Art by Tessa Wrathall
As a creator, you’re only as good as what you know. How can you best amplify your imagination and harness your craft? By reading great books. Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry analyze their favorite books, from the childhood classics that sparked their interest in illustration, to business guides that help flighty illustrators become precise, honed-in producers, to graphics and design manuals that teach the basic craftsmanship behind creating stunning and evocative images.
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INTRO
One bit of good news -- Lee finally got around to putting his shelves up. This helps him streamline his process and avoid buying doubles of supplies. (How have you used your lockdown time? Join in on the podcast discussion in our official forums HERE). Jake also managed to organize his hard drive with his spare time. There’s a weird level of satisfaction to organizing your workspace.
FAVORITE BOOKS
What are your favorite children’s books? (Thanks for the reader question! Let us know on Youtube if you have any questions for Jake, Will, and Lee).
Lee: I didn’t read a lot growing up and was an outdoor kid, very active and played in the woods. There was only one book that made it through my childhood to my adulthood and it was The Pink Elephant with Golden Spots. Published in 1970, it’s a fantastic story about three kids who open a wardrobe that gives them a wish. One kid wishes for a big giant cake, the next one wishes for a sports car. There was a spread with the sports car that looked incredible. I was blown away as a kid by the illustration. Eventually the last kid wishes for a pink elephant with golden spots, which starts the story off. But the car coming out of the wardrobe was the basis for my whole illustration and art career.
The common denominator between Lee’s work today and that book is the theme of a normal, mundane world, with one fantastical or magical element. That’s something that is pervasive in his work and also is in The Pink Elephant with Golden Spots.
Lee’s illustrations have so much whimsy and imagination, and that book probably sparked that.
Will: The reason I’m an illustrator is because of my relationship with images growing up. I was a reluctant reader that hated reading. I learned to love it eventually. I would check books out just to look at the illustrations and dream. Here’s my list:
Go Dog Go by P.D. Eastman
I Wish That I Had Duck Feet by Theo Lesieg and B Tobey
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Issun Boshi by Icinori
Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban
Everyone who wants to become a children’s illustrator probably has their own concoction of inspiring stories. The reason why these ones were special to Will is because they each hit an emotional chord. The images are indelibly tied to specific emotions. Will now looks at the work he is producing now, and considers if he can do the same thing for kids today to impart the same sense of emotion.
Has Will hit the point of imparting that emotion? He hopes so -- his Bonaparte books are deeply enjoyed by kids. He has tried to go beyond the text to really sell the emotions of the story. Is the text strong enough to amplify that emotion? On the Bonaparte books, yes. On other projects, no. Lee has realized that great illustrations with lacking text will not save the story, but both parts need to be working together at a high level in order to produce a good book.
It wasn’t until the 12 Sleighs of Christmas that Jake felt that he had found his voice. He got to ink and color in his own style. The story is about the elves trying to make 12 different improved sleighs for Santa because his one is damaged. This allowed Jake to go bananas with his side of the work, and let him do much more than he could normally in the confines of a children’s book. He felt he finally got to the point where he had drawn something he would have loved as a child. He included a lot of schematics and engine parts and a fun, Where’s Waldo-esque spread.
Jake loved the Richard Scarry books as a kid, which had a lot of little details and busy things. He also liked Danny and the Dinosaur, about a boy who befriends a dinosaur at a museum and spends a day with him. Little Toot is a book about a little tugboat with phenomenal illustrations. Jake loved a page with a map of the bay that chronicled the boat’s adventures. He loves top-down perspective schematic style images in kid’s books.
Are our careers based around trying to recreate that awesome, foundational moment that we experienced as kids? Will believes so -- the scene he always returns to in his childhood is in Go Dog Go, the last scene in which there is a party in a tree. It’s so fantastical, and he was obsessed with it for a time.
Our point of view is high up, and we’re looking down on the tree. The leaves are so dense, you can walk on them. It’s little kid logic. This image was burned into Will’s brain, so he channelled it for the last scene of Bonaparte Falls Apart.
Is Will now done with that theme, or will it come back in a different form? Probably not. He will probably keep creating the same version of that image.
If you’re struggling with finding your style or voice, remember back -- what was it that got you excited as a kid, looking at illustrations or books or video games? And how can you channel it into your work now?
