I added this, since this is my first book I’ve done that I’m sending to a professional printer, rather then printing it off myself. I felt that I should do something special for that, to mark this step forward in my work. Also, the printer said if I could up the page rate to 40, it would make it cheaper. So more pages, better per unit price, fin with me.

I had the idea for Son of Kool Aid when I was writing KAGF, and last year ran out of copies of it. So I began working on the story in full. I spent the last few days (7) doing all the illustrations. It was very intense, and wonderful. I would wake up, sit down, and get to work.

While I had written out the text many months ago, it wasn’t sold on every word that I had used, and the ideas for each page. And honestly I didn’t have the final page written or even what it would be. So I started with the pages I knew were right. As I worked, I kept thinking about the pages that weren’t quite right, and the final page.

I rewrote a couple of pages, and finally came up with the ending. This was how I worked for KAGF. I outlined the pages, then  write the page, then plan it out, then draw it. Generally I would be planning out the next few pages while working on the current page. Since I had a roadmap of where I needed to end up, this method worked.

I find that I can have some really good inspirations when working under a deadline. I also think these inspirations happen because my mind is so active during this time.

The book arrives around April 2nd, a week before MoCCA, the following weekend. The book will be available to order here, with payments acceptable via paypal, or checks send to me. The price will be $5.oo  plus shipping and will come signed and a drawing of Kool Aid (Not for retail orders, unless asked).

A special thanks and love to the following people, Tim Howard, Tim Fish, Monica Gallagher and Marc Scheff.

I also use think everything about me had to say WOW! Look at my bell and whistles. I hear this from other artists, on why they don’t have a website yet, or business cards, or more. Have to find the right image, the right design, the right WOW factor.

Well I’ve come to realize, functional serves more then WOW. Functional reaches more people then WOW. Also, functional is easier to get to then WOW. Wow will happen in time.

The first step is getting to a functional point where if you run into someone, you can give them a business card. So instead of making a WOW business card, make a functional one. No one is going to take your WOW business card and frame it, unless each one is an original work of art. (There is your WOW, factor now how long is that going to take you?)

You don’t need a website like Actor Jim Carrey. His site fits who he is as an actor. He also has the money for it (course if this is the kind of thing you do for a living, that’s different).

I wouldn’t say my site is WOW. It’s functional for what it needs to be, an extension of me, a tool to help sell me as an artists. To often, trying to be a freelancer in the past, I got caught up in trying to be WOW. Frustrated, I never really got my act together. You read in books about being a freelancer, getting noticed, and all that. More of the WOW.

But in many ways, WOW can come from just being functional and professional. It can come from being what it needs to be. After all, I want people to hire me to illustrate. Not design business cards, postcards or websites. So my WOW, as it should be is the art on my cards and site.

By taking a step back, and realizing that I just wanted to get my name out there and get work, made it easier. Pick the images, get the materials, and go.

- Chuck Close

Someone quoted that this weekend, I had never heard it before, but it’s something I believe in, and have for years. It’s not good enough to just sit around waiting for a good idea. In fact, I tend to have more inspirations when I am doing something, over doing nothing. Being active makes the brain active, which causes ideas. Just like anything in this world, use it or loose it.

Inspiration can come in many forms. Secret confession, I watch Project Runway. Not for the fashion so much, but because I like Tim Gunn. I see him as a very positive, problem solving, encouraging person, who is genuine. He goes with his gut feelings, but channels that into thoughtful questions and is very open to a wide range of ideas.

So, I enjoy watching someone like that, because I work towards being like that in who I am.

I find inspiration in Sarah Palin, in how not to be as a person. She is a horrible person, because she is a hypocrite. She talks about how society needs a strong roll model and leadership. And yet every time someone says some thing insulting or degrading about her, what comes back is on the same level, insulting and degrading.

In short, she has never shown me that she can rise above, and be better. Which, to me takes her lower then the person who originally insulted her. Because she knows she’s doing it, and goes ahead and acts that way on purpose. Maybe not, which is sad, because that means she has no self awareness.

I’m only mentioning these public figures as examples of how inspiration can come from anywhere. Currently I’m working on 10 full page color illustrations for Son of Kool Aid, need to be done by March 9th. I’m doing good on getting them done.

There are lots of things motivating me, but one thing in particular, are people that always complain about not being able to ever get work done. But they never just sit down and do it. There is always something in the way. Tired from work, which I would accept, if they were lumberjacks. They have boring jobs, that dull their minds. I’ve been there.

I write these blog entries for myself, really. Why? To remain positive. To motivate myself to looking at things in a forward way. There is no room in these entries for complaining and bitching. I may talk about a bad experience, but it would be about how I learned from it. There isn’t any reason to come here and vent.

