Art by Kim Pierson
How can you tell if you’re progressing as an artist? Should you ever bundle your book royalties? And how can you make sure your work looks the same on paper as it does on your screen? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry take listener questions and provide answers to your burning questions!
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SHOW LINKS
MIKE SNELSON’S PHOTOCOLOR LAB
INTRO
Let’s do a quick update on what the guys are working on!
Will is working on personal projects and freelance, as well as the new children’s book curriculum for SVSLearn. He is also finishing up What They Don’t Teach In Art School and is also working on a game. His freelance work was for textbooks.
Lee is working on his Slowvember project — an Alice in Wonderland Tarot Deck. He is trying to make sure he knows a lot about Tarot before he goes into it fully — it’s good to keep people around who know more about a topic than you do. He wanted to do a Kickstarter book initially, but six of the top twelve kickstarted projects at the time were Tarot Decks. The deck is 78 individual images, and they don’t need to be narratively cohesive — just cohesive via design. It’s like doing a bunch of book covers, which Lee loves.
Why is Lee switching away from Children’s Books? He has been turning the jobs down. He hasn’t been getting books that he likes. He wants to do the book that he wants to do, without going through the editing process and having people change his story. This Tarot Deck thing is following opportunity and letting your passion follow, as opposed to following your passion and letting opportunity follow. Lee’s passion here is illustration. If you’re not having success in your art, passion is sometimes not enough — you need opportunity as well.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY WORK IS WORKING?
How can you know if you are on the right path? It would take too long to give feedback to everyone that is useful and good. Be wary of quick advice as well — it might not be accurate if it’s given quickly.
Be wary of directions and be open to maps. Finding success in creative fields is a lot like breaking out of prison. When someone breaks out of prison, they patch all the holes so you can’t just follow that same path. You can’t copy someone beat for beat because it won’t work. Be aware of the pitfalls and traps that they encountered but follow your own path.
You do need advice, but make sure they ask where you want to go.
Lee’s recommendations:
Post often on social media. You’ll start getting feedback. Just be aware that people are way nicer on social media.
Get crits at local events. It never hurts to be there. Look for the common thread that most people say about your work rather than the individual critiques.
Take classes from a teacher that you respect, and try to sneak in a portfolio review after class. The teacher is already in the mode and is already teaching so there is a context there. “How does this match the other pieces I’ve done?”
If you do ask for a crit from an individual teacher, offer to pay for it — artists are super busy people so their time is valuable.
Being open to the different avenues of art is really healthy. Having tunnel vision for a single kind of art, like concept art or calendars or similar, can burn you out.
You have to know yourself to some degree. Sometimes you don’t figure out who you are until you go some ways down a path. It’s okay to jump and go down another path. You have a long life and the learning doesn’t have to end. If you learn smart you can learn fast.
Jake’s questions if you want to pursue art:
Do you like running your own business? Do you like marketing yourself and controlling what you do?
Do you want to focus on one thing and master it, and then essentially be a helper to other people to help them to do what you do?
Either you can be solo or join a team. Children’s books are a solo endeavour, whereas you could get hired in house and be a part of a bigger machine that creates something huge. You might not be an entrepreneur and might be happier as part of a team. The opposite might be true too.
The first step is to interview yourself and do your own research first. What are you good at, and what do you like to do? Those things can be related but not always. Lee is great at rendering but he doesn’t like doing it. The venn diagram doesn’t overlap.
Ask yourself:
What life you want to have
What you like to do
What you want to spend your day on
Will recently got an email from one of his students, and it was too much — Will does not have time to read it all and engage with it all. He asked for just three images. When asking for reviews, treat it like an elevator pitch. Milton Glaser said that a good art director needs just 10 pieces to determine if you’re a good artist. A great art director needs just 5, and the best need only 1. If you’re going to someone who knows what they’re doing, just give them a few images, not too much, and it should be enough.
Will would get students’ life stories during critiques. He was interested, but he had a class full of students waiting in line. Life stories don’t really help get a better critique.
There is a lot said for posting your artwork online and getting feedback. If you get zero response, or a lukewarm response, then you’re not on the right track.
FOUR STEPS TO KNOWING IF YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT PATH
You start getting noticed without solicitation. When you show work, people are interested in it without people pointing it out.
You start getting recommendations from teachers or friends. “Did you see this job posting? I think you would be good for it”.
You start winning things. Contests, or awards.
People start paying you. That means people really love your work and are willing to put their money behind it.
SHOULD YOU BUNDLE YOUR ROYALTIES?
As a children’s book illustrator, you get paid an advance. As it starts to sell, your advance is paid back to the publisher through your royalties. Once the advance is paid back, you start making money from your royalties. The industry term is “earning out” once you start getting royalties.
So what’s a bundle book? Your advance is bundled for both, and you need to pay back both books before you start earning royalties. If the first book pays back its royalties but the second one doesn’t sell, you will have to pay back the royalties on both.
Will had a bundled book deal with Simon and Schuster a long time ago. Each book’s advance was $7,500. The whole series was around $50,000. They took a couple years to finish even though he did other gigs in between. Will got paid money for work he wouldn’t be doing for the next few years. He had to be really careful with his money. If it happened to him now, he would open a new bank account and put the money in and let it sit there, then withdraw the appropriate amount after each book is done.
Should you ask for separate terms? Will doesn’t think he could have negotiated out of the terms he had. Jake has done two-book deals but not three or four book deals.
Illustrators do the lion’s share of the work and make less money. There are also plenty of hidden fees and other things that you need to take into account. Maybe doing a deal for the first few books and a separate one for the next few would be wise, if you can negotiate for it. It never hurts to ask.
PRINT READY AND DIGITAL FILES
Try and get printed proofs before the project is published! Jake’s opinion is that nobody cares! You do your illustration, and unless you are using colors that are super weird, it’s gonna be fine. The average person will not care and will not notice.
Lee thinks that the caveat is that you can’t control the end printing, but you can take steps to try and limit the amount of change that happens — and the steps are easy.
If you’re in Photoshop, select your color profile under Edit. You can change it at will without changing your file at all. Your colors will change depending on which profile you’re using, and the values can sway wildly. You won’t even know it. There should be a standard baseline, and the baseline in publishing is the Adobe RGB (1998) ICC profile. Then, print that image on a good printer on semi gloss or semi-matte paper, then send that proof to your publisher and let them know that that’s what you think that image should look like.
Jake just had his tenth children’s book released by a major publisher, and his work has been on the New York Times bestseller list, and he has no idea what Lee is talking about.
Will’s Cintiq monitor is very very accurate and it usually translates perfectly to print. His iPad Pro has really bad color though, so it always changes when he shifts it to his studio monitor.
Lee will send his image to a bunch of different devices, and as long as it looks good on all of them then he will let it go. Don’t just use one!
Lee used to add a little canvas space on the bottom and include a 10 step black to white scale and would tell his client that they should be able to see all 10 steps. Things tend to print darker than usual, so sometimes Lee will get the image to look how he wants it on his monitor, then lighten the midtones around 10%. He uses curves, you can use levels as well. He has never had something come back that has looked too light, but he has made stuff that has come back too dark.
Scanning or photographing your work is a hassle but it is essential. Either invest in a scanner or find someone who can scan your work for you — it’s a headache but you need it.
MIKE SNELSON’S PHOTOCOLOR LAB
Make sure you find the right person or you can do it yourself.
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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