Monday Morning Marty & Minnie -- One Defining Line

Which one's Marty and which one's Minnie?

Talk about simplification! This is a good exercise for artists to help define their characters, real or fictional, and help them distill the essence of their personalities: draw one line that best represents the person (or animal) concerned. Can you guess which one is Marty and which is Minnie? (I'm not sure I made the definitive lines for them, but this is a good start.)

Now, unlike other forms of simplification this one may or may not bear any visual resemblance to your subject, though it often can. Your line should bear as many of the same characteristics as your character's persona. Is your character swift or slow? Ambitious or lazy? Focused or all over the place? Honest or shifty? Smooth or awkward? Your subject's determining line should reflect that.

Now here's the payoff: when you draw your subject, try to use this defining line as often as you can. Look for places where the physical likeness and this defining line meet, and accentuate those points as much as you can. You'll have a portrait or a likeness that doesn't just convey the subject's look, but the subject's personality and character.

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Monday Morning Marty & Minnie -- Good to be back!

(Click on image for larger version)

First things first -- where have I been? I just finished a very long, very busy stint as storyboard artist on the new Terminator movie filming here in New Mexico! I'll have a post about that soon -- likely more than one. For now, I'll just say that the experience left me little time for other activities, including this blog. That's no excuse, though, and you do have my apologies.

Now on to the day's drawing.

Here's Marty and Minnie -- remember them? -- sunning themselves in the summer sunshine in our back yard, under a gorgeous view of the Sandia mountains. They've been doing well since you saw them last, frolicking merrily at my in-laws all day while I was at the studio, getting along very well and enjoying New Mexico summertime.

This drawing was originally going to be inked, but I liked the look of the pencils so I just decided to finish it at that stage. I started with the dogs, then went up and added in the background, then went back to the dogs, then the background. That's an important way to work a picture, especially with a medium like pencil, where you're likely to see a difference in your line work as you go. I tend to get darker and more bold as I go, so if I just started at one point and stopped on the other side, you'd see a marked difference throughout the image. Not that the image should look totally the same throughout -- just make sure your differences are intentional, depending on depth, texture or lighting, and not just the order you drew things.

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Monday Morning Minnie & Marty -- 2-25-08

(Click on image for larger version -- as always!)

Continuing on my 'simplification' kick, this week I decided to make Marty and Minnie into cartoon characters.

Last week I mentioned the importance of exaggerating the differences between your subjects. Marty here is a good deal shorter, and stockier than in real life. It's hard to make Minnie even skinnier than she really is, but I did a little.

I also tried to get across Minnie's eager spirit, and Marty's friendly attitude -- at least toward those he knows.

Notice another feature of simplification -- choosing what to include and what not to. Minnie's tuft of white on her chest is very distinctive, as are Marty's spots. And of course Minnie's "crazy eyes!" Sometimes making these choices means leaving out some peculiar elements that, while accurate, may work against the general look you're trying for.

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Monday Morning Minnie -- 1-28-08

Following my push last week to simplify my dog drawings, this one is very simple indeed. Minnie is a shock of black with those captivating orange eyes -- one of the workers at the rescue shelter where we got her used to call her "Crazy Eyes."

One of the secrets, in my mind, of effectively capturing a likeness or impression in a simple drawing is to first draw it out from memory. You're more likely to put down the noteworthy, unique attributes of a character and leave out the unnecessary details if you can't see those details in front of you. I first did this drawing from memory, then I called Minnie in -- she always comes when you call her name! -- and double-checked the general proportions and such.

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Details, Details...

How much detail is enough in an illustration? How much is too much? This is an important question every illustrator has to ask. There's a tendency among artists starting out to think that every inch of an image has to be filled with detail, that the merit of their work will be in how much detail there is, and how much it looks like its subject. They think they need to make their illustration like a photograph -- as if photography were somehow superior to what they were doing. Absurd! (And, of course, the best professional photographers go out of their way to limit the detail in their work, with lighting, focus and cropping techniques.)

