Category: Business

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Spec Work and why you should avoid it

When freelancers are first starting out and are very hungry, both literally and creatively, they’ll pretty much work for anybody.  Almost all of us get taken at one time or another, and often more than once, by the promise of exposure, low pay now/higher pay later, or just cheap clients.  Most of these lessons have to be learned the hard way, and while it’s easy to blame the client, it’s really our own fault for agreeing to the work in the first place.  Spec work falls into the same category of ‘should have known better.’  In the case of a graphic designer, for example, a ‘client’ will ask you to submit a logo and if they like it, they’ll pay you for it, but if they don’t, they won’t.  Basically all of the risk lands on the creative and the client gets free work done.  Try doing that in a restaurant, ordering five meals and only paying for the one you really liked.

“Spec work (short for speculative) is any job for which the client expects to see examples or a finished product before agreeing to pay a fee,” a quote by Eric Miller in an About.com article.

This is also how many design and illustration contests work as well.  They solicit many entries with the promise of big prizes or cash to the winner, and often second or third prize as well.  What they’re really getting is a ton of submissions for their project at a fraction of what it would normally cost them.  If you read the fine print for most of these contests, you’ll see that they still have the right to use all submitted images in a collection, book, future project and online with no compensation to the designer or artist as well.  This is why I don’t submit to editorial cartoon contests, unless it’s work I’ve already done.  I’ll frequently see ads for cartoon contests out of places like Romania or some other foreign country where you have to draw a cartoon or caricature on a theme, usually a politician you’ve never heard of.  All of the above mentioned criteria apply.  And while the contests are legit, and the prize money is real, the benefit is almost entirely to the company, organization, or person holding the contest.

Spec work is something to be avoided,  especially if you already have a body of work where your skill can be adequately measured.  If somebody asked me to paint their dog and told me they’ll only pay me if they like it, the conversation is going to end pretty abruptly.

So why did I just complete a spec project this morning?

Well, there are a few reasons.  First of all, it was an interesting challenge, something I hadn’t done before.  I was tasked with painting somebody else’s artwork, a cartoonist/animator whose work I greatly admire, because this person has drawing skills that I don’t.  A chance to paint a character designed by this person was intriguing.  Also, the company in question is well established and one I would like to work for on a contract basis doing just this kind of work.  While it’s work I can never claim as my own, and likely never show on my own site, it’s good practice of my painting skills.  To be considered for this work, I had to submit a painting test, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only artist tasked to do so.  There was no ambiguity in what I was agreeing to.  Paint the character, deliver it on a tight deadline (something I didn’t know going in), and if they like the choices I made and the look I came up with, I get paid for the work and will likely get additional work as a result painting this and other characters.  It was basically an audition.  And even though I have no doubt at all that I will be paid if my work is chosen, it’s still spec work.

Along with my other deadlines, I suddenly had a new one which meant working late last night and getting up very early this morning to submit the work on time.  It was hours of work that I may not get paid for.  As I’ve worked very hard to develop my painting skills, I have no doubt in the quality of my work.  That being said, there are many painters out there a lot better than I am and they could have submitted a test as well.  Also, if I don’t get chosen, it could simply be a fact that my style doesn’t suit the project.  My work may not be chosen for any number of reasons and I’m OK with that.  I went into this with my eyes wide open, basically expecting that I was working for free, with no assumption that I’ll ever get paid for it.

Now, all that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the test.  It was a great character I was painting, the drawing of which is currently beyond my cartoon skills.  And even though I’m pretty tired right now, it was a bit of a rush this morning, getting up an hour earlier at 4AM, and scrambling to get it done, not to mention I had two editorial cartoons to get done this morning as well.  I feel good about the work I submitted and have divorced myself from the outcome.  If I get the gig, great, if I don’t, that’s fine, too.  I have plenty of work without it.

But this is a strong warning.  Think very carefully before accepting any spec work.  Know what you’re getting into and if it seems like you’re being taken advantage of and you’re uncomfortable with that, turn it down.  If you don’t value your work, then nobody else will.  And if you do choose to take the occasional spec job just because you find it interesting and are willing to do the work for free, know that you’re doing it for that reason, and have no expectations afterward.

