Art by Gaëlle Grizzly
What is the Slowvember Challenge? You might have heard of it before, but Lee White has updated it to focus on recovery, creative refreshment, and deep, focused work on a singular image. This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss the different strategies and steps needed to do the challenge and how you can bounce back from the intensity of Inktober and embrace the slow, studied approach!
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SHOW LINKS
FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE PODCAST EPISODE (EPISODE 10)
INTRO
Welcome back! While we normally record our episodes in advance, this one was recorded recently because we wanted it to come out right at the beginning of November.
SLOWVEMBER
Slowvember is a concept that Lee came up with as a reaction to Inktober -- illustration often feels like a marathon, it’s really fast paced. A lot of the time in school, Lee would finish paintings and move on immediately, never having the time to fix stuff. Slowvember is a way to slow things down.
It’s going to be different for everybody, but the premise is: make one thing and do it the best that you can.
Destroy the idea that you have to be good at artistic things to enjoy them. Sing off-key, write poorly, draw badly -- life is not meant to be monetized, you are not a product always.
Lee feels this goes along with Slowvember a lot. Back away from the work, look at your life, and consider how you can enjoy it more.
STEP BY STEP
You can figure out where you’re going.
The last 20% of an illustration is the hardest part, but sit with it in Slowvember. It can take just as much time as the first 80%. It’s not fun, but it’s necessary. It takes stamina.
Slow Down. Now that November is here, take 3 or 4 days and don’t do anything. Start to value down time. Jake had nothing to do at the start of the year, and he just hung out and read books and recharged. He felt horribly guilty but he learned that he needs to incorporate down time into his schedule. Maybe take a nap! But be careful, napping can be dangerous! Stop rushing through stuff.
Schedule and figure out your duration. When are you working, and how much?
The Hermit: Self isolation for long periods of productivity. Bill Gates takes two weeks at his cottage just reading and thinking about the future of MIcrosoft.
The Blocker: People who block out a specific time per day and work on it.
The Quickgrab: People who use natural downtime in their day to fit work in.
Jake would love to be The Hermit but it requires a lot of freedom from responsibilities. Jake is interested in doing a mastermind getaway sort of thing, renting a cabin and then pitching ideas to one another, discussing the ideas, and then unwinding in the evening. Jake is a blocker. Will is probably the same, he pushes everything out of the way to work on his idea. It’s usually at the wrap of another project when he has the time for it. He doesn’t like working on multiple projects at the same time. Jake likes to switch gears so that he doesn’t get burnt out on a single project. Lee is also a blocker.
There is only so much time you can commit to deep work. After a few hours, your brain will be mush. Take a nap or rest and then go back to work for a few more hours -- you need to recharge sometimes, you can’t just go hard at it all the time.
Ask for what you want. Even if it’s big, it can work wonders. Ask to work from home, or to change your schedule, or to work in a different way.
Work in the right space. Which do the guys prefer -- home office or office space? Will likes to work everywhere. Sometimes he will sit in his car and work on his iPad.
Deep work vs shallow work -- deep work takes a lot of concentration, you can’t have a movie or music playing in the background. Inking and rendering are like noodling or doodling, and don’t take as much concentration. Jake will pencil a bunch of pages and front load all of his deep work, then save the inking and rendering for when he is listening to a podcast or something like that.
Lee can do big life paintings with people around watching, with no problems. He has trouble working at home, in his home office, as he tends to be less productive when he is alone -- he likes to have people being busy around him but not interacting with him.
That was one of Jake’s problems with working in the old SVS office -- it could be difficult to be productive when they got into discussions or had good talks.
Find the right space. Eliminate distractions, figure out if you work best alone or with people around you, and adjust your workspace to fit your needs.
Shallow work vs deep work -- shallow work could be like social media use, or doing research by watching stuff. They can make you feel somewhat productive without actually being productive or really working. Beware of getting sucked into shallow work! Jake calls them dives, or reference dives, where he goes in and looks for one piece of reference and ends up spending an hour finding 50 different things. Most of the time it’s wasting time. Jake has tens of thousands of pins. It feels productive because you are at a screen and clicking around, and it’s somewhat justifiable because it is art tangential, but it is a fake out that just makes you feel productive. Even answering emails feels productive but isn’t actually productive -- you aren’t moving the needle forward on anything.
Sweeping water at the beach -- answering emails
Will got an email from a prominent SVS subscriber. He said that he didn’t have enough time to keep up on social media -- Will sees social media as a necessary evil, when you announce something that you’ve finished. Publishers also use it. There is a cost to both using social media and abstaining from it. It giveth and it taketh away, and can be a good thing or can be harmful. You can spend a lot of time working on it and still not be discovered by the algorithm. That time could be spent better on Linkedin.
Identify and eliminate distractions, use apps like Self Control to give yourself a safe block of time to work. Identify your problems and try to develop strategies to avoid them. Block time, don’t do fake work or shallow work during it. Make time to use social media when it is necessary -- don’t check it all day every day. Same with email if your work situation permits this. At the end of the day, do you want to be good at email or good at your craft?
Think about your favorite creator -- do you want them spending their days replying to emails, or working on their next big project for you to enjoy?
Schedule your project. Figure out the best thing for you right now -- what project can you work on that will best boost your skills? Maybe it’s a master copy. Maybe you’re going to try a new medium that you haven’t tried. Maybe it’s expanding on an Inktober piece. Don’t feel pressured to make a huge portfolio piece, just try something new and use November to recharge creatively and artistically.
THE WEEKLY BREAKDOWN
Week 1: Setup your work space once you’ve identified what you need. Get your tools in order, buy new materials if you need to. Research and development. Schedule your shallow work and reference deep dives. Take something you’ve already done and try to do it better -- Inktober daily work.
Week 2: Thumbnail, thumbnail, thumbnail. Do value studies and get feedback from people. Workshop your ideas, don’t go with your first idea. Workshop everything about your image. Talk to people.
Week 3: Final value and color studies. Get the exact plan down before your last week.
Week 4: You’ve front loaded all the hard work, now is when it gets enjoyable. Put a show on or some music and just paint for the whole week. Post it in process and get feedback.
THE PITFALLS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
It can be difficult to post one huge thing that takes a ton of hours for only one Instagram engagement. That’s the peril of social media. The medium means that faster image production is favored. But you can still post other stuff, like your R&D process, or research, or WIP stuff.
Post with #Slowvember and tag Lee White, @leewhiteillo on Instagram!
Also give Will’s challenge a shot -- the Draw 50 Things challenge! #Draw50Things
What happens when someone tries one of these challenges and the result doesn’t turn out? Or it doesn’t equal the effort invested? Will suggests it’s because of a bad initial idea. If your idea isn’t amazing from the get go, you will burnout on it. The second issue is not taking the time out on the design stage to make sure your image is great, before you begin to render. Don’t skip time designing because it will save you time and increase your quality. There is a certain amount of efficiency with something that you have to do FAST. Otherwise you could be crippled with paralysis by choice.
Find an accountability partner or post on the SVS Forums and you’ll get some great feedback.
FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE PODCAST EPISODE (EPISODE 10)
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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