Category: Life Lessons

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Out the Other Side

PatrickGrinIt’s ironic that I don’t celebrate calendar holidays, but the changing of the year always makes me reflective.  While I usually aim for one short blog entry for my year in review, it would appear I’m incapable of that, so this first one is less about the work and more about what’s been rattling around in my noggin this year.

It is difficult to find the separation between my personal and professional life.  Having been able to find that elusive state of doing what I love for a living, the majority of my business is work that I enjoy.  When your work and life become so interconnected, happiness in one depends on the same in the other.

Clearly a midlife evaluation of priorities and direction, I’ve been on an emotional ride the last few years, one that has included dark lows and bright highs.  Most of my college years were spent studying psychology, so I’ve always been a believer in talk therapy.  Even the most supportive family member or friend can be too close to the source and a trained therapist will often present perspectives and open doors that had not been previously considered.  With that in mind, I spent some time talking with a professional therapist over the past year and it was incredibly helpful.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with OCD, and while sitcoms and movies like to use that as a punch line, it has a much broader meaning than fear of germs or lining up everything in the fridge, neither of those being components of my particular affliction.  I don’t mention this as a ploy to garner sympathy, just to point out that it’s a piece of the puzzle that makes me who I am.  As Michael J. Fox once said about his Parkinson’s disease, “Everybody has their own bag of hammers to carry around.  This is just mine.”

I mention it, because the ironic benefit of my particular OCD cocktail is that it makes me organized, driven and introspective.  As much as it can be likened to carrying around an annoying child in your head 24/7, one that never shuts up about shit you can’t control or change, it has also been one of the largest contributors to the success of my business and my work.

While some opt for medication to take the edge off of their anxiety disorder, and I certainly won’t judge anyone who has gone that route, I have chosen not to.  I have done well to rely on my gut instinct over the years and everything in me tells me that to chemically mess with the crazy, I risk damaging the creativity.  I am convinced that it all wells up from the same place.

I realize that calling it crazy isn’t politically correct, but I’ve lived with it long enough that I get to call it what I like.

Day in, day out I am worrying about things I can’t change and trying to control their outcome.  If I don’t have something to worry about, I will make something up.  Thankfully, I have a strong-willed wife who will apply the brakes when my mentally distracted driver starts veering all over the road.  When that annoying kid in my head attempts to draw her into a no-win pointless ‘what-if’ discussion, she is fond of sighing and saying “tell your little friend I’m not playing today.”

One particular quirk that comes with this genetic misfiring of chemicals in the grey matter is that I’m acutely aware of the passage of time.  While some may think they have all the time in the world, I’m under no such illusion.  I know it could all end in ten years, in twenty, or tomorrow.  That awareness factors into many decisions I make, especially in the past few years.  Funny how your early forties will do that to you.

WacoFBCoverOn our recent vacation to Vegas, it is this awareness that prompted Shonna and I to charter a biplane to take us on a tour over the Hoover Dam and to decide over lunch that we were going skydiving for the first time the very next day.  While I’m all too often guilty of having to plan everything and worrying about the future, it was worry about regret that allowed me to seize the moment, which made the experiences much more rewarding.  It also laid the foundation for the ones we’ll have tomorrow.

There is tremendous freedom in making choices, both personal and professional, if you imagine viewing them from the end of your life. If lying on my deathbed, would I look back on the choices I’m making today and wished I’d done them differently?  This is, however, a cautionary tale.  The choices we make for ourselves, when approached from that perspective, will undoubtedly alienate and disappoint some friends, family, mentors and others with whom we are connected.  But, those people see our lives from their perspective.  They don’t usually see that if we attempted to place the same restrictions or demands on them, they would resent it.

This is not an endorsement of shirking responsibility to your loved ones or those you care about.  But just as you choose to make yourself accountable to certain people, they are accountable to you as well.  Part of that accountability is allowing each other to make your own choices, good or bad, whether you agree with them or not.   One look at social media on any given day, and it’s easy to see that most people don’t walk that talk, your choices and opinions only valid if they happen to be the same ones they’re making.  Share or like if you agree.

Accounting for available evidence, we each only get one shot at life. While an unpopular view,  I don’t believe in heaven or hell.  If there is something after this life, I don’t think we can comprehend it in this existence and I certainly don’t believe we are meant to spend this life focused on it.  One person’s belief in their meaning and purpose may be entirely different than that of the person next to them, and both may be right.  I believe that you can live a good life and choose not to hurt other people without it being about a reward at the end.  If this timeline is all we get, it makes sense to get the most out of it.

