Gran

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My grandfather had a small stroke last week and now one of his ankles is paralyzed. After a depressing day or two, he got a splint and is, by all accounts, quite happily mobile again. Gran was a doctor and has always looked after himself quite well —  a brisk walk each day after lunch, a balanced diet, all his shots, quitting smoking at 80, etc. but I think genetics are primarily responsible for his living to this ripe age of 96. His sister, Shula, is still alive too, despite a several-pack-a-day habit.
Gran more or less retired when he was around seventy and has filled the last quarter of his life by writing every day. He writes stories, essays, observations, and his memoir (three times). He writes so much, in fact, that he has worn out a half dozen word processors (he’s not a computer man) and produced enormous stacks of work, many of which he has hand-bound with shirt cardboard and wrapping paper.
For most of his life, Gran certainly never would have called himself ‘a writer’. He was a doctor — he got his degree in Germany in the early ’30’s, then, when Jews weren’t allowed to practice medicine under Hitler, he went to Rome and took his degree all over again; then he fled to India where he and my grandmother had a practice in what became Pakistan for 35 years or so, and finally moved onto his current home in Jerusalem. He and my grandmother published a book on diet in the late 1940s but I have never heard that he did anything but work at medicine until he retired. Still, his passion for writing seems like something that must have alway been burning deep inside him. As soon as he earned the luxury of spare time, he didn’t head for the golf course or the local saloon. He started to write. Early in the morning and late at night, his fingers clattered over the keys, and the piles of paper began to stack up.
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I tend to think of 9/11 as this enormously defining moment, one that has made me reconsider the possibility of a long life. Seeing the Twin Towers collapsing a mile from my home flicked some switch deep within. Ever since, like many Americans, I have assumed that life suddenly became a lot more finite.
Gran lived through 9/11. He also survived the Flu epidemic and World War I. He lived through the Holocaust (but many of his relatives didn’t). He survived 6 years in a British internment camp where he and my grandmother, mother and uncle were incarcerated because they were of German origin. He survived the Bangladesh War which split his adopted country. He endured the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, just to the west. He lived though Yom Kippur War in a bomb shelter. He made it through the Gulf Wars when Scud missiles were aimed at his home; his gas mask is still in the coat closet. He survived the endless Palestine-Israel conflict – the barbed wire and barriers are visible from his living room window. He survived the death of his wife after more than a half century of marriage and partnership. And despite all of that, he is still here, in his walker and splint, keys still clattering.
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How long will your life last? Have you got seventy five years left? Or a day? So what are you waiting for? When will you allow yourself to be creative, to be the person you have always wanted to be? Can you overcome the trauma of the news and have faith in the future? Can you make things not to be famous (Gran has no books on the bestseller list) or rich (Gran’s writings haven’t earned a shekel) or influential (Gran has had a half dozen readers at most) but just because you must? When are your keys going to start clattering?

Advertising and Its Discontents – Part II: Charity

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unravel.jpg

I like nice. I like sweet. But even more I like raw. I like real. And Ilove Charity Larrison. She and I have been corresponding for a couple of years ago and she always cracks me up and take my breath away with her honesty. Charity’s story is pretty different from Trevor’s and it is far from resolved. I won’t say much more in the way of introduction but to say, Charity is the real thing. We can all learn a lot from her bravery, creativity and independence.

The Fundamental Distraction by Charity Larrison


At 18, the idea of going to art school, being a real artist, whatever, you know – seemed basically useless. My family was poor – college was not even an option really. And college for something as abstract as “being an artist” – ha ha. I might as well not even think about it.
I remember spending my whole senior year of high school in a corner of the art room working on paintings - buying extra time here and there doing the whole fluttery-eyelashes thing, “Oh come on, *please* Mister Whatever Stupid Teacher - I finished the assignment in five minutes! Can't I *please* go down to Miss McKannicks' for the rest of the period?? - i'm working on A GREAT PAINTING!”
So like any good comic book loving skateboard punk rocker with no way out of small town America hell – I joined the army.

I remember when I was in basic training my drill sergeant secretly pulling me over to the side and saying: “ONUSKA, take these markers and these flags up to the latrine and draw E-328 Predator faces on them so I can give them as prizes at the end to the other drill's. If you get caught you're in trouble, so don't get caught!”
And then there was the Sunday afternoon when I was in advanced training, learning my 68G10 - Aircraft Structure Repair crap; I was walking through the platoon area on my way to the smoking table when I was accosted by my Drill Sergeant to report for detail to the enlisted club, where I ended up spending the rest of the summer assisting his wife painting a mural of a bunch of Blackhawk helicopters landing on the wall in front of the dance floor.
She yelled at me one day: “YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!” Then it was a few really a lot louder sentences in Korean that I am still glad that I couldn't understand & I remember shrugging my shoulders at her and saying: Don't worry, Sun, I have it all worked out.

I got married. We had fun for a while. I got pregnant. He got kicked out of the service. I decided to opt out and follow him home. Our marriage didn’t survive the strain. I packed my baby and what belongings I could fit into his gold Fiero (dear god) and never looked back. I was twenty. Worked and worked and worked. Lots of crap jobs. Night shifts at the convenience store. Short order cook. Bank teller.
I remember it is two am and I am standing under fluorescent lights in an all night convenience store slicing endless little piles of lunch meat, passing the time wondering who it was that got to have the job where you made all the dumb signs. I would be good at that job.
I remember hanging out at my teller station when I worked at the bank, copying pictures out of comic books every moment of time where there were not incredibly crabby people in front of my face blaming me for all their money problems.
I remember lucking into a seasonal civil service gig with Pennsylvania state parks. Where I got to take care of the computers. Burning another boring afternoon clerking it in the office, doodling on post-its when Kevin, the Assistant Boss Park Ranger dropped a stack of instructions in front of me and said: “Larrison: if you can figure out how to network all our computers and make it work, you can have the internet. (THE INTERNET!!!! FINALLY!!!)