 

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Two By Two: The Sequel

About three and half years ago, I created the artwork for a family board game called Two By Two for Valley Games, a company out of Calgary.  Around that time, I actually illustrated four titles for them and they were a lot of fun.  A small company at the time, but with great momentum and their board and card games have become popular worldwide with fans.  While I haven’t done anything in a couple of years for them, I recently got the call to create artwork for an expansion pack to the original Two By Two game.  Here’s the original artwork I did.  The box cover…

Ship at Port

…and the animals…

AnimalSheet2009

My artwork in general is constantly being refined.  While the look of my work years ago is still recognizable as mine, I’m always trying to improve, so while I’m still proud of the work I did on the original Two By Two, the choices I would have made if I’d done it from scratch today would likely have been different.  Everything from the animal design to the colour and texture choices, not because I don’t like what I did, but just because artwork evolves.  With this expansion pack, however, it had to look very much the same.  So rather than designing characters from scratch, I used the old animal style as models for the new animals, and the old cover as a model for the new cover.  The titles are still the same at this point, but I know I’ll be asked to change them soon.  They don’t quite know what to call it yet.  Two By Two 2 doesn’t really have much of a ring to it.  The invoice has been sent, but I knew from the beginning that this change would be requested at some point in the future.  Here’s the new cover…

Cover2013

…and the NEW animals…

AnimalSheet2013

The beauty of Photoshop files, and designing with layers is that I was able to use some of the parts of the original file for the new cover, which really helped with the continuity of the look.  The water texture, sky, clouds, titles, Valley games logos were all re-used.  The rest of the cover was new drawing and painting.  The animals can’t be all that detailed because they go on small tokens.  If you use too much texture for something small, it can look muddy when it’s shrunk.  The expansion pack box is a lot smaller and has different dimensions.

One of the problems artists have a hard time getting used to when working for commercial companies is that you’re not creating art for yourself, you’re creating it for a product.  Even with licensing on work already done, you have to expect that your work is going to be changed, and it’s up to you how much change you’re comfortable with.  For example, my t-shirts with The Mountain are designed from my Totem paintings, but due to the look and texture of their shirts, they don’t want the backgrounds I painted, so I remove them.  They may also scale, crop, mask and compose the image differently than I did it, most noticeably with my Ground Squirrel Totem, where they didn’t use the body.  I am comfortable with these changes because it’s still my painted work, but they know their business better than I do, and they haven’t ruined my work by tailoring it (pun intended) to their product.

With something like this board game, however, I was hired to create specific illustrations.  The work is not based on my vision.  I was given a list of animals to draw and I don’t even know why these specific animals were requested.  For example, there’s a bunny AND a rabbit.  I’m curious as to why, but I can live without knowing.  There’s also a mythical chimera, the goat/lion/dragon heads.  On the cover itself, all of those elements you see were specifically ordered.  Everything from the nest in the tree to the dolphin and platypus in the water.

While I still own copyright of all of these images, I’ll very likely never use them for anything else but my portfolio, because they were drawn specifically for Valley Games.  When you’re a freelance artist, a lot of your work is just going to be work based on other people’s ideas.  This was still fun to work on, and proved to be a challenge to get everything to look like the older game, but it’s contracted work, which is what most freelancing is about.  It’s a great job, but you still have to treat it like a job.  That means giving the customer what they want, making sure they’re happy with it, and moving on the next project.

In this video, you can see a review of the original game.  I designed the animals for the tokens, and the cover, but not the board or other token textures.  They also made changes to the cover layout, which is why I supply the finished product in layers.  Changes are expected and they need to have a flexible file.

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To thine own self be true

SnowmanThe last few weeks have been less than stellar.  While I find winter tough to take most years, a cold snap hits my mood especially hard.  When the temperature drops to -20C and below, I’m about the unhappiest camper you’re going to find.  Vitamin D, sunlamps, and other home remedies, I’ve tried ’em all.  Short of moving away to a warmer climate for 6 months of the year, I’ve just learned I have to ride it out.  Add to that the holiday season, of which I am not a fan, and a nasty cold that knocked me down hard on my one slow week of the year, and the last few weeks have felt like I’ve been living at the bottom of a deep dark hole.  Don’t get me going again on the fact that I’m supposed to be in Vegas this week.

There seems to be this ridiculous belief that if you are fortunate enough to love what you do for a living, you’re happy and upbeat all the time, and everything is right in the world, every minute of the day.  Trust me, that’s not the case.  While I’d much rather chart my own course than have somebody else tell me where to go and how to do it,  there will always be bad days and bad weeks, just like at any job, even one you enjoy.  Think of it this way, if somebody offered you your favourite food for dinner tonight, you’d jump at the chance.  If they offered it to you tomorrow, you might still be happy.  Now, imagine you have to eat it every night for the next year.  Would it still be your favourite, or would you be willing to pay anything for a rice cake?

It is not only in an artist’s nature to keep trying new things and new ways of being creative, it’s an absolute necessity.  If new challenges don’t present themselves, you have to go looking for them, otherwise what used to be exciting just becomes routine.  Creativity doesn’t do well with routine.  It withers and ends up on life support.

There is an elusive state of being that we all seem to be looking for called ‘balance.’  Parents try to find the balance between a fulfilling work and home life, workaholics need to balance their schedule and time off, creatives look for a balance between inspired work and selling out.  I’ve come to the conclusion that this balance is an illusion, it doesn’t exist, and that to try to find it leads to a futility that only makes  a person feel even worse about their situation.  This is largely because your perception of balance is fluid.  Find that extra hour in a week to read a book, and you’ll be looking for two next week.  Manage that, and you’ll be wanting a whole day off, then two, then three and pretty soon you’re running out of money because you’re never working.  Balance is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  The closer you move toward it, the further it moves away.