If I have been going through a midlife crisis (evaluation, introspection, change of life, etc.), then I believe 2013 is the year I started coming out the other side, and not only was the whole difficult painful experience necessary for growth, it was incredibly freeing.  If the next year follows the same course, I am excited for what’s coming, and I’m looking forward to it.

DCIM100GOPRO

 

 

 

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Be careful what you wish for.

YesNoGot this question on my Facebook page this morning.  After writing the response, I thought I’d share it here as well with a few added sentences I thought of after the fact, as I get this sort of question a lot…

Hey Patrick, is your illustrations your main income?? I’m rattling around so much with going full time with my gift of photography but afraid to take that jump.. I seem to have no time to create working a full time job and kids;)

Hi ________:

Between editorial cartooning, illustration, painting commissions, print sales and licensing…yes. I’ve made a good full-time living as an artist for the past seven years. But for nine years before that, it was a gig I did on the side while holding down a full-time job to pay the bills.

I built my business working mornings before work, evenings and weekends and finally got to a point where I couldn’t get any busier until I quit my job as an office manager for a physiotherapist. Living in Canmore (high cost of living in the Canadian Rockies) on one income is near to impossible, or at least was for us then, so the deal with my wife was that if I couldn’t pay my half of the mortgage, I had to at least get a part-time job to supplement the art income. Fortunately, my boss at the time was (and still is) a great guy, knew what I was planning from day one, and when I gave him two months notice, he suggested I go part-time first and he hired somebody else part-time to take up the slack. About six months later, I had to give notice again as I got a lot busier, but waited until he found the right person to fill my job, which took about a month. It was the best LAST job to have.

It was a real struggle for the first few years, a lot of waiting for money to come in, going into overdraft more times than I can count before I wasn’t relying on every invoice being paid in order to pay my half of the bills, but every year has been better than the one before. It hasn’t really been a struggle for about three or four years now.

I don’t want to discourage you, but your situation contains a big factor that mine doesn’t. We never chose to have kids, so the risk wasn’t nearly as much. My wife and I have often said that if we’d had children, I likely wouldn’t have been able to quit my job. I’m not saying it’s impossible, of course, lots of people do it, but it will be a lot more pressure on you. In those first few years, I had no time for anything else but working. Even now, I work almost every day.  I finally figured out awhile ago why they say ‘do what you love for a living.’ It’s not because you’ll be happy all the time. It’s because when everything is hitting the fan, you haven’t slept, eaten, and the bills are overdue, if you didn’t love it, you’d toss it all out the window and quit. Loving what you do is a survival requirement.

Without knowing anything more about your situation, I would advise that before you quit your job, make sure all of your ducks are in a row. Everything from bookkeeping, accounting, taxes and some money in the bank. Get as many gigs as you can part-time first and make your big mistakes while you still have a job. Those first few years, I was on edge and scared ALL the time, feeling like I was one gig away from losing my business.  You spend half of your time doing support work. In addition to bookkeeping and invoicing, you’ve got marketing, correspondence, portfolio and website maintenance, travel time, all of the little things that will take time away for your photography. So those billable hours have to cover that time, too.

I’m a big believer in doing what you love for a living, but it’s never easy. A lot of sleepless nights, chewed fingernails, and figuring things out as I went along, most often from doing a lot of things wrong.  The stress WILL take its toll in a number of different ways.  For however long it takes, vacations can no longer be a priority and you must go without luxuries.  When you do take time off, you’re not getting paid.  There is no such thing as a weekend anymore and if you don’t have a spouse whose job comes with health and dental benefits (fortunately I do), then you have to factor that into the equation.  I know a number of people who quit their jobs without having any idea of what running their own business required and it’s unfortunate, because often they’ll end up giving up their artwork altogether because of the failed business. So they took what they loved and killed it in an effort to make it their job.

Having a hobby you love is not justification for doing it for a living.  There are many days where the last thing I want to do is draw.  I’ve invested so much of myself into my business, and honestly there is nothing I would rather be doing.  Many people like the idea of being self-employed, but it isn’t for everybody.  You can also count on friends and family failing to understand your choice and telling you that you work too much and should take more time off.  They never stop doing that, by the way.

Whatever you decide, give it a lot of thought, but keep doing what you love. If it takes a little longer to do it for a living, and that’s what you really want, so be it, even though it’s frustrating to have to wait. I started very late to this art gig, didn’t even consider it until I was in my thirties and I know people who started even later than I did and are doing very well.

