Lady Hummingbird again

I keep drawing this character, but I'm not sure what to do with her. I need to come up with a story for her.

Be Happy With Your Work

Here's something that's been bugging me for a while.

Common advice given to aspiring artists is to always be improving. Always strive for more, push yourself outside your comfort zone, study the masters, don't become stagnant. All well and good. However, sometimes this advice gets slightly twisted to become "never be satisfied with your work."

If you like your work, that means you're not pushing yourself. If you look at it and think "I did a great job" you're just fooling yourself; you can always do better. Look at Da Vinci, look at Sargent, are you that good? No? Then stop patting yourself on the back! Always be hard on yourself, always beat yourself up; this is the mark of a true artist.

Sometimes they'll say it directly, sometimes they'll subtly imply it. Keep an ear out for it and you'll eventually hear this warped message from a professional or professor. In fact, recently on Twitter I saw someone just come out and say,

"There is no amount of self-loathing that can't help an artist's work."

Okay, brace yourselves, artists, I'm going to say something CRAZY:

I like my artwork!

I'm not saying that it's perfect, or that I don't need to improve, I'm just saying that I like it and I enjoy making it. BAM. Mic drop!

Really, what's the point of being an artist if you're not going to allow yourself to enjoy it? There are a lot of professions that are easier and higher-paying where you can make yourself miserable. Try taking a risk: be happy with your work without worrying that this will stifle improvement.

Enjoy what you do.

"(Humans are) a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present." - Screwtape, letter 15

Blonde Thing on a Swing

Here's an Etsy commission I completed recently. 

I wanted to highlight the girl's radiant blonde hair, so I added in a background behind her. Then I lifted out some sparkle shapes just because it seemed to fit with the joyful, charming feeling of the scene.

I went back and forth on including the design on the girl's t-shirt, because usually I don't include patterns on clothing, especially cartoon characters which can be distracting. But her torso just seemed large and flat without some detail there, so I very faintly drew in Peppa the Pig. The customer really liked that little touch.

The customer left this feedback on my Etsy shop: "Kelley has drawn six beautiful drawings for us. She is very talented, attentive, and efficient. It's wonderful to watch her sketches come to life as she periodically sends updates of her work. We will cherish these art pieces for generations."

The Thing They Forgot to Teach in Art School

My art school, the Academy of Art University, was an extremely practical and business-oriented school. However, one thing my professors never mentioned, but I've found to be very important, is keeping track of your time.

In AAU's Facebook group, there is a regular steam of students asking, "a client wants me to draw ____ for them. How much should I charge? How about $100? Does $100 sound good?"

The short answer is, estimate how many hours it would take to complete, then multiply that by your hourly rate. The problem is, most students don't know how many hours it would take.

In order to judge whether a price is high or low, you must know how much time a project will take.

Recently I started using a free program called Toggl in order to keep track of my time. Toggl is basically just a computer stopwatch. The cool thing about it is that I can label my time under different projects, so at the end of a day, week or month I can see how much time I spent total on each project. Divide that time by how much I was paid, and I can see how much I'm making per hour. Simple.

I've also started keeping a spreadsheet of all my projects and how much time they took. I list them in categories, such as "book covers" or "spot illustrations", and average the amount of time in each category.

For freelancers, time is money. Start keeping track of your time today.

(This post was not sponsored by Toggl.)

Offensive = unoriginal

"Ultimately, most things that are offensive are also lazy and unoriginal; because you can't reach that point of view by looking at the world honestly...you reach that point of view by taking short cuts and by just sort of repeating what someone else told you."

- Joseph Fink, writer of Welcome To Night Vale

By the way, Welcome to Night Vale is currently my favorite podcast, even though I'm the only person I know who likes it.

The Dryad and the Traveler

During school, I said that after graduation I would produce a personal piece every two weeks. Snort. Lately it's been more like one personal piece per season. This is partially because I've been busy working on commissions, so it's not all bad. Anyway, here's my personal piece for fall.

Actual size!

I drew this tiny little doodle in my sketchbook the other day and I liked it. So without further planning or thumbnails, cue forboding music, I started the digital painting.

As I worked, I started to feel the piece sliding downhill. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, although I knew it probably had to do with my lazy lack of thumbnailing. I considered giving up, but instead posted the WIP to the Team Awesome Facebook group for feedback. There the ever-amazing Wylie Beckert gave me some extremely helpful tips, and even did a little paintover for me. She pointed out that the composition was suffering from too much centering and empty space, and the dryad's pose needed tweaking.

I implemented her suggestions and felt hope return to my cold, cold heart. From here on the painting went pretty smoothly.

Besides Wylie, I must also give credit to Hendrick ter Brugghen, whose masterful "Flute Player" painting I shamelessly copied for the man's hand positions.

And a process GIF!

Moral of the story: do your thumbnails and listen to your art friends.

Dr. Mason Arrives

Here's an interior illustration I did for a self-published book. I'll post more about it when the author gets his website up. The character came out looking a bit like young William Shatner. That was not intentional, but it is awesome.

How to practice figure drawing

Practicing figure drawing is one of the best ways to improve your art. If you're enrolled in a local figure drawing class, that's awesome. If not, try using this free online figure drawing tool: artists.pixelovely.com/

It will show you a timed slideshow of images to draw. I usually set the timer to 60 seconds. Drawing quickly helps you get in a large quantity of work, strengthens your ability to draw poses, and keeps you from having too much emotional attachment to your drawings. Here's some tips for getting the most out of these quick poses:

1. Relax. No one is going to see these drawings, so it doesn't matter if they're bad. You can throw them all away if you want to. So don't get frustrated - what matters is that you're drawing!
2. Draw small. When drawing quick poses, I find that it helps to keep your drawings on the smaller side. I can usually fit about six figures on one page.
3. Don't worry about details. Your goal is to capture the overall balance and flow of the pose. Don't worry about the face, the fingers or the costume. Just draw an oval for the head.
4. Start with the head and shoulders, then move to the hips. Get the angles for those parts right, and it will help inform the rest of the figure.
5. Keep your eye moving all over the figure.  (This is the hardest part!) Don't get stuck looking at one part, trying to get it just right. If you struggle with this, try drawing with a ballpoint pen, so you can't go back and erase things. Also, don't lean in too close to the paper.  

Keep drawing!