Art by Jake Parker
Why does my work look amateurish? How do I make sure my art prints properly? And should I copyright my work in case it gets stolen? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss these questions and provide their answers and experiences.
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SHOW LINKS
INTRO
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I LOOK LIKE A DAMN AMATEUR
Kyle:
Hi! I’m wondering why my art always feels amateurish? Feel like no matter what I do I can’t make it look professional.
There are two things: feeling like it looks amateurish, and actually looking amateurish. Find an outside opinion or a professional and ask them if it looks professional.
Lee is a huge fan of the master copy. Don’t just blindly match it, the real work comes in doing the copy, and then analysing the work. Lee made a little guide to analyse all the different elements of a Bart Forbes piece and see where it matches in his work, and what stays consistent. Lee would then check his own work against those common denominators and then applied that to his own work. The copy doesn’t matter if you don’t do the analysis.
There’s a level of craftsmanship to everything about creating an illustration. Each task rewards experience and time. Spend more time and you will develop experience and professionalism. Amateurs should try and spend 3 times more time than the professional will. When you are starting, try and refresh your portfolio often, pick your best piece and keep your standards at that level.
Storylines and concepts matter so much. Will finds that amateurish concepts are more distracting than bad craftsmanship. Avoid cliched images as well. Sometimes an image won’t even tell a story — there should be a story and not just technical ability.
Pros in any field are way more willing to scrap something that isn’t working and start over than an amateur. Lee has tried multiple times to do a single painting and has scrapped them often. Pros also stay in the rough sketch phase for longer and try to fix problems before committing to an investment in work.
REPRODUCING THE BEST IMAGE
Mallory:
"Just listened to the episode “Am I On The Right Path?” and I would love to hear you guys expound on the last question, about how art is reproduced. As an illustrator, probably 90% of our work is not going to be seen in the original, only in reproduction and prints, so I think it’s super important for illustrators to understand how their work will look—in a sense, or media is not just ink or oils or pixels, but the printed end result. You flew by terms like “dot gain” and stuff like that—I would LOVE to hear you go more in depth on the technical side of this, any tips you have about certain colors or techniques that reproduce well or don’t, etc and in what circumstances. (This is one of my favorite things Loomis included in his books, but I’m not sure that stuff is up to date with new technology now.)
I am a traditional-only illustrator. I work in ink and oil paint. Would LOVE any tips about how to actually do the work to maximize the odds of it reproducing well, not just how to get good scans of finished work.
Thanks! You guys are the best!!"
There are always trade offs when you change it from one format to another. If you’re working traditionally and smaller than 11 x 17, just scan it with a scanner. Do tests with the textures and see what papers work best. If it’s bigger, take it outside on a sunny day or use studio lights and take photos. Lee takes photos of each quarter and then stitches it together in Photoshop. You can also use a grey balance card to make sure the colors come out consistently. The color will never be perfect, mess with it in Photoshop and lighten it 10% more because if it prints too dark it will look bad, but it will look fine if it’s a little light.
If you’re painting with any metallic or shimmery colors, don’t. It won’t come out in print or online even — digital can’t capture what’s happening. Keep it matte. Don’t go for gloss because it’s hard to convert to digital.
Jake usually works in RGB but print requires CMYK. You get access to more colors with RGB and you can get really sharp striking neons and glows that you can’t get with CMYK. Be careful for any super saturated colors because they won’t show up in CMYK. In print, you need to convert your files to CMYK. If your file isn’t flattened, it gets super dull and muddy. Flatten the image first, then convert it into CMYK. It bakes in all the different layers. It’s much closer than an unflattened file.
Save a separate file as RGB and CMYK.
Under Edit>Convert to Profile in Photoshop, it’ll bring up a profile. Use Working CMYK (US Web Coated), it automatically converts to a print ready file.
SHOULD I COPYRIGHT MY WORK?
Jonathan:
Dear Jake, Will, and Lee,
First of all I want to say thank you for all that you guys do! The classes on SVS I have viewed thus far have made me realize I’ve still got a lot to learn and it’s possible to learn it!
How frequently should I be registering works for copyright and titles/names for trademarks?
It makes sense that one shouldn’t copyright every piece of art that one creates (it would take too much time and money), so should one just focus on copywriting the big projects? When should one do this (when the project is first created or after it’s found its audience?) And when should one worry about trademarking? (I’ve just begun some of the business classes that SVS has (specifically Lee’s How to Make Money in Illustration series), so these topics could be talked about there and I haven’t yet realized it).
I’m not yet ready to publish any works myself (in terms of both my skill level and the fact that none of my projects are completed), but I’ve always been curious about the business side of things.
Thank you in advance and have a wonderful day!
Copyright is for any creative work that you do. It could be a story, or a class that you teach, or a melody, or a song that you wrote. A trademark is a mark by which you do business — a logo, or some other characteristic that defines your brand. Jake didn’t register that trademark, but he did register the Inktober trademark — that way anything that he did specifically for Inktober with his logo couldn’t be ripped off by other people. Just add a ™ next to it, and that plants a flag that it’s something you own and that you are using as a mark to do business. You don’t need to register it or pay anything or do any paperwork, it still counts and holds up in court. The ® means that it’s a registered trademark, with a government, and that it is protected under law. It’s a more solid form of protection. Big brands use the ®. We don’t trademark our SVS stuff because it’s unlikely another school will come and use it. The ™ projects that you know what you’re doing.
Copyright is automatic! When you create something you automatically have copyright on it. Jake has only registered copyright on a book he made with a publisher. He just puts copyright Jake Parker on his books. Enforcing it is the problem — people are going to use your ideas and mix your stuff with theirs, and typically just reaching out is a good way to handle it. Calling them out publicly or having a lawyer approach them are escalations. Unless it’s a huge money maker for you, it’ll cost you more to enforce it than the return you would get.
Modern Dog is a well known graphic design collective who made a book with lots of dog portraits. A company stole those portraits and sold them as their own, and Modern Dog sued them. It took five years and almost bankrupted them to try and get the company to stop using their images, even though it was a clear cut case of theft. Suing people costs a lot of money, even if you win, getting the money from the people you win a case against can be really hard.
You own the copyright no matter what when you create something, don’t worry too much about putting the © on your work.
Sizzler stole some of Boris’s work, he did work for five menu boards in Utah exclusively. They used the art all over the country. They didn’t pay him. He got outspended and never got paid in the end.
Registering your copyright can increase the payout x3. You can ask for three times the amount of damages. You can’t do that if you don’t register your copyright. However, Will has never known of an artist that has been infringed upon who has won a settlement.
Contracts sometimes are really hard to enforce. Artists generally don’t have enough money to pursue judgments, even if they’re right. You just can’t win sometimes, it’s a part of life that you might get ripped off.
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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