Anything’s possible, but as the old saying goes, “if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”

Best of luck,
Patrick

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Avalanche Movies Rolls Credits

May-2,-2013

A few years back, I found myself considering a part-time job.  In my late 30’s, working full-time at home as a freelance artist, it wasn’t about the money, but getting out of the house a little more.  As much as I like working for myself, I missed having coworkers, even though when I had them, they drove me nuts.

The only place in Canmore I wanted to go for an evening job was Avalanche.  Make a little extra money, sure, but best of all, I got to be around movies, something near and dear to my heart.  I’m hardly the type of person that can discuss great cinema, tell you anything about Fellini or discuss the hidden nuances in Woody Allen films.  In fact, I can’t stand Woody Allen films.  I just love movies.

But Avalanche also has a reputation.  People like working there and that’s something you can’t fake, because they seem to like their jobs even when the owners aren’t around.  In a business well known for hiring teenagers and young adults, I was easily the oldest guy there.  Little did I know, the ownership was changing just as I was hired on, and I’ll admit that I thought I might have made a mistake.  But Jeff assured me that the owners weren’t just handing it off to anybody, they were making sure that it went to people who would keep the culture of Avalanche alive.

Enter Patrick and Camille, and I had no reason to worry.

I already had a work ethic; it’s something I take pride in.  But working at Avalanche, it didn’t take long to realize that everybody else there did, too.  Many of these ‘kids’ worked harder and knew more about customer service than most adults I’ve met and worked with.  For a lot of them, this was a coveted first job and with a lineup of their peers in this community waiting to take their place, few took it for granted.

My time at Avalanche was short, just over a year as I realized I was too busy for a part-time job, even though it was only a couple of nights a week.  But I enjoyed it and am thankful for the experience, because though I left a while ago, they still treat me like one of their own.  I even came back that year to work a shift with another former staff member, so everybody else could go to the Christmas party and we were happy to do it.  How many employers would you do that for?

To understand what kind of environment and direction Avalanche has provided to kids in this community, you need only look to the adults many of them have become.  Responsible and hardworking, they’re the type of people you want to know, hire and work with, because they know the value of doing a job well.

Customer service is a talk they walk at Avalanche.  Rather than just point a finger to a corner of the store when you ask for a movie, staff will take you right to it or go and get it for you.  That direction comes from the top.  Even as a customer, I still can’t walk by a crooked DVD case on the shelf without straightening it.

The place always smells of popcorn, free for the taking while you peruse the store, and if once in a while a batch gets burned, it’s usually because all of the staff are helping customers and didn’t get to it in time.  But a new batch isn’t far behind.

Only a fraction of late fees are ever collected.  Most of the time, they’re forgiven outright.  The only time you can be guaranteed to be asked to pay them is on the many occasions when they’re donated to benefit a local charity or cause.  And in this community, people are always happy to give more than they owe.

Walking into Avalanche, you never have to worry that you don’t know what to get.  I can’t tell you how many times Camille, Patrick or Jeff have taken the time to walk around with us, pointing out movies we should see, often  sleeper hits we’ve never heard of and then thoroughly enjoy.  It’s gotten so they even know what we like.  One of my favorite movies is “The Way.”.  This movie so inspired me that I painted Martin Sheen’s portrait from it.  I may not have ever seen it, had it not been recommended to me by Camille on one of those walks through the new releases.  That portrait now hangs in Sheen’s home in California.

Every dog in Canmore knows Avalanche.  Not only is it one of the few places where they’re welcomed to come on in, but there’s a never-ending bag of dog cookies behind that counter.  Even if you aren’t renting or buying a movie, dogs are always welcome to stop in for a treat, if they just happen to be on their way by.

For someone who lives outside of this community, you might view the closure of a movie rental business to be inevitable.  In the age of digital downloads and faceless automatic rental kiosks, it might seem that this business model has seen its day.  Not here.  As mentioned in their release, Avalanche is only closing because “our location is no longer available to us.”

You don’t just go to Avalanche to rent a movie, you go because you might run into someone you haven’t seen in a while. It’s one of the still locally owned gems in this town where they know you and they’re happy you stopped in, even if it was just to say Hi.  If this is the end for Avalanche, it will be mourned by this whole community.  Small towns have a way of disappearing one business at a time and while we all want the modern big box chain convenience, nothing comes without sacrifice and we lose a bit of ourselves each time it happens.

