Craft / Creative Process
Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene on becoming an artist by listening – The Creative Independent
A. Kendra Greenethecreativeindependent.com
A poet asked me to illustrate a book, and I realized I don’t think I’m an illustrator—I think I’m a bookmaker.
I can relate. Since illustrating my own book, I’ve spent a lot more time drawing, and this has brought up opportunities to illustrate other peoples’ books. But it just didn’t feel right. I want to tell stories, and often they come to me in words as well as drawings, and I like to show both. I think that makes me more of a multimedia storyteller, than what we might think of as an illustrator.
"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." - Gustave Flaubert
Quoted this in my piece on the value of routine: Rewards of Routine
He said that it’s a very good idea that after you write a little bit, stop and then copy it. Because while you’re copying it, you’re thinking about it, and it’s giving you other ideas. And that’s the way I work. And it’s marvelous, just wonderful, the relationship between working and copying.
Mason Currey • Seek funny leaps
on juggling multiple projects:
it was actually the first time in my life where I’d really consciously been working on two projects. There’s sort of a nice procrastination effect; one of them is always easier than the other, so there’s always something to do.
—A Kendra Greene
Living a multi-pursuit life has kinda been my thing for a while. But I’m
... See moreSimplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the... See more
Walter Isaacson • Steve Jobs
“I can feel jealous of David Sedaris’s fame, I can feel like I’ll never get to that point, but I should ask myself: am I doing 15 or 20 full rewrite drafts of my essays? Am I pushing myself to search for a universal feeling, for a moment of poignancy, and for a laugh, all in the same piece? Am I doing what he did, in my own way? No, no, and no. I am not. If I did that, and then did it for 15 years before getting published, like he did, then maybe I would find out how close to David Sedaris (or my own equivalent) that I could get.”