There are plenty of resources out there about how to put a price tag on our work. Some metric is lying around out there that perfectly calculates time spent on a project, education and training, taxes (eek!), and just good old fashioned supply and demand (although the truth is, as illustrators, we all offer something completely unique that cannot be imitated, right? Well, at least that’s the life-long goal)
But that’s not the question I’m asking.
I want something a little more intangible, but a lot more valuable. I want something that I will live off of the rest of my life (that’s not imprinted with past presidents) I want learn something about myself and about my craft. I want to be charged creatively, and desire to go to work each day. I want to WANT to wake up early and stay up late getting it right. I want inspiration and challenge. I want to dive into the deeper recesses of myself and find a way to put a little part of my heart on to that paper that will be here (hopefully) long after I’m gone.
Is that too much to ask of a client? Of course. But it is not too much to ask of myself.
Whatever the task, it is up to us as illustrators to discover something new about ourselves and our work, our process, our creative energy. It is up to us to generate or seek out the source of inspiration for our projects.What can I learn from this experience? How can I grow as an artist? What would make this project creatively challenging for me? How can I learn to increase quality and decrease time spent, therefore being more EFFICIENT? When do I work best? When should I stop and rest? The path to this creative balance or nirvana, is loaded with questions. Questions that need to be explored, not necessarily answered once- but over and over again.
Promo note: visit Diandra Mae fellow SCBWI member and illustrator. Her blog hosts “Sweet Squares”, a daily practice activity challenge similar to P3. I love it!
Materials, from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
“The materials of art, like the thumbnail sketch, seduce us with their potential. The texture of the paper, the smell of the paint, the weight of the stone – all cast hints and innuendoes, beckoning our fantasies…But where materials have potential, they also have limits. Ink wants to flow, but not across just any surface; clay wants to hold shape, but not just any shape. And in any case, without your active participation their potential remains just that – potential…What counts, in making art, is the actual fit between the contents of your head and the qualities of your materials.”
This is the view from my kitchen window. I love seeing only the tops of houses. It was my favorite thing about city living too – dwelling a few floors up, no ground in sight, only rooftops, windows and sky. like being in your own almost weightless world.
The trim around my window is white (Dover White, by Sherwin Williams to be exact) yet during daylight, it fades into charcoal shadow. My brain knows that it is still white, but my eyes challenge me to see the true relative color against the sunlit vista. I had to keep convincing myself to let my eyes lead, to push back against my head (like the schoolyard bully it can be) and go back for more pigment. Sometimes you just have to ask your brain politely to leave.
The Petite Painting Project travelled last week. For seven days I was out of my usual creative space with two small children in tow. It was almost next to impossible, but I did it. The posting slowed, but I kept coming back to the paper each day and here’s what I learned. If I don’t do this in the morning hours, the work suffers. I loose my enthusiasm, energy and desire to be creative as the day wears on. Morning has always been a time of inspiration for me. I remember waking up as a child giddy with excitement about the acres of time that lay before me with endless possibilities of how to spend it.
At the SCBWI conference this summer, Tony DiTerlizzi spoke about reaching back into our past to unearth what inspired us when we were children. What made 10 year old Alice get up early to play? What charged child Alice into creative action? In order to go forward, I have to go backward – back to the child self and rediscover that which makes me truly uniquely me. As my skills develop and my ability allows me to achieve success, I also become detached from that child who is the key to making it all work in the first place. Skill can be developed to near perfection, but if the youthful magic is lost, then what good is all the training?
So for me, P3 must happen in the morning, when I am excited about the possibilities. One of my favorite books is Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s a tiny thin book packed with lessons and observations about how art gets made. In one passage, the authors discuss how painting a picture is an act of diminishing possibilities. A blank canvas holds the most opportunity. Anything can happen, and the moment that the first stroke is made, then thousands of options immediately are wiped out. Each successive stroke therefore eliminates possibility until the end, where the final stroke can exist in no other realm except within that painting. I suppose that is why joy cometh in the morning, why babies hold our dreams, and why wonder lies at the beginning of an uncertain journey.
Last weekend, my grandmother was finally put to rest. The curtain was closed on her life and we all gathered and dwelled for a few days in the twilight of living things. Her home still holds picture frames and ticking clocks, china plates carefully selected, toys for grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her perfume, her pillow. I dream she is at the beginning of a new an uncertain journey where possibilities are endless.
I have a new favorite book: Still Life with Oysters and Lemonby Mark Doty. Saying that this is my favorite book right now does not do justice to the experience I’ve had with this book, particularly at the timing of when I read it, which happened to be last weekend. Isn’t that a large part of what makes a book so meaningful to us – the timing they enter our lives? Although I just recently read this book, it actually came to me almost a year earlier. In the fall of 2011, I attended the SCBWI Carolinas conference and met illustrator David Diaz, who was guest faculty providing intensives and portfolio reviews. In the midst of discussing my portfolio, he told me about a mentorship program that had recently been established at the SCBWI national conferences, and graciously invited me and fellow SCBWI Carolinas member and ARA, Bonnie Adamson, to join them for a weekend intensive the following month in his hometown of Carlsbad, California (which I might add -like most places in California- is full of beauty, to this east coast native) My favorite question is “What was the last book you read?” So I asked this of David, and he handed me Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. On the plane trip home I started the first few pages and quickly realized that this little book’s size was deceiving. It was intense and required more from me than I had after a weekend of non-stop discussion on the illustration and art-making process. So when I returned home, I placed it on the bedside dresser drawer with the mental “to read next” note. There it remained for two and a half seasons.