Hopefully somebody out there will want to write the sequel in another location.  If you’re that person, Patrick and Camille would like to talk to you.  If you want to know where to find them, just follow your dog.

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Working for Free and Clearing the Air

This topic seems to be floating around a fair bit lately and that’s a great thing.  Too many artists are doing work for free because many companies expect them to.  While I could write a long post about this, and I have in the past, Stephen Silver says it best in this video below.  If you are a freelance artist and aren’t yet aware of Stephen’s work, I would suggest you follow him.  He is respected for good reason.  He has great advice, is very inspirational and has been working in the animation and design business for a long time.  I’ve even taken an online character design course from him years ago and learned a lot.  While I don’t consider myself as accomplished a cartoonist or character designer as he is, my work is definitely better from having learned from him.  Now this video below is an angry rant, and this is out of character for Stephen, but he’s passionate about protecting artists from being taken advantage of, and you can see that in the video.  If you’re easily offended…well you wouldn’t be here, so never mind.

Before I get to the video, however, I’d like to address something I’ve been taking a bit of flack for the past couple of months, something that has direct bearing on this topic, and that’s the fact that I gave Emilio Estevez the painting of his father for free.  While I could easily dismiss the criticism as ‘some people are just angry at everything,’ I feel it’s important to address this because it’s not just me being slighted in the criticism, it’s Estevez as well.  While I’m sure he has thick skin and is used to being criticized for anything and everything in his profession, it bothers me that some think he got the painting for free because he expected it for free, simply because he’s a celebrity.  That’s not the case.

Throughout our correspondence, he was always offering to buy the painting.  He never expected me to give it to him.  When I explained that I couldn’t sell it because of why I painted it (you can read about that here), he then offered me other incentives from which I could make money from the print and I still declined.  My decision to give the painting was always mine.   I make a good living as a commercial artist, I do not do commission work for free, and nobody is taking advantage of me.  I wasn’t asked to do the painting.  That would have been something entirely different and I would have charged appropriately for my time and effort, just as I would have if the painting was going to be used commercially.

Let’s say that I had been in the same head space I was in when I painted that image of Martin Sheen, but had instead been inspired to paint somebody on the street in Calgary.  Let’s say I took a photo, and painted that person for my own enjoyment.   Let’s also say that person’s son or daughter saw the image and wanted to give that image to their father, the subject of the painting.   I can honestly say that I would have done the same thing, charged them only the printing and shipping and given them the painting, the same arrangement I made with Estevez.  The decision was not about celebrity.  It was about me, where I was at a couple of months ago, and what my instinct told me at the time.  The difference was that the inspiration came from a film, so the painting ended up being a character played by a well known actor.

Estevez was nothing but gracious and genuine throughout the experience and in addition to the signed prints I requested, and paying for the shipping and printing,  he even gave me a copy of the memoir written by him and his father, signed personally to me by both.  Some have suggested I should have gone for the big money grab because he was a celebrity.  That’s just not me.  While the story did get a fair bit of press in Canada and a little bit in the U.S., the experience doesn’t mean anything in the long run to anybody but me and the recipients of the painting.   It’s already long over, as most stories of this nature so quickly are.  To do it all again, I would change nothing.  While I have some very nice souvenirs of the experience,  I’m back to doing what I do best, drawing cartoons, illustrations, and painting funny looking animals for a living.  Throw in the odd portrait for fun and inspiration and that’s where I want to be.

Hopefully that clears a few things up for a few angry people out there.  If not, feel free to continue to wallow in it.  It’s your problem.  For the rest of you, take a look at this video by Stephen Silver.  If you’re an artist, it might inspire you to believe in your own worth.  If you’re not an artist, but someone who might hire one, perhaps this will enlighten you as to the struggles being faced in the industry.  We’re all building our own individual careers, but we also need to look out for one another as well.

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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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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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Fear and loathing of photo-painting

Anybody who knows me in professional circles knows that I’ve never been a fan of photo-painting.  While I don’t go out of my way to rant and rave about it, I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t like the practice of painting on top of a photo, that I’ve always felt it had a cheat quality to it, very much like paint by numbers.  I’ve had to bite my tongue and hold my anger in check whenever somebody has suggested that my paintings are just photos that I’ve painted over or manipulated.  It happens often enough that I have a chip on my shoulder about it.

I’ve always felt that if you’re going to learn how to use paint brushes in Photoshop, how to make them work for you, why not go all the way and just start with a blank canvas?  Use the photo for reference, but don’t go sampling the colours and painting on top of it.  I’ve pretty much dismissed it as something not worth my attention, resigning myself to loathing the practice, and making a concerted effort to ignore it.  People are going to do it, regardless of what I think, so why bother wasting my energy on it?

