Monday Series: What a Week

BAHAHAHA Let's talk about how completely useless last Monday's planning session was in light of the stress of election week. A combination of election stress plus decompression from Inktober rendered me virtually useless. I picked up some steam toward the end but let's just say I'm not flying any victory flags. This was probably true for most people. Sigh.

I have a professional portfolio review on Wednesday. I've been compiling a list of things I feel like I need to add to it in order to be ready for agency submissions. I'll be curious to see if my predictions are correct and if he is able to give me some sort of an indication of how ready I am. I'm a little nervous about it—I'm kind of dreading/expecting a "you have a LONG WAY TO GO MY FRIEND" kind of response but... we'll see. No use worrying about something that is 100% outside of my control. I cannot change anything about my portfolio between now and Wednesday afternoon so I'm just going to concentrate on other things until then.

My predictions (for what it's worth):

• I can obviously draw. My ability to draw believable anatomy and perspective is fairly well developed.
• My current portfolio is a little disjointed and doesn't give a clear indication of the kind of work I want to do. This is a microcosm of my whole life basically but that's beside the point.
• To that end, I don't have enough pieces in my portfolio that speak directly to chapter book illustration. I'll need more:
• Character continuity (more than one piece with the same characters in them to show that I can carry them through a story)
• More images with backgrounds
• More images with multiple figures
• More action images
• A few examples of book covers in full color
• Some indication that I can carry a rendering style through multiple similar images (I bounce back and forth between techniques a little too often)
• Perhaps some specific kinds of subject matter that are missing? I'll have to ask about this one.

The big question is: Do I need all of that in my portfolio before I start applying to agencies or can I apply soon and work my way through some commercial jobs while building out the rest of the portfolio? This affects timeline. Commissions and holiday sales are going to occupy a lot of my time within the next month and a half.

Goals for this week:

• Begin a new commission
• Begin a new portfolio piece
• Finish a large format print job
• Mail a few orders
• Add some new prints to the shop
• Get a wellness checkup/flu shot
• Do some financial studies homework
• Portfolio Review Call: prep and execution
• 1:1 Financial Coaching Call: prep and execution

Sigh. Anxiety always.