WHAT BOOK SHOULD EVERY ILLUSTRATOR READ?
What books should you read, from a business perspective, or a creative perspective, or to hone your craft?
Jake: There are two books that I’ve read in the last 3-4 years that I keep referring back to. They’re all marked up and dog eared, and I use quotes from these books for my YouTube videos, for my blog posts, and even in conversations with other artists. The first one is:
The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
This book isn’t for everyone but it was for me. He’s a Hollywood screenwriter and has worked on a lot of different movies. He comes at it from a writer’s perspective but it applies to any creative pursuit. His main theme -- in between you and the work you want to create is Resistance, and this is how you overcome it. It’s not super scientific and more an inspirational piece, a little bit tongue in cheek, but a lot of it is designed to help yank you out of your perspective and see things from a fresh perspective.
Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland
This is basically another thing that keeps people from being the best artists they can be -- fear. This unpacks your fear: why are you fearful, what are you afraid of, why should you create in spite of that fear, and so on. It’s really good, short, and powerful. I had to read it a page at a time and then let it simmer.
”The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.”
A lot of the artwork we did when we were just trying to make money informed the artwork that we make now, that really soars.
Lee: I’m going to recommend a book I read in college that I return to a lot. The writing means different things to me each time I read it, but it’s applicable to me no matter where I am.
The Art Spirit by Robert Henri
This one is old, but it’s good. It’s about what it means to be an artist.
“When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.”
It’s so good. The world stagnates without the artist. To be an artist really means being alive and responding to things. Are you expressing what you mean to express? Are you hitting the level you want to hit? This book always returns to the work, and if it’s good or if it hits the emotional core. When I’m feeling overwhelmed by social media likes and other stuff, I always return to this to center myself on the work.
Will: For art inspiration, I look at children’s books. Early on in my college years, I was a Steve Johnson and Mary GrandPré superfan. I was so jealous of Steve Johnson -- I called him up one time just to gush.
Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat by Jennifer Armstrong and Mary GrandPré
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! by Karen Beaumont and David Catrow
Sometimes when I want to be inspired, I just go to Pinterest and look for inspiration there. Pretty soon I am fuelled up and ready to go. It’s intimidating to see the best of the best there.
Before Lee was an artist, he would see things and be inspired but it never translated to his work -- he would have a spark and have nothing to do with it. When The Nightmare Before Christmas came out, Lee was astounded by the texture of the ground in the scene where the tree portals are introduced. He was inspired by that image as well as Joe Sorren’s work to create an amalgamated image that changed his style.
Lee White, inspired by Joe Sorren and The Nightmare Before Christmas
WHAT BUSINESS BOOKS DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Will: To me, there are two different types of business books: the first are granular, boring ones -- how to do invoices, taxes, maintain an office, etc. I’m not interested in the technical stuff. The other are mindset books, these are ones that I’m interested in.
Basically, Linchpin suggests that everyone has an art side to them. We all have some logic, and some creative. He talks about the mix, and how to draw on the art side for your business. You’re unique, and your uniqueness is important. Nobody can sell what you have because it is only yours. He also talks about being indispensable and how to succeed in the modern world.
A Whole New Mind is about how art exists in everything, how anything we want, every product, has an art component to it. We haven’t really learned to value art in our lives. We have to protect our art and develop and monetize it and get out of the starving artist mindset.
The 4 Hour Work Week is about creating systems to outsource work you don’t want to do to people who are willing to do it. Here at SVSLearn we realized that we weren’t good at certain things, so we have people who ARE good working behind the scenes to do those jobs. At first it was scary to hire these people but it has been amazing and has paid off really well. Jake read this book years ago and has gotten him onto the same wavelength as to generating income without working 40 hours a week every time. Jake still works 40 to 60 hours a week, but he does it doing things he wants to do as opposed to working for some employer who would lay him off as soon as things get hard.
What can I make that I own myself, and how can I sell it so that I can make money when I’m sleeping?
Lee: One of the biggest mindshifting books I’ve read is:
If you haven’t read it, it’s amazing and it really discusses how you can avoid absolute distraction in the modern world. There is a currency value to working in a deep way, and you need a strategy to separate yourself from distractions. Anything you do that you focus on can be enjoyable if you ignore distractions. This book dives into how to unplug and shift your mentality towards productivity.
