Unveiling the Artistry: A Conversation with Illustrator Ross Morgan

Music. In the spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.

I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples today. I'm coming to you from Mingen country and gratefully acknowledge the Turbol and Jagera people. Welcome to Totally Lit, the podcast celebrating reading, writing and creating literature. I'm your host Kai Garvey, thank you for listening. I'm excited to be chatting with illustrator Ross Morgan this episode.

Ross is a fine artist and illustrator from Adelaide, South Australia. From an early age, Ross enjoyed exploring the rural environment filled with creatures, abandoned structures and objects of yesteryear. He also practised drawing, painting and arts and crafts projects at the kitchen table, encouraged by his mother. These early experiences were key in establishing his lifelong interest in drawing and painting. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia in 2000.

Since then, he has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions and running an independent studio practice. Ross is joining me as he is a winner of the ForeverAbility Awards with his book The Gargoyle, which he illustrated with words from Zahna Phelan. The 2025 ForeverAbility Awards open today, so if you have a children's book which features disability, illness, inclusion or diversity, jump on over to foreverability.org to enter.

Entries close 1st of December. I hope you enjoy our chat. Ross Morgan, welcome to Totally Lit. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have you on. You are such an amazing illustrator. I've been doing a bit of Googling this afternoon on your book, Gargoyle, which is stunning, I have to say, and also an award winner. So yourself and Zana Falyan, the author, had entered into the Forever Ability Awards and won first place for the 20th of 24.

Yeah, it was a lovely surprise. And I'm very happy to sponsor those awards and provide an interview as a part of the prize. So thank you, Ross, for joining me. Can you tell me a bit about The Gargoyle? Well, when I got the manuscript from Hachette, I read it on the first read and I almost started crying. I loved it so much. And, yeah, given the opportunity to illustrate that was just such a special story to sort of be given that opportunity.

At him and so the story is about a gargoyle that hops on a train and it's just such a lovely start to a story and yeah it like comes from the eyes of the gargoyle looking down on the world over the years and watching how it's changed and he's been kicked off his like post up on an old building that's being demolished and and so yeah the story sort of starts there and he hops on a train and as a young boy.

Notices him on the train and yeah the story sort of follows that empathy that they have for each other so and how wonderful was it to immerse yourself in the illustration in terms of like a gargoyle is such well I think is such a beautiful thing to be able to draw did you find it exciting to to have such a great character to illustrate yeah I I'm I normally a like portrait painter I came from a fine art background and I'd often do like portraits and things

like that and come up with like a a character that is sort of different from what I normally do.

It's quite exciting to have a have a go at doing something like that and I sort of thought about the gargoyle in multiple ways as being a character but also like an architectural yeah piece as well and sort of like thinking about it as a it's architectural traits and what they're used for and parts of the story suddenly include that into parts of the story so the fact that they were almost like a like a downpipe i guess off castles or old buildings initially and then

they started to be more ornate and become figures and things like that and the story talks a little bit about how like the rusty water within his throat or whatever is part of that ended up being part of the design as an illustrator and the character design and so and the expressions and things like that I wanted to at being a character made of stone I wanted to sort of have this.

Expression that didn't change much and it was almost a little bit more of a timeless expression where it's sort of happy sad it sort of shows almost all expressions in one and so that was kind of a nice thing to play with but coming from my background as a portrait painter it was nice to sort of think about those sorts of things in expressions as well so it was fun it was really fun to sort of create that but yeah I wanted it to be something

that showed that empathy as well so Was there a challenge in trying to keep a balance between the gargoyle being too scary and for kids to be able to empathise and care for him? Yeah, definitely there was. And I started thinking more about animals as being the influence for that because I grew up on a farm and I always was surrounded by animals, especially dogs and things like that.

And I loved how sometimes the gestures and facial expressions that animals make, you can start to see that communication and whatever visually. And so they're just a great reference to use for inspiration for characters. And so the gargoyle, to keep it from being scary, I started thinking about animals that sort of have almost like sort of like ugly, cute expressions and things like that. And probably the main inspiration, I was sort of thinking of things like bulldogs and some others maybe.

