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By Timothy Piotrowski, March 7, 2012 7:39 am

Playing well with people might come easy for some, and for others it was something they had to learn. However you get there, as a freelancer if you want to have a successful career, it’s something you have to do all the time.

This just doesn’t apply to clients, or the moment you finally quit your day job. If being a freelancer is something you hope to do one day, you should keep this in mind, because today’s annoying co-worker/friend can be tomorrows art director.

Play Well with Others

I worked as a production artist for years. One company I worked for had a lot of issues. There was fighting going on between Editorial and Design/Production, and then within our own department there was a war between the Department Manager and the Design Director. As the guy making the stuff, I was at the end of the line for everyone: Writers, editors, designers, artists, marketing, and manufacturing. Any mistakes made along the way, ended up on my plate.

It builds up and you get frustrated, and you want to say something to the people you feel are making your job harder. As tempting as it was to vent on those people, the chances are, they aren’t intentionally trying to make your job harder. I kept my frustration in check at work.

Since then, two of the people I worked with have moved on from the company as well, becoming art directors with companies that use illustrators. I’ve kept in touch with them via facebook. They have seen my work as an illustrator, and have given me work.

I doubt that either of them would have thought to use me as an illustrator, if I had given into the moment and vented for my own emotional satisfaction. Even if it wasn’t venting about them, you can still be seen as a difficult person if all you do is complain.

Don’t Burn Bridges

A friend recently graduated art school and I was doing my best to lend him a hand. This was anything from answering questions about freelancing (as best I could), being encouraging when he was facing hard times, and even sending work his way, when I had too much.

At one point I was trying to get him in at a company I was working for. At the same time, the company started having lots of issues, and the project spiraled out of control. Lots of yelling, finger pointing and high stress levels. I decided that it was time to go, and did so professionally.  Unfortunately this meant that my friend missed out on work he could have used.

My friend took it personally. He wrote me an angry email, furious that I would leave this job when it meant not being there to push a referral for him. He made clear that he no longer wanted to be friends, personally or professionally.

I completely understand his frustration. You try to hold out from getting a crappy survival job, and rely on your skills and talent. Along comes something that might not be the ideal type of work, but it’s a thousand times better then retail or waiting tables. And it falls through. Right back to where you started.

My reason for not inviting him had nothing to do with him hurting my feelings or for disrespecting all the help and favors I gave him. I didn’t invite him simply because I couldn’t trust him to act professionally.

In the world of the freelancer, your attitude is the grease to make the gears turn. You can’t control other peoples attitude or how they react. So control yours and it can make all the difference in how fast your career grows and where it goes.

Thanks to Marc Scheff with his help on this entry.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, January 2, 2012 9:56 am

I love doodling. I find it to be a great activity that allows an artist to let thought flow more freely. Whenever I have the chance to doodle in prep for an illustration, I always find the end results to be richer and more detailed. Story elements also creep in. My visual language to express a character expands.

For cartooning, I think doodling is a valuable exercise. Kool Aid Gets Fired came from a doodle of Kool Aid having a moment of existential crisis. Many of my background characters come from doodles in sketchbooks. I doodle something that I feels really captures the visual essence of what you might think such a person looks like. When I drew the little guy down in the right hand corner, I thought he looked like an everyday background office worker, someone who pretty much comes in, does their job, and goes home.

His final incarnation in Kool Aid he had glasses. But the basic idea for what many of my office workers would look like came from this doodle. To me (and everyone is going to see different), it says, he’s been at his job not just years, but a few decades. Not fully beaten down, but definitely a corporate cog that knows his place.

As contrasted by this doodle, who I always thinking of as Ken Newman, bright, shiny, energetic, looking for ways to make a change and improve things. Often I will take a doodle and expand on it, working out how the character might look expressing different emotions.

Sometimes a character from a doodle ends up in a full illustration. I’m not sure if I specifically used the person on the left in the drawing on the right. The one on the left was a women who got onto the train with her chello and bags and insisted on squeezing into the space. I was trying out some new brushes in Painter for this. Clearly the way I drew the head stuck in my head for the crowd scene I drew.

When I worked in offices, often my meeting handouts would end up covered in doodles. Often they were of co-workers.

