Art by Mag Takac
Can you make it in illustration if you hate storytelling? Do you need talent to be a great artist, or can you make it work without natural talent? And what if your agent doesn’t give you the jobs you want to work on? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry go over these questions and provide their answers.
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SHOW LINKS
They pre-recorded all of their summer podcasts because they took the summer off and would not be in a position to record. This is their first recording session in a while (about five weeks) and they are a bit worn out from their vacations.
According to Lee, four days is the best length for a vacation because after five days he starts to get annoyed at his family and it becomes tedious being away from his art. He loves what he does and he misses it when it’s gone.
Jake actually spent the seventh day of his vacation just drawing. Don’t worry- he made it a family thing, but he was still eager to get back to doing what he loves. He had to do something creative.
He asks the others what they think about a seasonal approach to the work. What their opinions on only doing work at certain times of the year are.
Will likes the idea. He likes big projects that take up chunks of time and are the only thing you can focus on for a while. He enjoys life more when it’s not just a daily grind.
Lee was actually just talking about this with his son who is about to start fifth grade, and it reminded him just how much he liked school and being a student. He liked that there was a time to double down and focus on what needed to be done and then there was a recharge time. He found that kind of seasonal schedule in University as well (both when he was a student and when he was a teacher).
During the conversation that he had with his son, he told him to cherish this time because once you get out onto the job market the grind really doesn’t stop. You build a life by constantly getting stuff done. The process is kind of crazy.
Jake agrees. You raise your child to be used to this pattern of a semester then a break for twelve years-- longer if they go to college-- and then they’ll get thrown into the workforce where they get, at best, a few weeks vacation.
Lee thinks everyone should have summers off. Essential workers (e.g grocery store employees, healthcare workers, etc.) should have long breaks at other times of the year so someone is always working those jobs, but everyone should have the opportunity for long vacations.
QUESTIONS
Lily asks- What if I don’t like storytelling?
She loves drawing in the illustration style but she doesn't like narrative work. She likes making greeting cards, prints for fabric, wallpaper, stationary, etc. Is that a viable career path and where should I start?
Lee loves this. He says that Lily has done more for herself than she probably realizes because she has identified what she wants to do and what she doesn't want to do, and that kind of clarity about one’s career is rare and incredibly useful.
The licensing and advertising market is huge. This is where you’d get to create prints for greeting card companies, and do the design work you’re looking at.
There’s a conference called SURTEX- it’s a big show in New York (or possibly online because of Covid- according to their site they haven’t changed locations yet but you never know) where all the big retailers, manufacturers, and licensees come together to find and purchase patterns and designs for home decor, stationary, gift paper, beauty products, and much more.
There are agents that specialize in dealing in prints. Agencies, like Lee’s, have entire departments dedicated to this kind of work.
Will would like to remind listeners that svslearn has a couple classes on licensing. The teacher of these courses was one of Will’s students while he taught at UVU. She was in her fifties when she took his class and had a successful licensing career behind her, so when SVS was starting he knew just the person to help them out.
He also mentions that one of the students in the children’s book pro class has a successful business on Etsy. She makes graphics for t-shirts and it’s an incredibly lucrative thing for her and she kind of just stumbled onto it.
He thinks it would be helpful to Lily if she were to go on Etsy and see what artist shops are the most successful and to try to figure out why.
Rifle Paper Company is a design company that was started by a husband-wife team in their parents garage, and it has grown into a huge success.
You get so many ideas just by looking at how other people have done something. When clicking through RPC’s website, Lee saw the peel and stick wallpaper prints. RPC basically took a couple of wallpaper designs and put a couple of different color schemes on each, turning one product into three or four.
Lee sells prints, and he’s wondering if he could do the same thing. Just make a day version and a night version of the same piece of artwork.
Illustrator’s are kind of just one and done, but the people who do print work have figured out so many ways to market the same image to people. They use the same pattern of flowers on mugs, and pen sets, and planners, and all sorts of other things. Lee says that this kind of thinking is the difference between someone who likes to draw and someone who runs a business with their drawings.
Sarah Jane is an artist like Lily wants to be. She designs fabrics for children that are kind of cartoon-y and fun. Her fabrics tell a story- it’s a way to do a narrative style of art without illustrating a book or comic. It is absolutely a viable career.