I was like some of the poses and stuff as well. I was thinking of like squirrel monkeys and things like that where they sort of characters that or animals that can stand on two legs but they also naturally stand on four. And so being a gargoyle, I thought that was a nice sort of way to design him in a way that because he's always looking down on the world from up high his natural pose is probably to be on all fours anyway looking down.

And so I thought most of it was sort of based on the idea of animals rather than sort of like the stereotypical, almost like devil-looking character with wings. I wanted it to be a little bit more based on a creature that has acuteness to it and something that we can sort of see a little bit more, we can relate to it a bit more. Did you watch any of the cartoon gargoyles for research? No. I don't know if you've seen that. I love that show. No, I haven't. I was young.

But it's an 80s cartoon. But, yeah, they do a similar thing where they're, I guess, not quite animalistic but human expressions to make you empathise with them. Yeah, I missed out on a lot of cartoons in the 80s because we lived in the country and we only had, like, two stations that we could listen to watch. So we had, like, only one lot of cartoons right in the afternoon on ABC. Yes. I lived in North Queensland when I was in primary school and so we had

ABC and I think Channel 7 and that was the only two choices. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of the afternoon show cartoons. Yeah, we often had to travel. When we went to Adelaide, like from our farm, sometimes during Christmas or something, we would look forward to the fact that they had morning cartoons and stuff on. So rarely we got to see them, but yeah. And what about The Weeping Angels from Doctor Who? Did you use any of that? That's very scary.

I'm showing all my nerdy sides all at once tonight. I know. But, yeah, I think that would be too scary for a kid's book to have your gargoyles that severe. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to. It was a challenge, actually, because, like, you do have that, like it is a character that, you know, that gothic sort of character because that could end up being quite scary.

But I had to find something in it that, and I think going along the lines of empathy was such a strong part of the story that I started to sort of think about having dogs and stuff and how much empathy they showed. And so I had a lot of memory associated with the design as well. So I was looking for expressions and things that I could see in the animals that I was familiar with and how they were trying to communicate with me.

So, yeah, I guess that's one of the strong points, I suppose, to look for.

How much communication did you have back and forth with the author when you were coming up with your ideas for the illustrations? To begin with, it was quite like I was left to sort of my own devices. I was given that freedom to sort of explore it all before I shared the storyboards

and the illustration rafts. And so, you know, it was broken over three stages, you know, like doing the storyboards was basically a way of showing how I. Envisaged the story to be told through the 32 pages of a picture book and so the design and of the characters and stuff was quite at that stage wasn't very you know it was quite sketchy and the ideas were just there but then when I started developing them more in the illustration rafts we had the feedback from like Zahna and we ended up having

these documents that we shared between like the publisher and each other that we could sort of have like at this group discussion about how the book was going and how the design was going. And that was a really nice way to work, having that collaborative sort of discussion about the direction and things that needed to be sort of focused on or adjusted or whatever.

So it's something that was quite new to me but I really enjoyed that and having that constant feedback from sort of immediate changes and stuff is kind of rare in a lot of other experiences I've had. So sometimes as an illustrator, you're working in the dark for a long, long time, and then you sort of don't know if you're on track or whatever. And so it's really nice to get immediate or fairly immediate responses to what you're doing.

And so after that sort of stage, there was quite a lot of discussion between all of us about how it was going. But I was very lucky that most of the stuff that I had sort of envisaged for it was sort of on track. There was a few things I needed to change along the way and sort of near the end there, it started to get a bit more challenging when I start going into the final art because of the way I work.

Traditionally, it's a lot slower and also it's a much harder thing to change with paint and the way that I work. But overall, yeah, there was quite a lot of discussion between all of us and that was great. How much storytelling were you able to do yourself with your illustration? Quite a lot, actually. Yeah, it was good. Like a lot of the concepts that appear visually are quite, you know, that was sort of the things that I started to bring into it.

So say the ending was almost like the fact that where the gargoyle ended up and things like that was part of my conceptualising of the story of where the journey that the boy and the gargoyle take it sort of from the manuscript there are those things that sort of I could visualize in my head and I started to picture ways to resolve it and then yeah so the way it finishes is almost like that combination of like artistic ideas which

was really lovely to like have that you know work on someone else's manuscript and then take it to another sort of creative level that I wouldn't have even thought of if I didn't have the words and vice versa like so there's that's something that I found really special about working on the book is there was like that.

