Introducing myself

[Corlette Douglas]

Hello fellow members of SVS my name is Corlette Douglas , I just want to introduce myself to the form to make connecting a little easier. I'm an FIT alumni student with a 4 year degree in illustration , II also have some knowledge in storyboarding and animation. After leaving college I decided to go into children's books as of now I'm a freelancer looking for clients when I can. ( whether it be through animation or children's books ). In the near future I'm hoping to get an agent if one sees skill in my work , I know we don't necessarily need one but I feel like it does make things a lot better if I had one.

In the meantime I'm trying to build up my confidence and sell my work on etsy and on my website but I have self confidence issues sometimes I feel like my work isn't that interesting to most people so I do have a tendency of putting it off , even mailing out post cards seem to be a little difficult for me.

I'm trying my best to make a business out of my own instead of frequently looking for people to design for , though I do love the feeling of creating work for someone else I do have to say waiting for a payment from clients inst always the best.

Do any of you out the ever get discouraged or down when you don't hear back from clients or publishers , I'm trying to think of ways to raise my confidence.

Oh and if anyone would like to see the kind of work I do here is my website https://corcorart.squarespace.com/

I love creating children with animals mostly bears and a lot of little African American kids cause I feel like we're not represented enough in the book publishing world.

[lmrush]

Welcome, you are going to love it here! Your work is sweet and so colorful!

[APHOTICMOTH]

Welcome! I love those cat shrubs.

Your "Lemons meet parker" illustration really caught my attention.

[Heather Boyd]

@Corlette-Douglas

Welcome,

Love your first work, you will find a great community here.

I have self confident issues too, they come and go, right now I am feeling well -grinding out the Godzilla, lols.

I went to your website, first I did find all your tabs at the top a bit overwhelming. So if you selected the most pertinent ones or change the size it would be more clear. Like a section for Books as you have done so for Character Deign and Sketches. Also I would try to avoid stretching your images -two of your teeth images look stretched -I do apologize if this is not true.

I also love bears -especially in other people’s work lols.

Hope to see your work here!

[animatosoor]

Bears are my favourite animals! As I type this, I have an Aboriginal painting of a bear (gifted to me) sitting right in front of me, haha.

@Corlette-Douglas Hello and welcome to the forum! The colours in your work are delightful.

To answer your question: I do feel very discouraged when I don't hear back from potential clients, but I feel like I've only taken baby steps in that regard so far. I've been trying to reframe my mindset from "I shouldn't try because I could get rejected," to "I will collect rejection letters," which is something I learnt from the author Elizabeth Gilbert. The best way to raise our confidence, it would seem, would be to continue our efforts to expose ourselves and our art to the world, try for these jobs/deals, and work on our art everyday in a feedback loop.

You'd find that there are fellow artist friends here who also struggle with self-confidence, and I am definitely one of them. What is great is that when we meet these people, we have the opportunity to uplift them, and feel strengthened as well. I've tried going it alone before, and fell flat on my face. The community is great for this, beyond the actual art side of things: the critique, educational resources, tips, etc.

I hope you enjoy being here and interacting with everyone.

[Corlette Douglas]

@lmrush Thank you so much I'm hoping to learn a lot from all of you.

[Corlette Douglas]

@Heather-Boyd said in Introducing myself:

selected the most pertinent ones or change the size it would be more clear. Like a section for Books as you have done so for Character Deign and Sketches. Also I would try to avoid stretching your images -two of your teeth images look stretched -I do

Thank you so much for the feedback I'll get right on fixing those areas , Im guessing it's better to leave people wanting more that to pile on everything I've done into one page. Maybe a little here and there would work, and I guess I can get rid of older watercolor pieces as well so the website looks refreshed.

[Corlette Douglas]

@CLCanadyArts Thank you the lemons meets Parker was done for my niece when she made a lemonade business I'm actually working on a little book dummy I'm hoping to maybe show it around later. XD

[IgorWoznicki]

Hi there! Always nice to meet new folks!
You're gonna love people round here, those guys are great
Your illustrations are soo cool and colorful, can't wait for you to drop some more art in here.
See you around!

[Coreyartus]

Welcome to the forums, @Corlette-Douglas !! As you've seen, there are a lot of very friendly and helpful people here. Don't forget to take some time to dig through the forums--using some keywords in the search mechanism can really render some awesome insight!

Just so you know, there's a special category you can when making a new forum thread if you're really looking for "unfiltered" constructive criticism of your work. But everyone here is pretty good at making sure the advice they're offering is a genuine attempt at being helpful even without that categorization. I say this because you said you have confidence issues. Please believe me when I say I think a HUGE number of us can relate!!! You're in the right spot!!

Welcome, again!

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@Corlette-Douglas hi! Welcome to the forum. I love your style. It’s so bright and colorful.

[avfarrar]

Welcome!

[theprairiefox]

Your work is so colorful. I love the vibrancy!

Welcome can't wait to see more...