I decided I needed to cave in and try to go to college. To get out and get something better. Thinking to maybe get some kind of IT certificate, as I was so swell at computers and all. Looked it up on the Internet. Looked halfheartedly at stuff, then saw it. The graphic design program. You know: the “oh, that’s what i’m supposed to be doing” moment. (omg – like art school! But like – you could actually GET A JOB) (try not to cry laughing at me :D) anyway – once i saw it, it was too late. I had to do it. So i did. It was insanity. I worked five million jobs and went to school and somehow held everything together with just, pure will. (because seriously, this was the stupidest gamble of all time WHAT ARE YOU THINKING etc.)
See – I loved graphic design. I loved it more than anything in the whole universe. There was nothing like it to me. I knew how to make the pages talk. Then i learned how to make the pages sing. I made pretend magazines and taught myself how to make web pages, and I demanded that i get a REAL internship at a REAL place. Because even though i was just some jackass with an Associates’ degree from a tech school – that didn’t make me not THE BEST. (quit laughing :D)

Anyway, i got my internship. They hired me right out of school. Their art director moved to Atlanta, and I got his job. I was never, ever, ever, so miserable in my entire life than how miserable i was for those six months. I remember my favorite part of the day was whenever I could go down and sit in the restroom just so that I could spend five or ten minutes not having to be in the same room with those people. I mean, holy shit – these guys were some serious assholes. I was so depressed. I mean this? This is what graphic design is for? Lying? And lying and lying forever? GAH. And I’d spent so much of myself learning and it felt like, all for nothing.
I lasted about six months till they fired my ass. I remember dancing up the street Fred Astaire style the afternoon they fired me. Sure it sucked and I was doomed, but lunchmeat at two am was better than that crap.
Not to be thwarted, once i finished celebrating being fired from the ninth circle of hell, I threw my resume up on monster.com and got a call. Some company needed someone who could use Photoshop. Okay. I can do that. Went. Interviewed. They ended up hiring me on the spot. Was a small engineering company. Tired of getting raked over the coals from the ad agency that was doing all their stuff previously, they wanted just someone who could use Photoshop to fix some images for them.
I was all like, well, you know, i can do everything those bastards were doing for you, except better, and cheaper. So they hired me and gave me a million raises and built me a giant office and bought me every toy I asked for. It was fantastic for about a year. I made everything for them from out of nothing. I was like a great hero, rescuing my company from the tyranny of the great evil of advertising agencies.
I suppose you see what’s coming by now. I mean, there’s only so much you can do. After a while my job started to consist of just updating and tweaking and pressing buttons. I joke that it is my George Jetson job. I just rush in push a button then put my feet up on the desk. Which everyone says is so great. Which I suppose it is, but what happens if you are crazy and actually LIKE to work, but have no work to do? It sucks. But you can’t leave your great job when you are the sole support of your tiny family. You gotta just suck it up and go to work.
So, I sit in my giant office in the middle of nowhere America and spend my days floating around the great now of the Internet. I don’t know that I had a plan really when I started out. I mean, I just did the things I already liked to do. I followed comics websites and comics artists and followed their advice about how to learn how to draw, and i just kept trying to learn how to draw. Because that’s what I wanted more than anything. To learn how to draw for real. So i could draw comic books. For real. So i just kept drawing. I made myself websites to put my drawings on, cause that kind of made it feel like an activity. I made horrible comic books. I made friends and enemies.
I have some friends who are writers, they asked me to draw their stories, so I did. Because I love them, and I love that they write stories, and I love making words into pictures, and the challenge of making the pages read and flow. Figuring out just the right thing to draw to make the story move the best way. It’s the funnest game ever. It makes me work hard. I could do it till the end of the universe.
And slowly I started to learn how to learn.
It’s funny about learning. It’s never what you expect. I am starting for the first time ever, to actually get the hang of it, and make some things that are kind of cool and that i really love. I am starting to learn how to see the world, and my heart is constantly in like this odd vice of joy. I want to draw everything all of the time. But time is precious – which things to spend the time on? I want to draw that tree – but really shouldn’t I be working on something serious? I mean, that is the kind of thing I have been thinking to myself lately.
See – honestly, I hate my job. It’s awful. I am all by myself all the time. There is no one to talk to ever, except the dumb internet, and I want out. Having basically one client only for the past four years, my portfolio is utter crap. And, Jesus, I don’t want to be a graphic designer anymore anyway. I want to draw. But how do you make a living from drawing? How do you make a living from drawing without starting to hate drawing, is the main thing i think. I have been trying to figure it out. Trying to figure out what way to push so that I can still love it, and still get out of here.
So I have been trying to remember why I started this. Why I am here. What did I want when I began? To maybe find some kind of clue that will help me figure out what to do. What is important? Why do i do all these things that I don’t actually care about anymore when I would really rather be out drawing trees?

These days I just wake up every day and do what I have to do to buy the extra time down miss mckannicks' to work on the paintings. And think it is pretty awesome that I get to stay here this time and don't have to go to the Army again, because that sucked.

Advertising and Its Discontents – Part I

dannygregoryLeave a comment

adnotes.gif Above: Notes taken during a really important meeting I no longer remember.