Inspiration for the visuals but then the visuals almost inspire part of the story to develop as well so well I I have a picture book that I wrote and there's a character in my book that I didn't write who's a little duck and he is a superstar all the kids love the duck and it's just like something that I didn't even think of that my lovely illustrator added in for me but gave it such an extra depth to the book as well and I find it a really interesting collaboration

that you're writing your words and you're trying to leave room on the page for the illustrator and you have no idea what's going to come back and then when it does come back it's more beautiful than you can imagine so it's this amazing kind of collaboration yet you're not to begin with you're not really communicating you're just sending some words off I wonder what will come back and then a wonderful surprise comes back it's amazing yeah it's nice as an illustrator to be given that trust to

take it to another level as well I think there's a lot to be said for pictures and how you can tell stories through pictures like I've sort of come from a background of working with some filmmakers and you know doing my fine art for many years and so images have always been my storytelling medium and so it's nice when you get given like a manuscript or a story.

An idea to start working with visually and then it's like a whole other thing because working on your own ideas is, you know, I say myself, I've been working on some other books that I start visually but when you're given...

Like this manuscript and then it sort of inspires a whole other story to be told visually there's something really magical about that as well like taking your own understanding of visuals and taking them on another journey with someone else's vision or ideas initially I love I love that you know for the illustrators that may be listening did you want to share how you transitioned into picture book illustration yeah so I started off more in the fine arts I've been exhibiting probably

i think i did a picture of visual arts back in 2000 i completed that in back in 2000 and i had my first solo exhibition in 2005 and most of my work has been sort of like portraiture and landscape painting and it's sort of also been a combination of kind of i guess you would call it like magical realism where you're sort of putting a semi-surreal scenarios together and trying to tell stories with the combination of environments and figures in landscape and things like that.

And so I was doing that for many years and doing commissions, exhibitions. I ended up having a gallery for a little while exhibiting and then I've always wanted to be a – I've always liked the idea of telling stories with my pictures but I was trying to find where I would fit and when I look at picture books, I think that's where I'm supposed to be. And so I started sort of working towards creating work that tells stories more like a steal out of a picture book or a film or things like that.

And then after many, many years, I thought I should really try and move into the industry, which is very hard to do. And I applied for a mentorship through Raising Literacy Australia, which to my surprise, I had won. And that was in 2018. I applied for it. And in 2019, I went through the mentorship and my mentor was Mandy Foote from South Australia and she's done lots and lots of books. And she was sort of, through that time, she, it was like a year long mentorship.

And as part of the mentorship, there was a, we were given a manuscript to illustrate. And like Mandy mentored me through the processes of teaching.

Like all the different stages of getting a book to the publication stage and so the mentorship was both for emerging authors or there was two mentorships offered there was two emerging authors and two emerging illustrators and so initially the emerging authors were mentored and give it and then that manuscript went to the emerging illustrators and then yeah so my first book was called Molly Moores Has a House Like Yours which was published after that mentorship and it kind

of got my juices flowing and I got my foot in the door in a way and so to have a published book like showing how much work goes into it, that mentorship was just such an intensive like 12 months of learning all the different parts of getting a book through all the different stages and being published and after that sort of thought, oh, this is a direction I really want to go but then COVID hit.

And so after the mentorship, I was kind of like, oh, is this opportunity sort of been lost now that there's so much uncertainty during that time? But luckily, the book was still published and I started contacting, like using that as like a portfolio to send to other publishers. And yeah, and not long after, was it 2020, the book came out, 2021, I ended up getting another three picture book contracts.

And the gargoyle was one of those and yeah I ended up doing three in a year, and I don't think I'll do that again. What sort of time frame does it take to illustrate a picture book from start to finish?

Oh I guess it depends on the like technique that you use but because I work traditionally it's quite like I did three in it and probably 18 months but that was really pushing myself but I would imagine about six months is probably a realistic sort of if I was just doing one I'd say about six months for me and my technique and probably.

