Monday Morning Marty -- Woodcut

I'm very happy with this week's Monday Morning Marty.

Years ago, in art school, my illustration teacher Stan Zagorski taught be a great faux woodcut technique. You painted on the illustration board with white gouache, where you want the image to be white. You wait 'til the gouache dries, then cover the surface with India ink. When that dries, you rinse the board in running water; the gouache dissolves, taking the ink on top of it with it, leaving the surrounding ink. It's a great technique; my Storyteller's Workshop logo, above, was done that way -- with a lot of retouching.

Retouching is always a big part of the process, because you never know how well the gouache will dissolve, or how well the surface of the board will handle the water. It's touch and go there.

Well, last week I was working on a logo proposal for Santa Fe's 400th anniversary, and I came up with this new technique. I designed the logo the way I wanted it, then created a negative of it, so everything white was now black and vice versa. I then turned the image into a very, very light blue and printed it out onto card stock. I got out my brush and inked in everything that was black -- or rather blue -- adding lots of stray strokes that resemble woodcut marks. I scanned in the artwork -- the light blue was light enough not to show up -- reversed the image again, and got the woodcut look.

For this Marty picture, I started with a photo that I turned grayscale, then followed the process listed above. The final image wasn't too easy to make out -- I also printed out the photo untouched to help me make sense of it. I had to constantly remind myself that the ink strokes I was putting down would be white, and that the darkest shaded areas would be the lightest in the final piece.

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Shangri La

Last year I drew a large full-body portrait of Lutcher Stark for Shangri La.

Shangri La is a botanical garden and nature center in Orange, Texas, which is southeast TX near the Louisiana border. It's scheduled to open in March 2008.

Lutcher Stark was a lumber heir who took his family's land, bought more to augment it, and turned it into a botanical garden. He especially loved azaleas and camellias. In the late '50s, a "killing frost" destroyed much of his garden, and he closed it, heartbroken. It was more or less left to the elements since then and became a pretty wild place, but a haven for animals and birds. Now the Stark Foundation is reopening it to the public. This exhibit is in the visitor center and is part of an introduction to the place.

I was hired to draw Mr. Stark in a style similar to that of a naturalist's sketch book. I'm not sure I quite pulled that off, but the designers were happy with the final product, and so am I.

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Monday Morning Marty -- 8-20-07

I'm cheating on this one -- twice.

Once because I didn't draw this just for the blog. This is a close-up of an illustration in progress I'm working on for Cisneros Design in Santa Fe, for a fundraiser invitation to benefit an animal rescue organization.

The other cheat is that I didn't ask Fred Cisneros, or the animal rescue organization, if I could use the image. I'm hoping they'll understand.

It was, in part, my Monday Morning Marty series that convinced the client I could draw dogs for this assignment, so what better dog to use for it? (That other dog in the picture is just a model. We've never actually met.)

I always find it harder to draw a specific individual for an illustration, rather than a fictional character, even if the individual in question is a canine one. After all, when I'm making someone up, no one but me will know if I get the likeness exactly the way I envisioned. And I never say. But when I'm drawing someone's portrait, suddenly I have a measurable standard to be judged against. Yikes, that's scary! If I hadn't been drawing the Monday Morning Marties I wouldn't have had the confidence to even try this one.

Oh, and if you didn't catch the moral in all this -- ironic in a post about cheating -- it's this: whenever you put your stuff out there, good things result. My Monday Morning Marty series turned out to be good portfolio samples as well as a weekly exercise and a segue into moralistic lecturing. I've found that whenever I do work for fun, it seems to become a means to paying work. My long-running comics series Jazz Age (originally Jazz Age Chronicles) has been an off-and-on labor of love for twenty years now, and though it's hardly ever made much money, every good-paying comics job I've ever got, I got from samples of Jazz Age. All you freelancers out there, listen up: Get your stuff out there. If it's good, it'll produce results.

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Jazz Age/Annie Crossover!

Fans of my webcomic Jazz Age may want to pay extra attention to the Annie story unfolding now in papers around the country and online: Annie, Sandy and Santiago have found themselves in 1927 Boston!

And while I won't reveal yet whether any of the characters of Jazz Age will be making an appearance in the strip, I won't rule it out either. I will say, though, that some memorable landmarks will be seen, such as Scollay Square and the Public Garden.

