Independent Artists, Unite!

As a Generation-Y artist, I'm going to be directing this post mostly at my generation, but this really goes for any independent artists out there. Anyone feeling dispirited, or unsure of themselves, or worrying about fitting into corporate or freelance culture, this post is for you.

You've heard it a million times, at least since 2008: we're in an economic downturn. Jobs are at a low. You graduated, or are graduating, or will graduate with a truly unfair amount of debt that you have to carry for years. You've come out into the working world, to find there's no work. It's bleak. It's depressing. It downright sucks.

But you do what the rest of us have done: you start forging your own path. While you're job-searching, trying to get a "real" job, you're taking commissions. You're doing freelance. Some of you may have decided to start your own business, because in the age of the internet, it's just that easy to get a business front up and going. You have all the contents of a business degree at your fingertips with just a click of the Googles. You don't need a storefront -- just a Shopify or a BigCartel. You have the talent. You have the tools. All you have to do is market it.

This is an age of innovation. This is an age where we are taking control of our lives and steering it in the direction we want it to go. But the process by which we get there steals the thunder from what should be a powerful move. We, especially as creatives, are plagued by the idea that we are not doing this because we're the captain of our own ship; we're doing this out of necessity, just to get by, to scrape along until "real" work comes along.

Guess what?

It is real work.

The rallying cry of the past has been to get out of the 9-5 lifeless suck of the cubicle farm to do something you really love. To stop farming out your soul to a company you don't care for, to make a living doing something you love instead. And guess what? It is highly likely right now that if you're hunting for jobs, you're not going to get your dream job; many of us would just take any job, so long as it pays. But if you love art, if you love creating, if you have the drive to make it happen, guess what? Your dream job is at your fingertips.

It won't be easy. God knows, running your own business is hard work, and it takes perseverance and it takes mistakes and it takes gumption and drive. You won't get it right the first try, and that's okay.

But what I'm really getting at is this: you undervalue what you have to sell. You, yes you. You undervalue your skills, your creativity, and your ability. You are a commodity. Treat yourself like one.

If you're like me, maybe you grew up around communities like deviantArt, where everyone is taking commissions. That's just what people do. It was not until very recently that it hit me: not everyone can do art commissions. Not everyone was doing art for money at 14. I had thought that my resume was paltry: just a long stint of freelance work, with two "real jobs," one of which being a temp job that lasted three months. But in reality, I was an entrepreneur from a young age, earning money in bits and pieces as I could find it, even when I couldn't get a job.

In reality, not many people can do what I can do -- and not many people can do what you can do, even if the internet makes it seem like you're just another drop in the ocean. Take pride in your talent and give it the status it deserves. If you're freelancing, that is a real job. It's even more of a job than a "real" job, because you have to market yourself, and work weird hours, and separating work from home can be Hell.

So what have we got? We have a generation of self-starters, building their brands on the internet. Are you freelancing design? Because there are thousands of businesses now who need it. Are you a comic artist? Because independent comics are more popular now than ever. Are you a painter? Because thousands, millions of people from all over the world can buy your art now. Are you a writer? Because getting your work out there in a consumable format has never been easier. It doesn't matter what you do: you do it, and there's a market for it. There is! There really is!

You have something to sell. You have something so uniquely you, and you can't let your perceptions of what is work and not-work change it. You need to understand that you have the power. The market doesn't hold the power, you do. Part of being a self-starter means going out there and finding your own clients. Ask yourself what kind of clients you want, then market to them.

If your style won't attract stern-faced businessmen with fancy law-firms, then ask yourself: do I even want to work with stern-faced businessmen? No? Then stop trying to turn yourself into something they'd want. (They're probably going to a design firm for their work, anyway!)

There are so many people out there looking to work with someone who understands them, and understands what they need to market themselves. There are thousands upon thousands of different desires on the internet. There is a market for your style, and it's probably a lot bigger than you think.

If you stick to who you are, with all these thousands of self-starters and home businesses, with all these thousands of art-lovers and consumers, you will find plenty of people who want to hire you. Set your rates and stick to them, and you'll get paid what you think you're worth. So really think about what you're worth. Your skills are rare, and if someone is hiring you, they want what you're selling, as is, no changes to your style. Your work is what led them to this decision. So the answer is, honestly, that you're worth a lot.

I know that you, like so many of us, are desperate for money. I can tell you that desperation sells a lot less than confidence. So be picky. Be exclusive. Market yourself like a madman and don't look back.

Be confident, truly confident, and you'll be rewarded with gratifying work and clients you enjoy working with. No one can decide who you work with or what you do but you. So don't sell yourself short!

Don't undervalue your work.

Don't undervalue your choices.

You're the captain of this ship. Now steer it.

Color Tutorials

My current lust in the drawing world is color. I'm reading everything I can get my hands on about color, color theory, and how to compose a scene with color. My colors are good, but they're really not great. I could do better, and I want to do better.