When you when I first my first one that 12 months doing the mentorship like that was working pretty much straight through and learning everything so probably your first book would probably take a lot longer than that but it's nice to have a have that like with my technique to have a little bit more freedom to sort of work on the final art give that that part of it a lot more time because do you use any multimedia or is everything by hand I do everything by hand I do I do use photoshop and

and sort of a lot of photography is my reference and sort of I do a lot of layouts and stuff like combine my sketches and little paintings and the photographs together in like little Photoshop composition so I've got sort of like a guide to work from for my final art. But I guess my background as a painter, if I was to choose the way that I worked, I would probably just start painting and then figure it out on the canvas and that would be the way I would probably approach every single page.

But it's kind of impossible to communicate where you're at to a publisher if they're trusting that you're doing that.

So through the mentorship, I sort of started focusing a lot more on the storyboarding and illustration roughs and that's almost like another another process in itself like for me in a way like learning how to do storyboards and illustration roughs was sort of a little bit more out of my comfort zone because I'm so used to the you know just working it out on the canvas but it's been really helpful as well learning that those like techniques and whatever because suddenly when

you do like a small storyboard you've created a conversation that you can have with somebody about a 32-page book or whatever and it's you can get that feedback before you sort of launch into it and they can see where you're going and whatever so that's been a real change for me I guess in like coming from a fine art background into more of an illustration background is those collaborative conversations that you have about a project and

starting to nut things out together and whatever so yeah so that's sort of changed the way that I work now a little bit as well so a lot of my paintings now I'm doing like little storyboards and even just like ones of personal works that I'm doing I do a little bit of preparation work before I jump into it. And so are you still doing the fine art alongside your illustration?

Wherever I can I am yeah like I do exhibit a lot of my book more recently I've been exhibiting a A lot of the book works from when they're finished, but I'm always working on some personal projects and like things for exhibitions or I do have an online gallery where I put a lot of my work up for sale and things like that, just personal things that I like to work on. And what sort of things inspire you in your fine art? It changes.

I do like to work in series of things. Like I'm sort of, I'm often drawn to things like environment or landscape paintings. That's something I think from growing up in the mid-north of South Australia, I've always been inspired by the sort of landscape and things like that. But animals have always been a big inspiration. So I do a lot of just like little gesture paintings of animals and things and then a lot of portrait work.

But I think I'm kind of, I think working in the picture books has kind of inspired the direction I sort of head more with my own fine art now as well because I kind of feel like it. It's almost like portfolio pieces or study pieces or inspiration for a new story that I might work on or something like that. So it's like brainstorming on canvas and trying to come up with a setting or a character that I can perhaps take on a journey one day in a book or something like that.

So a lot of it's quite imaginative inspiration. I think I've always loved movies as inspiration, especially early animation I really love, like the hand-drawn animation and a lot of probably things like a lot of 80s science fiction movies and things like that. Do you have any Achilles heel in your artwork? My mum is a visual artist and she can't do hands and feet. So is there anything that you've had to work on a bit to get right?

All of it is a challenge. Hands and feet have always been a bit of a challenge. I think most, like, if you haven't got reference for that, that's sometimes quite challenging. So even the picture books that I've been doing, I've had to get photographs and stuff of nieces and nephews or my wife has been quite generous. Like most of the books, like either her ankle or feet or hands or something up here in there.

So it's good to have reference for that because it's hard to sort of naturally imagine a lot of gesture and stuff and poses. And I think also because of my style, I do like to sort of have it a little bit more based on like sort of tonal realism rather than sort of cartoon or whatever. So I find cartoons is something that I probably, I struggle with actually.

That's probably my, the thing that I guess I'd love to learn more is how to do a lot of line drawing and stuff where the gestures and things are sort of really immediate and because I'm such a painter and a tonal realist.

So a lot of the difference between what I, the way I approach it, like the best way to describe it is probably I like to work with the flat of a charcoal rather than with a pencil because I look at the light and shadows and that's the stuff I see first and I start shaping it with the flat of a charcoal where... I sort of envy people that can just, you know, do line drawing and imagine, you know, a character or an environment with just a few lines or things like that.

So, yeah, that's probably my thing I need to know.