Annie, Santiago and Sandy were flying to Boston in the present day when Annie's old friends from Atlantis accidentally scooped her up in their time machine and set her down in 1927.

Follow Annie's adventures in 1920s Boston, and keep an eye out for any private eyes or archaeologists!

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WARNING: Have Fun OR ELSE...!

I've been having more fun drawing lately.

I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's being back in New Mexico, after two years in Philly, a city I like, but don't really feel at home in. Maybe it's feeling less pressure financially, now that Jennifer has started working again after getting her degree in the aforementioned City of Brotherly Love.

Or maybe it's just that I've made a conscious decision to have more fun.

Illustrators, like all freelancers, cannot forget to be responsible -- meet deadlines, be responsive to the clients' needs, solve problems, budget their time and their money, and market, market, market. But sometimes those responsibilities can overload your circuits, 'til you're blind to anything else. A new job becomes just another deadline, just another necessity, just another paycheck. Sure, there are times when the workload is so heavy I just don't have time to enjoy myself. I have to get the work done and out the door, just to I can breathe.

But then I have to remind myself that I can breathe again, and that I can go back to having fun -- even if it means a little loss in efficiency. Which it usually doesn't, even, by the way. But I'll get back to that in a moment.

Having fun is not only important because -- well, because it's fun. It's also vital to my abilities as an illustrator.

The simple, demonstrable fact is that when I'm having fun drawing, I'm drawing better. My work is more fluid and dynamic, my ideas are sharper and more interesting, and I have more of them.

Last week I needed to draw up some ideas for a project. I had one idea, which I just thought I'd draw up and send to the client. I often provide just one idea, especially when the client provides me with very specific parameters. This time, though, the client gave me lots of freedom to come up with a good layout. But all I had was one idea. I didn't really think I needed more than one, really.

But anyway, I got tired of sitting around the office all day again, so I went to a local coffee place to sketch -- you know, the kind of place with wireless Internet and free refills. I really enjoyed the energy there -- getting a cookie as well as coffee helped there -- and my first sketch was a stupid one, which I knew we'd never use, but which I thought my client would find funny. That got me having fun!

I then drew up the one idea I'd already had. But then a couple more ideas came to me. I ended up having several ideas to show the client, and the one we're going with wasn't that original one. It was much better.

Having fun also helps you maintain your style -- or develop it. When every job is a chore, when all you're doing is satisfying the client, and not yourself, there's the danger that you'll lose your own original style to the dictates of the assignment. Let that happen often enough and you may find the only work you're getting is work you really don't like, work you're not happy with, and work that isn't the best you can do.

Now, getting back to that efficiency argument. I sometimes rationalize not having fun with the argument that there isn't time to have fun, that the project has to be done quickly and efficiently. But having fun with a project doesn't have to slow you down; quite the opposite. Working in a dreary mindset will quickly slow me down because I'll lose all motivation to keep working! I'll find excuses to leave my drawing board, take frequent breaks, longer lunches, and develop a substance abuse problem.

And even if having fun does take longer -- so what? If I'm having fun with the project, why would I want it to be done in such a hurry? What am I rushing through work to get to that could be as much fun as my chosen profession? Right? Because there are times -- numerous times -- when drawing, creating, and solving problems is the most fun thing to do in the world. And with a little bit of reminding yourself, you can have those moments much more often. Don't wait 'til the project is too good not to have fun -- have fun with the projects you've got today!

Because if you can't find something fun about every project, you shouldn't be working on that project. Because having fun is the whole reason we freelancers give up the security of a steady paycheck and the simplicity of automatic withholding. And because having fun is FUN!

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Monday Morning Marty -- 8-13-07

Here's a Marty comic strip that I drew with my wife, Jennifer.

This was a fun game Jennifer came up with while we were waiting for our food at a restaurant somewhere. Jennifer took the page out of her Filofax, wrote down the title she made up and drew up the panels. I then had to come up with a story to match the title and draw it in the panels.

This is a fun exercise to pass the time, and it also helps sharpen your storytelling abilities. Trying to find a logical reason for each panel to be the size and the placement that it is helps you decide the pace of the story, and that may come before you think of a plot or even a subject.

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Confession: I Draw on Letter-Size Copy Paper!

