
So they will look for specific illustrators. They're not going to call all kinds of illustrators. They're going to call just one kind of illustrator. And in that sense, the problem of what style to work in has already been solved. They like the approach.
for making illustrations of select illustrators and that's why they get in touch with them and that's the kind of project that i want to come to me i don't mind doing projects that there's a little bit more of a conversation about the style side of things that's something i'm open to these days But I also just know that it's way easier when a client comes to me, they know what I do, they love what I do. And in terms of style, when I show them the work, the sketches, etc.
They're not like, where did this come from? Or what's the deal with your style? They have that already in mind. So often an illustrator will come up with ideas. that seem like they came out of nowhere. But if you look at their body of work, it makes sense. They're just rehashing the same ideas in some ways.
That's kind of what a style is. It's not necessarily formulaic or dumb or something like that in the sense that they're not thinking, they're just... illustrating the same things regardless of the client, but they're using their world, their symbols, their visual language, their motifs that they turn to. and they find new ways of using these things to mean new things in the context of whatever project they're working on.
Now, if I get a project that comes to me and they actually have no idea who I am in terms of my style, maybe they know, for instance, that I'm a Canadian illustrator and they want me to illustrate something. Canadian, there may be some more work involved in getting the client to understand the kind of style I do and to make sure that it's actually going to work for whatever they need it for.
So if it turns out that none of the styles that I work in or none of the range of styles that I work within work for this client, then I'll probably walk and I'll find someone else to do it. Now, earlier on, when I was still kind of figuring out what my style was, what kind of problems am I good at solving, I'd be a lot more open to that.
And what I would do, and I'm kind of jumping ahead into the second chapter stuff where we're going to talk about more how to do this thing. But what I would do, I'll quickly say that I would find inspiration. I would go to Pinterest. I would gather references. I'd look for examples of how other illustrators or designers solved similar problems. what that style looked like, what were the colors, what kind of effects did they use, what kind of textures.
And of course, I would also look within a world that I was mostly interested in, which was more illustrative, retro inspired, printmaking inspired illustrations. And then I'd look at how these... artists solve certain problems for example like how how did an illustrator create an illustration for a package? How do they create an illustration for the cover of a magazine?
When you don't know what your style is or how you solve problems, you can at least look to artists that you admire and feel kinship with and ask, how did they solve a similar or the same kind of problem? in their own way. And then we can kind of transport that, we can transpose that, I should say, onto ourselves and say, well, I like illustrating in this way, even if it's not my particular style, I want to try this out.
And from there, you can start to find out what ideas work or what kind of ideas work. within that style. What I'm getting at here is when it comes to knowing what we do, i.e. how do we come up with ideas, we do? What is it that we do? What's our specialty? What's our way of interpreting the world around us and packaging it up so that others see and understand?
And if you don't have that style, if you don't have that awareness yet, that's totally fine. What we can do is go and see what models exist out there in the world. that we can reference for inspiration or guidance. So how we develop ideas is a mix of understanding, experience, intuition, and craft. So that's a bit of a mouthful. But basically, it's this mix of understanding where we understand what the problem is that we're meant to be solving.
also a mix of experience where we bring our understanding based on our experience of how we solve problems, especially if we've tackled something similar in the past, like how you illustrate the cover of a magazine one time will very likely influence how you do it. So our ideas are also a mix of intuition. So this is just where it is about gut feeling. It's about like, I like this. I don't like that. This is my taste. That's not my taste.