I've got a bit of a controversial question for you. What are your thoughts on AI at the moment? You're seeing lots of people creating images. It's hard to know. It's kind of an unknown, isn't it?

It's a it's it's scary and it's also potentially helpful but i think most of the time i feel like it's you know like when i i haven't really looked into it a lot because of where i've sort of come from myself i like to work with my from my own photographs and things like that but seeing how quickly things can be created but is scary because something like my technique is so long-winded it takes me months to create you know some of

my artworks whereas you know something that can do it in a few seconds it's kind of scary but I look at it as well and I kind of, find the ones that I have seen it does feel a little bit like it doesn't have those fingerprints on it that an artist can add to it so but who knows how that will change I think it's it's a useful tool but I don't think it can ever replicate the real thing no I think certainly from my own point of view,

I would prefer to have a beautiful piece of art in my picture book from a real artist than to just zip something together. Yeah, it's hard. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, like, I can understand why it's sort of come about, I guess, because, like, knowing how long it takes me to do stuff, I think, like, and, you know, maybe it's just that sometimes the industry...

Has driven things like that as well like it's like the film industry or the you know like having to have entertainment pumped out so quickly whereas that you know like films you know years ago they would have take cost so much more and they used to use you know all live action and models and all that whereas all this animation and stuff that's sort of become dominating the, the storytelling is you know that the audience craves all that sort of stuff so that's kind of driven things

like faster cheaper ways to sort of produce that but you know it's all about the story in the end as well and I think story creating what whether you be proud of what you're doing I think like and yeah and have that joy and the pros enjoy the process of putting it together and so that's what inspires me with my work is that i enjoy you know playing with paint and you know scribbling on paper and so if it ends up having i have to change you know potentially the

the area that i'm working it'll always the. Thing that i'll still always want to do is the play with the paint and whatever so whether it's with picture books or whether it's just creating stuff for myself or whatever I think most artists would probably think along those lines especially ones that enjoy the actual process so well there's that authenticity there as well that can only come from the artist it can't be repeated and that's how I feel with my writing is that no one can.

Replicate my experiences and my knowledge and the feelings that I had at certain times only I can write that and yeah it'll never come from me so I'm a big fan of AI like for Google Maps and things when I need to get somewhere but I'm like I don't think yeah I'm never going to use it to create art because I want that art to come from my heart so yeah I think in some ways like there are elements of like I can see like myself using it in some ways probably for like you know

like a reference or something like just to you know like sometimes you struggle to you know like say some of my stories you might need a a pose of a an animal that you would not be able to capture in real life or whatever and say you you need to have some kind of visual reference of lighting or action or whatever just to sort of and you know often we've used things like you know google images or whatever just to sort of like what does it you know like a monkey look like

when it's squatting down or whatever and you can't oh I can't go and find a monkey to do that for me so, you have to sort of look it up and research it and so things like AI probably bring. You know, that kind of stuff, you know, like helpful tools for that kind of stuff.

But when you see the real creatures or whatever, you can sort of see it hasn't got the same kind of look or whatever, but it definitely gives you a little bit of a starting point to perhaps start adding your own, like finding where you want to go with things and whatever. So I can see that being a helpful thing for illustrators, but we've been doing that regardless of whether we have AI or not.

We look for, you know, photos that are in encyclopedias or whatever so it's not on the days of like where you borrowed it from the library.

Now, taking it back to the gargoyle, has it won any other awards? I think it was shortlisted for the speech pathology award, I think. Oh, well done. Yeah, I'm trying to remember now. So many awards, I can't remember which ones you've got. No, no. And you've also had Glow come out and Zoom. I was lucky enough to be at the Brisbane launch of Zoom with Zanika Patterson. What else have you got coming up? Is there any more exciting projects ahead of you?

So I'm currently working on my second author-illustrator project called The Diver Chicken and Fox, and that's with Walker Books. And that started off from an exhibition years and years and years ago, sort of inspired by a series of artworks that I did, and I started developing it into a story and that's kind of, yeah, it's been amazing. So that's the reverse where you've got the pictures before the story. Well, the start of the pictures. Anyway, I've learnt so much since I did that

exhibition. It was before I had actually had experience in it. And so all the artwork that I did years and years ago just doesn't suit the picture book format. But it was definitely sort of an exploration of the idea and the characters. And so I've sort of been using that concept art as kind of like my starting point to develop a story.