Now, I’ll admit to thinking twice (three, four times) about writing this piece, because it reveals flaws in my character.  While we all have them, of course, most of us don’t like to out ourselves when it comes to the things we keep hidden under the image we like to project.  But, there is rarely an opportunity to grow when you lie to yourself and as someone who follows the antics of politicians for a living, I can only stomach so much hypocrisy without pointing a finger at it, even when it comes to my own.

This week, I had occasion to throw open the door to my feelings on photo-painting for three reasons, all of which were revealed through posts on social media.

The first, was a link posted by a friend, an article by a vegetarian who had to deal with some of her ‘friends’ shunning her when she chose not to eat meat anymore, even though she wasn’t expecting them to do so as well.  I went looking for the article to include here, but I couldn’t find it.  Suffice it to say, it spoke a lot about our innate fear of change and how often the things we hate (strong word, there) are things we fear.

The second, was a piece written by Sam Spratt,  a guest on Scott Kelby’s blog this week.  While I enjoyed the whole blog entry about his thoughts on digital painting, the part that resonated most with me, was about artists who fear technology and how people skilled in one medium will often look down on those who work in a different medium.  I’ve talked about the latter myself in previous blog entries.

Third, and finally, Russell Brown, one of the pioneers of Photoshop and somebody who continues to look for new ways to push the technological and creative envelopes, revealed an add-on extension for Photoshop called the “Adobe Painting Assistant Panel” which is designed to help turn photos into paintings.  To be clear, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Russell.  In fact, I even painted his portrait recently.

I’ll admit that if somebody ever told me that I feared technology, I’d be taken aback.  My tools of the trade are all about technology.  Photoshop, Wacom tablets, my computer, laptop, painting on the iPad, I am a digital artist.   But after being exposed to those three sources this week, I began to ask myself, “Is it possible that I might be afraid of technology?”

The answer, it turns out, is No.  It’s not technology that I’m afraid of.  What I am afraid of, is obsolescence.

I know a lot of photographers who lament the fact that anybody can buy a DSLR camera these days, set it on automatic, take a photo and call themselves a photographer.  If you go looking for them, you’ll have no trouble finding MANY discussions online, often heated, that complain about people who are being hired to shoot weddings, portraits, and events, who are mediocre at the craft, essentially taking money away from ‘real’ photographers.

This is clearly a case of anger motivated by fear.  If the paying public can’t tell the difference between somebody with a point-and-shoot and a dedicated professional photographer, then how is anybody expected to continue making a living at it?

I’m not a photographer, so whenever I see this fear being played out in arguments and discussions, it’s pretty easy for me to see what’s going on.  It’s easy for me to pass judgment.

And yet, I didn’t see it in myself until just this week.

The reason I don’t like photo-painting is because I’m afraid that the paying public can’t see a difference between painting over a photo and the work that I have devoted years of my life to becoming skilled at.

That wasn’t easy to admit.  In fact, it’s downright humbling.

I’ve also realized that the same thing applies to how I feel about similar practices playing out in editorial cartooning.  I’ve seen competitors take a photo they found on the net, apply a few filters to it, slap on a caption and it gets published in a major daily newspaper.  This is happening quite often these days and I’ll admit to being pretty angry about it, upset that they were cheating.  The reality is that I’ve been afraid that if that’s all it takes to get published, then anybody can call themselves a cartoonist and they won’t need me, that the time I spend drawing is wasted, because some editors just don’t see the difference, or they don’t care.

My wife, Shonna, always a sobering voice in discussions where my emotions get the best of me, spelled it out quite well when I broached the subject with her this week, about my realized fear of photo-painting.

While I can’t recall her exact words, she basically suggested that it doesn’t matter how somebody creates their work.  If they take a photo, apply a few filters to it and call it a painting, it doesn’t really affect me at all.  They still have to sell it.

That was my moment of clarity in all of this and what will finally enable me to put it behind me.

Art isn’t about how it’s done.  Art is about how you feel when you experience it.  That applies to photography, sculpture, painting, music, performance, etc.  If you take a photo-painting that somebody has done and put it beside one of my paintings, the viewer most likely won’t care how it was created.  They’re just going to care if they like it or not.  If both pieces are for sale, they’re going to buy it based solely on that.  That’s how it has always been with art.