This sits right. That's a much more subjective experience, but it's part of how we come up with ideas. We use our intuition or our spidey sense. to evaluate ideas at a certain level. And then of course ideas include craft. our skills and abilities in really putting something together in a legit way. When we have craft, this means that we can build something and it looks professional. If I were a carpenter, but I wasn't
professional yet. I didn't develop my craft, and that's actually 100% true. I don't have a very good craft. My cuts are very irregular. I don't even have the right tools. So no one's going to ask me to make... a kitchen table for them. unless it's going to be made out of just plywood and... sticks for legs. But a professional craftsperson, a professional carpenter is of course going to know all the ways in which a beautiful table comes together and
The best of the best will actually have a style. They'll have a way that they make. tables and furniture that other people are pursuing because it's so beautiful. So our ideas are a mix of these things, understanding, experience, intuition, and craft. Now, just thinking about real-world examples of illustrators, you know, thinking about the unique artists...
their craft and their ideas, like what is the relationship here. Think about Noma Barr, this is an illustrator who creates Clever figure ground illustrations. where we see two ideas at the same time, depending, and maybe one or the other, depending on how we look at it. So how does Noma Barr do this? Or how does Christoph Niemann... decide what to illustrate for his New Yorker magazine covers. They're always so different and creative.
How does he come up with his clever one-page or one-panel gags? He does these very clever illustrations. They're not necessarily comics. They're a little bit more detailed. They seem to have more substance to them, but they're always so clever. There's always some idea there that you're like, you get it right away and it looks good and you get it. You know, how does Malika Fav come up with her clever figurative compositions with that?
dazzling optical effect that she often uses where there's stripes and hard shadows and she doesn't actually draw the figure so much as draw shapes around it but together makes a super tight beautiful, figurative image. So each one of these artists that I've referenced here, their ideas come from a core part of what they can do and kind of using their own taste or intuition. Malika does a lot of figures.
and uses a lot of stripes and these are just part of how she thinks visually and puts it on the page. Her words that she uses to describe her ideas is this formula that she uses, and you see it played out in different ways in all of her illustrations. And they're always surprising. They're always good. It's not repetitive, even if... So just to bring this all home, the ability to come up with ideas...
is a skill that we develop, just like everything else that we need to as illustrators. So again, all these illustrators that I just named, like Noma Barr, Christoph Niemann, John Julian, Malika Favre, they didn't start being able to have these great ideas.
skill this craft over time and kind of it's like a chicken and egg thing where uh you know what came first the illustrator style or the projects that needed that style It's this gradual process where what the artist makes and what they're being asked to make come closer and closer over time. So we've talked about a few ideas like editorial illustrations. What are some other examples of ideas that illustrators have? And what I'm talking about here are ideas as compared to non-ideas.
Referring back to my writing instructor Mimi, she said that if you can't explain it you don't have an idea. What does it mean for an illustrator to be able to explain things in pictures? It means that we're able to communicate. something successfully through images, through our colors, our forms, our shapes, our subjects that we choose. So in this sense, an editorial illustration would be an idea because it's formulation or a perspective about the article that it represents.
An illustrated map of a city is an illustrator's idea. that city. A gig poster, an illustrated poster promoting a band or a tour, is a visual idea about said band. It's a sort of encapsulation, I like that word, or condensation of whatever that band is about.
understood and made understandable in visual format. So those are just some examples of ideas. Now let's just look at what examples of non-ideas would be. So these are less things that you can explain or it's less something that has been made visual that other people can understand. What about an abstract piece of art? Is that an idea? Is there something being communicated in it?
I would say, arguably, an abstract piece is not really an idea. It's more of an experiment or a formal, like a play with form. It's doing something, but it's not an idea in the conceptual sense. It's less about mind. It's more about instinct. Instinct alone doesn't give us the idea. It has to be paired with understanding and craft. What else might not be an idea? A beautiful drawing of a street scene. Usually drawings from observation.
aren't ideas. They're just reactions. It may take a lot of skill and talent for an artist to be able to draw these things, but they are not ideas. They're more drawings of ideas. So another thing that might not be an idea is a portrait. You might draw a beautiful portrait of someone. It's well composed, cool style. captures their likeness, the person in the portrait loves it. It could be a portrait for the King of England or the President of the United States, but it might not be an idea.
What would make a portrait an idea is what you're seeing with that portrait. So perhaps these examples that I just pulled out, like the presidential portrait or the portrait of the king, there might actually be an idea in there somewhere. And it might be the fact that the person was chosen to paint those portraits based on how they bring ideas into their portraits. That could be very true. But if it's just a beautiful picture or a well-painted picture, it's not necessarily an idea.