And, yeah, it's kind of become a dream project of mine and so I'm trying to get it all working and it has its, it's a hard thing to resolve when you start in reverse. Whereas like Glow, which was my first author-illustrator, that actually started as like a piece of music that I was sort of composing. I do that a little bit just as a little hobby, like play around on the piano and stuff.

Writing, illustrating, posing. And, yeah, so I did create that as a bit of a piece of music, almost like a soundtrack, and then it inspired some visuals in my head, and then I storyboarded that during a Christmas break one year, and then after I put that storyboard together, I thought, oh, I might just start doing a bit of concept art and stuff like that for this one.

And then I ended up sending that, like, storyboard with my Diver Chicken and Fox storyboard that I'd sort of been putting together to Walker Books.

And yeah that's kind of how I got my foot in the door with those and yeah they wanted to do glow first and then that grew out of a piece of music and then went on to the storyboards and then I started doing all this art and I ended up visualizing the story from the piece of music which was basically about a dog and a girl picking up this object out of the ground that they set free and it thanks them for setting them free as it before it goes off into space that was like the

piece of music story and then from that I sort of felt like well if I was to develop that into a picture book I'd have to do a lot more than that and sort of develop this whole world and give the characters sort of like a setting and I started to sort of invest in the world that they were living in and things like that and what was the story about and because it sort of just came from a piece of music and I was trying to work it all out and after

storyboarding it and I started to write some text and things and I was like, what is this about? And eventually it sort of became a story about dealing with grief and the loss of someone special. And so it ended up being a story that's almost like a metaphor of going through grief and suffering. And that inner journey that we have within ourselves as we go through grief. And so it's almost like an adventure through the grief in a way.

And, yeah, so it sort of went from music to storyboards to trying to work out what it was. It was sort of a real shift in what I focused on when I was working on that. And, yeah, eventually it sort of came together as that story.

And it was interesting being a writer as well. Yeah. Like coming from illustrating a number of books and then writing with myself like that, that was another challenge in itself, like trying to resolve the text and things like that and making it work with the book rather than, I think that's one of the challenges of being an illustrator is you don't want to illustrate the words. You want to add another element like you were talking about before. Like another story. Yeah.

That's a visual story. Yeah, and so that's one of the challenges, I guess. Being an author-illustrator is, you know, you feel like can I write this or can I draw this, can I describe this more with words or can I describe it more with pictures? And so there's a real juggling act there where you have to sort of decide which direction you want to go and how with a style that you're going to sort of put it together.

And so Glow was a really, I think I ended up, a lot of the text probably came sort of midway through creating the artwork whereas. And that's different from being given a manuscript. And so working on the Diver Chicken and Fox now is sort of like almost in reverse again. It's like I'm trying to add words to this thing as well. And that's been a written, I'm in that sort of challenging position now of trying to resolve the text when I've got so much of the story visually there.

And so, yeah, it's just been a new sort of addition to the challenge of creating.

I suppose and have you had the opportunity to get out and do like school visits and workshops and things like that yeah it's been more recent that i've started like okay this would be i think i've been two years now that i've been doing that but i've only been doing it you know every now and then i haven't been doing a lot of them but it's such a great way to see who your audience is and how they respond to what you do and and it's also I just love that engagement that

you can have with the story and how kids can see things in it that you didn't even think of yourself or must be a different experience though from your exhibiting to adults in a gallery to now.

Going in and interacting with the kids yeah it's funny in a way because I I think some of the responses that i got from like in when i did have my gallery i started to see a lot of children pressing their glass they're faced up against the window of the gallery and looking at some of the artworks and i was doing i said oh maybe this is who my real audience is and because it was sometimes quite challenging having you know like trying to cater to a certain

market or whatever but yeah i found that a lot of my work has sort of been for the either the the child or someone with the inner child sort of present and so. I've noticed a lot of my collectors have been people that love collecting childlike artworks and things like that. They have that sort of childlike theme or whatever. And so I do like to embrace that inner child quite a lot in my art and in my stories and things like that.