One of the chief obstacles many creative people face is how to cope with the intersection between our creative and our professional lives. Is drawing, painting, photography, music, whittling, just a hobby? Or are we serious about it and wiling to throw ourselves over the cliff’s edge and base our livelihood up on it? Anxiety over this issue is what derails a lot of us when we are young. Do we go to art school or a “real” college? Do we spend the rest of our lives in a split-level ranch or a garret? Do we break our parents’ hearts or become accountants?
Like most things in life, it’s not that black and white. People who make money doing creative things usually reap a varied harvest. It’s never 9 to 5 and the paychecks are rarely steady but there are more and more ways to sell your creative products. It’s not about getting your slides accepted at a New York gallery. And your patrons may be people just like you, not just investment bankers looking for investable art. For example, the internet means you can show and sell posters of your work and never leave the farm. You can sell drawings and jewelry and t-shirts and greeting cards and zillions of things.
And most importantly, you can call yourself an artist, regardless of how much money you make or how many pieces you sell.
I make a smallish percentage of my living from my personal work. I write books, I write articles, I do illustrations, but the lions’ share of my income is from my job in a company, working for the Man. I am pretty comfortable with this arrangement. It means I don’t feel desperate, I do the projects I want to do, and the extra money keeps me in 24 karat fountain pens and hand-bound unborn-calf-velllum sketchbooks.
Recently, I asked two successful illustrator to share some of the details of their lives, particularly to explain this issue of commitment and financial survival. First, Penelope Dullaghan, whom you may know as the originator of Illustration Friday. She took the leap from advertising into full-time illustration a Notes from a really important meeting I no longer remember.
A few years ago, I temporarily detached from the ad teat. It had been a good run. Ad agencies had provided a good steady income, kept my family health-insured, taken me on some all expense-paid junkets to interesting places. But the experience has often been depleting, humiliating, demoralizing, and I had to see what it was like it cut loose. Eventually I got sucked back in but I still question the wisdom of succumbing.

I’m not alone in wondering. Most advertising creatives would like to break free. A few brave ones do. A couple of weeks ago, I asked some pals who had jumped ship to tell me what drove them to do it, how they did it, and how they feel in retrospect. I was going to gang them together in a single post but when the first one arrived, from Trevor Romain, it was so good, I had to get it to you right away.

Have you had a similar or completely different experience? Please let me know, either by posting a comment below or by writing me a longer description. And stay tuned for more in this series.

The Very Moment by Trevor Romain

I’ll never forget that day.

It was the morning after I had pulled an all-nighter creating an advertising campaign for a client. The campaign was a good one. I felt great about it. With a number of Clio awards and dozens of Addy and One Show awards under my belt I felt confident that the client would love the ideas we were presenting.

The cigar-chomping, excessively-sweating client – who I created the campaign for – was reviewing the work. He was looking over the ad campaign with disdain.

He said. “This is bad. I hate it. Why don’t you just take the logo and fill the page with the entire thing? Now that would be branding.”

My heart sank. Then I felt anger. Extreme anger. Not at the client, but at myself. I remembered a promise I had made to myself twenty years before. A promise I had not kept.

It happened when I was in the army in South Africa. I was walking through a field hospital filled with kids from small rural villages who had been brought to a clinic for treatment from the army medical corps. The conditions were abysmal. There were almost six kids per bed, it was nauseatingly hot and there were flies everywhere, especially around the corners of the children’s eyes and mouths.

As I was walked down the center aisle I caught sight of a little boy who was about five years old sitting on the edge of one of the hospital beds. I looked into his huge brown eyes as I walked by and then noticed with shock that he had no legs. Instead I saw dirty bandages wrapped around two stumps. The boy had lost his legs in a landmine accident on the Angolan border.

As I walked by, the little boy put up his hands and said “Sir, can you please hold me.”

I will never forget the haunting look of sadness in his eyes. Huge tears rolled slowly down his cheeks and dropped to the floor, their significance lost in the dust and grime of war.

The Sergeant Major, who was walking alongside me, grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the child.

“Romain,” he grunted. “Leave him alone. Don’t get emotionally involved. We’re here for security, not child-care.”

As the Sergeant Major pulled me away the little boy, in a broken chocked-up whisper, spoke again. His voice tugged at me from behind.

“Sir, please, please can you just hold me?”

Something happened to me that moment that I will never forget. My life changed instantly. It felt like a hand came out of the sky, reached inside me, and flipped a switch that turned on my soul.

I pushed the Sergeant Major’s hand away, turned, walked back and picked up the little boy. I have never been held so tightly in my life. His trembling little body clung to me for all it was worth.

He put his head against my chest and he began to cry. His tears ran down my neck and inside my shirt. I held that little boy with my arms, my heart and my soul and every ounce of compassion in my being. I never wanted to let him go, ever.

At that second I promised myself that I would never waste a second of my valuable life. That I would use my creative talents to change the world for children.

But I didn’t.

I went into advertising because it was safe and the money was good and everyone told me that it was almost impossible to make a living writing and illustrating children’s books.

I believed them.

I got sucked into the advertising vortex. I allowed client after client put my work down, destroy my exciting ideas and turn me into a cynic, who spent every day, using my talents to convince consumers to buy things they didn’t need.

The inner explosion had been building for months. The cigar-chomping client wasn’t the reason I quit that day. He just lit the fuse.

My wife and I discussed the situation and both decided that I HAD to follow my dream.

I woke up the next day, sat in front of my yellow pad and started my new job as an un-published children’s author and illustrator.

Although getting started was difficult and sometimes frustrating, the sheer passion and joy of doing what I love was there. And it still is. I have been hungry, rejected, under-appreciated and often ignored but I LOVE what I do. I have been writing full time for ten years now and I am one of the happiest people I have ever met.

During my journey, after every book rejection I received, I heard the little boys voice in my head saying, “Sir, please can you just hold me.

And in my heart and soul I did.

And I still do.

I now have 30 books in print with over one million copies in circulation in twelve different languages.

And I’m not done yet. I still hear the little boy’s voice.couple of years ago and I remember how suspenseful but ultimately very satisfying the whole process was for her.
Second is Torontian Alana Machnicki. I like her drawings a lot and am inspired by the broad range of ways she applies them. I have learned a lot from both their stories. I hope you find them useful too.

Penelope Dullaghan

I think that leading a creative life is both rewarding and really really hard. It’s not just creative painting and being messy all the time. It is a real business, like any other. (Well, maybe not like any other. I think this is way more fun.)

To manage a creative life, I think first and foremost you need to be a good planner. You are not guaranteed a paycheck or steady income, so sometimes it gets really thin and you have to adjust accordingly. If you have a bad month, you better have some money left over from a good month to float through it. The people who work at the phone company and the power company have steady jobs and will not understand if you tell them you’ve had a bad month. 🙂 So you need to budget!

