daily doodle for May 14, 2010

I have come to the end of my work related projects. Sadly, I have not spent an equal amount of time on promotion while I was busy working on those projects, so I find myself in the uncomfortable position of being ‘unemployed.’ As a freelancer, and self employed illustrator, I realize this is a common occurrence in my profession, especially for the lone artist. Many of my fellow illustrators are also bemoaning a certain lack of paying work.

In years past I would have met this dilemma with fatalism and fear. But now I just realize it is part of the ups and downs that accompany the freelance lifestyle. I know what to do. Get out there and pound the proverbial sidewalk. Which brings me to the sad state of affairs that I have not yet discovered the secret formula for what works in bringing in new clients. After working as an artist (and a freelancer) since the late 80s, one would think I had gotten this part of my profession figured out. That would be a resounding — not really.

So, it is time to create a postcard mailer. On a small bit of real estate measuring approximately 4″ x 5″ minus mailing requirement to meet postal regulations, I have to showcase my work and convince an otherwise busy art director, editor or business person that I am the exactly right artist for his or her needs. My postcard also has to stand out enough from the 100s of others also crossing the potential client’s desk that day to warrant said person to take the time to visit my web site and see more of my art and assess if my skill sets and style match the current project needs. It is a daunting task to say the least.

Not only do I need talent, skill, style and perseverance, I also need a good dollop of luck. My postcard has to arrive on a day when the person receiving it is in a receptive mood, has the need for someone with my particular style and focus and a project available for me to work on. That, my friends, is a lot of ifs.

Which brings me to the playing at pirates part. In the past I have sent out art already created, or portions of books recently published (or about to be) and this time I’ve decided that won’t do. I’ve decided I need to create a series of illustrations meant just for this promotional purpose. I spent a week or two considering my options. Said options are endless, limited only by my imagination. And as you may have noticed I have a vivid imagination.

I have several pieces I started and abandoned for whatever reasons. One of these is a pirate girl I began to develop for a friend’s blog and never got past the rough sketch stage. I don’t know if the friend’s project ever went anywhere, but I do really like the sketch and want to move it from the ‘someday I’ll finish this’ pile into the completed project pile.

Being the over-achieving artist, Type-A personality that I am, I have decided to take the original drawing and instead of completing the sketch I have, to take the concept and make it bigger and better. So instead of one lone girl pirate, there will now be a bunch of children playing pirate. With a boat. And a parrot. And maybe a treasure map or two. The postcard has morphed into a full fledged story line.

Why do I do this to myself?

My sketch book awaits! Wish me luck.

Visit this blog for the first post of a series featuring A Journey Round My Skull‘s recently-acquired collection of Soviet children’s books from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I believe searching (and viewing) as many examples of other artists’ work as possible is a great way to improve your own work.

While my own work is focused on children’s art right now, I don’t limit my viewing to the genre. I visit fantasy artists’ sites as well as studying my favorite grand masters. I am often guilty of buying “just one more” art reference book far too often.

This week, because childrensillustrators.com is, sadly, still off-line because of a malicious attack, I went out into the wilds of the World Wide Web in search of contemporary picture book artists.

I consider myself a pretty patient person and often I am willing to wait for a page to load when it’s taking a longer than average amount of time. But, I’ve got to tell you some of the sites I tried to visit were too hard to see.

Fellow illustrators, please, if you want art directors or other possible clients to view your work and hire you, make your site easy to view. If you aren’t technically inclined ask a friend or aquaintence who is to help you minimize the load time of your images. When you load your site and open it to viewing by the public, check and see if it takes too long to load. Ask people you know to go to the site and tell you honestly what they think about it. Ask them if they could see the art. Ask them if it took a long time to load. If an art director or potential client has to wait too long for an image to load or can’t figure out how to view your images, they will go on to the next illustrator’s site and forget about you.

I’d like to say this was only in isolated instances, but it was every third or fourth site. That’s a lot of artists who are minimizing their chances for paying work.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of daily daily doodles. Between the kitchen renovation, the holiday festivities and having a book art deadline looming I find myself in a place where something had to give. Since the point of daily doodles is to make sure I draw everyday, no matter what, and I am busy on “real” art for the upcoming book. The doodles have been relegated to the back burner. (Kitchen pun intended.)

I will post rather sporadically over the next couple of months as the final push for the book art is in full throttle. No matter how well I plan time in advance of my deadlines, it seems as if there is always something to throw a monkey wrench into the works. At least I am getting better at forging forward when said wrench appears to muck up the works.

I recently received a copy (free – in exchange for my feedback and editing help) of Tara Reed’s Goal Wheel for Artists. She is a friend of mine who licenses art internationally and uses her marketing know how to help other creatives get a foot in. I was able to read through her very well crafted goal setting guide and use the knowledge gleaned from it in the production of my book art. I highly recommend the e-book download to other illustrators and writers who have trouble breaking down their goals and projects into do-able bites. Thanks Tara, you totally rock!

My drafting table is growling at me so I had better go and sharpen those pencils, kneed those erasers and make magic on paper. I’ll see you when I see you. Good energy and thoughts for deep creative well springs and accomplishment are always welcome and appreciated.

I received an email from a fan the other day. She was a young artist, 9 years old, according to her message. She asked my advice on how to become a better artist. I’ve thought about it for several days and decided that more than one fledgling artist or illustrator could benefit from my answer to her. So instead of just sending her a reply, I am blogging my advice to her here.

The 5 things to do to improve your skill as an artist:

1. Draw every day.

This is number one because in my mind it is the most important. Drawing is a skill. In order to improve the skill, one needs to practice it every day. Think of musicians and athletes. They practice for hours every day. Even after they have achieved a level of success, they continue to practice. Practice is a life long commitment.

