Studio tour

Or...money, money, money.

A tidy desk

(I wrote this back in January and have um-ed and ah-ed about posting it because it felt too drab and January-ish. But here we are.)

A few weeks back I took my first trip to my studio after the Christmas break and was faced, head on, with the horrifying truth of my true, despicably disgusting nature. Which was a bit much to square up to in the first week of January, if I’m honest. So, after a day of trying to work in amongst the chaos and mess I’d created for myself, I resolved to come in on Saturday and have a big old tidy up.

A very untidy desk

I threw things out, I reshuffled papers, I tried to clean a year or two of ink and masking tape scraps from the desktop (failed). After a few hours I’d reached a workable state with just a few shameful piles still lurking in the corners (but largely out of my direct view, which is key).

Pen pots

I feel very lucky to have a studio. I pay for it, of course, so I suppose I feel lucky to make enough of a living that I can spend just under £200 a month in rent (I should add that this is cheap for London). Sometimes that feels like a bit of a financial reach, and sometimes I can absorb the cost, more or less, easily. But as you can see, it’s really just a desk and a corner for dumping things (two corners actually, I’ve co-opted the book case). I share with three other people, who’s workspaces I will not show you, but please trust that they are neater than mine. The idea of a whole studio for myself, in London is, nearly fifteen years into my career, still a dream.

I say this not for sympathy but for a bit of reality, I suppose. I recently laid out for my Children’s Book Illustration students the financial history of my life in the Children’s Book Industry. Some seemed reassured that there was money to be made but many, I found out later, were somewhat dispirited (sorry kids!). I felt it was important to offer some clarity but one might argue that a bit of mystery keeps the dream alive!

The whole thing. Tidied.

There isn’t a woman making art who hasn’t, at some point, heard/read/repeated the famous Virginia Woolf statement “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”' Often the ‘money’ part is conveniently erased (she also mentions a lock on the door.) The ‘room of one’s own’ is a somewhat romantic, escapist notion, the money, however, is depressingly practical so might need to be glossed over. I long for a room of my own, but more so I long for the ability to sustain that room at minimal cost to my quality of life.

I think of how I would work if I had two desks instead of one, if I could leave an easel set up without disturbing anyone else’s space, if I had a sink that wasn’t three floors down in a basement that is, always, hellishly hot. What would I make? How many little exploratory projects would I have on the go? These fantasies can be torturous. What’s more it is difficult to pick apart what is fantasy and what is genuinely possible. Probably, even with a solo studio, I wouldn’t get into woodwork, but I might make some larger format drawings. I would maybe use oil-paints but I probably wouldn’t become someone who worked feverishly into the early hours of the morning. I’m just too sleepy. It’s easy to attribute what you’re not doing to some percieved limitation; without which you’d be totally free. I’m aware I need to pick apart the times when I am being held back by something external and when, annoyingly, the call is coming from inside the house.

Giant brush, Unused.

An image of Zadie Smith and a handwritten Zadie Smith Quote.

If I had the energy to scrape the internet for stats I would be telling you OFFICIALLY that illustration budgets are not increasing in line with inflation. As it is you’ll have to take my word for it. They’re not increasing. Not even close. In fact in most instances they’re getting smaller. Artists are burning out because it takes illustrating three or four books a year to make a decent annual wage instead of one. Or they’re taking on concurrent editorial jobs with tight deadlines when, ten years ago, one would get you through the week quite comfortably. What if these artists had just a tiny bit more wiggle room, what would they make? What could they give to their audiences and, more importantly, what could they give to themselves?

I was asked about my 2024 plans in the same week as the studio-clear-up and I said, flatly', ‘Oh, I’m going to get really rich’. Which probably isn’t actually on the cards but does seem like the only course of action.

I watched a not-very-good film whilst I cleaned up my workspace and in reviews of that film it was noted that the main character (ironically working as an illustrator) posessed a high-level of unremarked-upon-wealth. Having written and abandoned and written again a number of stories in the past couple of years I have noticed that telling a story becomes so much easier if your characters have enough money to not really have to think about money. For the rest of us, our behaviours, our choices, our plans, are all tied up in our financial situation and working life. If a character can’t take an impromptu trip to New York to propel the narrative then, maybe, the story stops dead. By contrast if you have to detail your character’s monetary wranglings at every turn then your book/film/play is going to get pretty boring.

more, more, more

I can feel myself, sometimes, being the boring character who has to talk about money too often. In fact I’m doing it right now, this was meant to be a studio tour! I wonder if I am only imagining that people bristle when I complain about having to take on a boring job to pay the rent. I’m sure it’s imagined and I’m only boring myself but still I feel, occasionally, the snag of something-like bitterness that I must take care to monitor, lest it turn into a knot.

Sometimes it tires me out. Currently I’m in an email back and forth for a foreign newspaper interview. In fact many of the thoughts I’ve written down here came as a result of this back and forth. They want to dispatch a photographer to my studio to take photos. I know that what they’re imagining is a beautiful room, with plants and big windows and not an attic with chipboard wallpaper and blue office carpets where I squish myself in with three other people. There are windows but it looks onto a brick wall and the other is too high to look out of, and, sadly, our plants are not thriving.

Should I bring the photographer here? Present them with a reality that is not polished enough to be aspirational or paint-peelinging industrial enough to be cool. Or should I keep them away? Insist that we go to a park instead? These photos don’t matter (and I will surely grimace and cringe through them anyway) but I feel exposed by the thought of them. That photos of this very un-photogenic room (and un-photogenic illustrator now we come to mention it) will highlight a failing. Perhaps a failing in no one’s eyes but my own, but a failing nonetheless.

Where am I going with all this? I honestly don’t know. I suppose to reassure some of you that the path is long and slow and even the people you might think have taken a fast-track are actually plodding along beside you. And maybe also to politely request that if anyone is sitting on a beautiful out-building in South London that I will absolutely take that off your hands for you and sit in there like a troll making/reading/eating books all day long.

OK. That’s all. Thank you for your time.

Lizzy

(P.S- Please, please, please the last thing I’m asking for here is for anyone to tell me to leave London, a city I love and which homes the majority of the friends I love even more than the city itself. I’m aware studios are cheaper elsewhere. Gallingly aware. But my life is here.)