Perhaps you’ve heard the fable about the scorpion and the frog.  The scorpion needs a ride across the river and asks the frog for a lift.  The frog declines saying the scorpion will just sting him.  The scorpion argues that it if he did that, he’d sink, too, so the frog gives in to a logical argument.  The scorpion climbs up on the frog’s back and they start off across the river.  Before too long, the scorpion stings the frog, and the frog says, “Why did you do that?  Now we’ll both drown!”

The scorpion says, “I can’t help it.  It’s just my nature.”

Rather than listen to all of the people that tell me I should relax more and take time off and try to find some balance, I’ve decided to make peace with the fact that I’m only content when I’m working.  Even when I’m not working, I’m thinking about work.  With that in mind, I’ve packed my next few months, and most of it will be quite challenging, because a lot of it will be new ground.  I’ll be recording a new DVD on painting portraits, something I’ve been talking about for months but haven’t actually gotten around to doing.  I’ve been commissioned to paint a couple of cat portraits and have received inquiries about two more pet portraits this week.  Another Totem is being prepped to paint as is another portrait, a painting of one of my absolute favorite characters in film.  The last one, I’ll be trying to paint in Corel Painter.  I haven’t used the Painter software since Painter Classic many years ago, and I’ve been wanting to try Painter 12, bought this past week.  The best way to do so is to just throw myself into a painting and learn as I go.  I have no desire to stop painting in Photoshop, but I also don’t want to be restricted to it, either.

There are a couple of online courses I’ve wanted to take for awhile, and there’s no time like the present.  Waiting for my schedule to slow down is just another way of saying that it’s never going to happen.

And finally, I’m well into the planning for my booth at the Calgary Expo in April.  There’s a lot to think about and organize, everything from which prints to sell and how many of each, banner design, and all of the other logistics involved with having my own booth and selling my own work at the event.  It’s very intimidating, I’m likely going to be stressed about it, but at least it’s not routine.

Some of the work will be fulfilling, some won’t.  Some of the deadlines will be ridiculously short, others will give me far too much time, which inevitably leads to procrastination and working at it last minute, anyway.  There will be up days, low days, but mostly just middle of the road days where it feels just like punching a clock, just like any other job.  That’s the cold hard truth of it and anybody who is thinking about being creative for a living should know that.

Motivation and inspiration, these are wonderful things.  Sometimes it’s the kick in the ass that will get you moving when you feel like you’ve got cinder block boots on.  But when everybody is telling you to be Polly Anna, optimistic, happy go lucky, and you-can-do-it, it can also wear on you.  Chasing that high will eventually lead to an overdose.  From time to time, you just need to turn off all of that noise and just get the work done, regardless of how you feel about it.  That’s all anybody does, no matter what they do for a living.

So what’s the point of this melodramatic post?  Simply put, sometimes it’s OK to feel bad even when things are good.  Don’t beat yourself up about it.  The pressure as a freelancer to be ‘up’ all the time is maddening and I’d bet that a lot of folks out there, the ones you think are riding high all the time, are either faking it as a marketing tool or they’re heavily medicated.  Even the most optimistic of personalities has down days, too, and you’re entitled to yours.  I’d rather share with you the reality of being a self-employed creative than be a complete hypocrite and sell you a bill of goods.  In my experience, it can do a lot more harm than good.

But this too shall pass.  For while I’m having a few down days lately,  I know that two weeks from now, you’ll see me giddy with excitement when I pick up a certain painting from the printer.  Bet on it.  After that, there will be something else exciting, and before too long, it’ll be Spring again, my favourite time of the year.  Enjoy the highs, resent the lows, but be who you are and stop trying to please everybody all the time.  It’s exhausting!

You may not be happy all the time, but at least you’ll be sane.

 

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A work visa? But, I’m Canadian.

This year could have started better.  I just cancelled my flight, hotel and other arrangements for CES in Vegas next week and I’m not too happy about it.

I was supposed to be working in the Wacom booth for the Consumer Electronics Show next week, leaving Monday morning, coming home on Friday.  While I did a demo presentation at their booth at Photoshop World last year,  I wasn’t compensated for that appearance, so it didn’t pose a problem.  For CES, however, Wacom was sending me there and we overlooked something very important.

Canadians need a work visa to work for an American company in the United States.   I honestly didn’t know this and neither did Wacom, as this was a new experience for both of us.  My research over the past 24 hours has shown that most Canadians who get paid to travel to work at trade shows, do guest lectures, and speak at U.S. conferences are completely unaware that without a work visa, they’re doing so illegally.  If you’re compensated for your appearance, even if it’s just your expenses, you need a work visa.