Drawing every day gives the artist time to explore new ideas, work on challenges in perspective, proportion and perception. Drawing everyday strengthens the eye-hand-brain coordination and the pathway from the brain to the hand. Contrary to popular belief, the artist’s talent lies in his or her head. The muscles between the head and the hand need to be stretched continuously in order for the ideas in the artist’s brain to appear on a blank piece of paper.

Drawing can be likened to running. A marathon runner trains a long time before running an actual marathon. It is a rare runner indeed who can decide one morning to run a marathon that afternoon and actually accomplish such a goal. Short distances are covered over a long period of time until the body and muscles are ready to pursue the miles in a marathon. Daily sketching is akin to the training sessions of the runner.

2. Draw from life

Even fantasy artists have to study life to see how things work. Physics work for a reason. A muscle is attached to a bone and joints work in certain ways. The only way an artist can learn these things is to study actual models in action. By studying people, animals and stationary objects in real life, an artist can add to his or her visual data banks. The way light acts in different settings, the way people move and interact, the way trees grow, all of this is necessary knowledge for an artist’s works to be believable. Looking at subjects in 3 dimensions is a huge bonus for all artists working in any kind of representational manner. Yes, some artists only use photographs for their reference, but when beginning a career in the arts, nothing is as good as daily life observation and recording. Photographs just can’t supply all the relevant information since they take the three dimensional and make it two dimensional. This is especially true if an artist is attempting to recreate any kind of foreshortening.

3. Study the masters

The work of master artists you admire is the best teacher you can have. My personal favorites are Michelangelo, D’Vinci, Durer, Mucha, Escher, and Rembrandt. I also have some modern day artist web sites book marked and visit their sites over and over again to study their art. When I am struggling with a new subject I have never attempted before, visiting the web sites of other artists to see how they handle a similar image often jump-starts my creative process and I can get over the hump.

In many art programs, the students are given assignments to study and recreate great works of art. This a wonderful lesson in learning technique and style. Of course, it is meant as a learning tool in developing one’s own unique style and vision. After all, the masters of the past often started out as some one’s apprentice before striking out on their own. Many masterpieces attributed to a Renaissance master are also works contributed to by his apprentices. Modern day comic book artists work in a similar manner. They do the original pencils and then hand off the sketches to inkers and colorists. Walt Disney animations had huge staffs of artists working behind the scenes to create all the cells needed to animate the feature length films.

4. Attend classes by other artists

In my early career, I took many art classes with visiting professional artists. I belonged to many different groups to get access to the workshops provided by artists from all over the country. In fact, I still take art classes every once in a while now. A different artist works in a different manner, with a different palette and a different set of tools. It is a rare class where there isn’t something I can gain from the teaching artist, even if I have been creating art as long as they have.

5. Find your own unique style and perfect it

Whether you are a commercial artist or a fine artists, if you wish to be a professional, people must be able to recognize your work as yours. Think of the list of masters I mentioned above. Even if you are not familiar with all the names, the names you recognized bring up a style of art specific to that particular artist.

This doesn’t mean you can’t change and grow as an artist. Even the masters have different periods of art in their histories. An artistic career can span decades. The work created in the beginning of a career will in all likelihood be very different than the work created in the present. What is consistent throughout each artist’s career is their signature style, their way of handling and perceiving light and subject matter. This signature style marks a work as theirs, even before the signature is affixed.

My washer has gone on the fritz. Just got off the phone with the repair man. The soonest they can get out here is tomorrow afternoon. Sometime between noon and 4. *sigh* What else can go south?

The SCBWI-MO Confluence was wonderful on Saturday. The college moved us into a new building with much bigger rooms which was nice. We had plenty of space to spread out. The only complaint I could make was that we had to eat our lunch in the lounge area instead of sitting comfortably at dining tables. However, the food was spectacular.

I got confused on the schedule and the one class I really, really wanted to attend, I missed. It was on marketing to schools and libraries, which is something I would very much like to get better at. The other sessions I attended were well taught and informative, but I get very little new out of either of the breakout sessions I attended.

The day was not a total loss, I connected with the visiting illustrator, Floyd Cooper, and he has graciously agreed to be the January interviewee. He is so funny. He kept repeating how he can’t really draw. Several of the more experienced illustrators in the room gave him grief for that. People aspire to not be able to draw as well as he can’t. LOL.

His technique is one of subtraction. He covers illustration board with a thin layer of 0il paint and lets it dry to the touch, then he takes a kneaded eraser and puts in the highlights in forms of shapes. He created a Native American face in front of us as he gave his keynote address. Truly amazing.

There was an agent and an editor there as well. The house the editor is from isn’t interested in the kind of projects I currently have on my plate, but the agent sounds perfect. I approached her after her address and asked her about author/illustrator submissions. She is interested in completed manuscripts with one or two pieces of finished art to show style. I will definitely whip my current PB into shape to submit to her.

It was nice seeing old friends again and everybody was very pleased to see how well I was doing. The last time anyone form this group saw me, I had only just gotten out of the hospital a few weeks before.

I topped the 10,000 word count mark in NaNoWriMo last night. I am only a few thousand words behind but if I have another few days like the one I had yesterday, I should be caught up by the end of the week. 15,000 is the word count suggested for today. I am just too busy with other projects to type out a total of 5,000 words in one day.

PiBoIdMo is moving along as well. My ideas are becoming more strange, but the practice of thinking about new book plots everyday is good for me.

I still have a bunch of phone calls to make and then I can settle in for a good afternoon’s drawing session. With luck, I’ll catch up on the back log of work I have there as well. I think the issue is I have so many projects with similar deadlines, I am having trouble prioritizing. Probably have to do as the Nike slogan says and just do it. Stop spinning my wheels moving from fire to fire, so to speak.

Ta!