But planning goes beyond financial. Time is also yours to plan. A good balance of work and gathering inspiration and personal time is important (I struggle with this a lot). Being an entrepreneur is hard. No one makes the rules for you and no one is there to tell you to work (or to stop working). If you decide to take time off and accidentally miss a deadline, you’re in trouble. At the same time, if you work around the clock and burn out, that’s no good either. Balance is in planning.

Secondly, I think it takes faith. Faith that the next job will eventually come, even if it sometimes feels like no one will ever call again. If no client has called with a new job or assignment, it can be really scary. Self doubt creeps in and you start to wonder if you’re really cut out for this. Working at the mall starts looking really appealing. But this is something to be waited out…and not sitting down. If you are bored, you’re doing it wrong. If no paid work is coming in, do something for your business. Start working on a new image for self-promotion. Update your website. Write some thoughts down about avenues to get your name out there. Work on personal work for yourself, while at the same time, bettering your skills. Give yourself an assignment…challenge yourself to think conceptually. Read a business book to hone that side of things. There’s always something you can work on. Always room for improvement.

Or, if you are a workaholic like me, try to relax and take some downtime. Go to a movie (a matinee to save money) or go for a walk in the park. Fill your well. By the time a client calls again (and they will!), you’ll be ready and inspired to do the project at hand.

And thirdly, it takes a lot of plain, hard work. I have a lot of things going on all the time (maybe too much) to help me pay my bills as well as keep the creative fire burning (for both me and others). But it’s work I enjoy doing. I get a lot out of having fun little contests (just finished up a “Draw a Witch” contest for Halloween) and doing free things like Paper Doll Mix n Match to help promote my new tshirts. I have an online store to sell prints and stuff to help financially and just for fun (I like thinking up new tees and postcards to print).

I also started Illustration Friday as a way to challenge myself…to grow my portfolio and force myself to think conceptually. Then I opened it up to others because I figured they would like the challenge too. And now it’s a huge, fun thing that many people participate in each week. I love seeing all the new names pop up in the column and checking their illustrations to see how their minds work. It’s also become a great form of self-promotion… even though that’s not why I created it (I think of it as a perk for running it!). The site was recently named a HOW Top Ten Website, which I thought was cool not only because it’s good promotion for the site, but because it kind of speaks to the creative community at large… maybe we’re not all isolated artists, but we seek to be a part of something bigger by supporting each other and talking to each other. Illustration Friday helps with that.

I’m also a part of a local illustrators group. I look forward to getting together with them once a month to chat about the industry, ask questions, give answers and just be with like-minded people. Part of a community, again…

I’m going to be honest and say that it is sometimes really hard to have so much going on. I get stressed out and unbalanced. Keeping up with my normal workload, Illustration Friday, doing self-promo, creative-community things, running an online store, gallery shows and trying to maintain a personal life… can be a bit much. I sometimes miss having a regular job with regular hours and regular paychecks. But I really can’t imagine giving it up. I feel like it’s kind of built itself…each thing I do is a part of me. It’s good for my creative spirit and hopefully feeds my business, too.

More on Penelope here, here and here.

Alana Machnicki

As a creative I’ve always found it important not to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I like to have a little going on in different aspects. I have a tendency to get bored really easily and having a cornucopia of outlets to choose from keeps me happy.
I also find it much easier to live as a creative when I’m not under financial pressure. Because of this I’ve come to accept that having a part time job in the background is essential for me. Also, having the foresight to keep the job, even when I’m having a particularly profitable month, is even more important. I never know when a dry spell is going to come along and leave me scrambling to pay the bills.
I try to promote myself as best as I can. I hand out business cards at every opportunity, even if it is to someone who will never need my services. There’s always that chance they’ll pass the card or my website on to someone who does. I also travel to Comic Conventions with my fiancé where I sell prints of my work. This has lead to jobs, commissions and sometimes the print sales add up to more than what I would have made selling the original. It’s also a great way to expose my work to the masses and hand out more business cards.
I also sell my prints online, but I’ve found people are quite wary of the whole system. The orders I have processed have been through email and the “I’ll mail you a cheque” method, rather than Paypal. I guess people prefer to deal with a real person.
I rarely turn down any job that comes my way, unless I’m totally swamped. Even those with a lower budget could be seen by another art director who wants to offer me my dream job. I’ve also done a couple “sample” jobs where I’ll work on a piece just to show them what I can do for them. Sometimes I get the job (this is how I got my Absolut Vodka ad) other times I’m left with another piece in my files. A few of these filed samples have lead into other jobs.
I do a little graphic design here and there. I design websites occasionally. I used to even have a part time job where I altered travel photos to make grey skies blue and erase trash from the street. I think it’s just a matter of being open minded and knowing what you’re capable of. I’m also a very quick learner, so I usually know if people just give me a chance I’ll pick up on the skills needed.
A lot of artists have issues with being labeled a “sellout,” especially when working commercially. Personally, I think I’m very lucky to be able to do what I love and get paid for it.
Currently I’m trying my hand a sculpting my wedding cake topper (maybe this could parlay into some kind of wedding topper business), and have plans for a line of t-shirts. I’ve also been thinking of different things to sell at the comic conventions, such as smaller pre-framed prints. I’m also working on a children’s book for Scholastic that features intricate paintings of carousel horses, as well as 400 spot illustrations for a Kitchen Dictionary.