Nothing happening or being said in it other than what the artist sees. This is an expression maybe, but it's not a concept. It's not conceptual. Illustrators make work that's non-conceptual all the time, and there's so much use and reason for that to exist. I'll just say that I don't want to ruffle any feathers here. I'm not even saying what I'm saying to be controversial. Just because something's not an idea, it doesn't mean that it's not good.
I'm not trying to devalue these things by saying they're not ideas, but these things may not be appropriate in situations where an idea is needed. These things aren't ideas, it's not to say they're useful. So just wrapping up this first chapter, it helps to have an idea of what we mean by ideas so that we know how to make them happen when we need them. And so that's what we're going to talk about in the next chapter.
If you're looking to get to the next level in your illustration career or just trying to get started, it can be so helpful to talk about it with someone else. Someone with a bit of experience and someone who can help you ask the right questions. And what they all seem to want is the chance to have thoughtful feedback on
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How to come up with ideas. So one of my heroes, Christoph Niemann, said that relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. but it is an excellent strategy for not going insane. Even in the absence of talent and inspiration, you can, through sheer practice, become so good at art that you reliably deliver very good work.
Now, great work, that's something else. For great work, you also need a lot of skill and craft, but you also need something else that you can't control. Once you accept this, your life becomes easier. And if you're a client, please remember, all you can ask from an artist is very good work. Great work is not really plannable. He's not talking directly about ideas he's talking more about the whole package of how things come together in the end.
But what he's talking about, his version of the word craft, is not just the ability to make something beautiful, but the ability to make something good reliably when you're... He's saying that through craft you can definitely guarantee good output.
but maybe not great. And by great, it's that work that becomes the award winner, the showstopper, the thing that goes viral. So my process that I'm going to share with you for how I come up with ideas is really... the process that I come up with my illustrations in general, I'm going to focus it more around the idea of ideas.
But it's really similar to what Christoph Niemann is talking about here. And if you want to read more of his thoughts on this, it's a fun article that is on Wired.com. I'll leave a link in the show notes. So, part of this idea of craft is how I would describe the process. I actually teach this in my class, the six stages of illustration. This is more broadly about how you lead your clients through the creative process and make sure that you stay in control.
if you're interested in that i'll leave a link to that in the show notes as well but here is my process kind of just as an overview first i want to define the problem second i want to understand the subject matter, like the topic or whatever it is that I'm illustrating about. Third, I want to formulate a perspective, something that is my own take on how I understand the problem and the subject. And then fourth, I want to sketch out my ideas.
kind of in a more free and uncritical sense, just kind of like throw them onto the page, see what happens. And then I go into a process where I start being more analytical. I evaluate those ideas with a more critical mindset and look for the best ideas, the ones that fit based on what I know. And then the sixth Thing here is to give your ideas their final form. But by this point, your ideas already exist. It's just a matter of seeing them come to full fruition. So again, it's...
Define the problem, understand the subject, formulate a perspective, sketch out rough ideas, sketch out refined ideas, and then finalize. in their final form. So let's just start with defining the problem. This is when a client comes to you and they want you to illustrate something for something. So much of the information about your ideas comes to you at this stage. And if it doesn't, this is an opportunity to get more information from your client.
So I always start every job by understanding what... what am I being asked to do? What is the job? What is the thing they want me to make? Is it an illustration for a magazine? Is it a spot illustration? Does it go on a cover? Do they want me to make just something for social media? What size will it be? What resolution? What are the files that they need? Those are very technical things. But of course, I also want to know, what is this about? What am I illustrating about?
their idea that I'm illustrating about, not mine. It's their company, it's their product, it's their Ultimately, our art is meant to do something. It's supposed to have an effect. It's supposed to be seen and do something and influence people in some way. So we want to know as much as we can about these things. This all gets defined in the problem just so we understand.