I think that moving forward, I’m going to devote some time to just doodling each week. No specifics, no goal, just a journey.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, May 24, 2011 5:29 am

I came across a bunch very old illustrations the other day, and thought, man, I would not recognize this as my work, compared to what I do today. Here take a look. (Happy Reed? Pictures! Also forgive any formatting issues. Since these blog entries are as I think of them I don’t take much time to try and re-size images and such.)

These are part of a series done for Reeling, the Chicago GLBT film festival. They got a lot of attention and people really liked them. So much that someone ripped off the style for several brochures, and people thought I had done the illustrations. To bad I didn’t, because more then likely, the person who ripped me off got paid. I did this for free for the exposure. I didn’t get any work from this.

I was very proud of these at the time. They were the best work I had done at the time. I can still see elements of these in my current work.

My friend was working at Chicago Magazine, handling the entire online website. This was back before the internet started killing magazines and newspapers. Chicago Magazine didn’t support the online site then. It was just her, and she had no budget, no direction to take the site. It barely served as a, whats happening. So she asked me to do these tiny illustrations for the site. For free. I thought, at least I can say I have worked for Chicago Magazine, and maybe I might get to network to get some work in the actual magazine. But that didn’t happen.

For a while I worked at a company that did corporate communications, mainly newsletters, brochures and more. Sometimes, they wanted illustrations. My boss never wanted to spend money of art and graphics, which was good for me, since it fell to me to come up with illustrations.

I really don’t know what I was trying to do with the shape of the heads. These were for a brochure about hospital credentialing. Back then, computers had these giant, thick monitors, that took up your whole desk!

Oh hey! One of the first illustrations I got paid for. For Lakeland Boating (I still do illustrations for them). It was about how the head (bathroom) on boats often can be left…messy. I wrote a dirty limerick on the wall, and thought I had smudge it enough. I didn’t, but thankfully they caught it before it went to print. I don’t do that anymore. (Here I sit, broken hearted, came to shit and only farted, in case you were wondering.)

Back then, I did  lot of work with actual materials, and would have to send them in to be scanned. The good thing about that, is you can work in different ways. Like this for an article about Morse Code.

I did it on scratch board. I really liked it. So did the editor. So much he kept the original art and never sent it back. Nor did he offer me any money for the original art. Yeah, people actually do that. A contract prevents that.

However, this did lead to me doing a series of these of skeletons. A friend of a friend opened a small knick knack shop, and wanted artists to put their work up for commission. So I did a bunch, and they sold. The first few that sold she gave me my share. The rest, she kept all of it, because her shop wasn’t doing well, and needed the money.

Come to think of it, she was friends of the editor that kept the image above. Another good reason for going digital, or at least only delivering digital. And contracts

These are some images that I did that were not for clients, but just myself.

It’s always interesting to look back. I also found a disk with all these illustrations I did for this interactive CD a bank put out to help people prepare to take a test to get their real estate license. There were 3 of us doing the illustrations, and a 4th guy doing all the photo researching. I think there was over 500 illustrations that were needed. I was working for a company that was doing the CD for the bank. I never dealt with the person at the bank, but we always got to hear her feedback. Like, I don’t like the color green. So what about the illustrations about lawn care and such? She also didn’t like red. Or bright blues. In fact, she doesn’t like primary colors.

So the color palette eventually became grays, beiges, purples, light baby blue, and where appropriate, some greens.  She also so everything as sexual and violence towards women.

I honestly can’t say what I think about my old work. I can say my skill has improved a lot.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, March 23, 2011 5:08 am

So, the last entry, I showed some goblins standing in a field near a forest. I thought the illustration was done, and sent it out to some friends for opinions. For the most part, they agreed it’s there, but that I could push it a little more. So I did. Here are the two versions, and the second version, I agree is much better.

However, The top one is closer to style of this illustration:

I wanted to stay closer to this flatter style of illustration. I did find myself getting more and more detailed as I worked on the goblins. Take the sleepy goblin in the back on the right hand side, he’s leaning against his spear. I had to go back and flatten his face some, because the level of lighting and details I had on it were more realistic in style then say the goblin sitting on the rock.

And I certainly feel that the grass moves much farther away from the style below.

Not that I think the after version is a failure. I love it. I’m glad I took those extra steps and pushed it even more. The far right goblin, picking his nose, I think his feet and legs are awesome. They have a real sense of space, direction and shape. I love the sitting goblin, his face, the legs. I feel I managed to really make each goblin have character.