Believe it or not, this came to my attention just yesterday while my wife and I just happened to be watching a National Geographic Channel series, “Border Security” which looks at the challenges faced by Canadian Border Services at the three different types of entry (air, sea, land) into British Columbia.  An American traveling to Canada needs a work visa for trade show work, guest lecturing, speaking, etc. as well.  One particular case sounded so similar to mine, and the person was denied entry into Canada, that I started looking around and found out that I was in trouble.

Had I shown up at the airport and told them what I was doing, completely unaware that I was in violation of Immigration Law, U.S. customs would have likely denied me entry into the U.S. and I’d be doing a quick turnaround heading right back home, my file flagged for all future border crossings.

My research, of course, found plenty of examples of people saying they just say they’re ‘attending’ a conference, rather than working it, and that’s how they get around the rules.  Then there are the people who’ve been caught lying to border security who caution against that tactic.  Border security officers are trained and experienced to know when you’re lying and I’ve always said I’d be a bad poker player.

I have an over-developed sense of ethics that has served me well throughout my life, but I’ll admit it makes me feel like a bit of a pushover sometimes when so many others regularly break laws like this and get away with it.

But here’s the thing.  If I tried to skirt the U.S. border laws by lying about my reasons for heading into the U.S. and they caught me in the lie, I’d be banned from travel to the U.S. for 1-5 years with no opportunity to appeal.  They don’t even have to prove you’re lying, they just have to think you are.  That means I couldn’t even land in the U.S. enroute to somewhere else.  And anybody who has ever had issues crossing the U.S. border will tell you that all it takes is ONE incident and you’ll have issues for the rest of your life, because they make a note of it on your file.  This would be far more damaging to my life and career than missing three days at CES in Vegas next week.

Just the fact that I called the U.S. consulate this morning to confirm all of my concerns, and they won’t even talk to you without your giving them your passport number, means I can expect that the inquiry alone is now on my file.  Any entry into the U.S in the near future will be met with additional scrutiny, I’m sure.

There is obviously a lot more for me to learn about this situation.  While the U.S. Consulate in Canada did answer some of my questions, they weren’t very helpful and seemed to have no sympathy for my situation at all.  Just getting to talk to a real person took me four or five different phone numbers and about 20 minutes playing touch-tone Olympics getting through the various menus.  Hitting zero just disconnected the call.

As it stands now, I need to talk to the U.S. Consulate in Calgary to find out exactly which visa I need (there are several kinds), make an appointment for an interview (in person), pay the fee if I’m accepted, obtain letters from any U.S. companies I’m working for, etc.  There are a couple of visas I may need, however, that require this work to be initiated by any company in the U.S. that I’ll be working for on U.S. soil.

Canadians have gotten comfortable with the fact that we are such close friends and neighbours with the U.S. that we’ve started to think that we have certain rights when crossing into the U.S. and it’s just not the case.  The United States is solely concerned with looking after Americans.  While Canadians may have a more trusted status in most cases, we are still visitors in a foreign country.  We can be refused entry for any reason deemed appropriate by the U.S. government and they don’t have to justify it to us.  In today’s charged protectionist climate, the rules are stricter now than they’ve ever been.

The same holds true in reverse, something that surprises many Americans when they travel to Canada as well.

So I’ve learned a valuable and humbling lesson this week, and as with most hard lessons, I’m paying for it by not going to Vegas next week, and worse, not working with Wacom while I was there.  Gut feeling, I did the right thing and even though I’m not a happy camper today, things could have ended up worse in the long run.

If there is a bright spot in all of this, it’s that I found out now, so I could cancel my flight and hotel and only be out a couple of hundred dollars in non-refundable fees.  Had I shown up at the airport and been denied access to the U.S. for lack of a work visa, I would have been out the cost of my flight, first night’s hotel, and the return fee for the airport shuttle I was taking Monday morning to Calgary.

There are a couple of days off in my immediate future.  Self-pity will likely be involved.

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Top 12 of ’12

It’s that time of year when editorial cartoonists and other creative types compile their ‘Best Of’ collections.  To be honest, I have no idea if the following cartoons are representative of my best work for 2012.  How it works in the world of freelance and self-syndication is that I follow the regional, national and international news each day, decide which stories are big enough or interesting enough to comment on with a cartoon, and then I send the images off to newspapers across the country.  If editors like the cartoon, they print it, and I get paid.  If they don’t, I try again the next day.  At the end of each month, most papers simply tell me how many cartoons they used, but only a few tell me exactly which ones.  Preferences vary from region to region, so while a cartoon may play well in Ontario, it might be a dud in Western Canada.  That’s the nature of this business, trying to please everybody.