What are we being asked to do? What is it going to look like? What is the size? What is the general description or category of this kind of illustration? And then what are the source materials involved here? What do I have?
to go by if it's for a magazine i want to make sure i know what the story is about i want to have at least a draft of the article from my art director plus their sense of why they came to me like why did they want My style, how does it play into whatever the article's about or fit into the magazine or something like that? These are all part of just starting to get an idea.
about what your work is going to look like and how it's going to work. So the second part here is to understand the subject. This is where you do research. You immerse yourself in the world
that you are illustrating for. If you're working for a client that wants you to illustrate their plants for a seed catalog, if that's a thing, then of course you're going to want to go get deep into the world of plants and understand what particular seeds they sell and who their audience is and what the benefits of planting such and such seeds are.
You'll know what to focus on here based on what the materials your client has given you they may also have neglected to give you these things so if you start asking like wait what about these plants should i be illustrating what's important that's not something for you to decide as the illustrator you can ask your client that
understand your subject by just diving into the world and trying to understand why it's important that you're illustrating these things, why these things are important to the people that ultimately will use them or why whatever you're illustrating is important for other people to see. What I do at this stage is, and this is more around just Getting a sense of imagery that's going to be involved in the subject matter that I'm dealing with, I want to gather reference images.
So earlier this year I had to illustrate a cover of a magazine. It was about the future of retail. For me, I needed to gather images that related to this idea of the future of retail. What does the future look like? What does retail look like? What does futuristic retail look like? What do these things imply? Is it a dystopian future? Is it a happy future? What's the tone of the article? Is it critical or uncritical?
celebrating all the futuristic advances we have today, or is it taking a more critical eye? So of course I read the source material, I read the article, and I learn about the different... touch points of what they mean and they're talking about it in the context of a magazine that is more on the...
uncritical side I would say of these innovations. They're not saying these are bad and they're not taking a stance on anything. They're just saying these are happening and I guess if they have a stance at all they're saying this is how it's going to help you as a retailer. tap into these markets, that kind of thing.
As I'm reading them, some of them I'm feeling like, ooh, I don't want to shop wearing VR goggles, or I don't want to be tracked with on all my devices so that advertisers can target me more or whatever these futuristic things are. i don't have any feelings about at all some of these things i think oh that's cool i could use that and then other things i'm like uh i just wish things were all analog again and uh i i hate virtual reality. So I have my opinions on things like this.
However positive they are on things that I'm not so positive on, none of these things are going to prevent me from being a good illustrator on this job. In fact, the more of an emotional response that I have to the subject matter, whether positive or negative, I can use that to fuel my ideas. I can be cynical. I can be snarky. I can be I can force myself to see things in a different light or maybe from a more positive side of things.
I'll filter all that out later, but this will give me fuel to illustrate from my own personal perspective, which is the third point that I'm going to be talking about. But before we get on to there, I just want to talk about when I'm understanding the subject, a huge part of it is not just gathering reference images like I mentioned.
but drawing from them. This is what I call O mode or observation mode drawing. And here we're not coming up with ideas, we're just using drawing as a way to understand and immerse ourselves in the subject. And in this sense, download visual information to our minds that we can call from later without having to look at the reference photos. And in that process...
we'll get more of our own perspective on things because they're kind of filtered through our memory and we're not looking directly at the images later on. It's not a hard and fast rule not to look at reference images later, but the idea... is that we can draw less from reference images. We rely less on reference images and we can draw more from our imagination or ideas and that's what we're going to talk about. in eye mode drawing, but first
I want to talk about this third point here, this third step, is to formulate a perspective. And this is kind of already happening as you're immersing yourself in the content. and the subject, like I said, in step two. But now this is more of a bridge into the stage where we're actually coming up with ideas next. And this is where we're thinking about the value that we're going to add to the image. Most of the time as illustrators we're not just being called to create pictures of things.
but to reframe or encapsulate an experience or truth in our pictures. so at this stage as we're formulating a perspective we can start to ask why this might be more of a writing exercise than a drawing exercise but we need to ask like why is the product or proposition important Right now, I'm working on some illustrations for a company, like a tech company, and they make hardware. They make memory. And so, like...