What is lacking is any sense of story, as they are just standing around by some trees. So, now I have an idea to do a second drawing of these goblins around a camp fire, as if bedding down for the night. It will also let me do some lighting from a strong source, as I’m working to expand my skills and learn something about light and coloring.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, March 10, 2011 11:19 am

One hurdle we often face as artists is how to get better? It’s hard to look at your own work subjectively sometimes. You might have an idea and think that’s good. And then later say, Oh, wait, lets do this! And you have a better idea. Then you show it to others, who offer much better ideas, and you think…man, this sucks compared to what it could have been…

The fact is, we all have to make our own choices on the road to the final piece. I’m working on some illustrations for myself, as a form of practice and skill building. Recently I sent this to a few friends to get some feedback on it.

From those three friends I got 3 different kind of feedback. All valid too. It’s my choice on how much of that feedback I use and incorporate into the piece.

I then posted the image on a site that has a monthly crit of work either finished or in progress. And I got some more feedback, some of it similar and some of it different. All good and valid. So this work will have some tweaks done and some parts reworked in more major ways. But hey, since it’s for me, that’s fine!

Right now, though I had another idea I wanted to get down on paper. A goblin raiding party.

So, here are the first rough pencils:

I just wanted to get the different characters in place and a general composition set up. After I went and did tight pencils of each of the different goblins. First I did the axe wielding goblin in the back.

I knew he needed a much more action ready pose then what I gave him. Then I moved onto the goblin mage to his right. This one, man is that boring, it looks like he’s just doing parlor tricks and is about to ask “is that your card?” rather then blast you eldritch energy. But he took a while to get something I liked. First I thought I would make him more sinister, but also frail. Wasn’t to happy with that, so I made him less frail. Then I decided, it’s partly the direction he’s facing. I imagined he was the kind of mage that delights in his craft, and cultivates an air of mystery by being devious. So he might hide what he’s going to do. So I turned him away from what the group is looking at. It added some variety to the com as well, so that not everyone looks like they are holding the same pose.

I like this set up much better.

So, on I went, with each character. What were they wearing, what features in their face made them different from another goblin? In particular the Rat Master was fun, since I decided that he’s kind of filthy and particularly smelly compared to your average goblin, he does after all, sleep with the rats he trains. After I had all the characters penciled in, I tweaked their positions, as I had a few spots where I had bad tangents, where several elements meet that become distracting. For example the Squatting goblin, the archer and the one rat all meet up and made it a confusing mess, it wasn’t clear what was what.

So here is the tight pencils as they stand now. I will not start on the final version till later, so I can go back in a day and look and see if there is anything I want to change.

For example, I think the lower leg on the squatting goblin is too short compared to his upper leg. So I will go back and fix that. I’m also not sure about his hair. Maybe he just needs to be bald and an eye patch. His dagger will certainly have a poisonous  The goblin mage needs bigger hands. Maybe a few animal skulls and feathers and such. These aren’t quite savage enough right now. Perhaps the archer needs to have his cowl down over his face more. The warrior and rat master I think are at good where they are. The rats are certainly what I want.

After heating some good feedback on the first illustration, I took those thoughts into developing this drawing. And before I start on the final work, I’ll get some feedback on that as well.

If you don’t know any artists personally or professionally, I suggest finding a site that offers a forum for posting work and getting feedback.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, February 18, 2011 7:33 am

I’ve talked about the difference between having talent and developing that talent into skills. It’s hard to divide the two clearly. A person could have a natural talent for something like color arrangement, while someone learns it as a skill. Both may be equally adept at it, and it would be hard for a person to know that just looking at the finished work.

Below are some drawings I did over the last few days.

The final art however, were these illustrations:

The drawing displays my talent. I have a natural talent for drawing. (which can be seen in some of the other figure drawing I’ve posted in the past).

The illustration (And there is a difference between drawing and illustration), shows the skills I’ve developed over the years. With drawing, it’s more of letting myself free to work and to see what happens. Many times when I’m drawing, I will be really loose, and see what lines or shapes come out, and then go back and hi-lite those lines and shapes that I find help create the image. Some of my favorite characters have come about this way.

But when I go to take it to an illustration, There is much more thought up front. I find that if I spend time thinking about the final illustration before starting it, I get much better results. Often I will do a tight pencil drawing in between sketching and illustrating. This gives me time to think about the different aspects, how to approach them, what’s the best way to achieve the results I want, and more details just start filtering in.