Some people really like my whimsical animal paintings and some don’t like them at all.  Some people buy them, some people don’t.  The fact that there are folks out there painting on top of a photo in Photoshop doesn’t change that in the slightest.

I’m still afraid of obsolescence.  I can freely admit it.  But I can use that, because fear is a great motivator.  It makes me try harder and scramble, eagerly seeking out opportunities to further my business and to ensure that I remain self-employed doing what I love to do.  While I have no intention of doing any photo-painting myself,  I’ve decided to no longer fear it.   As a consequence of that, I choose to no longer despise it, either.  It’s just another method for creative people to express themselves and that’s a good thing.  That’s art.

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The Exposure Card

This was a cartoon I did just for fun and for my fellow freelancers, whether they’re photographers, designers, illustrators, or any of the myriad professionals out there who make their living doing piecework for clients.  Ask any freelancer that’s been in the business longer than five minutes and they’ll have a story (probably many of them) of clients who’ve tried to pay with exposure.  For the uninitiated, that simply means that instead of paying for the work, the client cries poverty, but offers to put a link to your website on their website (or Facebook page, or Twitter feed, or on their bathroom wall) so that others who do have money will find you and hire you.

Most of us have fallen for this at least once.  Some of us more than once.  A certain cartoonist painter type I know (who shall remain nameless) has fallen for this at least a few times, because I’m such a…I mean he’s such a nice guy.

Unless the exposure comes from a company that has a lot of clout and comes in the form of more than just a link, but an actual testimonial, blog entry, press release or genuine concerted effort on their part to let others know about you, then exposure isn’t worth the paper your bounced mortgage cheque is printed on.  If you do end up working for a big company whose reach with all of that press is genuine, it’s a safe bet that they’re already paying you or offering perks that really do benefit your business.

To really see the value of exposure, consider the average Joe searching for an accountant in the yellow pages or online.  Joe gets the website address, goes to the site, finds the contact info and just before he phones or emails the accountant, he stops and thinks, “well hot damn, who designed that logo?”  or “who took that photo?” or “who designed this website?” and instead of calling the accountant he desperately needs to ward off the tax man, Joe clicks on that tiny link at the bottom of the page with your name on it and not only hires you, but pays you well for the privilege.

Those stories usually begin with ‘Once upon a time…”

That’s the sales pitch that exposure clients are basically giving you.  The irony is that the freelancer works long hours on the project that ultimately isn’t appreciated by the client (because they didn’t pay for it) and when the exposure results in absolutely nothing, many freelancers blame the client.   Worst of all, even if the exposure does result in a referral, it’ll most like be for another client who doesn’t want to pay you anything for your work.  Cheapskates tend to associate with other cheapskates.

Freelancing is a tough profession, and not for the thin skinned.  Most people will not value your services as much as you need them to and you’ll have to say “No” to a lot of people who want something done for nothing.  At least once a week, I get kidded about not having a real job because I draw cartoons.  I have a sense of humor, so I’m used to it, and usually let it roll off my back.  Occasionally, if I’m caught on the wrong day, I may get defensive, however,  and tell them in no uncertain terms,  they have no idea what it takes to do my job.

But I love my work, and many of my freelancing friends feel the same about theirs.  Sure, we’ll complain about it sometimes, just like everybody does about their job, but for a certain personality type, working for somebody else from 9 to 5 is one of the seven circles of hell.  We still have our bosses, though, they’re just usually temporary.  The big difference, however, is that we hire our bosses just as much as they hire us and when one of them pulls the exposure card, the correct response is, “I’m sorry, you’re just not the right fit for this company.”

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And the award goes to…

Over the past week, I’ve received some pats on the back from a few people I’ve run into, in addition to emails from readers and editors congratulating me on my second place for editorial cartooning for the Canadian Community Newspaper Association awards announced recently.  This is not about my syndicated work, just the local cartoons that are published each week in the Rocky Mountain Outlook, here at home.

While I simply said, “Thank You,” and went about my business, I’m going to be politically incorrect and honest about how I feel about it.   Second place is not winning.

I’m sure an Olympic athlete who has won a silver or a bronze medal would disagree with me, and while they’re entitled to their perspective, I don’t share it.  In our current short-sighted cultural climate where every child gets a participation ribbon, competition is discouraged in case our fragile selves be scarred in some horrible last place finish in a potato sack race.  When did the topic of winning and losing become so taboo?  People don’t celebrate the team that almost won the Stanley Cup or the politician who almost won the election.  With the exception of CEOs who get bonuses just for waking up, the corporate world doesn’t reward or function on ‘self-esteem before profit,’ despite what we’re teaching in our schools.