And sometimes I find in some ways my audience is probably children and adults that have embraced that themselves. And so I get a lot of, even the picture books that I've created, I do get a lot of adults wanting to buy it for that same reason. So, yeah, it's been good. It must be interesting though because putting a price on art that you're displaying and you would like someone to purchase must be challenging.

Well, I guess you would look at the market and see what everybody is charging but deciding how much value your art has, whereas on a picture book there's a standard within reason price of how much someone will pay for the book.

Yeah, well, I think there is a different, like as an illustrator, like I own all the original artwork still from all the books and so I'm creating the work and knowing that it's going to be all packaged up in this beautiful light-bound picture book and so in the end that's the piece of art but then I've got the ability to sort of sell it as individual pieces and things like that.

And pricing I think is more about being happy with how you feel if you let it go rather than, you know, like if you feel like you're getting, if you're letting it go and you're not getting enough money for it, then you it's not the right price. Like, because you have to have that sort of like happy medium, like you sort of feel like you're happy to pass it on to somebody if they're happy to like, if it's mutually agreed that.

That you're mutually happy about it, like if you're happy to pay that much for it and I'm happy to receive that or that kind of, then you know it's the right thing. And so I try not to, I don't, like my work isn't like hugely expensive, but it's one of those things that you sort of have to feel like you're being, it's valuable enough to yourself to let it, if you want to pass it on to somebody else, they have to reimburse you for how you feel emotionally about letting it go.

It's taken a while to sort of find that as an artist and I think like when I was doing my exhibitions and things like that, often I would let a lot of works go very cheaply in the early stages to try to get some sales and over years and years of doing that you start to find what people were happy to pay for things and then that emotional connection that you have to like when it wasn't, didn't feel like you were.

Yeah, and you've got to be careful because sometimes you can undervalue yourself and actually prevent sales. So you've got to learn what the price point is and what your own value is in your work as well. I don't think I could be a visual artist because I would be giving it all away. Yeah, well, I think as well, like I was saying earlier, like the process is part of the joy that comes from creating as well.

So there are elements of you know like you have to make a living and you know pay your rent and try and keep going and it is really hard to do that like most of the time my art is selling way cheaper than what I can really afford it to be but at the same time you need to keep paying the rent you need to keep and so you sort of have that you know like if I let something go and it's going to help me get by for the next couple of weeks or the next month or whatever then suddenly you feel

like oh that's that's okay I can keep going and there's so many artworks that I've let go over the years because of that very reason I've just I wanted to keep creating and keep this process going and so you sort of like well I'll let it go because it gives me that opportunity.

But sometimes it's nice having a part-time job to do that as a boy so you don't have to let things go and so it's been a real juggle I guess as a creator to do you know to either be have the time to work on something or whether you sort of fund your time to work on something and sometime but more recently it's I've been doing it full-time and it's it sort of gets it's quite an emotional roller coaster because sometimes you're at that point

where because picture books take so long and advances are quite small like there's a lot of time in that process where you're not getting paid and.

You need to sort of survive somehow and so I have to try and sell a few artworks or whatever because I can't really I haven't got the time to fit in a part-time job when I've got this deadline I've got to meet or whatever so it's it's a real challenge as a freelance like freelancer and I'm only new to it as well because in the past like say when I had my gallery as a fine artist I was working like at a school part-time and more recently when I was working my first book I was working at

a picture framer like three days a week so that kind of funded my creative time but when i had three big three books to do in you know like a very short period of time suddenly i couldn't fit a part-time job in there but i didn't have the the funds to promote all my advances to cover the creative time to work on it so it's it was a real juggle and a real financial sort of you know you have to really like be specific about what you're spending your money on and. Yeah, it's a challenge.

And I'm sort of at that, in that same stage right now, like working on this, like picture book, like my second author-illustrator book. I got a grant to help work on that, but it hasn't lasted very long because, yeah, a year of, especially more recently with all the cost of living going up and things like that, it's been quite a challenge. I'm sort of in that stage now. I'm like, oh, do I keep working on the book or do I focus on trying to sell some more work or whatever?

