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@ Tynka
2025-03-14 20:00:01
I’m working on my portfolio. I will take it with me to the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, to stand in very long queues, hoping to show it to some people in the publishing industry.
Preparing a portfolio could be a moment of celebration of all the work I have done and want to share with the world. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Instead, it slowly and quietly became a litany of the “could”s and “should”s and “must ”s: I could include all the work that’s even remotely relevant, I should probably showcase a range of skills, and therefore I must create a bunch of completely new work to appeal to every possible audience.
Maybe I need a range of deep, magical forest backgrounds, or a unicorn flying over a London night sky, or a coral reef with jellyfish playing poker, painted in very bright colours. Just to show that I can.
<img src="https://blossom.primal.net/06f18fb9aab21c555bae82ce177c38cd1ce0d0b131c9824aeef94c84d094053c.jpg">
Well, that quickly became a downward spiral of stress-induced ideas for illustrations I don’t have time to make. Even though I enjoyed the work I was doing, in that mindset, no matter what I do, it’s never enough.
And then, lo and behold, I looked through my sketchbook. I was looking for something specific, a texture or a colour from a sketch that I’ve done. I opened one sketchbook looking for it, then another one, then one more.
There was so much work looking back at me wherever I turned. After all, I’ve been drawing daily since last July, sometimes from life, sometimes from imagination. Inevitably, I created a lot of work: paintings, drawings, sketches, and finished illustrations. Only looking through my work did I realise that I will always feel the push to make more work for my portfolio; because my style keeps evolving, I’m able to draw more and better with every step. But is the work I’ve done so far, enough to show where I am as an illustrator? Hell yeah.
Many cliches come to mind (because they’re true!) but my favourite is: don’t compare yourself to others, only compare to yourself from the past.
This is the third year of me going to Bologna for the fair, and the first time I will bring a portfolio with me. That means whatever I do is already 100% more than what I’ve done before. That’s a much better way to think about it.
Chill, Martyna, you’ve got this.
Thanks for reading.
x
<img src="https://blossom.primal.net/f2c43a504599d683b40b05a46ce988eecb84bfb7325c36473ed58b7bcf583fe9.png">