As I work on these illustrations, I find inspiration comes naturally. But it’s also because my mind is very active. It’s like working out. Keep doing it, and you will see results.

So don’t wait till you have the inspiration to do something. Do something and the inspiration will come. Not only that, your skills to execute the inspiration will be sharp, making it easier.

Here are some sections of the illustrations I’m working on. Enjoy.

Recently, I’ve had conversations with people that say they want to do something, but just can’t find the time, or don’t have the energy. Frankly, I find that to be an excuse. A fellow cartoonist, Melody Often, once told me about how she lived in a van for many months when she first moved to LA. She had a drawing desk, a light, a CD player, and a battery hooked up to run those. And she drew all the time. That’s pretty amazing. So when someone says they don’t have enough room to work, I just think it’s an excuse.

My friend Marc, tries to spend all his time painting and creating. I find that inspiring. We send each other screen shots of what we are working on, for feedback. Because we are both passionate about doing the best work we can, so we use each other (and other people) as checks. Sometimes you are just to close to see objectively, so having someone else give input helps a lot.

I’m a doer. Unless I’m actually doing something, I generally don’t talk about the things I want to do. I’ve got lots of ideas. But I only talk about that which I’m actually working on, and only in limited amounts. I’m a firm believer in putting the energy into doing the work, not talking about the work.

Passion allows me to accomplish a lot. I think it’s a real mark if a person is serious about being a creative type. At this point, even though it would be nice not to have deadlines, I can’t see myself not drawing. This morning, I finished the last details on a project, and then sent the final files off to the client. I said I would give myself an hour to read, before I get started on the next job, but that lasted on 20 minutes, before I started writing this. I really can’t just walk away from the drawing board (so to speak, since I work digitally).

Passion for what you do, is an amazing force.

Oh and here is the final version of that sketch of the guy breaking out of the ropes from my last post. Enjoy.

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.

Here is the basic shape of the boys that I am going with. Sure there will be variations but the basic average boy is based on this sketch.

When I’m working on my comics, it amazes me the amount of pre-development you need to do for any given aspect. It’s easy enough to write down “SoKA being picked on by school mates”. What do all those school mates look like? I think that’s often were I spend the most time staring at the screen. It’s a good process, as I will get an idea. It might be “Fat Kid”, then I start working out what kind of fat kid. “Mean Girl” or “Nose picker”

A friend on facebook recently asked, should he plan out all the aspects of a website, sketching it out, or a few parts, and then just start to building pages, making things up as he goes along. The over all response was, sketch it out, keeping it flexible, that making it up as you go along doesn’t really work.

Planning out your art and creative process, more often then people realize, determines if you will succeed or fail.

Here is color test of his son I did, as I was working out the look I wanted for the illustrations.

I’m very pleased at how this came out, for only spending a couple of hours on it. If you haven’t read Kool Aid Gets Fired, I’m not spoiling much. There’s plenty in the book to look forward.

The books should be in my hands by April 2nd, and will go for $5 each, which you will be able to order through here (Plus shipping), or if you come to one of the several conventions I’m going to, get it there. Of course, I will be posting more info as it comes along and gets closer.

Years ago, when I was trying to get freelance work while having a job, I had a lot of “Client from Hell” experiences. Most of them came from people that don’t normally work with a creative aspect to their business. A lot of it was working for private citizens and small business. Experiences like those lead me to stop taking that kind of work. It just wasn’t worth it.

For the most part, if you do the work on your end, and cover your self you avoid unpleasant client/vendor moments. For example, have a contract or at least an agreement. For any work under $600, I am fine with an email agreement working out the terms of the project. At the $600 and higher mark, I have a contract which both sides sign.

But honestly, I do enjoy working with clients, because often an open dialog can result in better illustrations.

The first step anyone should take when working with a client, old or new is discussing the amount of work to be done. Lets take a magazine illustration to work with as an example. The editor will either give me some idea’s of what they think, or ask me to come up with ideas. And for these, that doesn’t change the price. What I offer then is the following:

Step 1. Rough pencils. I’ll come up with 3-4 possible solutions for the illustration. If I’m working with an idea they have, I’ll try and do several showing that idea, and maybe a few alternate ideas I had, if they seem good. If I’m providing my own ideas, they tend to be all different. Generally you are given the article to read to spark ideas. For the Asian Carp invasion I was asked to come up with ideas.

The editor sent me the article and a picture of the carp jumping out of the water, to show the kind of behavior they have. The article’s name was “Between a Carp and a Hard Place.” She said she wanted to play that up if I could, and she wanted to keep away from anything that might be alarming like in the picture she sent.