Only one team or individual can win in any competition.  Everybody else loses and is invited to try harder next time.

Even though I enter very few competitions, I do like it when I reach the finals.  Two of my paintings have qualified for Ballistic Publishing’s Exposé 10 book due out in June.  As a digital painter, this is a very prestigious book to be in and I’m thrilled that my work is being considered.  It’s also great for business, because of who sees it.  I want this, but being a finalist doesn’t mean a damn thing if the book comes out and my work isn’t in it.  Aside from the fact that I’ll be encouraged to submit again next year, qualifying or a nomination just means graduating to a higher level of consideration.

In the grand scheme of things, awards are good for two things.  One, they’re validation of a sort that you’ve achieved a level of recognition placing you at the top of your profession, if only for that moment, in the eyes of whomever was judging for that year.  A panel of people come to a collective opinion that your effort was the best of the bunch for that moment in time, and still only compared against the other people who entered.  The other value in an award is that it’s a great marketing tool.  As far as the CCNA awards go, it is in the Rocky Mountain Outlook’s best interest to publicize the 2nd and 3rd place finishes awarded to the staff because it establishes a reputation for being a newspaper of achievers.  That sells advertising and that’s how a newspaper makes money and stays in business.  While I chose the cartoon to be entered in the CCNA awards, I wouldn’t have bothered if the Rocky Mountain Outlook didn’t want me to.

The first awards that I considered significant enough to celebrate were the Guru Awards at Photoshop World in 2010, where one of my paintings won the Illustration Category and another won Best In Show.  Regular readers already know about this, I won’t bore you with more details, aside from saying it meant a lot to me only because I consider my Totem paintings to be my best work.

Let’s be honest, though, it was two years ago.  The moment has most definitely passed and if I were still posting weekly updates and screen shots of those paintings with the express purpose of  bragging about the awards as if they were yesterday, it would be time to consider some serious therapy.  That being said, I’ll put the words ‘award winning artist’ in every promotional bio I write from here on out.  From a marketing perspective, I’d be stupid not to.

There’s a line I love from the movie ‘Superman Returns,’ where Daily Planet editor Perry White says, “Lois, Pulitzer Prizes are like Academy Awards, nobody remembers what you got one for, just that you got one. ”

That’s how I choose to think of the Guru Awards today.  Winning the awards put me in contact with some influential people, resulted in some lucrative commissions, and opened some big doors, but it’s now my job to keep them open.  I realized last year that I don’t need to win another Guru Award.  While I was nominated in 2011,  I didn’t win, and nobody cared.  Seriously, nobody really cared that I didn’t repeat the win, including me.  Doors didn’t close, and people didn’t suddenly stop returning my calls or emails.

As long as my business keeps moving forward, I keep making decent money at it, and I enjoy the work, then I’m happy.  Of course, an award once in awhile will certainly put a shine on the day.  I haven’t yet met an artist that doesn’t enjoy an ego boost.  But I’m not unrealistic when it comes to their importance.   If I win an award, I’ll very likely tell you about it, because that’s what you do when you’re in the business of self-promotion.

Second or third place, however, you’ll most likely hear about from somebody else.

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Much ado at the zoo

With my focus on painting animals the past couple of years, my thoughts are often on trying to figure out the best way to sell the prints and the images themselves.  While I’m pleased with where the paintings are sold here in Canmore at Two Wolves Trading Co. and at About Canada in Banff, I’m now looking for venues in Calgary and for licensing opportunities.

With that in mind, I sent off an inquiry email to the Calgary Zoo.  I figured if there was one place in the city that people were looking for animals, that would be it.  While it took me a few tries to get to the right person, I eventually did get a meeting yesterday morning with the Retail Manager who liked my work,  and I learned a few things.  First, they don’t currently license images in the manner in which I was hoping, so for the time being, that one is out.  Second, they’re just beginning to sell art prints like mine in one of their venues.  I had brought in a 12″X16″ canvas print of the Wolf Totem, a small wolf matted print and a large moose matted print as samples.  To my surprise, I was asked to leave them there on consignment, which is a pretty standard arrangement for art for many venues.  I honestly didn’t expect that right away, or I might have brought more.

