Meet Tim Palin

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tim Palin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tim below.

Tim, 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 yet.

In all seriousness, I think I’ll always carry a bit of that with me. Over the years I’ve really spread my wings in that I have don’t a lot of new things. starting with public relations (for a VERY short time after collage.), then graphic design for travel, then design for advertising, then book publishing, then children’s illustration, then final art, and now…3-dimensional art. When you dive into something head-first (as I tend to do), you have to do it with some level of confidence that you can accomplish it…or at least try it out for a while. But when you jump into these new territories, you know there are experts, geniuses, and ol’ timers there already. It’s, in my opinion, impossible not to compare what you’re doing with they people you admire already doing it. You’re at least mindful of what those that started before you will think of your work. I learned a few things along the way in these instances:
1. This is a HUGE roadblock for you. This thinking can hinder your work and your motivation. You cannot give up before you start.
2. I’m not them. We do different things in different ways.
3. My work is awesome. Once I like what I’m doing and I feel that the work I’m putting out into the world is authentically me, I don’t have to feel like I’m just trying something on…I’m doing the damn thing!

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Recently I’ve adopted the octopus as my spirit animal…and apparently my muse as octopi show up in more and more of my work lately. This is because I do, what feels like, a million things at once. By business as well well as my art journey and rarely focused on one or two or even three things at a time.

Professionally, I describe myself as an independent publishing professional. I design, illustrate, art direct and produce books for a variety of markets. But what comes along with relationships with publishers is opportunities to dip into my professional roots, a marketing designer. This marketing work usually involves websites, photography, advertising and motion graphics.

I think being able to balance as well as integrate all of these skills onto a workflow is incredibly exciting and rewarding. To be able to say, “I can do that too” is a huge point of pride.

Beyond this work, I’m diving head first into the life of a working artist. Introducing my digital collage and editorial illustration into my days (and long, long nights) has been incredibly exciting. While i love client-service work, nothing beats creating something completely from my crazy brains, unfettered and unfiltered. It’s also built up my confidence as an artist. It’s just this past year or so that I introduce myself to people as an artist without looking to see if there’s “a real artist in the room ready to call me a fraud”. ha!

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?

1. Have the motivation to create.
2. Learn knew things rather than saying, “Oh, I don’t know how to do that”.
3. Trust yourself.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Book? My sketchbook…all of them, really. I credit these for playing such a role because they consistently and perennially inspire me. There’s no better feeling than to flip through a long-shelved sketchbook and see something I scribbled scribbled years ago, then forgot about. Sometimes these discoveries happen at a time when I am in desperate need of inspiration. Sometimes they event prompt new work!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

The image of me sitting at my desk was taken by Henry Marte

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