RAM and stuff like that. And they want me to illustrate some pictures about one of their memory products. It's like a solid state drive. So not super sexy material. Obviously I don't think they're asking me to just create a picture, an illustration of the drive. The device itself is actually not very interesting looking. It's this sort of...
It just looks like a black box with a cable sticking out of it that you stick to your computer. Not super interesting. I have to ask, what are the advantages of this particular product? Maybe I get that information from my client. What do they say is the advantage? They say it's portable and lightweight. And so I think, well, how could I use portable and lightweight? How could I use a hard drive that's portable and lightweight and solid state and doesn't have any moving parts?
So I think of someone who's out in the backcountry, filming, shooting, filling up their cards, but not worrying because they can offload their videos or whatever onto this solid state drive, format the little card, put it back on their camera and keep going. So this is just an example. I'm not exactly sure that's everyone's experience, but this is an example of thinking
This is the value of the product. This is a story that I can illustrate. This is a value that I can add in an illustration that you can't just see by showing a picture or illustrating a picture of the product. One of the questions you can ask here as you're formulating your perspective is,
What about this thing? What about this topic or this product is interesting or important to the client and to their audience? So in this sense, when I'm thinking of ideas for how to... represent this hard drive, I'm thinking what problem does this thing solve and how does this help the end user? And my job as the illustrator is to imagine a story where someone, some end user would be greatly helped by this product.
You know, just one more example as we're talking about formulating a perspective. I recently made a map of Kingston. It's a city in Ontario, Canada. So when I was asked to create a map of this city, the first question is, what about? What about? Kingston. I don't live in Kingston, so I don't know what's important enough to feature on a map that people from Kingston are going to want to buy. So I have to ask the client what their ideas of Kingston are.
And it's really not about my idea at all. It's really about what their ideas are. And in this case, I'm just putting them into a visual form. And I'm able to do that because I have experience and skill in this particular craft or art of illustrated maps. So just as the illustrator for this map of Kingston, It's not really my perspective on Kingston in the sense that I know what all the points should be.
as a Kingston-er, because I'm not. My perspective comes in mostly through my style. It's like, how do I illustrate maps? How do I choose what to leave in, what to leave out, what lettering style? Those are parts of the ideas that I come up with.
in that sense. But I would also say in that sense, it's actually not an idea. The idea of this map, of what Kingston is, came to me from someone else. It wasn't my idea. I didn't have to come up with it. In fact, The things that I had to represent in the map themselves are not ideas. so much as icons or symbols of
things that exist. Okay, moving on to the fourth stage here. This is where we start to sketch out our rough ideas. This is where you actually start coming up with ideas. In Omo Drawing, We didn't come up with ideas. We just drew without trying to think about ideas. step into coming up with ideas. That's why I call this I-mode drawing, ideational drawing.
don't really like the word ideation. It always felt like a made-up word, and it was overused in the design world that I was a part of when I was a designer many years ago. But I actually am coming around to this idea of ideation because to come up with ideas is... a verb. Ideas aren't just something that happen to us. We ideate. We come up with ideas iteratively.
So to start out this process of ideation, we start to formulate our ideas on the page through drawing. This is when I iteratively draw out what comes to mind. without too much hesitation so sometimes i have thumbnails that are in the shape of whatever the illustration has to be whether it's like a tall rectangle or a circle or whatever it is it starts off pretty loose
and tentative. It starts off kind of like, oh, I don't know how to start, but I just start. I just make some marks and do kind of a free drawing. If you know what free writing is, that's where you just write without stopping to think about what you're writing. You just kind of let a flow of words come through your fingers, through your pencil or keyboard.
