The Art Of Failure with Raissa Figueroa #scbwiSummer22

Raissa Figueroa is a children’s book illustrator based in San Diego, California. You can find out more about Raissa at Rizzyfig.com, on Twitter at @rizzyfig, and on Instagram at @rizzyfig. ASL interpreters: Lynne and Lori.

Raissa discovered concept art via Fen Zhu's YouTube channel. She started a weekly paint night and posting art to Instagram, where she was discovered by an agent.

Social media can be demoralizing if you let it. Raissa gave examples of not getting Likes for a piece you've worked hard at, or being intimidated by amazing art created by other artists etc.

However, social media can help illustrators get noticed. Partly because of Raissa's participation in the #MerMay challenge on social media, she was asked to illustrate Oona, written by Kelly DiPucchio.

Raissa showed some time-lapse videos of her digital art process. I loved how she starts with what looks like random colors or textures but then picks out shapes and turning them into people and things. She strongly recommends digital artists to try traditional/non-digital art - not having an "un-do" forces you to focus on problem solving. 

Digital art can become a handicap, she warns.

Fascinating to see what Raissa calls "watercolor fails," which seem to be stream-of-consciousness experiments that Raissa will then sometimes turn into more developed illustrations. She says that Brian Wildsmith is an influence, and loves his work.

Raissa likes starting with one of these "fails" experimental pieces in non-digital format, then adding characters and other elements digitally. She says she photographs the non-digital piece on her iPhone and then Airdrops it to her iPad.

For creating the initial "fails," Raissa experiments with different media and tools. Raissa even did a live demo of how she creates one of her initial inspiration pieces! You can see her using a feather to create interesting textures:

She also used just her FINGERS as a brush as well! 

Such an inspiring session.

Raissa's Tips on Avoiding Burn-out and Looking After Your Mental Health

Take some time away from social media.

Go outside.

Pet a cat.

Listen to music.

Do something that your inner child has not done in a while.

Humor. Raissa follows comedian podcasts.

Paint for yourself, not for social media.

Corinna Luyken: Yes, And ... Mistakes, Imperfections, and Improvisation in the Book-Making Process

Author/illustrator Corinna Luyken

Corinna Luyken is the astonishingly talented author and illustrator of The Book of Mistakes and My Heart, and the illustrator of Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse.

She started her talk on improvisation and imperfection in the creative process with a couple of wonderful quotes, including this one from Art & Fear:

"When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what i did at work. I told her I worked at the college—that my job was to teach people how to draw. 

"She said, 'You mean they forget'?"

Corinna talked about love and fear and how they can motivate and affect our work, observing that, "you know you're on to a story that's yours to tell when you feel scared and excited to write it."

She shared one of Elizabeth Gilbert's quotes from Big Magic: "What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success become irrelevant?"

She also showed hard-copy rejection letters going back almost two decades—which makes the wild success of her debut the opposite of an overnight success story. She kept at it because of her love for the work.

"Art is a PRACTICE. It's a PROCESS. And it's messy," she said.

So how do you cultivate a practice?

• pay attention
• play
• embrace mistakes
• live with uncertainty

When Corinna was in college, she took dance classes and was predictably the worst dancer in the room.

In a dance-improv class, she learned, "There is a freedom that comes from not having your ego attached to something, and to realize that the only reason you're doing something is that you love it."

Through improvisation, she practiced paying attention. Improvising before an audience required she be attentive to all the other dancers on the stage. The idea of "yes, and" in this environment means you don't get to say "no." Otherwise you're killing the creative energy.

From The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken

She urged us to pay attention to things that we love and make us feel good, and also things we don't like. And trusting the process means that we don't need to know everything—that we have to be willing to improvise and embrace mistakes.

"It's a very uncomfortable place to be a lot of the time....When I'm experimenting and I don't like what I'm making, which is a significant part of my process, I'm grumpy," she said. And she's starting to trust that part of the process, too.

From My Heart by Corinna Luyken