So, when it comes to picking my ‘Best of’ cartoons for 2012, I’m just showing you the ones I liked best out of the 275-300 syndicated cartoons that I drew this year.  Could be because the commentary still made me smile when I was going through the archives, or that I remembered enjoying working on the drawing.  For example, the Pac-man cartoon has no editorial or political value at all.  It’s a seasonal cartoon.  But for some reason, I really like it, so it made the list.  There are a few that take shots at Prime Minister Stephen Harper in here as well.  The other party leaders have no power right now.  They’re just noise in the wind.  So naturally, the blame is placed at the top, the guy with the power.  And considering how much he abuses it, there were a number of cartoons about that this year.  Pardon my candor, but that guy just pisses me off.

All the rest were on topics that made me laugh, made me think, or in a perfect world, accomplished both, which is what an editorial cartoon is supposed to do in the first place.  For those of you who follow my daily cartoon posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, thanks for your continued support this year.  I will do my best to keep you interested and amused in 2013.

To get a better look, click on the page and it’ll allow you to zoom in.

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Totem T-Shirts have arrived!

Was pleased to receive my first samples of the Totem T-shirts from The Mountain.  While there are two others yet to come for the 2013 line, the Wolf Totem and Ground Squirrel Totem, I’ll receive those soon, once they’re up for sale on their site.  As the Ground Squirrel Totem went up just recently, I would expect I’ll see the remaining two in January.

I received three shirts of each design in different sizes and was very impressed with the quality of the shirts themselves and the printing, not to mention my name clearly visible on every shirt.  Images will always vary in how they look, depending on what surface they’re printed on.  Paper looks different than canvas, so I was a little anxious to see how well they would reproduce on fabric.  I wasn’t disappointed.

As mentioned before, one of the things I like best about my Totem paintings being licensed to The Mountain is their commitment to being environmentally responsible and their business ethics.  I know that we get a little cynical about believing that these days, but I’d invite you to check out their claims at the following link, The Mountain: America’s Greenest T-Shirt Company.

If you’d like to purchase one of these shirts, you can visit their online shop.  Here is the link to the four shirts that are currently available, and coming soon, the Wolf Totem will be available as well.

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Risking your love for a living.

There’s an old saying that says, “Do what you love for a living and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

There’s  another old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it.”

With the accessibility of training, the affordability of equipment and an endless string of stories of people who have turned their hobbies into their living, it seems that many have become convinced of that being the end goal for any creative pursuit.  If you can draw, write, paint, play music, act, sculpt or create anything, you’re supposed to be working to make that your profession.

As someone who made that very choice and is creative for a living,  I consider it a great job, but it is still very much ‘a job.’

Right about now, you’re likely thinking this motivational blog post just went wildly off the rails.  My apologies if you’re disappointed, but there’s plenty of ‘you can do it!’ advice out there and too few reality checks.  Brace yourself.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m not comfortable with my choice to be an artist for a living, because I am.  I make my own schedule, I answer only to whom I choose, and if I sense a job is going to be a nightmare, I’m in the enviable position that I can turn it down.   Lately, however, I’ve been experiencing an uncomfortable anxiety about my work.  While there are going to be bad days  in every profession, regardless of how much you like it, there seem to be many more days lately where I get up in the morning and just don’t feel like drawing or painting.  For somebody who used to find any excuse to do either, that’s disturbing.

I used to work at a hotel in Banff.  As far as jobs go, it was a very good one with good people, and I look back on my time there fondly.  During my six or seven years at that hotel, I ran a waterslide facility, then worked night audit, front desk and eventually became the accounting clerk.  During the off season, there was more than the usual downtime.  Sometimes, after all of the cleaning was done each day, I might be alone in the waterslides for an hour or more, just sitting at the desk.  It was then that I’d doodle and sketch and it would pass the time.  When I worked night audit, I would arrive just before midnight, run the reports and balances until about 2:00 AM and then just babysit a sleeping hotel until about 6:00 when people would start to be up and about and the day staff would come in.  That gave me about four hours to read, draw and sketch.

No deadlines, no expectations, just enjoyable drawing.  It was a nice hobby.

During that time, I began drawing one editorial cartoon for the Banff Crag and Canyon, the local weekly newspaper.   Not very well drawn, not very insightful, but no real pressure.  It wasn’t the National Post.

I could write a whole volume about what has come between then and now, how one thing led to another and how I ended up being a full-time artist.  Let’s enter that as read and we’ll jump ahead to the present, shall we?

I can’t remember the last time I drew something simply for fun.

You see, these days, everything I create is part of an end product.  If I’m sketching or drawing, it’s for an editorial cartoon or illustration.  If I’m painting, it’s for promotion, a training video or DVD, or an image I will sell or have been commissioned to do.  Everything feeds the constant deadline.  I realized this recently while working on my last couple of Totems and a commission piece.  There was something missing in the enjoyment of it and it was unsettling.

At the beginning of this ride, there was excitement in the scramble of it all.  Getting that new newspaper, having a magazine print an image, being recognized by a publication or resource.  I was younger, hungrier and enjoyed the competition.  After you reach a certain level, however, it’s no longer a thrill of being ‘on the way up’, but the maintenance required to ‘keep from losing any ground.’  The same old drug dosage is no longer providing the high that it used to.