The thing Will really loves about being an artist is that no one can really take your product and compete with you for sales of that thing. It’s your creation. When someone buys something for resale they have to compete with other retailers who have that product, but when no one can compete with your own creativity.
Owen asks- Do you think art is a talent or a skill?
I’ve had this debate with my parents, friends, and even professors- Do you think art is a talent that some people are born with and have a head start at or do you believe that art is a refined skill, where everyone starts at the same level and it’s the amount of work and time you put into it that makes you a good artist? Curious what your thoughts are on this.
Lee calls this the C-student dilemma. The C-student is the one who loves to come to class, does all their work, and ultimately just loves illustration, but they are missing the x-gene that would transform their work from good and practiced to great and practiced.
Will says there’s two factors to being a good artist and they appear in people in different percentages. Creativity and Craftsmanship. Having low percentages of both is the losing combination, but it’s possible to have a really high percentage of one of them and still be successful.
There are artists out there who are really good creatively but aren’t necessarily great artists. Like Matthew Inman- the artist behind The Oatmeal comics. Or The Farside comics by Gary Larson. Or the Simpsons.
All of these things have their own style and the artist behind them are talented in their own right, but the art is there to get the job done. It is a vessel for the story being told- it doesn't necessarily help create the story.
But that is an argument for another time, the question is whether a C-student (as defined by Lee) can be elevated to the skill level of an A-student. In Lee’s opinion the C-student is always going to be outshone by the A-student because they have the same level of interest in the work but differing skill sets.
He’ll tell his students that everyone ends up where they are meant to go. He’s never seen someone who’s only mediocre end up in a job for a fantastic artist. If you’re good, the work will find you- eventually. That can be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people.
That’s not to say that massive improvements in skill level are not possible. They are. In his teaching, Will has seen many students that he had written off (he doesn’t separate his students based on personal feelings but you can kind of tell who’s going to do well based on the effort they put into class) put in the work and make it big.
You can never tell who has the potential and the drive to pull something like that off. Lee went to school with this guy and at first his art made Lee wonder a bit how he got into the program. But, overtime his classmate’s work got better and better and by the end he was rockstar level good.
And on the flip-side of that, Lee sees a former student of his post on FB from time to time and their style and skill level hasn’t really evolved from when they were in Lee’s class.
Jake poses the question- what are some of the raw talents and abilities that give you an edge in art?
You can sit down and teach a person how to draw light and shadow, but some people pick up that lesson in a day and for some people it can take years. So he would say that one of the raw abilities that help you in the art world is hand-eye coordination. It’s important to be able to see something and then tell your hand how to recreate the image of it.
The other big one in his mind is seeing things with a very literal eye. It’s important to be able to notice things like how the light hits a building and creates shadows on the other side or, to look at something and see how it fits the rule of thirds.
But, Will points out, that you have to be taught how to observe the world. It’s not a natural skill to notice the main composition points or to follow the movement of something. Will wasn’t very good at figure drawing when he was in school. About ten years ago he took a figure drawing class from Don Seegmiller because they were teaching at the same university. This gave him the opportunity to sit in on this class and ask Don for help.
The advice Don gave him wasn’t career changing but it was helpful. He can’t remember all three pieces of it, but one of the things Don told him to do was to make the character fit the page. Your goal should be to make sure that figure is not too small or too big. Someone probably told him that while he was in school but for whatever reason the lesson didn’t stick with him. His point with this story is that you gain wisdom and perspective as you go along. Your skills grow with experience.
Jake agrees that you can learn the skills it takes to be an artist, but it’s like when a tall person goes to play basketball. Yes, there are skills they’ll have to learn and practice but he’s going to have a bit of a natural advantage over his shooter teammates.
Jake had an ability as a kid where he could look at something and copy it, and that helped him a lot because he was able to learn and get more detailed with each copy.
He says that you take the control you have over your muscles, and the way you look at things and notice their placement and movement and details, and you build on that. You learn things like how to apply light and shadow. You learn color theory and how to apply that. You learn composition.
He also thinks that you can teach someone to be creative. You can help them notice the world around them and then help them look at it differently. You can teach them to combine their skills in order to make something that is unique.
There are people with raw talent and this makes becoming an artist easier for them, but it can be learned. It just takes a lot more effort.
Lee adds that in addition to the other learned skills you need to have a grasp on why someone would find your art interesting- and if it’s not interesting what can you do to make it so.