It's the same with free drawing. You start to just draw uncritically, except there's a little bit more focus to it because it's topical. You've already understood what you're illustrating about, and now you're trying to come up with ideas. First part of coming up with ideas is rough. We're being free. We're being uncritical. We're not being too analytical. We're seeing what comes out.
kind of as a combination of intuition and understanding. We're maybe drawing things that we've always drawn, whether it's a person or even a person. seated in a particular way that we always start with when we draw. It's kind of like a warm-up. Those first few marks that we make as we start our rough ideas are kind of like warm-ups.
Maybe like doing scales on your piano when you sit down before you actually start playing a song or writing a song. I guess the tricky part here is this is where we start thinking about that what about question. Like what about the solid state drive or what about... the future of retail. Am I illustrating here? You've already looked at some reference images. You've already started to get into the world of ideas that were given to you.
So you're most likely going to start with whatever it is you started drawing in O mode drawing. It's just that now you're looking for something to click where you're telling a story in the right way and How this comes together is really going to be up to each person. It's really up to you and your style, whatever ideas you have, whatever symbols you seem to gravitate around. For me, this is where...
I actually discover what those things are. There are certain things that I know that I will do because I have a style, I have a way of drawing. I have a way of illustrating, but I'm looking for the things that surprise me most or the way that what I do or what I expected kind of... becomes more than that, becomes unexpected. So we do this iteratively.
meaning we do it over and over again for a period of time. You might set a timer or you might just say I'm going to do this until I can't do this anymore. The way I usually start ideating is I'll have little squares or rectangles, whatever the shape of the illustration is that I'm making. draw them out. I use Procreate, just a simple pencil brush, and I'll have a layer, fill that layer, and then once I fill up that layer of thumbnails, I hide it, create a new one and I keep going. As I go,
I'll usually have some kind of pattern of like, oh, this is sticking. I like this. I'm going to dwell on this for a while. I like how this heart shape sits over this person's knee. That's not a real example, but let's just go with it. And so I'll draw the heart over the knee over and over again, seeing all the different ways that I can do that until I'm exhausted. And then I'll move on. So here's where we're asking, what about? What is it about this thing that I'm trying to say?
And what is the story that I can say about that? How do I tell the story? How do I communicate this message? Your idea is a visualization of a story or a truth or an experience. about your subject. And how you do this will come into being in your own intuitive way and this is where your style really does play into how you come up with ideas. Your ideas and your style are so interrelated.
Now, if you don't have a style yet, if you don't have a way that you know that you do and love doing and can rely on, This whole stage is just understandably harder. It's harder to come up with ideas when you actually don't have a way that you express these visually in the same way that you don't.
Even if you had ideas or the seeds of ideas, as a toddler before you had a lot of words to express things until you had those words you couldn't express yourself and and that's kind of what developing your style as an illustrator is about So I'm not here to say just draw things in your style if you don't have a style. I'm actually recognizing how difficult it is to come up with ideas when you don't have a style because the ideas and the style are so interrelated. And by identifying this,
we can think about what can you do if you don't have a style? Well, You can do what I know that many designers, including myself, do, and that is looking at references. Looking at inspiration from other people, how did someone do this in their style for this similar kind of situation? As designers, often wearing illustrator hats,
They don't have a particular style. They have to communicate ideas in all kinds of different styles. A lot of designers will pride themselves on the fact that they don't have a style. But what do they do? They have to look at how...
certain kind of style that they're going for plays out and in that sense they have to look for inspiration from others of how they did it. The risk here of course is that you end up making work that look imitative and derivative But you can also be clever about how you mix and mash up your inspiration and come up with something a little bit new or original. But just keep in mind that there really is nothing new. And in fact, your audience, your client, their audience
They don't want completely new. They want to see something, probably 80% that they recognize with 20% novelty, 20% eureka moment where they didn't see it in that exact way. It's just about... So basing your decisions on what you know works. And before you have your own style that you know works, you have to look to other people just naturally.