So just how much detail do you need? Well, before you answer that, you need to ask: What is the purpose of illustration?

The purpose of illustration isn't to look good; it's to tell a story. Oh, make no mistake -- the illustration better look good. I mean, who wants to look at an image that doesn't? But what makes it a good illustration isn't just that it looks good: it needs to tell a story.

By "tell a story," I mean it needs to get something across, to convey something. It might be a narrative, or it might be a mood, or a concept, or a setting. That's the purpose of every illustration. And once you recognize that, the question of how much detail to apply becomes a lot easier to answer.

Detail that enhances the story is good; detail that detracts is bad. Seems simple, right? Well, of course it's not. It's still hard to decide exactly what's necessary to get across that mood, or concept, or story. But at least now you begin with a specific goal in mind.

In sequential illustration, the need for detail varies from image to image. The sequence I'm using to illustrate this point is from my comics work -- specifically, from an early Jazz Age story -- but the ideas apply to all kinds of illustration.

Each of the panels in a comics sequence needs to convey something different, so although they all need to have a consistent feel to them, in a way they're all separate illustrations. Some panels establish the setting of a scene, or perhaps they're meant to be slow-paced, and contemplative. These scenes are often more full of detail than others. This isn't just to get across the factual information of where the characters are and what they're doing -- it also gets the reader to physically slow down his or her reading, taking in the scene and its details. This is a subtle way the illustrator can try to manipulate the pace that the reader uses in reading the story. Lots of detail in every panel will help give the feeling of a slow-paced scene, as if the characters in the story are also noticing these details.

A faster-paced scene -- like some of the action panels in this sequence -- lets the reader "read" the panels faster. It speeds up the reader's experience of the sequence, just as the characters in the story, running or fighting or whatever, wouldn't be noticing the background details either.

Detail in illustration is like pace in fiction writing. I made the comparison to photography earlier, but illustration -- especially sequential illustration, though not exclusively -- is also akin to another storytelling medium: fiction. Fiction writers know how to control the feeling of unfolding pace in their story by the details they throw in. A slow-moving introduction to a new day might be full of long, detailed descriptions of the landscape, the light of the morning sun through window lace, or the slow meanderings of a fly on the wall. But when the action picks up, a good writer knows not to clog up the action with too many details.

"Lefty Adamson, the uncle of Little Jerry, threw a haymaker punch at Rocko, his $300 Rolex watch glinting in the mid-day sunlight that filtered in through the latticework outside the back porch, where Lefty's aunt used to grow tomatoes until her hip began giving her too many problems. This was, of course, before they decided to rent out the twenty-year-old New England style duplex..."

Enough! We want to get to the fight already! We're (hopefully) vested in these characters, and we (should) care about what happens to them. So let's just experience the fight as it happened and leave the long-winded discussions for later, okay?

It's the same with visual storytelling. Give the reader -- or viewer -- just enough to get the point across. That point may need lighting, perspective, landscape or any number of things to fully get it across. But if it doesn't, leave it out.

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Elasticity: How Much Can Characters Change?

I want to talk about how much characters can change from one drawing to the next in a comic strip or other series of illustrations. There are two ways a character can change; one way is in the gradual stylistic change over the years, as the artist's style simply grows and evolves.

When I got the assignment to draw Annie, I had no time at all to work on developing my own style and finding that stable convergence between my style and that of the strip's predecessors. The strip was behind schedule, so I had to just start drawing, and figure it out as I went. The side-by-side comparison, above, between one of the first Annie drawings I did, back in August of 2004, and one I just finished for an upcoming strip, shows just how much my style in drawing the character, and the strip, has changed since those heady days of yore.

But the kind of elasticity I want to talk about is the day-to-day, panel-to-panel variety. The elongations of a character's face to exaggerate a facial expression, or the stretching of the body or parts thereof to make expressive gestures or to convey action or movement.

