It’s been kind of quiet here at HQ– no big freelance jobs knocking on my door, but so I’ve been trying to keep busy and get work accomplished– slowly putting together a website and taking care of numerous little things on my to-do list, and as such I’ve looked at the most recent bio I’ve written for myself. First and foremost, what’s the first statement about me? I confess that I’m a jack-of-all-trades. I don’t think I can really help it– I have a lot of interests, and I doubt I could say I’ve mastered or will master any of them! Illustrations, comics, 3D needlefelting, sewing (more of a recent pursuit though), and screen printing, and that’s just off the top of my head, not counting all the things I’ve tried and failed, or the things I do casually (web-site building, for one). And of course several of those things (like screen printing or comics) have multiple internal processes of their own! Despite all that, I’m always wanting to learn more, do more, take more on my plate. But of course– too much on one’s plate and you’re left daunted about how to accomplish it.

We’re a society of multitaskers now; and this is pretty awesome and frustrating too. Instead of doing one thing (and doing it excellently, arguably) we’re spread out all over the place, dipping our hands into different pools and making wonderful ripples. Or if you’re in my case, making the starts of ripples but never finishing them. My love of exploration has left me wondering where my focus is, and left me wondering how to manage it all. Take a step into my studio and you’ll see pages of started projects, half-finished printmaking endeavors, and pages of plans and plots. I think this is one reason if nothing else why my previous thoughts of grad school were in my head– hoping that somehow an institution will force me to buckle down and complete something. (Not to mention that while I appreciate everyone’s positive thoughts about my abilities, I can’t help but shake the idea that my growth over the last year or so has been a lateral move.This might just be me though.) It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to focus on just one thing, and do it well.

And the other curse of having a vivid imagination coupled with a hard time knowing when to finish something? Well, my imagination likes to go on a trip and think of all the other possibilities of things I could be doing, things I’ve always wanted to do. Practicing lettering! Making repeating patterns! Drawing just about anything! My brain goes on overdrive and working on project A becomes a true test of wills.

I like to think that everyone’s like this– but I’m really not sure. At the same time I try not to berate myself for being all over the place, because I have a lot of interests, and it’s who I am. In a weird way this kind of spread-out view is my way of balancing– because with too much focus, I wouldn’t see myself growing, and with too little, I wouldn’t get too far either. It doesn’t mean that things are easy of course– I get pretty exhausted just from the mental workout that creativity provides. And I constantly find myself wanting an extra self/pair of hands/ten hours a day just to improve things But I guess the lesson is that’s okay, even if it means I’m like this unto old age.

What about you, are you a multitasker at heart? Or do you work on one thing predominantly until it’s done and then move on? How do you balance all the things you want to do when time gets in the way? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ever since I graduated college, I’ve had this little old woman hanging on my back whispering ideas into my head. Her name is grad school, and she’s impossible to shake! My professors in college always said, ‘You should go to grad school! Why wait?’ I was never sure though. I still am not really; I’ve always been on the fence, and that unsurity has led to me not applying. On one hand, the appeal of going back to school is obvious– be around creative types, network, force myself back into the hectic createcreatecreate schedule school gives me by default, experiment, blaze new trails. On the other, there’s the negative: it can be so pricey, what if they don’t want to give me scholarships, it’s a big move, do I have to abandon certain things I have here, do I really need it?  I’m still not very convinced yet.

The other downside to grad school (at least for us illustration types) is that there’s so few programs for us. A couple of limited residency ones, and then it seems like SCAD, SVA, and MCAD. And the Academy of Art (I think?) in San Francisco. Of course SVA seems like the best route for some reasons, though to be perfectly honest now I don’t know how much I want to live in NYC. (AKA, why can’t there be a great illustration program in Portland?) I think regardless of all this I need to do some applying; if nothing else than to see how I’d fare in that grand lottery of art school admissions. I’ve been feeling rather down on myself lately– my artwork is all right, but i think I could be worlds better with time and effort applied. I certainly never feel confident enough to apply to any of those illustration contests like American Illustration or the Young Guns or whatnot. What I do know though is that I don’t feel like I’m working to the best of my potential– perhaps grad school could help with that? Anyway, we’ll see. I’m hoping that working hard til fall will leave me feeling a little more sure of myself and then putting together a portfolio will leave me in a positive frame of mind to see how it goes. I’ll keep you posted. And of course, any advice you might have about the whole thing is always appreciated.