Your brain needs time to just think. It can’t be constantly processing inputs, you need time to take what you’ve experienced and digest it. We should have time every day in which you don’t focus on outside distractions and instead meditate or let your brain think. Jake removes social media apps from his phones in order to wean himself from the desire to use them.
Jake has also unplugged from email, and has changed the contact page on his site to note that he won’t likely reply. This has made Jake feel much less self conscious about the emails he is receiving.
Real Artists Don’t Starve is a book that Jake read two years ago, and it is the book that he needed to read at 20, not 40. For the most part, he was doing everything the book said but he came about it the hard way. Holiday opens the book by discussing Michaelangelo. His assets, at the time Michaelangelo died, was around $42M in today’s money. He made a lot of money from artwork as well as renting out villas. He was an artist that went about art like a businessman. He was an outlier but not abnormal -- artists in the renaissance made a lot of money. Artists during the renaissance created guilds that had set prices for nobles to commission work from them. Something happened in the 1800s, where the starving artist archetype came into existence, and we haven’t been able to shake it since then. The book is about artists not having to starve, making money that sustains you, and choosing the work that you want to do. Shakespeare was a grain hoarder and a real estate guy, and a ruthless businessman. He owned the theatre that his plays were performed in, and rented the space out to other theatrical troupes.
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday -- Ryan is an author that writes timeless books. The Obstacle is the Way took five years to be a bestseller. Now it’s the go-to book for NFL coaches and their teams. In Ryan’s experience, he wanted to make something that lasted for longer than a single hot season. He wanted to make something that lasted for years and decades. He suggested that books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr. Seuss paid the bills for the large publishing houses, not their monthly releases. How do you make a book that is a perennial seller, and how do you make something timeless? And how do you sell it?
WHAT SHOULD EVERY ILLUSTRATOR USE TO REFERENCE FOR CRAFT?
Will: Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre if you want to learn composition. Design is one of my favorite things to do as an illustrator. A lot of artists are good at drawing but might not be able to design. If you struggle to make a great composition from your imagination, consider working on it and use Framed Ink to hone those skills.
Lee: I agree with Will, design books are essential. Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler. This book talks about the different ways to make better design decisions and how to teach design. It goes through all the different principles of design, from a base level -- I used it to remodel my house, it applies to every discipline.
When I went through ArtCenter, I noticed that a lot of the industrial design illustrations all looked similar -- they had a “designey” feel to them. I always wondered how they got that cool look, until I found this book. It’s called Drawing and Designing with Confidence: A Step by Step Guide by Mike W. Lin. It is literally how to make industrial design drawings. The one principal I took from this was to name everything -- there’s a line in the book that Mike calls the hit-go-hit line, where you start slow, then speed up, then slow down. It gives your drawings a designy look.
Jake: If you wanna be good at illustrating, you have to be good at drawing. You need drawing chops. To get that I recommend How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments from your Imagination by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling. This book is the one that I pulled a lot of info from for my How To Draw Everything course on SVSLearn. It teaches you step by step how to make a line, all the way through how to draw something incredibly complex. They show you very methodically how to draw everything in a step by step manner. It’s a great way to get better at drawing objects.
If you want to draw figures, I recommend Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton. This guy isn’t as concerned with life drawing as he is with you being able to draw a character running or jumping or reaching for something without you looking at a model. He teaches how the muscles work together in such a basic design sense that you don’t need a biologist’s understanding of anatomy to draw them. He breaks the muscles down into their core basic shapes and shows you how to piece them together in however many ways you want to.
How do you make your characters and objects interesting? I recommend Imaginative Realism by James Gurney. James created Dinotopia, and illustrated countless National Geographic magazines. He builds models of things like dinosaurs so he can get the lighting right when he paints them. The whole book revolves around drawing things that don’t exist, and how you can draw something for which there is no reference.
Thomas Kinkade set a rule that he had to make 12 finished, beautiful, large paintings a year. He was prolific and worked a lot.
Lee: I recommend Picture This: How Pictures Work by Molly Bang. It’s about the psychology of shapes and what they mean to people.
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Aaron Painter: painterdraws.com. Instagram: @painterdraws
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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