Journey for a New Artist

Working toward becoming a professional illustrator is like taking a journey without a map. There is no GPS to plot your course. It may be a long, rocky, difficult journey, or you may have an easier path to follow, because it is your personal journey.

For many occupations there is a set course to follow: go to college, get a degree, make good grades, then apply to companies for jobs in your appropriate field. But lately, it seems that this old tried-and-true approach is becoming even more difficult. There has never been a set path for creative people such as artists, musicians, writers, actors and all occupations that would be included in the Arts.

I can only talk about my personal journey that has led me to this point in my life /career. I always refer to my career and my life as one and the same. My life is my art; there is no separating the two. I have spoken to many groups of people during my career on this topic and I will go over a few points that I feel are important, which may help a young artist /illustrator on his journey.

Try to educate yourself in your field. Go to college or a good art school, if you can afford it. Usually this opportunity comes when you are young, and because of your youth, you can more easily absorb the basics in your field and get a good foundation of art in general. Going to school at this time of your life does one more thing besides giving the obvious education: it buys more time for your “eye” to mature. You will learn to see your art more objectively and become a much more efficient self-critic. This helps you grow.

Drawing is the foundation. Good drawing skills are a must. For example, if you start a painting and your drawing is weak, your painting will be weak. It is much more difficult and time-consuming to redraw or correct a drawing with paint. I cannot emphasize it enough: never stop drawing.

Learn perspective. If your work is representational or realistic, then you must understand perspective. You can exaggerate perspective for certain effects, but the foundation of your exaggerated perspective must be correct. Everything you draw, every object is in perspective. Don’t guess at perspective, learn it.

Learn to see. This applies to objects, shapes and colors.

I had a lot of problems when I went from drawing an object to painting an object. I made the same mistakes that a lot of young artists make: I tried to color a drawing. My thought process was almost the same as coloring a line drawing in a coloring book. I was thinking symbolically. Since then, I have taken classes in color theory and learned by reading and observing other artists’ work, but what I have found that has taught me the most is learning to see.

When I look at a real landscape, I try to see the real colors and values in nature, not the symbolic colors that are taught to us from the first grade up. I try to mix and match the colors and values in my mind when I am looking at that real landscape. Which different paints would I mix for those distant pine trees? A touch of green, raw umber, ochre, white, blue, purple? There lies the challenge, and it is so much fun.

Painting from life, out in the field or in an enclosed environment, is a wonderful way to learn to see, and learn to see real colors and values. We have been trained during most of our young lives to think of shapes and colors symbolically. A good example is, “the sky is blue, the clouds are white, the grass is green, and then just add black to make the shadows.” That is so wrong. Watch a child draw a chair; it is usually in the shape of an “h,” a tree is two parallel lines with fluffy cotton-candy leaves around the top, and a shoe is always drawn in profile. Believe me, these symbols carry right into your adult lives.

So, learn to see. You will soon learn that what at first looks like totally random patterns and shapes in trees, water, rocks, clouds and folds of clothing are actually repetitious patterns with slight variations. They are rhythms, consisting of musical notes slightly rearranged to play different melodies, all within the same song. Nature works that way.

I used to think of all my tubes of paints by color names, like a box of perhaps thirty-two crayons. Later I started thinking of my tubes of paint as musical tones that help compose an overall melody, and now I think of them as tastes or flavors and I am cooking up some meal that will taste good to me. Different colors, hues and values have different flavors. So now I cook without using a recipe. As my mother and grandmother would say, I’m “cooking from scratch.” This helps keep me from thinking of colors with names, all placed neatly in the box of crayons. Real life doesn’t work that way, you can’t find a box that all the colors could fit into, and, on top of that, we don’t even have names for all the colors that are possible!

Everything that I have said so far is to help you become a better artist, so you can compete with everyone out there, and today the world is much smaller. Now you are competing with artists around the world. You have to be good. I am not saying you must paint or draw exactly like some other professional artist, and you shouldn’t; besides, it is basically impossible to beat another man at his own game. As humans, we are all unique; we all have different fingerprints, and your creative fingerprint is inside you.

Learn, study, do your best and you will see your creative fingerprint emerge. You may be influenced by many artists, but let all those influences flow through you, filter through you, and then let your art be you. You are the magic ingredient, your style.

When I teach art classes, I have had students tell me that I am giving away all my secrets. But I have no secrets to give; there is no magic formula. The lessons I try to teach my students are things that they should learn, they should know, the basic knowledge to help them become an artist /illustrator. The secret ingredient is you. It is how you take all your knowledge of art, how you process it and interpret it and then let it flow through you. Then, when you paint or draw, your fingerprint will be all over it.

If you become a freelance illustrator, you must be self-confident. Believe in your art. A freelance artist lives on a bubble of self-confidence. Beneath that bubble may rest a dark pit of depression.

I think most freelancers have been in that dark pit once or twice. Most creative people have been there. I think it is because we are putting a bit of ourselves out there in the world to be admired, ridiculed and sometimes walked on. You have to grow a thick skin. If not, you will bleed a lot. I always say, “Thank God that everyone has different tastes in all the arts; if not, then there would be only one artist, one musician, one writer, and the world would be a boring place.” So if your art is good, there will be people out there who will enjoy it.

The problem is getting your work out where it can be seen. You have to be a businessman also. You must learn how to market yourself. Learn about self-printing, especially digital printing, because in most cases, you can print in smaller quantities, making it less expensive. Some examples could be sketchbooks, prints of your art, stickers, posters—whatever way you can think of to get your art out there so people can see it and possibly purchase it.

Go to conventions; a convention is a great place for people to see your art and purchase your art. I know artists who have built a huge fan base strictly by showing and selling their art at conventions; eventually, major publishers saw their work and published the artists nationally for the first time. Also, at conventions you have the opportunity to meet art directors from many different companies. Try to target publishers/companies that publish products for which your art may be suitable.

You must be visible, and now it is easier than ever for an artist to become more visible in the world. Use the Internet; build a website; use Facebook, Twitter, any and all of the social outlets on the Internet, even YouTube.

Use any outlet that will keep your art and your name out there. Remember, the only person who truly cares about your success or failure as an artist/illustrator is you. The only person who will sacrifice, push, work, dig, stay up all night working hard long hours is you. That is a hard thing to truly understand sometimes, but the bottom line is that you are responsible for your career, because no one else really cares as much as you.

Being an artist /illustrator will not be a life of smooth sailing on a calm sea; there will be rough waves, always. So you have to be strong.

Think of the typical professional football player. The average player doesn’t make millions, like the superstars, but that average player works just as hard. They practice being strong and tough, because part of their job description is being knocked down over and over, just to win a single game, and this is how it works for their whole career. The average career is not that long.

I feel that I am in a game, and that game is my life as an artist. It is full of hard knocks, but as long as I stand back up and keep playing, continue making a living from my art until I die, then I will win the whole damn game!

My personal goal is to draw and paint all my life. Hopefully my last painting before I die will be a relatively good painting because I spent my lifetime learning and improving my skills. The lifelong challenge for me, which keeps me so excited about art, is simple: Give one hundred percent and make the next painting a good one and better than the last.