So, yeah, it's a real juggle. It is a juggle. I'm clinging on to my full-time job with the dream of immersing myself in creating art, but I don't think it's going to happen for a while. But when I hear about people that are really engaged and involved in their work and I'm like, oh, one day that might be me. At the moment I'm just dashing things off and hoping it lands.

Yeah, sometimes I sort of miss the idea of a, because it's been what now, maybe three years I've been full time working on the illustration and I really miss having a steady paycheck like that, that in some ways gave you the freedom to focus on your work, whereas I've been full time working on the illustration and I really miss having a steady paycheck like that, that in some ways gave you the freedom to focus on your work.

It's quite distracting having that financial burden, like when you're trying to create and you're like, I don't know where my next, how I'm going to pay for this next stage of the work. And you're like, do I need to find another job or do I need to go and sell something? Like there's so many things that are sort of distracting you from focusing on the work and maybe it's sometimes nicer to have that regular income. Maybe we just need to get bigger advances or something. Yeah.

Bigger advances of the dream. But, yeah, I think it's artists have that ongoing issue of how to sustain themselves while they're creating. Yeah. And I guess you have to weigh up how passionate you are about your art and how much you're prepared to sacrifice. Yeah. And especially once you start having a family and other obligations, it gets that more difficult to balance. But it's the world we live in. Yeah. Yeah, well, I've been doing a lot of other freelance illustration work on the side.

I've been very lucky. I've started doing some stuff for the school magazine and things like that. Oh, fantastic. Which has just been another little, like, it's only been, like, this year I've been doing that, but it's just another little side, regular sort of income that's been coming in, like, once a month. And then, like we were saying earlier, like, doing the school visits, I've started doing that a lot more now. And I've told my, like, booking agent for that that I'd like to do a lot more.

And I think having the practice of doing school visits as well, because if you have a long break from doing that as well, it's quite a challenge. I get quite anxious before I start because I'm not naturally a stand-up-in-front-of-people sort of person. No, me neither. Some people have seen me speak in public where my knees are shaking and I'm holding on to the lectern.

I find it much easier to be like on a panel or whether I'm, if I'm walking around the room with kids, I'm fine, but delivering to like a gala full of people is not my damn really. But if I'm in a conversational style like this, up on a stage, no problem if I'm sitting down. But, yeah, as soon as you get me to stand up, I'm like, oh, this is great. And just I think a lot of children's writers are also teachers and they have

all of that experience in controlling a classroom. But if you haven't had that experience, it can go from zero to 60 minutes. Yeah I've already experienced a few of those raising your hand works wonders though yeah it's a good tool I've noticed I think like I was talking about before like sort of embracing that in a child I think there is an element of that that's been nice doing the school visits as well like I probably more recent school visits I've done I've started to sort of find my.

Natural way i want to draw in front of children and things like that as well because i started off doing like whiteboard drawing and it's just not how i i not naturally work and it's quite challenging as an illustrator to learn how to use a whiteboard because i was saying before about how my line drawing is quite a a challenge in comparison to my painting and so i've started incorporating like more of like charcoal and paper and stuff and i sit on the floor and draw it rather than stand up

in front of them because I feel more like that's the way I work and there is a there is a nice way of sort of being at the floor level in a way I've always worked sitting on the floor and I think that I'm closer to a lot of the children because I'm quite a tall guy so it's quite nice you know in a way to be working on the floor because I feel like I can engage with them more and they can see the process and how much I enjoy it probably more when

I'm sitting on the floor so yeah but that's only a new thing I've noticed probably in the last.

Few school visits I'm like I'm naturally starting to go down onto the floor and do that I don't think I'd get back up again well thank you so much Ross for joining me and sharing the gargoyle and all of your creative experience with us it's I've really liked getting that perspective of the other side of a picture book as well about how an illustrator approaches things So congratulations on your win in the Foreverability Awards

and I look forward to seeing more of your work. Thank you so much. Thank you. Totally Lit is an independent podcast. You can help support us to continue to chat with wonderful Australian creatives by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing our socials with your friends. You can also make a contribution at www.buymeacoffee.com backslash totallylit. This will also help with equipment and podcasting platform fees.

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