$urviving

dannygregoryLeave a comment

One of the chief obstacles many creative people face is how to cope with the intersection between our creative and our professional lives. Is drawing, painting, photography, music, whittling, just a hobby? Or are we serious about it and wiling to throw ourselves over the cliff’s edge and base our livelihood up on it? Anxiety over this issue is what derails a lot of us when we are young. Do we go to art school or a “real” college? Do we spend the rest of our lives in a split-level ranch or a garret? Do we break our parents’ hearts or become accountants?
Like most things in life, it’s not that black and white. People who make money doing creative things usually reap a varied harvest. It’s never 9 to 5 and the paychecks are rarely steady but there are more and more ways to sell your creative products. It’s not about getting your slides accepted at a New York gallery. And your patrons may be people just like you, not just investment bankers looking for investable art. For example, the internet means you can show and sell posters of your work and never leave the farm. You can sell drawings and jewelry and t-shirts and greeting cards and zillions of things.
And most importantly, you can call yourself an artist, regardless of how much money you make or how many pieces you sell.
I make a smallish percentage of my living from my personal work. I write books, I write articles, I do illustrations, but the lions’ share of my income is from my job in a company, working for the Man. I am pretty comfortable with this arrangement. It means I don’t feel desperate, I do the projects I want to do, and the extra money keeps me in 24 karat fountain pens and hand-bound unborn-calf-velllum sketchbooks.
Recently, I asked two successful illustrator to share some of the details of their lives, particularly to explain this issue of commitment and financial survival. First, Penelope Dullaghan, whom you may know as the originator of Illustration Friday. She took the leap from advertising into full-time illustration a couple of years ago and I remember how suspenseful but ultimately very satisfying the whole process was for her.
Second is Torontian Alana Machnicki. I like her drawings a lot and am inspired by the broad range of ways she applies them. I have learned a lot from both their stories. I hope you find them useful too.

Penelope Dullaghan

I think that leading a creative life is both rewarding and really really hard. It’s not just creative painting and being messy all the time. It is a real business, like any other. (Well, maybe not like any other. I think this is way more fun.)

To manage a creative life, I think first and foremost you need to be a good planner. You are not guaranteed a paycheck or steady income, so sometimes it gets really thin and you have to adjust accordingly. If you have a bad month, you better have some money left over from a good month to float through it. The people who work at the phone company and the power company have steady jobs and will not understand if you tell them you’ve had a bad month. 🙂 So you need to budget!

But planning goes beyond financial. Time is also yours to plan. A good balance of work and gathering inspiration and personal time is important (I struggle with this a lot). Being an entrepreneur is hard. No one makes the rules for you and no one is there to tell you to work (or to stop working). If you decide to take time off and accidentally miss a deadline, you’re in trouble. At the same time, if you work around the clock and burn out, that’s no good either. Balance is in planning.

Secondly, I think it takes faith. Faith that the next job will eventually come, even if it sometimes feels like no one will ever call again. If no client has called with a new job or assignment, it can be really scary. Self doubt creeps in and you start to wonder if you’re really cut out for this. Working at the mall starts looking really appealing. But this is something to be waited out…and not sitting down. If you are bored, you’re doing it wrong. If no paid work is coming in, do something for your business. Start working on a new image for self-promotion. Update your website. Write some thoughts down about avenues to get your name out there. Work on personal work for yourself, while at the same time, bettering your skills. Give yourself an assignment…challenge yourself to think conceptually. Read a business book to hone that side of things. There’s always something you can work on. Always room for improvement.

Or, if you are a workaholic like me, try to relax and take some downtime. Go to a movie (a matinee to save money) or go for a walk in the park. Fill your well. By the time a client calls again (and they will!), you’ll be ready and inspired to do the project at hand.

And thirdly, it takes a lot of plain, hard work. I have a lot of things going on all the time (maybe too much) to help me pay my bills as well as keep the creative fire burning (for both me and others). But it’s work I enjoy doing. I get a lot out of having fun little contests (just finished up a “Draw a Witch” contest for Halloween) and doing free things like Paper Doll Mix n Match to help promote my new tshirts. I have an online store to sell prints and stuff to help financially and just for fun (I like thinking up new tees and postcards to print).

I also started Illustration Friday as a way to challenge myself…to grow my portfolio and force myself to think conceptually. Then I opened it up to others because I figured they would like the challenge too. And now it’s a huge, fun thing that many people participate in each week. I love seeing all the new names pop up in the column and checking their illustrations to see how their minds work. It’s also become a great form of self-promotion… even though that’s not why I created it (I think of it as a perk for running it!). The site was recently named a HOW Top Ten Website, which I thought was cool not only because it’s good promotion for the site, but because it kind of speaks to the creative community at large… maybe we’re not all isolated artists, but we seek to be a part of something bigger by supporting each other and talking to each other. Illustration Friday helps with that.

I’m also a part of a local illustrators group. I look forward to getting together with them once a month to chat about the industry, ask questions, give answers and just be with like-minded people. Part of a community, again…

I’m going to be honest and say that it is sometimes really hard to have so much going on. I get stressed out and unbalanced. Keeping up with my normal workload, Illustration Friday, doing self-promo, creative-community things, running an online store, gallery shows and trying to maintain a personal life… can be a bit much. I sometimes miss having a regular job with regular hours and regular paychecks. But I really can’t imagine giving it up. I feel like it’s kind of built itself…each thing I do is a part of me. It’s good for my creative spirit and hopefully feeds my business, too.

More on Penelope here, here and here.

Alana Machnicki

As a creative I’ve always found it important not to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I like to have a little going on in different aspects. I have a tendency to get bored really easily and having a cornucopia of outlets to choose from keeps me happy.
I also find it much easier to live as a creative when I’m not under financial pressure. Because of this I’ve come to accept that having a part time job in the background is essential for me. Also, having the foresight to keep the job, even when I’m having a particularly profitable month, is even more important. I never know when a dry spell is going to come along and leave me scrambling to pay the bills.
I try to promote myself as best as I can. I hand out business cards at every opportunity, even if it is to someone who will never need my services. There’s always that chance they’ll pass the card or my website on to someone who does. I also travel to Comic Conventions with my fiancé where I sell prints of my work. This has lead to jobs, commissions and sometimes the print sales add up to more than what I would have made selling the original. It’s also a great way to expose my work to the masses and hand out more business cards.
I also sell my prints online, but I’ve found people are quite wary of the whole system. The orders I have processed have been through email and the “I’ll mail you a cheque” method, rather than Paypal. I guess people prefer to deal with a real person.
I rarely turn down any job that comes my way, unless I’m totally swamped. Even those with a lower budget could be seen by another art director who wants to offer me my dream job. I’ve also done a couple “sample” jobs where I’ll work on a piece just to show them what I can do for them. Sometimes I get the job (this is how I got my Absolut Vodka ad) other times I’m left with another piece in my files. A few of these filed samples have lead into other jobs.
I do a little graphic design here and there. I design websites occasionally. I used to even have a part time job where I altered travel photos to make grey skies blue and erase trash from the street. I think it’s just a matter of being open minded and knowing what you’re capable of. I’m also a very quick learner, so I usually know if people just give me a chance I’ll pick up on the skills needed.
A lot of artists have issues with being labeled a “sellout,” especially when working commercially. Personally, I think I’m very lucky to be able to do what I love and get paid for it.
Currently I’m trying my hand a sculpting my wedding cake topper (maybe this could parlay into some kind of wedding topper business), and have plans for a line of t-shirts. I’ve also been thinking of different things to sell at the comic conventions, such as smaller pre-framed prints. I’m also working on a children’s book for Scholastic that features intricate paintings of carousel horses, as well as 400 spot illustrations for a Kitchen Dictionary.