Fast forward to this summer: While packing to attend the SCBWI National Conference in LA, and it occurred to me that this book still sat in the drawer. It of course should rightfully be returned it to its owner, whom I would be seeing at the event. Ashamed about neglecting my homework, I gave myself one last task: READ THIS ON THE PLANE. So while I began this little book out of a mixture of obligation, guilt, but also the genuine desire to get my head into a place of reflective preparedness for the weekend, Doty’s prose wrapped itself around me I received every drop like a warm sponge. What begins as a moment in a museum, where the author is captivated by a particular painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem (Still Life with Oysters and Lemon) becomes a philosophical journey into the intimacy we share with objects, the permanence and impermanence of earthly pleasures. By exploring the dutch masters of still life painting, Doty captures the essence of why we are drawn to still life. At one point he refers on the painters love affair with light – and ultimately, that all painting starts with love. That stuck with me, particularly in light of the many notes I heard at the conference that weekend.
There was much talk of love inside of our work, whether that be as a writer or an illustrator. EB Lewis told us to bring to the table ourselves – our own souls and experiences, what we LOVE. Draw what you love and what you know. During his breakout session, he offered a short documentary by National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones, in which the prevailing mesaage was about how to recognize the beauty around us. The extraordinary lives in the ordinary. “By celebrating what is right with the world, we are given the energy to fix what is wrong.” Author Ruta Sepetys asked us, “What are you willing to give in order to create? What are you longing for? What do you hide?” If we are bold enough to lay bare our broken selves, then “the wind will blow through our hollow places, and someday may cool and heal a reader.” So much courage is needed to expose love and fear in order to create, but without, I’m not sure we can be successful in connecting with our listeners, our viewers. As the final keynote speaker, Gary Schmidt instilled in us this most important lesson: You will never learn to love art well until you learn to love what art mirrors better….the world. Love the world.
While travelling last weekend, I received the call that my grandmother had died. What remains?
Permanence. Impermanence. Love and objects.
It is really hard to have patience when trying to capture foliage. There so much out there with such variety of distinct personalities that if that is the only subject you focused on, you would have enough work to tackle over the course of multiple lifetimes.
I didn’t really have the patience this morning with it, but I showed up. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow…
The prompt was the first paragraph of Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland which I absolutely adored tackling. A part of me wanted to make it classic and part of me wanted to see a modern Alice. So after wrestling with it a few weeks, I decided to do both: Illustrate in a classic style, but have the actual era be present day.
For the composition, and this was really the fun part, my mind kept being seduced by the magic of a pop-up book, 2D and 3D intertwined. When I worked on the piece I actually worked in three separate planes: rabbit, Alice, and the sister (do we ever even learn her name? I can’t remember….must consult Carroll again) and the city line. I had all these figures on separate sheets of paper that I moved around and taped together. Even once I scanned in each “plane”, they were moved around and resized a bit. The whole process was a time-consuming mess and I didn’t know exactly what it would result in, but in the end, it all came together and most importantly I had a blast playing with it.
Ok, before I go any further I must step back a bit and talk about process. My process came about due to necessity rather than by an artistic decision. I was asked to illustrate a book while I was in the midst of moving. And I had a two year old. So I really didn’t want to dive into alot of materials that would be smelly, messy, and potentially eaten or destroyed by curious little hands. Not to mention there was little living space to provide for any fancy studio set-up, and the living space I did have was slowly being taken up my moving boxes.
So I started looking into how the computer could work for me. It seemed like the best solution to my circumstance. It’s clean. There’s no long set-up time. I can leave a file open and come and go all day, working for five minutes at a time if need be, in the middle of mommy-hood duties. I contemplated over using the computer for the work. The purist that I am kept accusing me of cheating. But I came to realize that the final product is a digital file anyway. This is not art that will hang in a gallery or on someone’s walls. It is MEANT to be viewed in reproduction, as essentially a digital image. This way, I actually have more control over the final product, instead of sending off priceless hours of original work, then hoping the production photographer/scanner will do justice to the colors. I still agonize over color, but that’s another story.
I came across a wonderful find: “Illustrations with Photoshop: A Designer’s Notebook” published by O’Reilly Media. Documented by fantastic collection of illustrators, this compilation of journals was my answer (and still is). I have adopted (and adapted somewhat) the technique used by Nicolas Fructus. You can find his journal of the process in the book on page 39, I’ll give you my version here. To be continued….
