Posts Tagged: art

Warm-Up Exercises!

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Warm-up Activity Sheet

Read the article, then grab the activity sheet! It provides guided examples that students can use to establish good warm-up techniques.

Warm-up exercises are a critical component of the art process. In sports, professional athletes know that in order to achieve peak performance from their muscles it’s necessary to gradually work up to the demands that are placed on them. Art is no different, save in one respect. Muscle control is certainly a factor but the real benefit of warm-up drawing exercises is the way they engage your mind.

Confused? You may have heard of the famous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It theorizes that the two hemispheres of the brain control separate thoughts processes. In most people, the left brain is active much of the time, allowing you to verbally and logically navigate through the world around you. But the right brain is where visual and creative processes reside and it’s that part of the mind we are trying to engage when we draw. These warm-up exercises will help you to work up to thinking visually and should be used daily.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you’re interested in drawing this is it.

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It’s Called Freelancing – Part 3

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Missed the first installment of this article series? Read it here.

So what exactly are fair rates? This is the million dollar question. It’s very difficult to get a straight answer, and everyone will give you a different one. Here are page rates as determined by the Graphic Artists Guild from a few years back:

  • Writers (plot and script) $75-120
  • Painted art $150- 350
  • Layouts/Breakdowns $35-100
  • Penciled Art $55-200
  • Background art $10-25
  • Ink Art $45-150
  • Lettering $18-35
  • Lettering on overlay $20-35
  • Coloring art $75-150

Those are some pretty wide ranges, but it gives you an idea. Depending on your abilities, some employers may offer more, some may offer less. If you’re new to professional illustrating, these rates may be a little bit lower for the first few years as you gain experience. After looking at these, I feel that my rates are are actually rather low in a lot of cases, but they do fluctuate a lot. I take different variables into account before submitting a quote: the time frame involved, the complexity of the art, what style of coloring is needed (digital vs watercolor), who keeps the original art, what my other commitments are at the time of production, and anything else that may be a factor. Don’t forget that communication can eat up a lot of time, too. Sending emails, making phone calls, creating invoices – these things will eat up your time faster than you can imagine! Sometimes my rates are higher, sometimes they are lower. But I always quote what is fair to me based on the needs of the project. And see, writers should be getting paid a fair wage, too. But that’s a story for another time…

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It’s Called Freelancing – Part 1

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[Tweet “What do you charge for your freelance illustration work? The answer – probably not enough! “]

What do you charge for your freelance illustration work? The answer – probably not enough! There seems to be a growing trend in the indie comics community in which freelancers are not getting paid fair rates for their work. It sickens me when I peruse Deviant Art and see countless artists offering their talents for a measly $5 per page. It’s infuriating when I look through job offers on Digital Webbing that offer a whopping $20 per page, yet come with a list of complicated demands. It drives me to the brink of insanity when I spend all day on Craigslist only to uncover ad after ad ending with “I can’t afford to pay you at this time, but you can add the work to your portfolio and we can split the profits (if there are any – which there almost never is).”

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Drawing Pains

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Do you ever draw to the point where your hand feels like it wants to completely fall off? Till your wrist is nearly broken, or your knuckles are about to bleed? I think pretty much everyone who draws daily is destined for this kind privileged pain. For me, I get this strange shooting pain that starts at the tip of my thumb and goes halfway up my arm. It’s like a jolt of lightning.

Lousy nerves.

Even though I’m right handed, I draw more like a lefty. I use four fingers to hold my drawing/inking tool and I sometimes bend my wrist funny. Parents and teachers used to criticize me for this, but they didn’t really make any efforts to encourage me to hold my pencil the correct way. To make things worse, I grip my pencil way too tight. This is what leads to the shooting pain. As soon as that pain starts to set it, I know it’s time to quit drawing for the day or else things will only get worse. When I force myself to continue, I find myself spending more time erasing the countless mistakes I make than anything else. It’s pretty frustrating when the pain sets in when I’m on a deadline or when I’m really immersed in my work.

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