Making it a habit: about illustrating daily & teaching other people to just do it
I started to teach illustration around 2 years ago (this semester i am taking a little break due to the fact, that i am building and renovating a new home next to my daily projects). For those two years i went to a place called zeichenfabrik on a weekly bases to teach a course called: ILLUSTRATION, OR NO FEAR OF FAILURE. When i started i wanted to get out of the office into the more dirty, hands on making again. I knew that with talking about illustration and design i would get a new and fresh perspective on it and i was hoping to get inspired by all sorts of characters, age groups and people who would attend the class. So i did around 8 courses, 8 week each with around 10 people in every course.
It was funny to see, that every group was completely different but they all came because of the title of the course. Even if it was a hypothesis at first - that people forget how to play and draw, how to be free and not kill ideas at the very first moment - everything i built my course on became true. I built those 8 weeks upon the fact, that a lot of adults have a lot of fear when it comes to illustration, drawing or even doodling. So every week got a new topic and new tools to experiment with. I included a lot of ideation and storytelling exercises and the main goal was to loose fear of new things and tools and your own style and ideas. And it went well. People had fun and out of the rather free outlines there came a lot of beauty and ideas. But mainly people lost the fear of the white, blank sheet of paper.
One main issue though, was that people always think that there is a genius illustration gene that makes you come into the world with a great talent. A talent, that is given to you, so that you don't have to work, just touch a pencil and magic happens. A lot of sad faces looked at me when i preached to them on a weekly bases, that only hard work, daily routine and constant learning makes a good illustrator ( and designer). That there is no lazy, amazing illustrator out there...
One of the best examples is my dear friend lip comarella - with whom i also work together at salon alpin and who held a digital painting session in all my courses. Him and all good illustrators, artist and designers have something in common, i struggle with pretty much every day (but i try hard to get better): do what you love, work hard for it and on it, be self reflective and humble every day and never stop trying, learning and evolving - there is no failing there is just process and progress.