One of the first things you learn as a working freelance illustrator is when you can cut corners and when you can't. Or more appropriately: What's important.

When I first started out, fresh out of art school, I had learned the importance of using the right equipment, the best paper, the most precise and elaborate methods. We had been indoctrinated from our freshman year in the importance of proper technique. We learned to be precise, thorough and detail-oriented. And, above all, we learned not to cut corners.

Well, those techniques and procedures are fine as a starting point, but over time you learn to develop your own methods and routines, ones that are attuned to the importance you put on things.

In a previous post I talked about the procedure I use to create comic strip artwork. It took me years to develop this technique. For years, concerned with the "proper" way of doing things, I had a much more labor-intensive method; I'd cut down large sheets of Bristol board, used Rapid-o-Graph pens for all the ruled lines and (GASP) the lettering, and everything else was done with a pure sable brush and India ink. Anything else wouldn't be kosher, I told myself; anything else would be a cheat.

Well, thank God I got over that mentality. Now most of the line work I do comes from Micron pens. I still use a brush for most of my more realistic comics illustration, like Jazz Age, but 90% of Annie is done with the pens now. And as I'd gone over before, the lettering is now done in InDesign! The pure Bristol Board has been replaced by 11" x 17" 80-pound matte cover stock and fed through the printer for the lettering and panel boarders.

For most of my other freelance work, I draw on good ol' letter-size copy paper. ( I originally put "typing paper" before realizing that it hasn't been called that in a few decades!) It works as well as any kind of paper for inked line work, it's cheap, easy to find, easy to scan or fax -- the only down side is when the job calls for the original being given to the client, which has happened less than half a dozen times in the twenty years I've been doing this. On those jobs, I break out the thicker card stock. (This, of course, is in the context of the freelance work. For the comics work, I still use the card stock that's very much like Bristol board because there is a market for the original art.)

In short, I figured out what's really important: Do what works. Get the job done as well, as quickly and as reliably as you can.

People are paying me for the digital file of an image. They don't care what paper it was drawn on, or even if it was drawn on paper at all. It doesn't matter to them that I drew it with India ink, or if it was on 100% rag content paper. They want their image, and whatever is the best, easiest way to make it is the proper way.

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Responsibility: Drawing a Legend

Last Sunday, August 5, was the 83rd anniversary of the very first Little Orphan Annie strip, created by Harold Gray back in 1924. Last Monday, on August 6, I received a very nice card in the mail. It was a birthday card, addressed to "Annie Warbucks," in care of my address, and it was sent to me by a nine-year-old girl. Her father had bought some Annie original art last year, and so he knew where she could send her card.

Annie is known the world over. Little girls everywhere can sing the songs from the movie and the musical -- which came to Philly twice in the two years I lived there, and is coming here to Albuquerque in a few months. People know the archetypes of Annie and Daddy Warbucks (Sandy too!), and the strip is as ingrained in American culture as Superman or Snoopy.

And I draw that comic strip.

Wow.

Now, let's be frank -- the strip ain't what it used to be. It's running in a smattering of papers across the country, mostly smaller ones -- though it's still running in the New York Daily/Sunday News, where it's been since August 5, 1924 -- and most people I talk to don't realize it's still going.

But people are reading the strip -- if not in papers, online -- and they compare our work (Jay Maeder of New York has been writing the strip since 2000) with Harold Gray and every other artist and writer who've worked on it. Last week, when Drawn.ca posted a link to my post on creating the Annie strip, one reader commented that the strip "...is so far removed from Harold Gray’s Annie it isn't even funny."

We have a responsibility to stay true to the roots of the comic strip. When you take over an established property like Annie, you take on that responsibility. If I completely reinvented the strip, throwing out all that made it what it was, then what I'd really be doing is marketing my own, new strip under an established brand name. If I want to do my own, wholly original work, I should go ahead (and I did) but not within the old strip. People expect, and deserve, continuity.

But it's also important to allow the strip to evolve, to change, and as the author of the work I have another responsibility -- to be true to my own artistic sensibilities, and to my own style and strengths. The artist picked to take over a strip should already have a similar, or at least compatible style, from that which came before, and I think that was the case this time.

