Oh Sweet Art

Commission for @erebun ! ♥

Baby’s been working hard

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

Now that new semesters have started, I thought people might need these. Enjoy your lessons!

Friendly reminder to all working artists or (especially) aspiring artists.

If a client says they can’t afford to pay you but you’ll get good exposure, one of two things is happening:

1. They are lying. They can afford to pay you, but they are choosing not to. They will pay the printer to print the books, they will pay the mail service to deliver them, and you’d better believe they’re going to pay themselves for sending you an email explaining that they can’t afford to pay you. They think you are a sucker, and if you take the job you’ll be telling them they are right.

2. They are not lying. They have zero budget, no audience and no real distribution system. They’ll still be paying the printer and mail service because people who work in those professions don’t work for free just because someone promises them a recommendation. But they aren’t paying themselves, they’re running on an incredibly small margin, and there’s a good chance they won’t exist as a corporate entity in a few years. Publishing your work with them will give you less exposure than putting it on tumblr or Instagram for free would. It will never lead to a paying job. 

If a client starts ranting about the “short-sightedness” of artists, or otherwise complains about artists in general in their opening offer to you, run. Run as fast as you would run if a blind date spent the whole of dinner ranting about how horrible your entire gender is. Yes, there are doubtlessly clients who’ve been screwed over by artists in the past, but the ones who complain about artists in general will not respect you, they will not treat you well. 

Working for free does not prove that you are passionate about something. It proves that you do not need to be paid for your work. How many doctors went into medicine because they are passionate about saving lives? Do you think any of them are asked to perform heart surgery for free?

No one will ever pay $50 for something if they can get something similar for $5. When you charge next to nothing for art that you’ve worked for hours on, art that required years of training to create, you are telling your client that it is worth next to nothing. They will remember that the next time they want to hire an artist.

People who are looking to exploit artists know that artists are hard on themselves. They know that most artists don’t think their work is good enough to charge top dollar. They know that artists have been told from the first day they started taking their art seriously as a career that they’ll never make any money off it, that it’s not a real job, that it has no value to society. They know how to push artists’ insecurities about their profession in order to convince them that that demanding fair compensation is unrealistic and uncooperative.

If you’re just desperate for a job in the arts, any job in the arts, give yourself a job. Start a webcomic, or give yourself illustration assignments that you post on social media regularly, create work for a gallery show even if you don’t have one yet, or make a book. Give yourself a job. If you’re going to work for free, you may as well be working for yourself, setting your own hours and following your own interests. Having original art with original characters and ideas in your portfolio, and making sure your art is visible online will get the attention of publishers who are actually looking to hire people for good jobs. Drawing a shitty comic for a defunct publisher based on someone else’s shitty ideas will not.

Protect yourself, because no one else will. Protect yourself, because no one else will. There are people lining up around the block to exploit you. Protect yourself because no one else will.

Way too funny

Introducing Character Drawcember!

This is a series of drawing prompts I designed for myself to get into a better rhythm of art production and also to think in depth about my characters. I’m posting this in case anyone else would like to work through the list too! :) I purposefully designed the workload to be relatively relaxed, since December is a busy month for a lot of people, myself included.

RULES: Use whatever of your own characters you want to use. You can stick to the same couple of characters or use all different ones. Any medium, and they don’t have to be consistent in style or technique. Basically there are no rules, just use this as a fun opportunity to work on your cast of characters. If you do decide to do this challenge, use the tag Character Drawcember!

WEEK ONE (Dec 1-7)

Sketch…

…a protagonist

…an antagonist

…an old character you don’t use anymore, and then redesign them.

Finish one of these into a full-color piece.

WEEK TWO (Dec 8-14)

Sketch…

…the inside of your character’s room.

…your character as a child, adult, and senior.

…an alternate universe version of one of your characters.

Finish one of these into a full-color piece.

WEEK THREE (Dec 15-21)

Sketch…

…a big group shot of your characters.

…a fake screenshot, as if your characters had their own movie

…your character’s favorite place

Finish one of these into a full-color piece.

WEEK FOUR (Dec 22-28)

Sketch…

…your character in someone else’s style (credit who you were inspired by!)

…three different outfits for your character

…free day- you choose what to draw with your character

CATCHUP (Dec 29-31)

If you’re not done yet (it’s okay!!), use this extra time to finish!

I’M GONNA DO THE THING