Will says that successful artists have this confidence that if they aren’t good now they will be later. He punctuates this point by telling a story about how he was put on probation for the art program at BYU (he had one semester to prove that he belonged in the program).
He has had students that were so good, but since they lacked the confidence to capitalize on their talent they ended up not doing anything with it.
The next thing on Will’s list of things you need to make it as an artist is humility. You need to be humble about your talent or all that confidence will turn into hubris. It’s incredibly important to be willing to continuously learn about your craft because you will never know everything.
The next item on his list is necessity. You need to need it- not just want it. There has to be a fire under your butt about it. That fire can be fueled by financial worries or maybe it just feeds your passion. The reason you need it can be anything but creating art has to be as essential to your survival as the air you breathe.
The question of ‘where do I find my motivation’ is answered by necessity in Will’s eyes. He’s not good at anything else. This is what he enjoys and this is what makes him money.
The last item on his list is aesthetic, and this is the one (next to necessity) that is hardest to teach. It’s the ability to look at a piece of art and say ‘ok what’s missing and what could I take out?’ You need to have this sense of what looks good.
Stuck in a client rut- how do I expand my reach?
I am an illustrator, working with/being represented by a big company. I’ve been with them for about a year and a half and it’s been amazing, but it feels like I’m only working with the same three clients over and over. I’m not complaining but this is not what I want to be doing. I want to do picture books but the art I create for work is not fit for a picture book portfolio. I’ve created some more appropriate pieces in my spare time (there’s not a lot I’m a working mother). What else can I do?
Also, I feel like my agent could be doing more to help me get where I want. How do I approach that subject with them?
It’s also worth noting that I’ve written and illustrated my own children’s book and am working on selling that.
Working with agents can be tricky because (especially the big name agents bigger isn’t always better) as long as you're busy and making them money they don’t necessarily care if you really love what you’re doing, and occasionally they will actually get upset at you for turning down work.
This exact thing happened to Lee. His agent sent him a job offer where he had to copy a sample piece in someone else’s style. That wasn’t the kind of work that Lee wanted, and his agent had been told that. This job offer was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Lee wanted to be dong something different and his agent wasn’t listening to him.
Taking that job would’ve hurt his career because it would’ve taken him away from the kind of work he wanted to do. He questions if this woman’s agent is really looking out for her best interests and is really listening to her.
Will compares the relationship between agent and artist to a venn diagram where the overlap in the middle is the common need to make money. But, the artist is more interested in doing a certain kind of art than in the numbers side of things. A really good agent will listen to the talent and try to make those circles come closer together..
This artist is good, and she’s good in a way that the educational clients she’s working for would love. Which is sad, in a way, because then why would her agent want to take off those projects?
The guys are familiar with this particular agency and they’ve heard that there are artists “working” for them who aren’t getting much, if any, work. They are not super concerned about an artist who is doing well and getting clients.
Will says that one solution would be to just get a new agent. Another would be to kind of just ride it out. She’s already taking steps to ensure they know she wants to transition to other projects. He says it’s important for her to keep reminding them that she wants to do other things and that she can do other things.
She’s written and illustrated a book and is having them shop around. She’s working on picture book type pieces to make her portfolio stronger in that area. She’s already working on being in a good place with this agent in a year or two.
Jake says that another thing you could be doing is reaching out to publishers yourself and when they tell you they’re interested you go to your agent and say hey I’ve got this deal and just hand it over to them.
Lee strongly disagrees, saying that unless you clear this with your agent first this would look super unprofessional. He did this once and got in trouble for it.
You and your agent are a team and you don’t want to appear like you’re doing something behind their back.
However, Will says there’s a certain situation where this is okay. If you are at ALA and there’s a bunch of different editors there, you can go ahead and pitch your work to them. If they want to buy what you’re selling and they ask what agency you’re with- go ahead and tell them and mention that they can contact you through them.
Lee says that it’s all about setting boundaries with your agent, telling them this is the kind of work I want to do and I will only accept a certain amount of other assignments. You need to bring this up with them and make it clear what kind of work you want to do and say that you’re willing to lose the income from the other stuff, at least for the short term, and see if they're okay with that. If they don’t want to make a plan for this and to work with you on it- drop them and find someone who will work with you.
Remember, they’re there to help make what you want happen. Not the other way around.
Lee jokes about creating their own agency and is quickly shot down, but the guys are chatting behind the scenes about their desire to publish books.
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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