Nancy with the pencil

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Nancy wrote to me:

Hello Gregory,
I have one question so far while reading your book – I wanted to know why you require us to draw with a pen and not a pencil. I’m on page 60, and maybe I haven’t gotten there yet, but I am curious to know why pen and not pencil?
Cheers,
Nancy

I responded, somewhat acerbically:

Hi, Nancy:
Drawing with a pen forces you to commit. You avoid being sketchy ( p.90) and hone your vision. Drawing helps to clarify what you see, to concentrate and to be specific. Ink helps seal that commitment.
Pencils are great to draw with but, particularly as you learn to draw and learn to expand your creativity, try to strengthen your resolve whenever you can. Shut that internal critic up. If that little nagging judgmental voice in your head takes over you will want to erase to correct to second guess. Don’t.
When you feel in control of this medium, by all means, branch out. I spent two years just drawing with a pen, then I started adding color. I still almost never work in pencil. And I don’t own an eraser.
“Do not fear mistakes. There are none”. Miles Davis said that.
Recently on the Everyday Matters Yahoo group we had a long talk about this., People who were convinced and switched to drawing in pen reported miraculous changes overnight. Don’t believe me? Join the group and you’ll see.

Your pal,
Danny

PS My name is Danny.
Gregory is my last name.
Too bad we can’t write email in pencil.

Everyday Matters – now in Korean!

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This afternoon, Patti called me at work to tell me, “It’s here!”. And when I got home, there, sure enough, it was. We immediately started drawing parallels. Jack reminded me that Homer Simpson had found a box of Japanese soap in the dump with a strange Japanese version of himself on the label that he discovered was a major animated character. We talked about Bizarro Superman and, even more bizarre and àpropos, Bizarro Seinfeld.
But nothing was as odd as seeing my book Everyday Matters translated into Korean. Not just translated but painstakingly reproduced in Korean. The calligraphy, the rubber stamps, everything was done absolutely perfectly. It is such an unusual feeling to stand in my living room, loking over the journal pages I made right here, and to now see them in this other skin, one made on the other side of the planet and yet so in tune. I don’t know if I can fully explain the oddness of it all.

The wonderful translator, Suh Dongsoo, wrote to me several weeks ago:

I haven’t met you, but I feel like I am familiar with you.
Maybe that’s because I spent several months reading your book, and trying to feel like you, writing your sentences in Korean.

I really enjoyed translating your book. I was deeply moved by your book.
Right before I started translating your book, I had a very unhappy experience myself.
Maybe it wasn’t such a big disaster for other people, but I was very shocked by that experience, and was living with an empty heart, thinking how should I live from now on, everyday, every minute.
And then I met your book, and I felt so attached to the book.
I believe translating the book was something very important in my life.
I can’t forget one afternoon when I had to cry leaning over my computer translating a sentence.
I want to thank you for giving me the chance to translate this book.
Thank you very much.

How wonderful, and how lucky I am.

The book is apparently doing very well and is about to go into its second printing. And for those of you waiting for the 2nd printing of the book in English, I understand it will be ready in a just a few weeks.

Odder still, as readers of this blog may appreciate, was my discovery of this site, whose contents I don’t understand at all, apparently about my book.
I used Google to tranlate part of it and came up with the following:

Love hero unit of be picture lost chance ni that ley ring (Danny Gregory) It was born from Great Britain and when to 12 flesh moving in New York the State of Israel back and and until, the blood chu bug, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia and Republic of Pakistan, it came and went enough. phu lin su then It studies a political science from the college, nothing after the that el the printed style of writing it eats and and it does not live to be in agony, about 20 it worked from year between advertisement industry. 1995 year wife phay the mote in subway accident the lower half of body after becomes disabled, it draws the picture, it started.

What a weird trip we’re on.





Change of scene

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When I was drawing with my pal Roz Stendahl, I was amazed to see that certain pages of her journals were randomly pretreated before she turned to them. She might have a fat, wet brush stroke across a spread or have some lovely textured paper glued onto a page. When she turned to that page, she just worked on it like any other blank sheet.
I found this very disconcerting at first. “What if the colors you’ve slopped onto the page don’t fit in with what you’re drawing,” I asked. She explained that this what made it fun. Each new spread became a double challenge: to capture the drawing and also resolve it with the obstacle she had set up for herself (Roz has just set up a gallery of some of these pages pre- and post-drawing here).
I spent a year with this in the back of my head and then, last month, I decided to try it. As readers of this site will have noticed, most of the drawings I did in December were on orangish blotchy backgrounds. This happened to have worked really well when I was in Mexico, an orangish blotchy sort of place, but that was just serendipitous.