The fact is, elasticity is an important part of any illustration. It gives the illustration an expressionism that is a crucial component to any good image. Yes, some illustrations are supposed to look more realistic than others. But even the most photo-realistic image needs a little bit of exaggeration, a little touch of elasticity, to help emphasize some things over others.

We all know what a caricature is -- the extreme exaggeration of certain traits about a person, and the downplaying of others, that brings about an expressive likeness of that person. But the truth is, a so-called serious portrait needs to highlight and downplay those same characteristics in order for the portrait to be recognizable. They'll be much subtler, but they still need to be there.

Without any elasticity, whether based on mood, movement or both, drawings will feel stiff and wooden. Anyone who's tried to draw a expressive or dynamic pose using one of those wooden posing models knows how static and dull the poses usually come out. Also, anyone who's ever tried to draw, say, a ballplayer hitting a home run or a tennis player hitting a backhand winner from a photo in a sports magazine knows that even a photograph doesn't often have the flow and feeling that you need; you still need to push it just a bit.

The question, of course, is: how much is too much? I'd have to say it's too much when it's obvious. It's too much when the characters stop looking like themselves. It's too much when the average viewer says "that arm's too long" instead of "Hey, he's really throwing that ball fast!", or "his mouth is really big" instead of "Wow! She sure is hungry!"

Where exactly is that point? It's impossible to say; every style, every context has a different level of willing suspension of disbelief. Which ultimately is what this is about. I mean, if you can accept a girl without pupils...

...

(Okay, I was going to end my post there. Cute ending. But since I sometimes do get asked, very seriously, why Annie has no eyeballs, let me state for the record: Annie does have eyeballs. Of course she has eyeballs. everyone who can see has eyeballs. It's just her picture that doesn't. We see images all the time that are missing essential features -- ears, noses, sometimes mouths -- and accept that the characters have them, but they weren't included in the drawing for various reasons -- simplification, highlighting other features, etc.. Not having eyeballs gives Annie, and the other characters, a simplified, open expression, which is meant to convey their honesty and clarity of vision. It's notable that in the original Harold Gray comic strip, (and usually in ours now) all the shifty types, all the bad guys and most of the enigmatic, hard-to-read ones (The Asp, Punjab) didn't have those white open eyes.)

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Introducing Monday Morning Minnie!

Now that she's been with us a week, and begun to settle in here (?) It's time to give Minnie her formal introduction. Notice the black coat and those piercing orange eyes! Okay, you can't tell they're orange from a black-and-white sketch, but I was able to capture the piercing part. And those ears that tuck down onto her head -- sometimes you can't see them at all, and then she really looks odd.

I mentioned last week that Marty's first reaction to her was a bit -- well, aggressive. Well now they get on like a house on fire! They jump on each other like Grecko-Roman wrestlers, trying to get underneath each other and flip, trying to pin each other down. Their play is so fierce it's frightening -- Minnie will bite on Marty's face and pull on it, and Marty will bite Minnie's ears -- but it's all in fun. The tails keep wagging, and moments later when they're tired out, they'll just fall asleep next to each other. Crazy.

This sketch was done in pencil, then scanned and the tones added digitally. When I augment a sketch like this, I like to keep it minimal. There's a danger of the digital effects taking over, and it's easy to go overboard, but I want the piece to still feel like a sketch.

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Another Key to Success: Ideas!

Last week I saw an item online about a certain historic theater here in New Mexico celebrating its 80th anniversary. (I'm leaving out the theater's name, because no deals have been signed, but anyone in Albuquerque can probably guess the theater in question.) I immediately thought of the Pueblo Deco, World's-Fair-style tricentennial posters I did for the City of Albuquerque last year, and realized that this theater -- a Pueblo Deco landmark -- needed a poster like them for its own. (Now the rest of you in New Mexico have figured out the theater.)

So I emailed the theater manager and told him that if we worked quickly, we could have Anniversary posters printed up in time for the Holiday shopping season. He wrote back saying they weren't interested in anniversary posters, since they'd become dated quickly, but were interested in putting together a new poster for the theater. We're now in the midst of working out the details.