Most of the stuff I read is either below my skill level or above, but I read it anyway. (You never know what you'll learn from even the simple stuff!) So, you can imagine my delight when I find a tutorial on the exact things I needed to hear and learn to make the next big step!

Well, really, a series of tutorials, but nevertheless. Tony Cliff did a few posts about things he learned over the course of his graphic novel Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant and his submission to Flight 8. And they are wonderful.

1. Everything I Learned About Color Over 6 Months and 150 Pages: Part 1
   Topics: Thinking about value in the planning stages, the importance of value to determine silhouette (and its importance in general!), and how the color picker is lying to you.
2. Everything I Learned About Color Over 6 Months and 150 Pages: Part 2
   Topics: Texture, manipulating Photoshop brushes, and artistic confidence.
3. The Black Fountain: New Techniques, Part 1
   Topics:  Process, primarily. Thumbnails, sketching, flatting. But download that "look good" button. Great plug-in.
4. The Black Fountain: New Techniques, Part 2
   Topics: More process, manipulating Photoshop brushes for digital inking, Gurney's "gamut mapping" technique for color (holy crap), manipulating hue/saturation/brightness, double importance on value, color for a deadline.
5. The Black Fountain: New Techniques, Part 3
   Topics: Refining his experiences with the new techniques, explaining how they helped and what he'd do differently next time, and summing up the whole shebang.

If you're looking for a nice take on color, take a look at those links. Another one I've used that's a more basic primer on color is How I See Color - A Tutorial by *purplekecleon on deviantArt. It's a great little flash with lots of good examples. It also reinforces the idea that VALUE is most important, moreso than hue.

Speaking of, one of the things we learned in graphic design is 1) always design your stuff in black and white or grayscale before assigning color, and 2) once you've done color, print it in black and white to make sure the values contrast enough. If they don't contrast enough, you're doin' it wrong. Probably. (Unless bad design was your intention?)

And for a list of other tutorials I've got saved in my favorites...

1. F*cking Gradients: How Do They Work
   A nice little tutorial about integrating gradients into your color process. It's a little reminder on light and light sources, and how to keep shape in mind as you're working.
2. Understanding Your Style, Part 1 & Part 2
   This is a phenomenal tutorial just talking about how we integrate what we see and learn from into how we draw. It talks about inspirations, how to draw from life instead of cartoon, and similar things. But it doesn't say that it's bad, necessarily, either. It's very informative and a good read.
   I actually think about this tutorial a lot, since I learned to draw primarily from anime and my favorite cartoons as a kid. Picking up on where you get particular "symbols" can be very hard until you start training yourself to notice.
3. Coloring Walkthrough
   This is a tutorial for `alexds1's process for coloring The Meek. It involves research, synthesizing, utilizing Google SketchUp, and of course, color. Beautiful work, as always.
4. Horse Tutorial
   This is a hilariously written but still extremely useful tutorial on drawing horses. Horses are hard to draw, man! 
5. Collected Thoughts on Brushes
   A very nice overview of the options for photoshop brushes, and how they can be changed to make different effects. Check out toerning's paintings. Sooooo pretty! 

The Power of Social Media

I am fascinated by social media, by the way. It took me a long time to understand what the deal was. I tend to be a little slow to pick up on new things -- not because I dislike them, exactly, but because I like to watch and see how they work and how they're used before I adopt them.

So, because I'm late to the game, I'm still fascinated with the impact social media has on the internet market nowadays. The internet is a powerful tool, and we're entering a new age of independent creators dominating the successful market. (Or, at least, I think so.) And if you want to survive and thrive as an independent creator, you're going to have to be good at marketing yourself as well as your product.

Hence, social media.

Anyway. Most people I meet in real life consider social media to be a continuous stream of word-vomit, and to some extent (maybe a large extent), that's true. But if I examine my own reactions to social media, I know that watching someone else's "word-vomit" makes me feel I know the person better. It makes me more apt to look at them favorably, and to see them as a person instead of a faceless entity.

Companies can do this too, but a lot of them are, frankly, bad at it. I don't want an endless stream of advertisement in my twitter feed. If that's all you've got, I don't want to hear it. But if you have someone behind the keyboard talking to your customers, replying to comments, and making conversation, well I'm much more interested.

Case in point: @SockDreams. They do a minimal amount of advertising when there's a sale, or new products. But they also retweet their customers' comments about their socks, and often reply back to you with conversation. I feel that following them is worthwhile, because I can show my support for a small Portland-based sock company that I adore, and they don't pay me back with endless spam but instead kind words.