Continuing on with known sayings, how about this one? “When your hobby becomes your job, you need to find another hobby.”

I used to have full-time day job, and editorial cartooning was the fun gig on the side.  Then it became ‘the job.’  Illustration was then the fun side gig, then it became part of ‘the job.’  Painting became the fun side gig…you can see where I’m headed, here.

Being an artist for a living is great.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else and I would still say that even when I’m having a bad day.  But if you’re considering that leap, go into it with your eyes wide open.

The truth is that business and marketing is where success lies as a creative, not doing what you love.  I’ve seen artists so much better than myself and others, fail to get anywhere because they don’t know how to sell and manage their business at all, or ignore the necessity of it.  I know some self-employed people who are three years behind on their taxes and are living under a ton of debt they’ll be lucky to ever crawl out from.  They wonder why they have no money but they haven’t done any invoicing in months.  I speak to school classes regularly and one question always comes up about whether or not they should go to art school.  I tell them to go to business school.  If you love art, you’ll do it anyway and will find the resources to become better by yourself, but where most artists fail is running their business and selling their work.

You have to be every department as a freelancer.  Accounting, PR, sales, admin, and creative.  Invoicing is done immediately or at the end of the month, without fail.  GST payments are never late.  Tax installments are never late.  You must foster relationships with your clients all the time.  If they know you and like you, they’re unlikely to replace you.  I would estimate that I spend only half my time drawing and creating, and the other half of my time running the business.  All of that comes with expenses, too.  Website design, printing costs, accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, etc.  Even designing your own budget website will cut into the time you’d rather be working on why you’re in business in the first place.

If this is what you want and are prepared for what it takes, then more power to you.  I would encourage anybody to give it a shot because I prefer these long hours working for myself than shorter hours, vacation time and weekends off working for somebody else.  If, however, you just love to draw or create, seriously consider if you really want to risk that by turning it into your job.  When your hobby becomes your work, it will change how you feel about it and it will no longer be that which you do in order to relax and unwind.  While compromise is always a part of life, decide how much you’re comfortable with.  There is no right or wrong answer, but there is a choice.

I will still write inspirational ‘you can do it’ posts here and elsewhere, and if you read one of those, don’t doubt that I mean it, but success stories will always be about hard work.  In this age of instant celebrity with folks believing they will be ‘discovered’ on shows like American Idol or YouTube and that they deserve to be successful by the simple virtue that they exist, inspiration needs to be tempered with reality, too.

Finally, a word of caution in the form of one more old saying.  “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

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Forward Momentum

One of the best things about being a freelancer these days, whether it’s writing, photography, illustration or just being self-employed is that there is no shortage of information out there to help you.  Just twenty years ago, there was no such thing as Google.  The Internet didn’t begin to gain real traction with the public until the mid to late 90’s.  Before that, you had to go to the library.  That’s a building with books in it.

We enjoy almost instant connection today, but it used to be a lot more difficult to find information while learning a skill.  If you were lucky, you might find a professional artist with whom to apprentice, but what to do if you lived in a rural area and had limited resources?  Now, we have access to apps, books, trade magazines, DVDs, online courses, webinars, forums, and websites full of information, all from the comfort of our own homes.

The problem with access to all of that information is that it is far too much for any one person to take in.  You may have the resources to learn all you want to, but so do your competitors, so there’s no room for complacency.  Thirty years ago, for example, a newspaper would have an editorial cartoonist on staff and that’s how they’d make their living, drawing one cartoon a day (sometimes less) for that one publication, spending the whole day working on one image, and not having to worry about sales, marketing, printing, promotion or local, national, and international competition, certainly not to the extent one must do so, today.

Most daily newspapers have dismissed their cartoonists and are opting for more regional, national and international syndicated cartoons and paying significantly less than they used to.  We are all familiar with this trend in every industry, so lamenting the fact is a useless exercise.  Adaptation is the order of the day in every profession.

With all of that information available and so many options, it can be easy to become anxious about where to put your efforts.  Ask ten freelancers which sites, organizations, and advice you should follow, and you’ll get an infinite number of answers.   If you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover that each of those ten freelancers is following the advice of ten other people, and everybody is just winging it, hoping to get enough work to pay the mortgage.

Put simply, you have to try new things and then evaluate their worth on your own.  Then you have to consider that something that worked for you yesterday might not work for you tomorrow.  Your own instinct will be your best guide.

For example, I’ve been a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals since September of 2004.  That’s quite a long time these days.  In addition to all I’ve learned about Photoshop, I’ve made invaluable contacts in the industry, and have formed lasting relationships with many people, a number of whom I consider good friends.  The investment in that membership has been very good for my career.

In recent years my skills have reached a point where I’m now in need of more advanced training and when the air gets a little thin, it’s tough to find that in any organization that must cater to a wide variety of skill levels.  That, coupled with the fact that today, NAPP’s focus is almost exclusively on photography, it has become obvious that there isn’t much left there for me anymore.

