Why Am I Not Winning Art Contests?
Art by Josh White
SHOW LINKS
ILLUSTRATION REFERENCED BY WILL
SOCIETY OF VISUAL STORYTELLING YOUTUBE
This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry take on listener questions and provide their own opinions and solutions. They tackle minimizing the difference between the thumbnail and the final, getting selected for the monthly art contest at SVSLearn, the nitty-gritty on pricing your prints and originals, and what to do if a publisher doesn’t pay you.
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INTRO
Congrats to the guys on 60 episodes!
For podcast listeners: check our Youtube Videos for false starts, bloopers, and extra banter!
Will’s Kickstarter is available RIGHT HERE.
Lee is shifting into a fine art career and is now looking at a whole new world in image making and business. He’s also starting a Patreon so keep an eye out for it!
Jake has been doing concept jobs and is working on a card game, as well as an animated series that he cannot talk about, but it’ll be out later this year.
The two cool things about illustrating: saying you have an agent, and saying you have an NDA.
Jake was obsessed with the stealth bomber as a kid. Jake’s best buddy’s older brother was an engineer that was working on projects for the military -- and they always asked him what he was working on, but he couldn’t tell them. Finally the news about the Stealth Bomber came out, and he admitted that that was what he was working on. While we’re working on our dumb stories, people are designing Stealth Fighters, but we’re building worlds at least!
Q&A FROM THE SVS FORUMS
This question comes from Rachel Horne!
I feel like I'm getting into a better way of working recently. I religiously do my 50 thumbnails and this definitely helps a lot! That said, sometimes I'll have a thumbnail I like, I'll do a sketch from that that I also feel happy with, I check with people around me that there's nothing too weird-looking and then get to do the final piece and something just feels wrong with it.
I'd be really interested to know if this happens to anyone else?
JAKE: This happens to everyone, this is basically what artists just have to deal with. If you are magically able to make your final art look like your thumbnails, then you’ve reached the upper levels of illustration!
Your thumbnail could be so loose and symbolic that your brain is making up for everything the thumbnail lacks. Your brain is suggesting stuff and filling in the gaps, there is a lot of energy because nothing is nailed down. When you go to the final, you actually have to nail things down and make decisions, and things naturally become stiffer and more lifeless. The way I combat that is by using my thumbnails by scanning them or increasing their size so that they are overlaid in their full size over my image, so that way I am not reinterpreting my thumbnail, and that gets me a little bit closer to the original thought as opposed to just drawing the thumbnail bigger.
WILL: I totally agree. This might not be a satisfying answer, but the better your work gets over years, and the more you’ve seen different compositions come together from thumbnails, the more your mind is able to comprehend a final piece from a thumbnail. If I’ve come up with a good thumbnail or comp and I’ve spent some time whittling it down and getting it to where I want it to be, I can see the finished piece from it.
Being positive helps, because being positive about something inherently makes it turn out better. I see a thumbnail that I’ve done, and I’m at the point now where it always turns out. A few decades ago, I would do thumbnails and just hope that they would turn out. Sometimes they would and sometimes they wouldn’t. If you’re at that stage, you might not have done enough and had enough failures under your belt to know why. Making a good image is just as much the problems you avoid as opposed to the good things you put down.
Lee’s process is like an assembly, where he adds things and reduces things over time to reach a great image. He’s careful with both concept and design.
LEE: I think you’re right. Over time you learn issues and start to avoid them, like not putting light characters over light backgrounds. If you’re a total pro you could do it, but a beginner will absolutely struggle with that. Jake is right as well -- people go from too loose to too tight when going from thumbnail to final. I’ll also blow up my thumbnails either digitally or by scanning and printing, and they look horrible when they’re blown up but they still have that quality that I liked. If you have a little loose thumbnail and a huge board and you are going to do a clean version of it from scratch, there is just no way. Not even pros can do it.
When Lee first got into watercolor, it was super hard for him. It still is. When it came time to do the final, he told himself it was just a sketch. It’s just a practice one. Tension is the problem for most people, and that stiffens you up and stiffens up your work as well. If everything is a practice, then you can play and make mistakes.
ILLUSTRATION REFERENCED BY WILL
Jim did a pro move by using ambient and bounce light to seperate a light character from a light background. The work is really good but difficult for beginners! He shifts from cool to warm colors.
SOCIETY OF VISUAL STORYTELLING YOUTUBE
This question is anonymous!
I keep entering the contest but I never make the top 16. What should I do?