I provided 4 really rough pencils.

Two of the ideas are very similar, the carps driving the car, one has the Chicago skyline in the background, the other an outline of the Great Lakes. The editor liked the skyline in the background. This was probably about 20 minutes worth of work, after giving it some thought, while working on something else. In the agreement we have, she can do the following. Pick one and make some changes to the idea. She could have asked that the carp look more Asian in their face. In fact, she asked that I don’t use the sky in the background, because the art director likes illustrations that have odd shapes, and to make the highest carp in the car, actually flipping out of the car, which is something they do, jump out of the water.

If the editor hadn’t liked any of these thumbnails, and wanted to see a whole new set, in our agreement, there would have been an additional $20 fee attached to the invoice.

Step 2. With those changes in mind I went into refined pencils. I added the carps drinking and food wrappers flying from the car, because one of the problems with them is how they move into an area, and strip it of food, upsetting the ecosystem. Then they move on. So they became party animals in a way. The refined pencils took about an hour to do, and I sent them them two days. In our email agreement, I had 3 days to provide refined pencils. It’s always smart to give yourself more then enough time, you never know what could happen. As I was writing this I got a call from a former coworker, wanting to know if I could do some tech illustration diagrams for a math book. We had talked the week before about this, and now he was getting back with me, and I have a feeling it’s going to be a rush job. Thankfully I am ahead of schedule on my various projects, so I’ll be able to do it.

Here is the refined pencils.

I sent it, and the editor can again make changes before I go into the final illustration. She didn’t have any, and she loved the addition of the beer and food wrappers, she thought it added the right touch to show how the this particular fish is viewed. If for some reason at this point, the editor decided she wanted to go in another direction, to start over, would have been an additional $40 fee attached to the invoice.

Step 3. The step we all want to get to. The Final version. The first two steps took about a week to get through. The whole time, I’ve been thinking about the final version. Working how to approach it, visualizing it in my head. For example, did I want to do the car red? I was considering orange or purple, to be different. But as I started working, it was clear red was going to be a bigger impact, since the background and the fish were going to be soft and cool colors, the red would just pop so much more. The final illustration at this point took about 3-4 hours. I pretty much new what I was going to do, and more importantly, how I was going to do it. I had 5 days to provide the final, and I needed them, because a little project came up after I started, so I had to put this aside for two days. I still delivered it a day early.

Step 4. The editor loved it. I sent my invoice in with the final version. When the magazine comes out, I’ll get a copy of it sent to me, so I will have a tear sheet of the work.

Sometimes the editor will provide lots of reference material, as in the case with the illustration I’m doing for MIT. While it was a lot, it was great, since the idea she had wasn’t fully formed and she was hoping my rough pencils would help her have a better idea if that’s the direction she wanted to go.

She had a list of things that needed to be in the illustration, but no specific layout, that was all left up to me. I gave 3 possible layouts, and we picked one, but pulled in elements from the other two. I then did a revised layout rough, and she liked. She gave me the layout of the text, and I went and did a refined pencil of the illustration, which required having to lose some parts of the illustration, because the text took up more room then we thought it would. We both thought one element should change, and after that I had permission to move into finals.

For Inside Council Magazine, I was given a few paragraphs from the article, and the dimensions of the illustration. I provided 3 rough, all different ideas, they picked one no changes, go to final.

But each with each client, I had the same basic agreement. I will do this, you approve with or without changes, then move to the next stage.

In the past, I’ve been at the point where I failed to lay that out for a client, and ended up with to many revisions. Can we see this part in red? Can you try several different colors? Oh I forgot to add information. Oh I just realized I needed to add something. Since there was no agreement on the amount of work to be done, the number of steps or rounds, or an approval process, and the cost for going outside of that, I had to do what they wanted. What I thought would be a 5 hour project, which breaks down to about $40-50 and hour turns into $5-10 an hour, and no end in site.

Regardless of the client, new or old, never skip the work agreement/contract step. You may go ten years always doing it, and then the one time you think, pffft, I’ve never had a bad experience and skip it, that’s the koo-koo pants client from hell.

I like working with clients, because I like seeing an idea evolve from good to great.  The boating magazine editor liked the car angle, and provided feedback and changes she wanted to see, and I in turn upped it even more, turning a good idea into a better idea, which in turn lead to a great illustration, one that is going in my portfolio.

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.

I’ve gotten a lot of work this month, which has made me happy because it’s work coming to me, and I think, I can do this! I can make a living as a creative. People are looking at my work and wanting me to create for them.

I look at my work and see the improvement in just over a year. How I work, how I approach the project. And I think me realizing I have to put my signature on my art, was me thinking, I’m at a point where I’m going towards where I want to be.