See how easy that was? This could be a big project for me, and all it took was for me to see an opportunity and make an inquiring email. Email! I didn't even have to send a letter or -- yikes! -- make a phone call!

In a profession like mine, it's easy to get passive, to wait for the work to come to you and then get it done. Even with aggressive self-promotion, the focus is usually that I'm available, that I can do what you need getting done. I sit back and hope for a big break. And big breaks do come -- occasionally. But in order to get further in your career you have to make those breaks. You have to go out and do more than say "I can do whatever you want." You have to say "This is what you want."

The biggest break in my career was probably the Albuquerque Tricentennial posters, but that didn't exactly fall in my lap. I was hired by Rick Johnson & Company to draw up sketches of what the posters would look like, to sell the concept to the Tricentennial Committee. They hadn't picked an artist for the final work yet, but were looking at some guy in Toronto, I think. I told them I could do the job, and they were wary. I hadn't done anything of that scale before. So when I did the sketch, I made it very, very tight, to show them I could do this. That, my enthusiasm, plus the good PR they'd get for hiring a local boy (doesn't hurt!) got me the job.

That's a great story, but the fact is I should have been pitching ideas to companies for years now. I'm very slow at learning this business, but I am learning. I need to do this more often -- go out and look for possibilities. Since that theater anecdote, I've sent similar proposals to two other organizations -- this time by mail, to make things a little more formal. That and I couldn't find an email address for one of them.

Whatever your field, if you're not where you want to be, you need to go out and make it happen. You can't wait for a big break to fall in your lap. If you want to work on more important projects at your job, tell your boss that. If you want your writing hobby to become a business, find someone who could hire you to write and then convince them. You can't afford to be passive, to hope that someone else can see how you could help them in some way. You need to come up with the ideas, and then show them. Sometimes that's all it takes. Even if they don't like the idea you're pitching, they'll see that you do have ideas.

Just don't be pushy. People hate that.

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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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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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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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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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Clients: Illustrators Help with Summer Vacancies

It's that time of year again, folks -- summer vacations. I've seen several business-related sites talking about coping with the vacancies in offices that these vacations cause. Wells Fargo's Business Roundup has one such article. One resource those articles don't mention, but which you should consider, is... well, me.

A good conceptual illustrator can help take the burden off your hands. I'll go into the difference between a conceptual illustrator and the other kind in a future post, but for now let's just say that a conceptual illustrator is more than a pair of hands. He or she has a variety of styles and applications, and works at finding the right solution to the problem, instead of needing everything laid out in front of them to just follow skillfully.

As a conceptual illustrator, I can work with an art director to come up with a piece that's the right fit for the project. I can be given some rough ideas and can run with them, freeing up the art director or designer to get on with other things.

If you've got a project that could use some illustration to give it some pop, some project where you can't even think of how to approach it, what visual to give it or what style might work with it, I can not only provide you with some great illustrations but can help shape the direction of the piece. Give me a call, drop me an email and let's see what we can come up with.

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Making Use of the Time You've Got

So the storyboard job is well underway; I wrote about it in a previous post. I'm drawing storyboards for a few sequences in the new Kevin Costner comedy Swing Vote. The work is going very well, indeed -- so well that I find myself with plenty of down time.

Don't get me wrong, I love down time -- especially when I have other projects to work on, like the Annie comic strip which needs a week's worth of strips, six dailies and a color Sunday, done every week. By starting early, over the weekend, and putting in evenings, I got the week's worth done today, just in time for the July 4 holiday -- I'll be able to relax tomorrow.

But the reason this down time is significant is that the film company's paying me by the day. I'm getting a day rate, for five days total, and to be honest, they're not working me very hard so far.

Of course, if it doesn't bother them it shouldn't bother me. We're not behind schedule, in the least -- on the contrary, they might love the latest revisions I sent them this afternoon and not want me to go back and tighten them up, and I'll be done two days early.