And from a business point of view, by getting most of their advertising through being a hub of word-of-mouth compliments and comments about their products, they're increasing the likelihood people will buy from them. It's one thing for a company to say, "We have awesome socks, come buy them!" And a completely different thing for a customer to say, without prompting, "These socks are awesome and I'm glad I bought them!" And, of course, the fact that it's on something as informal as Twitter, rather than a 'testimonials' page or something, helps make it feel more valid. SockDreams didn't manufacture these comments; they just manufacture a good product. The rest seemingly takes care of itself.

But! That's not actually why I started writing this post. Actually what prompted this post is a series of incidents lately with theft, and how Twitter brings the smackdown in a very real world way. You want to know the real power of social media? Observe:

1. A few months ago, Jess Fink (@jessfink) had her designs stolen (again) by Todd Goldman of David & Goliath, a t-shirt company with notoriously cute and quirky designs. In addition, someone on Etsy had traced her designs and was selling shirts on Etsy, while flagrantly acknowledging her theft. Through the power of twitter, the Etsy shop was taken down, and legal action is being brought against D&G. While this is not a particularly mind-blowing case, it's still fresh in my mind, because I loved D&G tees. But, thanks to this, I'll never be buying them again.

2. Cut to yesterday, when holy crap, Twitter exploded over Urban Outfitters thieving an independent creator's designs.

Huffington Post and Boing Boing picked it up. It spread on Twitter like wildfire. My tweets were retweeted hundreds of times. Twitter users alerted me that former “fans” were blowing up the Urban Outfitters Facebook page.

Messages of support for Stevie and her jewelry poured in. Lots of people seemed outraged that they weren’t being sued. Many people seemed downright shocked and hadn’t heard of their previous douchebaggery in ripping off indie artists.

As a result, the necklaces were pulled from stores and UO is suffering a bad PR backlash. If you want an example of how not to handle social media as a company, read what UO did (or didn't do) in that article. You have to put out fires fast nowadays.

3. Still not real-world enough for you? Linked in the comments for that article was an instance of someone using Twitter to get their stolen bike back.

Boulder was full of helpful information, so by the time I went to the police station @WendiTV told me he was known as Dready Dave, @eatullis thought she had seen him on the bike path with a different bike, @bikestohikes had seen him ON my bike at Baseline Liquor, @CDR16 let me know he had seen him multiple times on Pearl St. previously and @thecupboulder spotted him on the bike path under the bridge on 9th.

In a six hour window, Ellis's social network single-handedly identified the culprit and tracked him down. Ellis and company caught up with the thief, flagged down a police officer, and ... she has her bike back!

These instances may not be typical. But you can't tell me that it's not impressive. The internet is providing ways for "the little people" to be heard and speak with a distinctive and powerful voice against Big Companies. The thing is, Big Companies could get in on this too, if they could just do it right. But until their marketing and PR execs are from Generation X/Y, I think they're sinking in a mire.

While the huge, unwieldy beasts of Big Companies trundle along, in my opinion, the fleeter-footed Independent Creators will overtake them and, in the long run, maybe even completely surpass them -- in large part because of social media.

Time is of the Essence

So, it's late. I should be asleep but I had to drink caffeine for my headache so I'm still awake. And you know when's the best time to write a blog post? When you're blearily incoherent thanks to sleep dep! Hooray!

Mostly, I've been thinking about art a lot lately. I'm accumulating everything I need to apply for Pixar, but it's slow going. Do you know how hard it is to write a comic-ized cover letter? It's like as hard as a cover letter times two. But I'll figure it out and I'll knock it out of the park when I do, because that's just what I do. Take that, self-doubting naggery!

I have now improved enough that I'm looking back at some sketches I thought were amazing less than a year ago and now wrinkling my nose and going, dear lord, get that girl some lessons! That's a pretty cool feeling. But then, that's also what I wrote about in my last post, so I don't think it needs another repeat.

No, instead, I think I'm going to talk about time management.

One of the biggest problem that faces freelancers is time management, you know. Especially when you don't have a separate office to go to, delineating between home and work can be very difficult. Or even non-existent. Doubly so if you work in the comics industry, because comics take a lot of time, work, and effort, and I know most comic artists work day and night, seven days a week, sometimes without sleep. Because we're crazy people! And if you work in comics you have to love what you do, or else...well, you're never gonna make it, kid! It's grueling work. I can't imagine doing it if you don't love it. Eep!

But time management! Right, let's get back to that.

So, with no clear line between on- and off-work hours, being a slave to The Deadline rather than The Workday, and silly things like 'remembering to eat' and 'sleep? what's that?', it can be difficult to keep your time managed. Now, recently, I learned that the very hard way. I worked myself way too hard for too long and wound up making myself sick. After working a few 13-hour break-free days in a row, you know, it kind of takes a toll.

Part of the problem is I love what I do so damn much that, left unchecked, I will happily run myself into the ground if I get to keep drawing. The other problem is that I am absolutely dedicated to meeting my deadlines, and if I forget I already have too many and take on another freaking project, I will sometimesusually pick deadlines over health. This is obviously a problem!