The tight pencils are a blend of using my talent and skills. I let myself the freedom to explore with the pencil, but I also keep in mind the composition, what colors I might want to use, and more.

By the time I moved into doing the final illustration, I would say I’m mostly in the skills side of things. It’s skill that lets me get the shading how I want it, the texture of surfaces, and more. Is there some talent there? Yes sure, but I would say it’s in the passenger seat instead of driving.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, March 19, 2010 6:12 am

I can credit part of my freelance work because I got involved with a figure drawing group. I came to the group when a friend asked me to go with her to a Meetup group that met in Central Park to draw. I looked through the other members profiles, to get a sense of the people in the group. I found a couple figure drawing groups, so I signed up for those. I have to admit, I was nervous about going to my first session. The guy who started it was running it from his in home studio, and is a pretty amazing artist.

I went, drew and felt good about it, even though I knew my skills were pretty rusty. I think it was also a right-time thing. I had been let go from my job in March, and had decided I would make sure that my unemployment, was FUNemployment, and really de-rust my skills and build them up. I talk a lot about goals. At that time it was improve my drawing skills. I know in the year since then I’ve achieved both those skills. If I hadn’t gotten involved with something outside of myself, I don’t know where I would have ended up.

I’m a firm believer that drawing is the base skills for most art. I also have a very open mind to what a successful drawing is. Looking “right” is subjective. However, the ability to convey your idea’s visually, and to work them out is really what going to the figure drawing group is about for me.

At first it was every other week, then we moved to a bigger space and it was every week, thanks to Kristen who worked with the artists who owned the studio. The owner went to China or Europe for a few months, so we found a new place. Jeff who had been coming to the group, offered his place. But after a few months, we outgrew that. One of the people coming (Liam) started organizing Saturday meetings, every other week. This week, Marc and I went shopping for stuff we need for the new stage the group has taken on. A professional space we are paying for. The money comes from the people who attend, it covers the cost of the models and space.

Around this time, I was reading a book, My So Called Freelance Life, by Michelle Goodman, which was recommended to me by a fellow cartoonists, Monica Gallagher. The book is more about changing the way you think about freelancing, rather then what you should be doing as a freelancer, such as mailings. One of the things it talks about, which I’ve written about, networking. Basically just finding people who want to do what you do.

Getting involved in the drawing group got me several new friends, who want to do the same thing as me, making a living off our creativity. We are all at various stages of that. So any of us can ask someone for advice or give advice. We formed our own network.

You don’t have to get as involved as I did. But doing something art related can’t hurt. I recommend groups more geared towards professionals. Don’t worry if you don’t see yourself as a pro yet. If your goal is to make a living as an artists of some sort, get in there with them. You also don’t have to find a group that does specifically what you do. If you want to be a cartoonist, you don’t have to find a cartoon drawing group. Chances are you aren’t going to find that.

Our group says we are for professionals and people serious about improving their life drawing skills. I’ve been asked how we determine that. We really don’t make any judgment about that. People come, if they feel it’s a good fit, they keep coming back, if they don’t, they find a group they like better. We are a fun group, but we are serious about what we do, and I think both come across during the sessions.

If you are worried about someone looking at you and saying your not a professional, only a real jerk is going to do that, and who wants to be around those people? If you are worried about people thinking you aren’t that good, going will soon change their mind as you get better. Like I said, when I first went, I was rusty and was worried what people would think.

Doing art is often a solitary act. But as artists it’s so important to interact with other artists. From going to this group I would say I’ve gotten the following out of it:

Better Drawing Skills
A network of fellow artists
Self Confidence to be a freelancer
More resources
New friends

There was some good timing and maybe a little bit of luck involved. I signed up for two figure drawing groups, both being run by talented artists. I only made it to one of the groups. What if I had went to the other one, and it clicked as well as this one did?

There is another factor that had nothing to do with timing or luck, which came from me, and that was my willingness to get involved, and following through. Looking back, some of what I did, seemed very natural to me, even though it wasn’t anything I had done before. But also looking back, I can see why in the past it had trouble trying to be a freelancer, be an artists and be the person I knew I was.

If you find yourself struggling and maybe a little isolated, get involved.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, February 16, 2010 2:51 pm

Picasso was in a park when a women approached him and asked him to draw her portrait.

Picasso agrees and quickly sketches her.

After handing the sketch to her, she is pleased with the likeness and asked how much she owed to him.