I hope this gives you permission to actually be inspired by other artists, other designers In coming up with your own ideas, the catch is that you can't imitate them directly, especially if you're doing this for paid. for a paid project. This is something you might have heard me say before. I say imitate to learn, innovate to learn. All of this is to say, I know this is a sticking point for this stage. so just look out for it and know that over time you will develop a craft
And you will develop your own style, your own voice, however you want to put that. And this sage becomes much easier because you have a well of symbols and shapes and qualities that you bring to all of your ideas. So the fifth stage here is sketching out more refined ideas. So in this stage, we're still in I mode, but now we're being more analytical and more critical.
i always suggest that people take a break between stages so you should have taken a break between oh like your original o mode and research stuff take a break after that before getting into your rough sketches and after rough sketches take a break and then come into this refined stage because just that little bit of space and distance gives you new perspective and you're a little bit more objective even about your own work.
So take that break and then evaluate your ideas, which we're doing now in this stage. Use your critical mind. to see if your ideas align with the goals for the project as defined in step one. That was the brief. That's where you define the problem. Now you're looking at all those ideas you freely and uncritically blathered on layers in Photoshop. And now you're saying, okay, which are the most viable? They may not all be perfect. You might not have a single idea that's perfect.
but you're going to have some that are better than others. So now it's time to do a little process of selection and elimination. And a big part of this is just evaluating them in this sense. Do they work as intended? Does this idea come close to what I'm trying to do in the first place? You can also use your instinct to ask which ones you like and which ones click and feel right to you, kind of above and beyond anything you can explain. That's important as well.
And then you can also say, and we were talking about style in the last point, which ones will you most likely be able to complete in your actual final illustration style? That also plays into how we choose which ideas we work with or bring forward. As we bring it toward the final, we want to know will it actually work when I start using my colors and lines and shapes or whatever it is you use to create a final illustration. So what does the refining process look like?
Well, it's tracing over and refining those sketches. Literally like taking a sketch that you made in the rough, you take down its opacity to like 20% and then you draw over top in a more refined way and you work out the kinks. And anything that was a question mark, you should work to make. By that I mean you want to make sure that if it wasn't lining up, it kind of showed promise to line up, whatever that might mean.
Maybe you like the gesture of the person, but now you have to figure out how the facial details, the eyes, the nose, and mouth look like. You have to work that out in the refined sketches. Because if you can't make it work in the refined sketch, how will you make it work? in your final illustration style. This is where we test our rougher ideas.
this is kind of like the first test and then actually the second test is when we actually start making them in our final form that's the true test of whether our concepts our ideas and our style all aligned come together but in this refined stage we're still just sketching but we're going over with more confident lines
making things clearer. And if things can't get clearer, if we can't make up our minds, then this particular idea or sketch did not pass the test. Basically, as we're testing our rough ideas, we're asking, do they work? as we give them a more closer critical eye. So by the end of the stage you should have at least one refined sketch which you can turn into a final illustration in the next stage. So the last and final stage is to give your ideas.
their final form, aka the final illustration. This is where you flesh out your ideas in your illustration style, using your technique. you bring it into photoshop or you do it in procreate or fresco or or wherever you make your final illustrations it doesn't really matter because at this point You have your ideas. Your ideas are already there. They're 95% done. It's just a matter of giving them that final four.
I said that your illustration style is such a big part of your idea, but that doesn't mean that in order to have your full idea, you need to illustrate it fully in your illustration style. It's just that your illustration style, your awareness of what you need to do to tee yourself up to.
finalize that illustration using your style needs to go into those sketches. So what I'm saying is, and I teach this actually in my class drawing toward illustration, is you're drawing how you illustrate when you're sketching. You're drawing how you illustrate, because you're teeing yourself up in your sketches.
to build your illustration your final illustration over top of that so this is really the second test of our ideas where if we run into problems leshing it out in our final illustration style we're going to have to do something. We're going to have to either go back and create new sketches or even go back even further and try and come up with new ideas.