(Ed. Note: The contest is Critique Arena, a battle royale of art entries based on a prompt picked by one of our hosts, and judged by them bout by bout with a popular vote as well. New prompts monthly on our forum.)
LEE: We can’t speak to every person individually because there are so many entries, but we can discuss the top five or so things we tend to see.
JAKE: Immediately, there are two things that disqualify an entry for me.
A low level of rendering ability. If the quality is not there, if the character or the environment is poorly thought through or executed, or it just looks unpolished, then it’s an immediate no.
Does it capture the story of the prompt? A lot of what we do is illustrative, storybook style prompts. We pass on ones that don’t clearly get the prompt across, that either don’t get the concept or the visuals across well, or are amateurish in their execution.
WILL: People fall into many pitfalls when dealing with story. Here are a few:
They don’t write the rest of the story -- the prompt is just one page of a larger story, the motivations should be there for the story to continue. It should feel like a page from a larger book, write the rest of the story for your characters. Make it understandable.
As far as visual stuff goes, you are competing against people who have been doing this for a decade or more, and time spent on art really does correlate with visual quality. If you’re not making it into the competition, give yourself a break -- you might not have enough time in it. You just need more time with steady, studied practice to get in. Same thing happened to Will when he started as a beginning illustrator -- he never got the job when he started, but now he almost always gets his projects and is a first choice for a lot of clients. It just takes time and experience.
LEE: It’s artist against artist and image against image, and you never know who’s going to win. I agree with Will, you should figure out your story elements. Once you’ve done that, show it to somebody who has no idea what you’re drawing. Sometimes submissions are ambiguous or vague. Someone who has no familiarity with your image should be able to know what is happening in your image.
Pros should be open to changes when things are not clear in your image. If you don’t want to show your work to others because you’re afraid it will give you more work, you aren’t ready to make great work. You can show people early sketches or semi-polished pieces so that you don’t spend so much time rendering something that isn’t clear. This is good practice in general when working with clients. It’s great to have a few people to bounce ideas off of. Lee often even sends thumbnails to his friends to see what they think. It’s really beneficial to use your network.
It’s hard because if you get feedback after hours of work, it can be emotionally challenging to go back and undo your work to make it better. Will usually sends his work for notes if it’s something he already is thinking about or if a concern is already on his mind, just to get confirmation.
Watch out for showing people with a history for making you feel bad about your work. Sometimes family can be really sharp about things!
When asking for critique, know yourself -- do you just need validation or do you really want to improve? And then just be honest with the person and ask for acknowledgement of your work or ask for serious feedback.
Related question: There are a handful of people who make it to the top 18 or 19, and the three or two who just don’t make it through have a few issues to address to get it over the edge. What separates them from the top 16?
WILL: I will forgive a lack of rendering ability if the concept is strong. If it’s funny and interesting.
LEE: Composition is the problem at that point. It could be really flat, no foreground middleground background, it’s not interesting.
Keep entering even if you aren’t placing. There is a huge benefit to saying “This is as good as I’ve got right now.” Put your work out there, it will change you as an artist. Finish things and do that last 20% on your work.
Which do you want at the end of the year -- 12 finished pieces that didn’t make it to the top 16, or 6 half-finished images that you never finished because you thought you wouldn’t place? Go through and finish things, and you will progress.
This question is from Cory:
My question is about pricing your art. Mr Jake Parker recently sold some originals on his website, I couldn’t figure out his method of pricing. Some were $40, some were $600, it didn’t appear to be based on anything. Maybe popularity of the subject matter? How do you price artwork?
JAKE: For me personally, I could sell my art and make some money, or I could leave it sitting in a flat file in my office where I’ll never look at it, whereas people out there in the world might want to hang it and look at it in their homes. It’s doing no use sitting there and it could make some money. If you pay some close attention, all the ones that are $40 or $50 are small postcard sized drawings, whereas $100+ is 8 x 11 or larger. A lot of it is figuring out how much a square inch is worth. If you price it at $10 per square inch, then you know how much a 100 square inch piece is worth. I’m not super scientific about it though. Small pieces are cheaper, large pieces, color pieces, or mixed media pieces are worth more. Subject matter is a factor too. I could charge more for a fanart of Baby Yoda or Jack Skellington than my own work. There are people who collect Jack Skellington stuff, and if they see original art of him they will want that too.
LEE: Is there any for sure subject matter that sells?
