Megan Herbert is a frequent Wheeler Centre collaborator, illustrating the Winter Season line-up and live-drawing events. Her illustrations for Season 2 of Better off Dead have recently been longlisted for the World Illustration Awards 2022. We caught up with her to chat all things illustration.
Your illustrations for Season 2 of Better Off Dead, the Wheeler Centre and Go Gentle’s 2021 podcast series about voluntary assisted dying in Australia, have been longlisted for the World Illustration Awards 2022 – what does this recognition of your work mean to you?
To be long listed in a competition of that calibre was unexpected, but to be long listed for that particular project made it extra special. My cartooning work is often what people know me for, so this has been a useful way to be able to tell people that I am an editorial illustrator too. I hope it brings new listeners to the podcast series because the analysis of the topic of voluntary assisted dying laws across both seasons of Better Off Dead by Andrew and the Go Gentle Team deserves recognition.
How did you first get your start as a professional illustrator?
My first regular paid illustration was illustrating a monthly column in Disney Adventures magazine. I was just out of high school and working as the editorial mail clerk (the bottom rung of the publishing ladder). I showed the editor some of my illustrations and she was kind enough to give me a go. I’ve been relying on that strategy to find new opportunities ever since.
Who are the illustrators that most inspire you?
I’m always in awe of illustrators who have an immediately identifiable style – Jon Klassen, Oliver Jeffers and Lisa Congdon come to mind. There’s no shortcut to getting to that place; it takes years of effort and work and trial and error and distillation, eventually becoming an artistic DNA of sorts. I’m also inspired by current and past New Yorker cartoonists (far too many names to list here). They are just so very good at what they do. Honestly, there is so much beautiful illustration being made in the world right now, and so much of it is being posted online, that it’s impossible to take it all in even if you want to. In a way, that’s resulted in me spending less time looking at others’ work and more time making work that comes most naturally to me.
You work across a few different mediums; how do you decide which approach to take for each new project? Why did you choose water colour for Better Off Dead, for instance?
I used to work only in traditional media – pen and ink, watercolour, collage. I claimed to have a real contempt for digital art, but I know now that was just a way of masking my insecurities. Back when I was starting out, programs like Photoshop and Illustrator were highly unintuitive; they felt like another language and totally out of my reach, so I dismissed them. Thankfully, I eventually got over myself and realised that it would be more useful to see them as just another artistic tool. There was a steep learning curve, but luckily, with every passing year, the programs have become simpler and more intuitive to use. Procreate (using an iPad and Apple Pencil) is one of the main tools I use these days and it’s broadened the scope of the type of work I can do enormously. But I still work in traditional media whenever the job calls for it. With a subject like voluntary assisted dying and all that goes along with that (love, loss, pain, anger, frustration), watercolour was a natural fit. It’s unpredictable, constantly shifting, difficult to control… and the results, if you’re lucky, capture a fragility and humanness that better behaved media can’t.
You’re a writer as well as an illustrator, how do you know when a story needs one or the other? When do you use words and when do you use images and when do you use both?
I was interested in writing and drawing from a young age, but was told by pretty much every adult and authority figure I encountered that only the former would lead to a paying job, while the latter should be enjoyed just as a hobby. That led to me studying writing (first Arts-Law, then Journalism at RMIT), then moving onto a succession of writing jobs in TV and film. There were many years when all of my paid work was as a writer, but I kept up my visual art practice because I loved it and I knew deep down that’s how I wanted to make a living. Over the years, I learned how each different skill set informed and complemented the other. I began working on children’s books and cartooning, which were both beautiful unions of the two skillsets. These days things are more evenly balanced, perhaps slightly in favour of illustration. Again, it’s often the project itself that dictates which elements I use.
What are your favourite projects to work on?
I love the mental challenge of cartooning. It requires research, writing, lots of thinking, followed by editing, illustration (of course), visual narrative skills, humour, empathy… a good cartoon balances all of these elements well. A really good cartoon has a certain magic to it. Live-drawing events offers an excellent challenge too. It requires me to listen to the speakers, and jot down key take-aways, while simultaneously capturing their likeness and their body language, and the tone of the event, and do it all extremely quickly. You need to be in almost a trance state to pull it off. I also enjoy balancing these more intense jobs with traditional illustration work, like the Better Off Dead series. It’s meditative in comparison.
You’re a self-taught artist. How did you start and what resources have you used over the years to continue to develop your practice?
I can’t remember a time in my life that I wasn’t drawing. But as I said, I wasn’t encouraged to study art formally, and certainly wasn’t told it was a viable career path, so it’s taken me a lot longer to build up the skills I use today than if I’d taken a more direct route. Fortunately, it’s become easier and easier to educate myself as the tools have become more accessible and information more available. Now, if I want to explore a new technique, or learn a new program, it’s all there online. (What a time to be alive, etc!) It makes me feel like I’m finally getting the art education I craved for so long, and that there are no limits to what I can learn. I’m a big believer in 100-days-projects as a way to sharpen skills and improve fluency in a new area. They call art ‘a practice’ for a reason – it’s like training. You have to do it every day and not see everything you make as a finished product. Some of it’s just growth, push ups, muscle building. When you think of your work that way, you can let go and keep improving. There’s no end to that.