I've had to do this a number of times, fortunately less so these days, but there are times when I get all the way to the refined sketch and then I bring it into the final illustration, and because there's something that I haven't tried before. I try to make it all work, maybe it's a more complex scene, or I've added a new brush into the mix. things aren't working really well so I might have to redraw that whole sketch just so it works better for my illustration style.
or I just have to illustrate it in full once just to get a sense of what's not working and then I look and I see oh okay that doesn't look as refined or polished or well-crafted or that idea is not coming through or the contrast isn't right, the proportions aren't right, whatever it is, I can see that. And then from that knowledge, I can start again.
and have a much smoother, more efficient way of building up the illustration, I come up with something that really feels like it. It came out all at once. And it's easy to read. It was easy to write. That's something that's very deceptive about work that looks easy. It looks like it came very fast or quick or through inspiration to artists. When you look at it, it just is so easy to look at.
you think that it came as effortlessly to the artist who made it. Or in the case of a writer, you might think, oh, he just thought of that and wrote it on the page. But what you don't see is possibly months and months of work or hours and hours of work behind that clear idea. Ideas are iterative and they get better and better by working on them over time.
So there's really not much else to say about the final illustration stage, because like I said, your idea is already there. You're just flashing it out. This is just the ultimate final test of your idea. works in your final illustration style and you feel like things have clicked, then that means the idea works. It works in terms of saying what it's about. communicating what you're saying about that, And it all comes together.
through your craft, your style, or technique. So to wrap it up, illustrators don't just draw pictures. We express ideas. And to come up with those ideas, most of us are going to have to follow. some kind of a process, and that's going to take work to get there. So the question, how do you come up with ideas, is really an understandable one. I think we all wonder it, and I think it's helpful actually to sort of sidestep it.
up with ideas, we can say, this is a problem-solving task that I'm doing. What is the problem? What are the various parts that define this problem? What materials and resources and talents or whatever? do I have to solve this problem? And then from there, go about finding solutions. And we'll do this through the process that we went through today. Understand what you're making and why and then use your resources to solve it in your own artistic way.
So the very meaning of what our own artistic way is, is going to develop for us over time. It's not going to come at first, it's just something we have to work at and chip away at. But we're going to learn so much about our own process. by modeling ourselves and our processes on those we admire. We can look to others for how they solve problems in their own way and learn how we might do that ourselves.
And that's why it's so important to learn from others we admire and, if possible, see their process step by step. A lot of teachers today do have books or classes or they write articles about their process. And it's really important to really get into that as much as possible, especially with artists and illustrators or designers that you admire. Now not all of these people are making classes or writing about their process, but we can still study their work and learn from it.
not just the end piece, but we can look at where that piece ended up, how it was used, We can look at how that piece relates to other works that the artist made or how it relates to other illustrators work within the same space. You know, there's lots of different ways of learning. about how ideas get formed within certain contexts,
and in certain styles, we begin to see patterns. And through careful enough study, we can actually start to see places we relate. We can see clues about what we would do. in our own way. So my biggest advice that I can say to beginners is to know what your message is in the first place and what you're trying to say and try to put that into words.
And if you can't explain it, you might not be able to put it into pictures. You may not have any idea at all, but if you just start to describe what you're trying to do in the image, you're going to get closer and closer. that you use to describe it will actually guide you to the final idea. So if I have any homework for you whatsoever,
It's this. If you are the kind of person who gets stuck trying to come up with ideas, or if you want more depth in your ideas, you want to get better at telling stories, before starting to draw what you're trying to illustrate, try and describe and put into... actual words, what you're trying to illustrate. Through that process, you'll find that
Images will come a lot easier. Being able to put your idea into words will guide you to your final visual idea. My name is Mr. Tom Froese, and those are my thoughts. on illustration. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. patreon my work my skillshare classes and more remember to rate review like follow tell your And be sure to find me on threads at Mr. Tom froze for.
I'll see you in the next one. The music for this podcast was written and performed by Mark Allen Falk. You can find links to his music in the show notes or go directly to his Linktree at linktree slash semiathletic.