I chose this palette at the beginning of my journal #43 because I had been looking at a lot of 18th and 19th century drawings in sepia ink (best of all the wonderful Van Gogh exhibit at the Met) and wanted to focus on warm colors rather than the black ink and bright watercolors I have been using for the past year. I unspiraled my book and took a handful of pages into the kitchen and one by one doused them in water. Then I took various bottles of orange and brown and yellow Dr. Martin’s and dripped and sloshed them around . Then I popped the pages into the toaster oven and, when they had dried, added some more layers. Patti described the results as ‘very Cheetos’. She also pointed out the drips of Doc Martin’s on the counter that only came out with bleach and elbow grease.
I drew most of the time with Faber-Castell PITT brown S nib pens and did my writing with a dip pen for maximal splashiness. But one of my favorite things about this technique has been the opportunity to use white pencils to bring out highlights. I just love the look of this.

Last weekend, I inaugurated Vol. 44, which has heavy Kraft paper and so I have stopped the Doc Martin’s pre-treatment. I am still using the same media to draw with but am doing a more traditional illustrated diary sort of thing with each right hand page being a drawing and each left hand page a straightforward record of my day. It’s another way of getting a drawing and some writing into each day and also having a sort of ancient looking document to work in. I have fantasies about burning certain pages and sloshing wine around.
Drawing on colored backgrounds is giving me a chance to think more clearly in terms of values. Because I have at least three tones in my palette right off (brown lines, tan paper, white pencil) and then the infinite variations in between (varying degrees of solid ink and cross hatching, different line weights, different degrees of pressure on the pencil from light dusting to solid opaque), I really pay attention to what is the darkest and brightest points in my subject and then try to capture the correct variations in between.

On drawing from photos

dannygregory1 Comment

Drawn from life.
Drawn from a photo.
Can you see the difference in detail, in energy, in understanding of the scene?

Occasionally I make drawings from photographs. If I have an illustration assignment to draw something that I can’t get my hands on or a location that is remote or a human in a particular position or a drawing that needs specific detail, I will resort to photographic reference. If I am cooped up in the house during a cold spell and bored with drawing my environment, I may pull down one of the old yearbooks I collect and draw ancient faces. If I am stuck on the runway with nothing to draw but seat backs, I may flip through the in-flight magazine and be inspired by the pretty pictures. But, always, drawing from photos is a hollow experience. Photos are useful reference for illustration but as a basis for real art and for the sort of meditative drawing that expands my consciousness and creativity, I find it a lot less helpful. Far better, I’d say, to draw a cluttered corner of my desk from a half dozen angles than waste time drawing from photos of celebrities or far-off places or someone else’s kitten or the like. I’d rather draw what I see in front of me.
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So what is it about photography that makes for a peculiar kind of drawing experience? I’m going to jot down some thoughts, in some case taking extreme anti-photography positions in order to get a better grip on this phenomenon.
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Is photography more accurate or more authentic than a drawing? Does the average snapshot actually capture what the picture taker originally noticed in the scene? Does the camera see as the eye does? Does the viewer look at a photo and see it as one does reality or as one sees a drawing’s depiction of reality? How long can you look at a photo and remain connected? Compare that with the experience of looking at a drawing or painting, particularly one you made.
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A photo captures a scene without emphasis or subjectivity — it is a mechanical rendering with no human element in the process. It also captures just a fraction of a second of time. Even if the subject doesn’t move, it lacks the fourth dimension, the influence of time on the scene that comes with looking at reality or art – it is frozen and there fore unreal in a fundamental way. Time does not stop. It is difficult to remain connected as you spend more time looking at the photo than the time represented in the photo; the more disproportionate, the more difficult to remain engaged.
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Drawing from photos is really bridging media. Can you imagine drawing from a piece of music or dancing to a painting? I propose that if you did you would not be copying what you see but instead give yourself a lot of latitude in reinterpreting. But when you draw from a photo, do you give yourself that sort of creative license? Great photographers have made many great photographs that are powerful art. I have yet to see a drawing from one that would be considered equally great. Imagine a Diane Arbus or a Steichen or Mappelthorpe rendered in graphite or ink. Ugh.
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A camera sees all in one fell swoop – the focus is deep, the whole scene, from 90Ë™ corner to corner is captured with same emphasis. That is not how the human eye, and more importantly, the human brain see. We scan back and forth at a varying rate, observing more or less, capturing more or less detail, depending on our degree of interest in the subject. Even if we observe a photo in this manner we are not having a true viewing experience. That is why drawings done from photos seem to me to have an inherent flatness (which is further exaggerated by the optics of the camera lens) or an unlikely amount of detail in elements that are not inherently interesting. Photorealistic paintings and drawings are immediately recognizable as having been done from projected, traced photos because of a certain eeriness, the quality of their reflective surfaces, the deadness of the scene.
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Some people are also concerned about the legal issues in drawing from someone else’s photo. Technically, if the picture has been copyrighted and you draw it, you are making an illegal copy. Obviously most photographers won’t bother to hire lawyers and impound your sketchbooks but it is a consideration. More dangerous to your experience as an artist is the practice of drawing something you have actually never seen. Sealing someone else’s vision may not land you in court but it will arrest your development. Stick to your own experience of the world. If you insist on drawing from photos, take them too. It’s so easy to shoot a digital picture and then pump out a print to draw from that there’s no reason to violate others’ copyrights if you can help it.
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Drawing from photos is also easy and faster because the camera has already done the conversion from three to two dimensions. When we draw, we are always selecting between the data provided by one eye or the other, shifting back and forth, picking and choosing. But the camera has just one eye and so it flattens the perspective, seeing just from a single POV. It doesn’t have to choose where one plane intersects another or if a shadow contains variations in light or where one plane sits behind another. All the calculations are worked out for you and you just transfer them form one page to another. Again my brain and my creative-decision-making apparatus are robbed of the pleasure millions of little decisions, the decisions that are mine, decisions that make it art.
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Another consideration is that the composition of the picture is dictated by the original photo and photographer, All too often something will look better when the POV is shifted or the picture elements are rearranged. If I don’t really know what my subject looks like, can’t see in to the shadows, don’t understand the surface and the lighting, this is very hard to do effectively. And again someone else’s photo or my own hasty snapshot will not come close to the careful consideration and particular priorities I bring to the subject when I make a drawing. I also think that a drawing is influenced by what’s beyond the frame – the artist’s experience of the scene and the moment, the sounds, the temperature, the smells, the parts not seen within the boundaries of the frame and again, the time that passes in contemplation of the scene, the moving light, the changing world, the way I, my mind, my body are becoming different as I draw and I capture the hundreds of glances that go into careful observation, glances from slightly different vantages as my head shifts, my lungs expand, my heart beats, all these changes add life to my creation. Drawing is life and life is time.
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If you are overly committed to drawing from photos, think again, long and hard, about why you are drawing. Is it to impress with the ‘accuracy’ and photographic ‘realness’ of your final image or it to have the drawing experience, the life affirming contemplation that comes from slow and intense observation of some object or creature in your environment. Do you get it from drawing from a photo? Maybe you do. I find it hard. Every time I draw from a photo, I feel like a bit of a cheat. When I’m done, covering the content of the photo, transferring it to the page, and I look back to find more, there is none. It’s done, emptied of content, wrung out. It’s like a tracing. But when I draw from life, I can keep going deeper and deeper puling more and more stuff out, as if I am diving between the molecules, heading to the subatomic realm that unites all things. P.S. For further digestion of what I have written here, check out Jay Savage’s thoughtful analysis on the Digital Photography Weblog. P.P.S. For an amazing photo experience. spend some time here.

