Interview with Lenny Lishchenko

I’m thrilled to introduce illustrator, designer and storyteller Lenny Lischenko, the talented artist behind Inhabit Media’s The Origin of Day and Night (which I raved about here)! Lenny very kindly agreed to be interviewed here on Raincity Librarian, and I’m so happy to be able to share her thoughtful answers. Read on!

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! My name is Lenny Lishchenko and I am a Toronto-based illustrator who loves telling stories, bright colours, a well-placed birch tree and overthinking what kind of chair to draw because of the implications it may have on the personality of my characters. I primarily draw pictures for books but I also do comic work as well as editorial, and advertising.

Can you tell us a bit about your career journey, and the path that brought you to your current role as an artist/illustrator/storyteller? Did you always know you were destined for a career in a creative industry?

I had a few years where I was convinced that I was going to be a lawyer, but anyone who has ever known me had a very strong idea that I would end up drawing for a living. I graduated with a degree in Illustration from Sheridan College, and I had a few months in which I lay on the floor in my room and stared at the ceiling wondering if anyone would ever pay me money to draw pictures.

A deep underlying love of narrative is what drives all of my work, sequential or single image. I love working with people to bring their stories to life, I love telling my own stories – deciding where someone lives and how their surroundings impact who they are and where they’re going. Ever since I was little I had one single career aspiration: I wanted to be the person at every dinner party who told the best stories. At this point in time, my friends still invite me to parties, and clients pay me money to draw pictures, so I feel like I’m making little me proud.

My parents have never been creatively inclined so it’s not something I grew up seeing them be a part of but our house was always filled with stories and books and I devoured them all. I’m not sure if I always knew I would be in a creative industry, I’ve always had a wide variety of interests and this really annoying drive to prove people wrong. But I sat down and made a list around the time I had to start making these kinds of decisions (I love making lists), and if I had to spend the next 40 years in the workforce, I wanted to spend it doing what I loved.

Walk us through the process of illustrating a picture book like The Origin of Day and Night. For example, how long does it typically take to complete a picture book? How much input and collaboration do you have with the author/publisher? Do you adapt your style to suit different stories/publishers?

I’ve done simple picture books in about two months start to finish, but The Origin of Day and Night took 7 months, and maybe another month after that before I got to see it in print in my own hands. It was a particularly fun one to work on because I had a lot of creative freedom with how I wanted the book to look and my art director let me run wild with some of my more risky spreads. The author ended up being super on board with the direction I decided to go in and I think that it really paid off!

It’s always interesting because you’re never quite sure how much creative freedom you end up getting when the text draft arrives in your inbox. Some writers/art directors have a very clear vision of what they want to see and will write me notes to get that across, and sometimes I just get the manuscript and get to interpret it how I think will suit it best. I tend not to have very much say in say, how the title looks or the font choice, but I work with brilliant designers so I’m never worried.

You’ve worked with Inhabit Media on several projects, how did that relationship come about?

I believe that I replied to a job posting that I found that Inhabit Media put out for new illustrators, and I was in the habit of answering every job posting that was even remotely relevant to my field. I illustrated “Families” (by: Jesse Unaapik Mike and Kerry McCluskey) while I was freelancing for them and continued to illustrate books for them ever since last year.

I currently work full time for Inhabit Media’s sister company Inhabit Education as an illustrator & graphic designer, and that 100% came around from my existing freelance relationship with Inhabit Media.

Has your artistic style/voice changed over the years, either consciously or unconsciously? Do you feel you have a specific artistic style, or do you prefer to dabble and experiment in different styles?

Absolutely! For a long time I believed that there was only one specific way to be an illustrator, and it was whatever I wasn’t doing.

I think so many young illustrators get hung up on style and feeling like they need to include consistent elements in their work or else they’re suddenly not cohesive or employable. I’ve found that I can’t get away from my “style” because it organically grew out of the way that I see the world and like to represent things. Everything I make looks like I’ve had my hands in it.

I like to not feel limited by what I’ve done before and tonally I’ve done work all over the spectrum. I’ve gotten jobs illustrating early childhood educational materials and also editorial pieces about a journalist watching their colleague get shot in the Middle East, but in the end they both looked like I drew them.

What are your preferred mediums? Do you find that different mediums allow you to express different stories, or work better with different themes or stories?

I work about 70% traditionally and 30% digitally so all my work is done with a 2B pencil and sometimes some black ink on marker paper/vellum/bristol paper. I colour all my work in Photoshop with a library of textures and fun papers that I made and scanned in. I love the freedom that working digitally gets you but I also love the unexpected marks you get when you can’t necessarily undo every stroke you do. I like to make the most of both worlds.

Working as a professional illustrator you don’t get to experiment a lot because people hire you based on your past work. That’s why personal work and keeping your practice alive with no stakes attached is so important. In another life I dream of retiring to the Tuscan countryside to become a printmaker, and I do a fair amount of scratchboard illustration that rarely makes it into my professional work.

How do you deal with rejection (as a fellow creative person, this is something I get asked a lot!)

This is such a great question! As an illustrator, especially one working freelance, you often don’t get potential clients rejecting you to your face, sometimes you send out 300 cold emails with samples of your work and are just met with resounding silence. And it’s tough! You spend hours slaving over your portfolio, it feels like you bare your soul and put it all on the line and for nothing!

The advice I still think about was from a college creative writing class I took where we had a visiting author come in and tell us that for every 10 rejection letters she got she would go out and get a bucket of fried chicken. When you reach out and yell into the world that you exist and you love what you do and you make great work (and make your contact information easy to find on your website), someone will answer. And if they don’t this week, then you’re one step closer to Rejection Chicken.

What advice would you give to aspiring illustrators?

1. Make time to draw for yourself. Illustrating for a living is a sweet deal but if you keep yourself busy with only client work, your work starts to suffer. There’s a kind of magic in the exploration and play of making work that nobody ever has to see and that only exists to make you happy. It helps you remember why you love drawing in the first place.

2. Don’t ever feel bad about what you have to do to pay rent/keep the lights on/feed yourself even if it’s not art related, even if it’s not your dream job. I worked as a graphic designer for years (still do partially!) to pay off my student loans and get myself in a place financially where I could afford to take risks and big career steps. People who are immediately successful and illustrate full time out of the gate are the exception, not the rule, and in the end you have decades ahead of you.

3. An accountant is worth every cent. Every. Cent. Especially if you’re self employed. Just trust me on this one.

A big, big thank you to Lenny for taking the time to chat with us, and be sure to check out her website, http://www.lennylishchenko.com/, and her work with Inhabit Media!