We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marguerite Sauvage. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marguerite below.
Marguerite, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
I haven’t learn art or writing in school, so I always felt in the right place but in the wrong way. I might say what helped to overcome the imposter syndrome, even if it’s still there, is mostly experience and aging. First you learn to let go not being one of the best, then you learn that you will earn respect and professional acknowledgement for being reliable, which is often consider as having nothing to do with talent but more with being able to listen, understand, adapt and deliver on time (so important). The last point is: there will be bad days, it’s not what you are, though if you do nothing the spiral down will took more time to stop, so just sit in front of your table and do, don’t think, don’t overthink, just try. If your goals are too high, ignore them, but do a little thing. Every time it helped me achieve my objectives.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I started my career as a commercial illustrator and have worked in press, advertising and publishing for a wide range of clients and countries. Then I step a feet in the animation industry and created an edutainment animated TV show for kids in France: I always love when art and knowledges are associated. In the meantime I started doing comics for the European market. Then I expatriate. I lived in Paris, Sydney, Montreal and now Los Angeles. It’s a very rich yet demanding life experience. I got lucky that at the same time I began travelling for living abroad I started working for the US comic book industry. This has allowed me to work from anywhere with an internet connection. Nowadays, coming from multiple factors like becoming a parent, living through Covid, having done a lot of commercial and licenced art, I focus on doing my own books, or chose to dedicate myself to thematic more personal. I’m developing mostly graphic novels for young readers, young adults and also adults. I have tons of projects in my mind and I’m currently working on 2 of them to be published in 2027 by First Second and Little Brown.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Be nice and polite to people, clients are not your enemies, that does not mean accept everything: your work is worth something.
Never work for free, it’s not worth it and it pull down the range of rates for all your fellow artists friends.
Be reliable, ask questions, deliver on time, transparency is the key if you have any issues (that does not mean oversharing some personal details, you have to compartiment).
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Doing as much books as I can, curated with sense or written by myself with sincerity. Also: traveling and spend time with my kid. That would be some busy years!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://margueritesauvage.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margueritesauvage
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margueritesauvageillustration
- Twitter: @S_Marguerite
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/margueritesauvage.bsky.social
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