So, my foot is in the door and a small sample of my work is now for sale at the Calgary Zoo.  I mentioned that I was going to be painting a penguin or two as part of the series, and chances are that when it’s done, they’ll be hanging one or two of those as well.  Penguins are very hot (cool?) right now at the Calgary Zoo as they just opened their ‘Penguin Plunge’ habitat, right next to the store where my art is hanging.  For purely commercial and obvious reasons, my next Totem painting is going to be a penguin.

Throughout my career, I’ve often had things turn out better than I’d hoped by not getting exactly what I wanted.  I have a good feeling about this first step, and I think it’s going to lead to something very positive, even though I have no idea what that will be.  I’m certainly pleased that I took the shot, which leads me to the other shots I took at the zoo.

It’s no secret that I find photography frustrating.  Aside from enjoying capturing moments and memories with point-and-shoot snapshots, how I feel about the technical aspects of photography is close to how I feel about doing my taxes.   It’s very clear to me that I already know how best to express myself with images and it’s not with a camera.

I know a little about what it takes to be a photographer, mostly because I hang out with a lot of them.  I see what they have to learn, how much dedication is required, and how very much more it is than just pointing a ‘good camera’ and pressing a button.  Still, I naively headed for the zoo thinking I’d get some really great reference photos, because I just needed decent light and  sharp detail, not great composition.  My buddy, Joe, gave me an old zoom lens of his recently, because it has sand in it, so a few grains end up in shots.  Bad for him, fine for me.  Attaching it to my very basic Nikon D60, I figured the lens would make all the difference.  The actual difference was that my shots were worse than they normally are.   I couldn’t use auto-focus, I had it fully extended with no tripod, was using a flash, and there was one other thing…oh yeah, I have no skills with a camera, whatsoever.  A common joke among photographers is people who shoot with the automatic setting.  That would be me.

A little sidebar here.  I spent a beautiful morning watching animals.  The new penguin habitat is a wonderful addition to the zoo, and I got there early, so no lines to contend with.  Had a great conversation with one of the staff about the care and feeding of the penguins, and wandered around in the sunshine for a couple of hours.  Despite what follows here,  I really did enjoy myself.

I shot over 250 shots of the penguins, a giraffe, a meerkat, and red pandas, all with the intent of getting GREAT reference to paint from.  After pressing the delete button far too many times in Adobe Bridge, I ended up with about 5 good shots of the penguins and one of the meerkat.  Not great shots, not even very good shots, but good shots.  That means, good enough for reference, not good enough to publish anywhere except here.  It was a very humbling experience.

Like I said, I already knew that photography was difficult.  This being my first time using any lens but the one that came with the camera, however, I learned the hard lessons you only learn through experience.

When mentioning my tale of woe on Facebook yesterday, a number of my supportive photographer friends chimed in with advice and observations.  Here were two of my favorites.

My talented photographer friend, Christine, said, ” Practice, practice, practice. I remember a post you put out the other day about the same concept with your paintings, and the work involved.”

My friend Lu Douce, whose husband Craig is another talented photographer, right here in Canmore said, “250 photos? There’s your problem right there! Craig would have taken at least a thousand!”

Both of them are absolutely right.  A real photographer will often take many more shots than I did just to get ONE good one they can use.  My 250 was nothing.  And when I read the comment about practice, I thought, ‘touché.’  Why I expected to get great (not good, but GREAT) reference photos first time out, just because I could zoom in closer with the lens,  is beyond me.  Chalk it up to enthusiastic shortsightedness.

A few others on Facebook graciously offered advice on shutter speeds, lighting, stabilizing the camera and other helpful tips that made me realize that even though I have no interest in photography, I should still  learn a lot more of the basics if I want to take my own reference shots.

I’m a good painter.  I’m confident that I can say that without it sounding arrogant.  The reason is that I love doing it.  It’s fun, it’s a challenge, I feel at home while painting.  I’m very passionate about my work, and that’s why I’ve gotten skilled at it, because I don’t know how NOT to put the time into it.  This is also the reason I am unlikely to ever be a good photographer.  Passion is a key ingredient to becoming good at any creative pursuit, and I just don’t have it for photography.  The spark is absent.

Up until now, I’ve relied on buying or trading for reference photos from photographers who really know what they’re doing, with great appreciation.  That’s unlikely to change.  But I anticipate many more trips to the zoo in the coming year, trying to learn more of the basics and about my camera.  While I have no ambition to be a photographer, I am willing to put in some book learnin’ and practice time to become at least good enough to take some photos that will help me with my paintings.

To my photographer friends out there who do enjoy their work, and have that passion, you already had my respect.  Now you’ve just got a little more.