But if I were to just ape Harold Gray's style -- which I have done once in a while, when it was appropriate, such as in the art sample above, when modern-day Annie went back in time to visit the Annie of the 1930s -- then I'd be cheating the readers. There's no way I can draw like Harold Gray better than Harold Gray did, so my work would be inescapably inferior. When an actor takes on a role that another had played before, should she simply try to imitate the previous actor? Or do we want to see a new interpretation of the essences of that character?

That's what I try to do with my work on Annie -- take the essential characteristics of the characters, both in terms of their personality and in terms of how Harold Gray drew them -- and build from that, using my style, my strengths and my perspective. I feel what I've come up with works, but I'm constantly refining and redirecting the work I do, checking to see that I'm still on course, still remaining as true to Mr. Gray's ideas as possible while also being true to my own. It's a difficult task, it's a huge responsibility, but it's also very, very rewarding.

Annie got the little girl's card on Monday, and she'll be sending a thank-you card by the end of the week.

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Monday Morning Marty 8-6-07 -- Fur

Here's a little portrait of Marty to start your week.

When you're drawing a furry creature, like Puppy here, your pencil strokes can do more than just follow the contour of the general shape -- they can take on the qualities of the fur itself. If you notice, very few of the actual lines in this drawing follow the edge of Marty's head -- they follow the direction and the length of the fur, and the succession of these lines creates the contour. This lets me convey not just the shape of the head, but the direction of the fur, the thickness, and in some places helps suggest the cheekbone and other structure beneath. It's important to be economical in your drawing, and to let every stroke, every line contribute as much as possible to communicating your subject.

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Specialization: How Much is Too Much?

One of the questions freelance illustrators, like freelance writers and a lot of other professionals, have to face is this: how much should you specialize? How much to narrow one's focus?

On the one extreme is the complete generalist, who will draw, paint, digitally create or sculpt any and all subjects, styles, and viewpoints. Obviously, an illustrator who spreads himself so thin probably wouldn't be very good at any one style: "Jack of all trades, master of none."

But the biggest problem for such an illustrator isn't one of talent or ability, but of marketing. For without a specialty, without a niche, an artist has a hard time being remembered, and a hard time finding a place to shine.

There are plenty of illustrators out there, and they're all reasonably good for most applications. Why go with one over the other? For most clients, the answer lies not in ability, but in specialty; if you need an illustration of a car, you hire the one who's drawn cars. If you need a portrait in Byzantine style, find someone whose portfolio shows Byzantine portraits.

You need to stand out from the competition, and being very good isn't enough. You need to show potential clients you have experience at what they want.

Many of the most successful illustrators out there today specialize pretty narrowly. They have readily-identifiable styles, and many of them specialize in subject matter as well. There are medical illustrators, editorial illustrators, children's illustrators, comics artists...

So some degree of specialization is necessary. But how much?

The other extreme is the overly-specialized. Narrow your field too much, and you may never be called. If all you do are pointillistic children's illustrations of people in diners, there may not be a need for your services too often. But if you specialize in a pointillistic children's illustration style, that might be a good style that is specific to stand out, while also being applicable to many projects.

Those of you who've looked through this web site have noticed that I haven't narrowed my specialization too much. I have a fairly wide variety of work, though there's a consistent style and sensibility throughout. Instead of trying to be a guy who does one thing well, I like to do many things well -- or, perhaps, do one thing well in many way. One reason is that I want to offer lots of choices to my clients; If they need an illustrator, I can approach the project with a great deal of flexibility, and deliver the solution that would work best for them. With the highly specialized illustrator, you have to know exactly what you want ahead of time; with me, you can come with your ideas and we can brainstorm together on them.

The other reason I don't narrow my work more is simply because I like to do a wide variety of things. I get bored with doing the same thing every time, and part of the fun I get from my work is applying a technique in a new way, or finding a new solution to a problem.

Whatever strategy you take, realize that there will be a downside to your decision. Narrowing your specialization means clients will need your talents less often, so you'll need to reach a greater number of clients. And it means you'll have to turn away work that falls outside your range. But it will also eventually brand you as an expert in the narrow field you've chosen. A less narrow field may mean more work from your existing clients, but may prevent you from being marketed as the expert in that one thing that only you do as well as you do. It's a decision that should be weighed carefully, and pursued aggressively.

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