TCL: Supplementary Material, IV: Andrea

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I first met Andrea Scher through her blog, Superhero Journal. Within days of roaming through her posts, I was hooked. Being hooked meant more than just loving her photos and learning so much from her wisdom and compassion. It meant that I became a customer when I bought one of her beautiful necklaces for Patti. Andrea’s blog is certainly not designed to be a crass storefront but the more immersed one becomes in her sense of style and her appreciation of every day, the more you trust her and want to own a piece of her.
As we corresponded, I learned that Andrea had spent several years as a gift product designer/book production manager working with SARK, a woman I admire a great deal for the enthusiastic inspiration in her lovely colorful books. SARK is another good example of someone whose creative spirit reaches in many directions, and someone who has made a decent living not through galleries or mainstream marketing but by designing her own sort of company, her own sort of way of making a creative living.

So many people seem to want to know about alternate paths to creative self-sufficiency beyond the Major-Hollywood-Studio, Major-Publisher, Major-Label-fantasy-that-will-probably-never-come-true-as-one-imagines-it sort of thing. The Internet and one’s own imagination seem to offer so many opportunities and Andrea seems to be plumbing many of them. She is a talented photographer and painter, she designs and sells a great line of jewelry and t-shirts . Last year she was trained as a life coach and started a practice, working with creative people all over the world. She plans to focus more and more on the coaching in the coming years.

Andrea and I spent some face time in San Francisco, where I stayed in a lovely little guest house on Balmy Alley, surrounded by incredible murals. Here the gist of what she told me then:

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ANDREA: “I was reminded today of an important turning point in my creative life. A woman wrote to me and asked, “How do you keep your confidence up (without letting it dissipate) to keep living your creative dream?”

What came to mind is something a friend of mine told me years ago. I was saying something self-deprecating and insecure about my artwork and he turned to me and said, “When are you going to take it for granted that you are a talented artist? When are you going to stop trying to prove it? Assume it. Take it for granted and imagine what you could create from that place…”

My whole life changed that day.

I finally saw how much energy I was putting into becoming an artist. I thought I had to somehow earn the title, that there was some special magic attached to it. I thought I had to be plucked from the crowd, that someone from the outside (who? I have no idea) would say to me, NOW. You are good enough.

What a bunch of crap.

I think the label of “artist” is loaded and has a strange sort of baggage attached to it. People say, “I’m not an artist! I can barely draw a straight line” and I always cringe when I hear this. What’s so interesting about a straight line anyway?

It is not an exclusive club, this artist thing. It’s just a bunch of people who like to play, to make things, to dream up ideas, to color, to sing, to build, to string words together. Don’t we all? I think it helps to remove the labels.

Another part of keeping my confidence up has been learning to honor and trust my own unique way of doing things. I have to make peace over and over again with the fact that I run my business differently than others. I invent it every single day. It is very intuitive for me. I don’t read books about business, I don’t have a business plan, I don’t use spreadsheets and I don’t have a marketing program. To most, this is highly disorganized and BAD. (There is an evil voice in my head that reminds me of this all the time.)

Your dreams are living, growing things. There will be times when you think, “This is never going to work! What the hell am I thinking? Who am I to do this anyway?” And then a few days later you will get a call from someone who wants to hire you to design their CD cover or shoot their wedding or DJ their party and although you are tempted to say, “Me? Are you crazy? You should probably call someone more qualified.” You will instead grin, nod your head graciously and say, “Great. I would be happy to do that.”

Living your dream doesn’t mean you are always confident. It just means that you keep on going…”

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Things I do to make money from my work:

1. Sell off of my web site SuperheroDesigns.com Sell my jewelry online on my web site.

2. Urban Fairs Attend retail shows such as craft fairs, trunk shows and small “urban fairs” such as Feria Urbana.

3. Home shows Small home shows at your house or at a friend’s are a great and really fun way to get your work out there. You can invite other artists to join you as well! Because they will be inviting their list of clients just like you will be, everyone wins. This is a great way to expand your client base. There are also people organizing home trunk shows professionally, such as Relish at Home.
4. Corporate trunk shows A newer venue for me is the corporate office trunk show. A friend who works at a big magazine publisher in town proposed a holiday trunk show at their office. I set up my wares in the boardroom during the lunch hour and employees stopped by to shop for holiday gifts. I was delighted at how much money I made in one delicious hour!

5. Sell my work off my body. When I first started my business, I was sure to wear a really fabulous (and new, hot-off-the-press) necklace when I went out on the town. Inevitably, someone would comment on it and I would tell them that I actually made it and that they could purchase it right off my neck. (I also had a small inventory in my bag to show them as well) This worked for me on many occasions!

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For more, read this recent article by Andrea called “Superhero Guide to Designing a Creative Business” and this profile on GirlAtPlay.