The friendships and connections, I take those with me, but when my membership expires next month, I won’t be renewing it.  It was a tough decision, but I based it on the question, “Had I not been a member for the past eight years, would I  join the organization today?”

The answer was an easy No. It isn’t that NAPP doesn’t have value for photographers, because it clearly does.  But I’m not a photographer.

While I had a good run and it was time and money well spent, I’m looking for other learning opportunities.  That being said, there’s still a good chance I’ll return to Photoshop World in Las Vegas next year.  Connecting with others, networking and spending time with other industry professionals is invaluable, not to mention that I always have a good time.  My experience teaching at the Wacom booth in September was great and I hope to repeat it again next year.  But I’ll be there on the periphery, not as an attendee.

So the message here is that continuing education as a freelancer is crucial to developing and maintaining a thriving career, but it’s up to you to find your own teachers,  a task that will never end.  You must constantly adapt to an environment that is changing so much faster than most can keep up with.  When something is working for you, get as much from it as you can.  When it stops contributing to your momentum and success, you need to cut it loose.

For now, my own path to continued education is uncertain, but I’ll keep looking to online courses, webinars, trade magazines and I’ll follow the art of other creatives, those who inspire me to be a better artist.  They say when the student is ready, the teacher shows up, so I’m not worried.

While I’m waiting, I’ll just keep working.  Practice makes perfect and even though I’ll never get there, I’m still aiming for it.

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You, Me, Them and Online

 

With limited or no knowledge of your background, skills, training, experience or business, there will always be somebody else painting a black and white picture of what your path to success should look like.  Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to your online presence.  Too many experts pontificating on the right way to do things (the way they’re doing it) and the wrong way to do things (any other method they don’t like).

The questions each of us should ask ourselves are simple.  What are you putting energy into that isn’t giving you anything back?  What are you spending time on that is or isn’t worth the effort?

I’m not an expert.  I just play one online.  Here are some of my own answers.

Website ads:  It took years for it to happen, but my website gets plenty of traffic these days.  Some people advocate selling ads on the site to give you more revenue.  Personally, I don’t like seeing them on another person’s site, so I don’t put them on mine.  If I had a physical storefront on a main street, I wouldn’t block up my own window and doorway with billboards for other businesses, even if they were paying me.

Blogging: I love watching the ‘you should blog/blogging is dead’ argument that pops up now and then.  My take on blogging is simple.  I enjoy writing, I do it well enough, and I find that keeping what amounts to an online diary of my work to be an enjoyable process.  It’s interesting to look back on thoughts and perspectives I had a few years ago and compare them to what I think today.

If I didn’t enjoy writing, however, I wouldn’t keep a blog, no matter what anybody said, because it wouldn’t sound genuine.

Social Media:  When I joined Facebook, the goal seemed to be to get as many friends as I could and that would tell people whether I was popular or not.  That got old really fast.  So I started a business page.  Then I had to get those people that were friends to ‘like’ my business page.  Get as many ‘likes’ as I could and that would tell people how popular my business was. This becomes an exercise in groveling.  I didn’t like it.

After Facebook, came Twitter, LinkedIn, and eventually Google+, because other people said that’s what I was supposed to do.

Here’s what I know now.

I’ve put the brakes on my personal page and focused my energy on only having my business page.  I’ll include links to it in posts, give away prints from time to time and promote it when appropriate, but I’m no longer holding my hat out, getting people to ‘like’ it out of guilt.  It stinks of desperation.  I want people to like my page only if they like my work.

My personal page still keeps me connected to other people and the pages and information I like, and allows me to comment on those, so there is still value in having a personal page.  Connections are very important and interaction on social media is a two way street.

But you have to control your own experience.  Everybody has that one person that posts ten cat videos in a row, or is constantly picking a fight or complaining, or turns every one of your posts into an opportunity to further their own agenda.  I hide those people from my feed, block them or unfriend them and I don’t feel bad about it.  With a limited amount of energy available to me in a day, I can’t afford for social media drama to sap any of it.

Facebook gives me the most return for the time invested.  The people who follow my work there are the ones with whom I interact the most.  I get regular work and referrals from both new and repeat customers.

LinkedIn hasn’t done much for me, but then again, I haven’t done much with it.  I can say the same thing for Google+.  It costs me very little time to post my cartoons, blog links and other business related happenings to Facebook, Twitter and Google+, so I continue to do that.  But despite how many followers I have on all three, Facebook gives me the most interaction and traffic (the numbers don’t lie), Twitter a distant second, and Google+ a very dismal third, even though if you look at my profile, it shows the most followers out of all three.  For me, Google+ is quantity, not quality.