JAKE: Baby Yoda. I set it for $300 and it sold fast. I did price a range from $40 to $600 because I wanted to fit different budgets. I wanted people who didn’t have the budget to spend $100+ to be able to purchase something. I also wanted a handful of affordable, fast selling pieces so that it would motivate people to buy fast rather than waiting and seeing. FOL or fear of loss.
LEE: That’s right. I set mine up for different levels. Have different price points. The two main factors on price are your reputation: how well are you known for your work? And the second is the scale and size of your work. If you can paint as well as Jake, Jake will still sell for more because he has been doing it for a while and is more well known. This really factors in if you are showing in galleries as well.
There are four different levels of pricing that I use:
Lowest priced -- reproductions and prints. Greeting cards at $4 to 16x11 prints that go for $75. There are a couple sizes in between, these are for everybody and are easy to do.
Drawings -- usually with pencil or marker. I price them from $200 to $350 here.
Monoprints -- something with one color, more complicated than drawings. Around $500.
Paintings -- typically framed. Small 10x10s are $400, up to a $30x40 that goes for $3000.
Each one stacks on, people start at stage 1 and move their way up as customers.
WILL: I don’t sell originals, just reproductions. I keep my price point low. I sell them cheap and sell a lot. I don’t sell originals because I work digitally. I have so many ideas and projects that I have to move on them, I can’t get paints out and work traditionally. I can’t do the same line work at the same time with paint. I render my work double the size digitally and then reduce them down. It wouldn’t be worth my time to do it traditionally when you factor framing and shipping in.
LEE: When anyone asks me for an original artwork of a digital piece, I go home and make it for them.
WILL: If you could sell my originals for $3000 each, then it would be worth it.
This question is from Mirka Hokkanen!
I have finished final illustrations for a picture book, waiting to be submitted to a small publisher that I’m holding onto because I haven’t been paid yet. The contract had dates etc, but doesnt seem like the publisher really cares for any of those, we are way past deadlines. Is it still acceptable to just start invoicing them on a weekly basis? What should I do?
LEE: Do you keep the artwork and wait for the publisher to pay? What do you think?
WILL: There are more illustrators willing to work than there are assignments being given out. It’s a buyer’s market for giving out assignments. What I would do in that situation -- often the Art Director has nothing to do with paying on time, they are under pressure to hit their deadlines. If you play hardball and withhold your artwork, you run the risk of alienating your art director and they might not want to work with you again. Now that we have the internet and social media, any company that doesn’t pay will get destroyed on social media. Either they will pay or there will already be info online that tells you not to work with that client.
JAKE: 9 times out of 10 they aren’t paying you because of paperwork or somebody forgetting to contact somebody or something like that. They usually will have the money. It’s just miscommunication a lot of the time. Your job is to remind, remind, remind, and eventually it will come through. I’ve never had a professional publisher not pay.
WILL: I’ve only had it once out of twenty to thirty thousand jobs. They didn’t have the money and offered to pay me only half at the time. Beware of accepting a partial payment -- this isn’t legal advice, but apparently it counts in a court of law if you accept a partial payment as being paid.
LEE: Is it more detrimental to your career to call out a publisher on social media for not paying? You mentioned the rocky relationship you might have with an art director, would the same thing happen if you call them out?
WILL: You have to document your interactions. If you could show a list of 10 things you tried, and shared it respectfully online, then you should be fine. If you go hateful online then that’s a different story. Treat it like a cautionary tale rather than a beating up of the publisher. Have decorum.
What about giving them low-res files until they pay? That way the art director can place them.
WILL: I do that sometimes with small publishers.
It’s amazing how irrelevant you are once you turn in final artwork. You need 6 months to a year of expenses saved up where you can have clients stiff you and still be okay. It’s dangerous to have only a month’s expenses saved and you need to hunt for your pay. It’s easy to make dumb decisions at that point.
Some artists who worked traditionally would mail their artwork to final publishers. Some artists are now asking if they should pay for scans and send those in and if they should bill their client for those scans.
It depends. Will has paid for scans before he switched to digital. It used to be a client expense but sometimes artists have to do it themselves.
What makes an original an original? If you print something out midway and then finish it, is it still an original? Definitely, it exists only in that one spot.
Lee hates the idea of scans, that costs should be passed on to the artist.
Jake has visited his publishers a few times, and he often saw originals accumulating in piles in editor’s offices. They used to just mail the originals in and let the publisher worry about it.
Lee has a great story about running from the police with his son -- we’ll get to it in a later episode!
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Aaron Painter: painterdraws.com. Instagram: @painterdraws
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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