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In ‘always the last to jump on the bandwagon’ news, I finally got my hands on a copy of the book Art & Fear, and man! That book is so spot on and pinpointed all the creative neuroses I have. Which made me realize I’m not so all alone out there. There’s a whole world of fear-filled neurotic artists! It reminded me ways in which to combat all those worries I have about not being good enough or having envy over my fellow illustrators. If you haven’t read it, I definitely advise you to do so!  (Also a goodie: How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, by Adrian Shaughnessy. Though I feel I’ve mentioned that one before. Very apt even for non designers!)

It’s June, which means that 2008 is nearly half-over! (Or is that really half-to-come?) Stay busy, pals.

I am officially the world’s worst blogger, I think. But this morning as I was running errands an idea popped into my head to write about– so here we go.

Head to a store and you’ll find prices jumping for food and supplies. The gas pumps are charging more all the time, flip on the news and you’ll invariably hear about airline expenses, businesses merging and cutting staff, the job search becomes harder and harder, and then there’s rationing… Whether we’re in a recession or not, things are changing and it’s not really for the better, at least not right now. It’s kind of depressing, but it started to make me wonder– how is it affecting illustrators?

Do you think our future is still bright? As the cost of necessities rises, will we still have much of a market? Will magazines discontinue (or switch to photography or stock) because they’re more like extravagances than food or shelter? I wonder. I would like to hope not– publications are my bread and butter! But I’m curious of your thoughts.

Also, how are things affecting you currently? I find that I’m spending a lot more at the post office mailing out artwork than I used to. Cost of plane tickets and fuel make me reluctant to travel (though I didn’t drive– used to bike til someone stole mine recently!), which means I have to cut out any public things like comic conventions or craft fairs. And then there’s the worry about the art I make to sell (as opposed to illustrations)– will people stop buying because they need to worry about more important things? I worry that somewhere along the line creative people will be out of work. I doubt a doctor will ever have that problem– but an artist unfortunately doesn’t have that same clout in society.

I may just be a worrywart right now, but I do wonder– how good will we have it in the next several years? And if there is a lingering concern, should we be considering a plan B? I honestly don’t know what I’d do besides what I do now! So tell me what you see and predict– the good and bad, because I want to know!

Before I start this post, I want to preface with some news I meant to post last week but got side-tracked on:

There’s a book out there that has scammed a bunch of my fellow illustrator friends, compiling their work and interviews without permission in book AND cd form (like clipart). This is bad news folks, and you need to spread the word and hopefully something can be done about it to get it taken off the shelves and the illustrators compensated. This is bad for the industry and bad for so many people.

More details here and here. I can’t put it as eloquently as my friends have but it sincerely makes me angry.

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Back to the main premise of this post: art supply shopping. Art stores are stocked with temptation for me; but oftentimes I will buy something I swear I’ll love (I’m looking at you, Chartpak markers) and they wind up sitting and taking up space, because I just can’t/don’t use them well, or they don’t feel comfortable. Still, I blow money on art supplies because it’s fun in its own way. It’s rare that I walk away from a store (or receive a package) 100% thrilled with what I get. But this weekend I did, so I wanted to share and review what I found.

Art store: Jerry’s Artarama, Tempe, AZ

Jerry’s is where I typically get my art supplies. I’ll admit sometimes the store frustrates me, as they don’t always have what I need, and I expect store prices to be similar to their website, but I have to sacrifice price for convenience sometimes. And I rarely ever buy brushes there, because they are not really kept well, but oh well. On Saturday I wrote up a little list and went in search of white ink. The Moby Dick of the illustrator world, white ink is SUCH a pain to find and be satisfied with. Either it’s too thick and gloppy, or it’s not opaque enough, or it lies funny on the surface and can get dirty. Ideally you want something opaque but thin enough to be used with a brush and a dip pen.  I was seeking out FW Acrylic because some friends were getting good results with it, but when I got there, the selection was picked over. Desperately I started scrambling for some other ink, and looking at the bottom of one rack I saw this:

Item #1: Dr. Ph Martin’s PEN-WHITE! I wasn’t sold at first, after dipping my finger into the vial I couldn’t tell how opaque it was over ink, but I bought it anyway. The kid at the register said he liked it better than FW anyway, and since I generally like the brand I scooped it up. Consensus? I love it. It is great for my dip pen and brush alike (though not 100% opaque with the latter, with clean-up in Photoshop, it’s not noticeable. See below), and my only complaint is that in the desert here, it seems to dry a teeny bit faster than I would prefer. Still, a touch of water doesn’t affect the opacity and helps that out.

Before, on my warm-white sketchbook.Sometimes it got a little less opaque because I didn’t refill as often as I shoulda.

After clean-up in Photoshop… Most everything cleans up nice!

So I highly recommend/love this ink. Only trouble– how hard is it to find? I’ve never seen it before.  Next on my list was to look for some pen nibs. Unfortunately, no art store around here seems to have the awesome nib supply I used to get in CT, so everything’s mostly prepackaged and in sets. But, I did notice while checking the manga section, a nib that is totally awesome and my new favorite:

Item #2: The Tachikawa G-nib. ( with nice green lacquered pen holder, and my old inkwell). This sucker is awesome. In the drawing above, 90% of the whites were all done with it, and the chipmunk was all pen, while the girl was brushpen.  Some minor differences, but overall I can emulate brushstrokes with it and get fine detail AND get curves to work better. I know part of it is lack of practice, so I hope to get better and further use it for lovely mark-making. And even in the below picture, I did the bottom half of a monster with brushpen and the top half with the nib and the results are really close. So it looks like I will be using the nib predominantly (and supplement with the brush) from now on!

(Above, everything is nibbed, except for the bottom half of that monster.)

From there I found my oddest and possibly neatest discovery:

Item #3: Liquid Pencil! As you can see, it’s from Australia and it says rewettable (next to that little splotch of white ink). Which means that you can take water to it and lift up areas and shade. Basically, the inside is like a puddinglike consistency, and you can wash and use a brush to sketch. Kind of like sumi-ink, but graphite. They also have a permanent version and you can get six different tones–two greys, sepia, green, red, and blue. I just went with the basic for now.

I haven’t used it a lot yet, but here’s a little sample of some fooling around. It’s pretty cool and I will use it a lot in the future methinks!

Anything that looks like it was brushy/washy was with it. Reminds me of the results of drawing with crayon on a litho stone, which is super-awesome!

Well, this got a little long but I hope you guys appreciate some cool supplies to take a peek at. I always find playing like this rejuvenates me and keeps me creative during quiet freelance periods. Feel free to recommend me your favorite new art discoveries!

Been slowly working my way around on getting a feeling for what I’m doing– sometimes I gotta admit I feel like someone replaced my hands with clumsy dog feet and blindfolded me and said “OK, now make some fun drawings!” On the other hand I do think far too much about what I’m doing right and wrong in this business. It’s one of those things I have to work on– not that thinking is that bad, but too much of anything is a good thing! Emailing my illustrator friends and asking their opinions has been a nice experience though– part of me is like ‘Wow! They’re going through what I’m going through!” and the other part is like “Wow! I’m totally jealous!” But still, I’m getting a better idea of where I feel more comfortable and where I could see myself. Ultimately though I just have to have fun– and stop thinking so hard!

I’m curious though– are any of you working in the children’s books field? Several pals of mine keep telling me they’d love to see me tackle that field, and I’m definitely interested. So if anyone has any suggestions/resources/contacts/advice on how to get into it, or know someone who I should talk to about this, that’d be great! Anyone willing to let me pick their brain? My sister and I have a book idea also, though it’s currently in the wrong format (comics) and we’ll need to rework it.

I’m all for the give and take of information obviously. I’ll answer what little I know in return!  I’ll try and write a more advice-worthy post sometime in the near-future, too. Bear with me!

Anyway, it’s time for this lady to stop thinking so hard and start putting the pen to paper. It’s been a while. How are you guys doing?