Too many people are flailing about trying to be everything to everybody and following every bit of advice that’s offered them, even when it ends up being completely contradictory.  There is safety in numbers, which is why sheep and other animals will form a herd.   But, if safety were my biggest concern, I’d still be working for somebody else, and wouldn’t have left the herd in the first place.

So here’s one more bit of advice, which you are free to ignore.  Take a moment to look at your online presence with fresh eyes.  Take a breath.  Then ask yourself what’s working for you and what isn’t.  If something is paying off, helping your business grow and showing promise, then keep doing that.  For everything else, cut it loose, despite what ‘the experts’ are saying.  Adapt, move forward, and ignore the herd.

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Another Photoshop World

Photo courtesy of Chuck Uebele.

This past week, I once again found myself in Las Vegas for Photoshop World.  Following last year’s event, I wrote that it was unlikely I would attend again as the classes no longer offered me any significant benefit and that it had become very much a conference about photography rather than one about Photoshop.  Since I still believe that, you might wonder why I returned, especially since I only attended a few classes.

I got to hang out with many friends from all over Canada and the U.S., a number of whom I’ve worked with on projects or have plans to in the coming year.  I rely on these folks for reference photos, business contacts, and often just critiques of my work and moral support throughout the year, so it was great seeing them.  There is a great benefit to spending time with likeminded creatives with whom you can connect.

One of those was my good friend Jeff Tamagini from Boston.  Jeff is an architect, 3D designer and photographer whose work I really admire in all three disciplines.  Jeff was a big part of the reason Vegas was fun last week.  In addition to his introducing me to the amazing food at Julian Serrano at Aria (my wife was very jealous of that one), it was just guys hanging out, attending parties, dinners, and laughing an awful lot.  But I hired Jeff as a photographer while we there, too.

I plan to have a new PhotoshopCAFE DVD coming out this Fall, this one on painting portraits of people.  To avoid having to worry about model releases and licensing issues, I’ll be using myself as the subject.  The other reason is that anybody hired to paint a portrait is unlikely to have a model as their subject.  By using myself, I get to talk about how to minimize flaws (I have those in abundance) and to paint your subject in the best possible light, working with what you have.  I even woke with a zit on my nose that day, so I set aside my ego and told Jeff not to correct it from the shot, so I could show how to prep your reference photo as well.  The sacrifices I make for my craft, I tell ya.

Since I really like Jeff’s work and he’s a friend who’s also not going to make me look bad, I trusted him for the gig.  The shoot didn’t take long; I got the light and scene I wanted, to see the images in real time, and as a bonus, I have a little anecdote to share to make the DVD a little more engaging.

The second reason for attending was networking.  It’s an overused buzz word these days, but it basically means building new and reinforcing existing relationships to the benefit of your professional interests.

I was able to spend time with people from different companies, some of whom I’ve met before, but also a few with whom I’ve had no prior connection, but now have opened doors and dialogue for opportunities in the coming year.  There’s no online substitute for being introduced to a department head over lunch, and then realizing you’ve segued into discussing potential projects you might work on together.  You’re also a lot more likely to find out inside information about a great many things while sharing a drink with somebody at a social event than you will over email or social media.

At one point this week, I participated in an on-camera interview for an Adobe promotional video.  They asked me to show my painted work on camera.  At the end of the shoot, one of the camera crew gave me his card and asked for mine; because he might have a project he wants to hire me for.  Who knows if anything will come of it, but you just don’t find yourself in those moments when you only exist to people online.  I also had the opportunity to participate in an informal forum discussion with Adobe designers to discuss expectations and share thoughts on future releases and possibilities, a process I enjoyed very much.

And finally, I was invited to demo for Wacom in their booth on the Expo Floor.  I will admit to being a little nervous about that, but I’m also a firm believer that if you don’t step out of your comfort zone on a regular basis, you stagnate, especially as a creative.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been able to build relationships with a few key people at Wacom and I count myself lucky.  Wes, Joe and Pam have been very supportive of my work, and have treated me very well.  The trip alone was worth my time just to spend some with them. While the demo didn’t go completely according to my plan, (does it ever?), apparently nobody noticed and many told me afterward that they enjoyed the presentation.

Once I got rolling, it really did feel quite natural.  As Joe from Wacom said to me in an email the week before, “It is 45 minutes of doing what you do so well.”

You see why I like these folks?

After giving it some thought, I’m not going to make a ruling on whether or not I’ll go to Photoshop World again, but I can honestly say that I won’t be there as a conference attendee.  Without any advanced classes on painting and illustration, there’s just nothing there that I can’t learn online.  I may be back, however, for the reasons I’ve mentioned here.  What made the conference worth attending were the conversations and experiences I had at the Expo, as well as the number of meetings, planned and otherwise, in which I participated.  Some of my friends have said they won’t be back next year, so that will factor into it as well, but for now, I’m just leaving my options open.

All in all, I enjoyed the week.  While it was technically a business trip, it was also a bit of a vacation from the office, too.  Sometimes, even that’s just reason enough to go.