Picasso replied, $5,000.

The women screamed, “But it only took you five minutes!”

“No madam, it took me all my life.” Replied Picasso.

Recently my idea of what it means to be an artist/writer/dancer/actor/musician has changed. To be an artist/writer/dancer/actor/musician you must always practice your passion. Only the rare prodigy comes forth as a fully functional artist. The rest of us talented folk have to sharpen our skills. For me being a cartoonist means drawing all the time, and not just comics. Drawing sharpens my eye and hand. Much how you learned to write your letters, drawing them over and over, till now it’s so built into you, you don’t even realize it.

I’ve mentioned that I attend a weekly figure drawing session. (if you live in or near Brooklyn, I suggest checking it out.) It’s been about a year, and I’ve definitely noticed improvements in my figure drawing. Other benefits I’ve seen is I’m able to sketch out a layout or a thumbnail for an illustration idea quicker and cleaner. That kind of benefits comes over time, and is some what passive, it just happens.

I’m in the middle of a project (which I got with the help of my good friend, Marc, an amazing artist), working on the pencils. I’ve got a lot of reference material on the human figure, which I refer to, when doing action poses. But one panel, I really didn’t need to refer to anything, because I knew how the figure was going to look. It was a straight forward shot of the character busting out of the ropes holding him. I knew how the shoulders connected into the pecs, where the line between them and the biceps would be, how the arm would connect to the chest.

I’ve drawn similar poses in the course of the drawing session. What I had been practicing, I was putting into action, in an active way. It was very clear that what I was doing in the drawing sessions was having a direct impact on what I was doing, both passively and actively. It was pretty cool to have a moment where I could see both happening.

Some one once asked me, “Does anyone ever get good enough to not have to use references?” I seriously doubt it, save for the prodigy mentioned earlier, or people who draw the same thing over and over. And even then, all that happens is that you probably rely less and less on reference material for what you know. But if you have to draw something such as Washington Square Park, wouldn’t you look at a picture?

Also, this project has been a good one for re-evaluating my composition. Take the above image again. That is not how I originally drew the inset panel. This is how I drew it:

How boring. Very boring. The same idea is in both, that hasn’t changed, but how I executed the idea has changed. This in fact happened several times. One panel in particular, I redrew about 5 times, over the course of many hours. I had a lot of trouble finding a pose to reference* that I really liked. Eventually I found something that lead me to the final solution.

For me, being a cartoonist and illustrator doesn’t mean that I make money doing that. It means the way I think about it, the way I approach it. I need to always look for ways to expand my talents, what I know, and the information I can bring to each project. Being an illustrator/cartoonist is more then a full time job, since all the work I do to be a better illustrator isn’t done for direct pay, and comes on my own time, after the time spent on paying work.

*When I reference an image, for me that doesn’t mean copying it, but using it for a guide on how things line up on the body. Especially for hands and feet.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, January 21, 2010 10:19 am

Here are some drawings from last night’s drawing group. The group is taking off it seems. Others are stepping up and offering to help run sessions, and start sessions of different days once a month. It’s great.

Part of learning is observation of what you are doing. In the drawing below, I was going along, somewhat pleased at what I was getting. Then I got to the area circled in red. I realized that the negative space outside the body in my drawing was at least twice as big as what I was actually seeing (The yellow area).

What it comes down to, my proportions for most of the drawing were way off. It happens. It’s why good artists draw all the time. You aren’t always going to be perfect, you don’t always get it right. Heck even the two drawings above are 100% correct. Maybe 80%. Models shift, you make one area a little to big, you forget to have some outside reference point.

It’s the ability to look and evaluate your work, that helps someone improve.

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By Timothy Piotrowski, January 14, 2010 5:47 am

Last night we picked up our figure drawing group after a few weeks hiatus because of those pesky holidays. It was good to draw the figure again, though I did feel a bit rusty, and I wasn’t digging on my pencil paper interaction. I felt my shorter sketches were far more successful then the longer poses.

It was also a new model, which takes a while to get used to. When you use the same model(s) over and over, you begin to learn their body. This model was very good, and she had a really great body to draw. She was quick to want to use props, and was happy to wear the mask Kristen brought, and grabbed a hula-hoop. Having props and objects to work with, allows you points of reference outside the body.

We are thinking of trying to expand the days the group meets, such as a Saturday session. It’s nice that the group is doing well and there is an interest in it.