So, I spent my enforced week-long vacation figuring out how to better organize my work day and my work flow so this doesn't happen again. First, I laid down a list of goals:

1. Get at least 2 pages done per week; optimal: 3 (one for buffer)
2. Make sure there's time to do non-page work like thumbnails, or advertising
3. Take breaks
4. Work "normal people" hours (i.e. try to stick to around 8 hours a day -- not 14)

I already work mostly on a schedule, getting up at the same time and starting work at roughly the same time, so that wasn't a problem. I went and asked for advice from people, and was told to aim for a 40 hour work week, and take breaks every two hours.

First off, the breaks every two hours thing did not work well for me. It broke up my creative flow and made it hard to get started again. However, I've discovered a nice little schedule that works well:

1. Try to stick to 40 hours a week.
2. Alternate inking days and coloring days.
3. Take breaks whenever you reach the end of a "stage" or when it's creatively appropriate to put the pen down. Do not skimp on this, do not forge ahead anyways, do not pass go and collect $200.
4. When you've reached 8 hours, you're done for the day. No ifs, ands, or buts.
5. Take at least one day completely off a week. An additional day must be at least partially off.

By alternating inking days and coloring days, I'm splitting the bulk between two days, which should give me about 6 hour days of just working on WoBG. It's also good because I can get at least half a page done for the buffer each week; more if I choose to work six days a week. Plus, the additional hours after inking/coloring is done can be used for those extra tasks of thumbnailing, and so on and so forth.

So far, this has worked beautifully. I'm feeling a lot less harried, and a lot less burnt out. Today, I got to leisurely map out and ink an old secretary roll-top bureau for page 21 without feeling pressured, because I don't feel like I have to finish a page a day. (And thank goodness because these pages are monstrously time-consuming.)

Also, it bears mentioning that we decided to drop the schedule back from twice a week to once a week for this month, while I build up a buffer. I expected criticism for this decision -- lord knows I've heard enough complaining about this in the past -- but actually we got some very supportive comments for it. We have the best readers!

Anyway, that's my thoughts on time management. Have you guys implemented any tips and tricks for managing your time? Freelancing can be so crazy!

On Improvement

Insert self-indulgent post here!

I’m at a point in my life where I’m recognizing how quickly I’m improving. Granted, I’m working really hard at it. Most days, I draw for hours and hours on end, whether that’s the 10-14 hours I tend to spend working on Walking on Broken Glass, or whether I’m working on some other Broken Glass related thing like prints or pencils or whatnot, or whether I’m just working on sketches. This past week, I found a listing for a sketch artist opening at Pixar and at first I felt I was woefully inadequate for the position because I am an artist and that is what artists do. But as I researched and got some helpful links from my Dad, I found I actually might have a little bit of a shot at this. Which is, frankly, brain-exploding.

I have been working really hard to improve lately. I’ve had my eye towards hands and feet especially; I know where my sticking points are, and they’re getting better with every attempt I do. I’m gaining more and more understanding of perspective and how to make it work for me. I’m working and I’m working and I’m working, and good god it’s showing. I can see my improvement. I can look at something I did not two months ago and wrinkle my nose and go ‘ugh!’ because I’ve improved so much. And really, all it has been is observation, observation, observation, and application.

For hands, I’ve been looking at, well, hands. The bone structure of the hand, the way the thumb moves, where the nails are located on the fingers, how knuckles are shaped. But I’ve also been watching a lot of animated movies of the mostly Disney persuasion to see how they do hands. Some of them aren’t very helpful but oh my god, I am in loooove with the hands in Atlantis: The Lost Empire and The Emperor’s New Groove. I love the way they stylized them. I know well enough not to learn to draw something from another artist’s interpretation — at least not as my BE ALL AND END ALL REFERENCE for how this thing is drawn — but it is really helpful to see another artist’s observations and how they translated that into simplification. For example, the fingernails in Atlantis are triangles, and that was an interesting observation on the shape of fingernails for me. It led me to look at the shape of fingernails more closely to see what led to that stylization.

Anyways.

I’m rambling of course. It’s late! Don’t mind me. What brought this on is I’m reading Demo, by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, and I am frankly blown away by the inking and the style and frankly everything. But as I was marveling at they way they drew feet in one panel, it hit me:

I could do that.

It would not take much improvement for me to get to the point where I could be this good. It would not take much at all to get to this level of drawing. (Inking, now, that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. I’m going to be drinking in everything they did for inks in this book because it’s gorgeous.) That realization was really crazy. For someone who’s always felt they were behind the curve, who’s always felt they were looking up at everyone else, that really struck me: I can do that.

And thus, I was in awe.

I guess drawing 14 hours every day has its benefits. :D