But when I agreed to work five days, I committed myself to them for those days. The other work I've done was never at the expense of their work -- it was only done while I was waiting to hear back from them, after finishing the work so far and sending it in for review. But to part of me it still feels like I'm cheating, like I'm getting away with something.

I remind myself that as long as I make myself available to them -- and I haven't made any other appointments or commitments for these days so that I would be available to them -- then it's okay if, while I'm waiting to hear from them, I take care of other work. It's actually a great arrangement for me, obviously. The director seems happy with the work so far, as does the director of photography. So it's all good, right?

In fact, as a freelancer whose time is valuable I have a duty to make the most of the down time, to take full advantage of the gaps in my storyboarding workload to get other work out of the way. To not do so might make me feel more loyal to the film company -- for reasons that don't even make any sense as I'm writing this -- but they'd be at the expense of my business. I can't afford that kind of luxury.

Just as a good freelancer needs to accept without shame when things aren't going well, a good freelancer also has to accept, without guilt, when things are.

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Multi-Tasking Hand

This is an odd thing to confess, and I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but -- I think my hand doesn't write as well when it's been drawing.

Let me explain.

On the best of days, my handwriting is pretty bad, as anyone who's seen it can confirm. My writing is usually a block lettering anyway -- yes, like the kind used in comics -- because my cursive, and even my upper-and-lower-case print writing, are rather -- unsophisticated, shall we say.

But when I'm in the middle of drawing, it's a lot worse.

I just came upon this thought now, as I'm drawing up the layouts for another week's worth of Annie strips. I have these pre-printed blanks I made up, with a rectangle representing the strip, some guidelines marking the 1/2, 1/3 and 2/3 spots, and lots of room on the sides for notations about the sketches, which aren't very elaborate. Jennifer has commented occasionally about how I never use those notes areas, and just now, as I was writing a little comment about what one of the characters was doing, I realized why.

I can't write worth crap while I'm sketching.

Maybe writing and drawing use different parts of the brain. That makes sense, since they're very different ways of seeing, and different ways of thinking. And since creating images and putting down letterforms are very different ways of using the same hand muscles, maybe transitioning quickly from the one to the other causes some stumbling -- like shifting gears in a car without properly using the clutch or something.

And maybe, since I'm an illustrator through and through, and since that's what I've always been, maybe that's why my handwriting has always been so bad. Maybe, as soon as I pick up the pencil or pen, my drawing instincts take over, and don't want to surrender control to the writing part of my brain.

I know this is an odd theory. I don't even know if it's true that I screw up my writing more often when I'm in the middle of sketching or not. It seems to be, but who knows? And I don't know what possible practical application this could have, other than to try pausing a moment when switching from one to the other -- like waiting for the clutch to engage in the car. Maybe just being aware of this brain change will be enough to improve the situation. I'll let you know what progress, if any, I see.

Stumble It!

Why "Storyteller's Workshop?"

A couple times a year, it seems, I get a call, or an email, from someone who wants to hire me for a children's party, or some Native American event. They think from my business name that I'm a storyteller -- that I sit around and tell people stories.

Well, I'll admit it may not be the best name for a freelance illustration business, but there's a reason why I chose Storyteller's Workshop.

The name was originally for a self-publishing business I had in mind. I was going to publish my own comics, the way so many others at the time were doing -- this was the mid-90s. But as I became more serious with my freelance illustration business, I realized it would be a perfect name for it.

You see, illustrators are, above and beyond all else, storytellers. It's our job to tell the story. The story of the client's business. The story of the magazine article. The story of the comic strip. It's great if the artwork looks good -- in fact, it's very important. But if the illustration doesn't convey what it needs to convey -- in other words, if it doesn't tell the story -- it's a failure.

The dictionary defines illustrate as "explain or make something clear by using examples, charts, pictures, etc." That's the job of the illustrator. To get the point across. To present a viewpoint. to be a storyteller.

Stumble It!