This Wednesday, July 2nd from 5:00 to 8pm at the ICON5 Conference Roadshow you can meet our Susy Pilgrim Waters. You will love her. She’ll have some of her fab eco buttons to give away and a portfolio for you to see. This event is free for art directors, designers, editors and art buyers. Roosevelt Hotel in midtown.

Good Things

I get to draw and make things and paint and design and do all the same things I’ve loved doing since I was a child.
I can work from home or a studio. I can start and stop work when I choose each day.
I can have a weekend in the middle of the week if it suits me better.
At the ideas stage of a project I can take my sketchbook to a cafe and make plans there. I can work in my garden. I can go and visit my family and take my work with me. When I’m doing the drawing or “knitting work” (repetitve straight forward bits on the computer) I can listen to the radio or story tapes (this week I’m listening to “Far from the Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy – something I’d never get around to sitting down and reading). If you have a job that involves writing, administration, maths etc you don’t have this opportunity to fill this free space in your brain!
I get to run my own business. I get to make my own decisions. There is always the possibility of earning more – no capped salary for the year.

Not so Good Things

It can be lonely if you work alone from home. It can also effect your self esteem – you can wonder if you are doing things the right way or the best way – which happens less if you are working along side other people. When you have lots of work on – ideas of drawing in the garden or cafes or trips during the week – go and you can end up just working and working and working for weeks. Because there is never any guarantee that there will be more work after this job – or that it will come soon. It makes planning your future harder.
Running your own business, make your own decisions as well as being rewarding and empowering can also be taxing – sometimes I feel like I’m juggling may roles – illustrator, marketing person, administrator, artworker, director – when really all I want to do is be the Illustrator!
There is always the possibilty to earn more but sometimes you don’t – you can have some good years then a not so good year. What your earn isn’t linked to how long you have worked or how how hard you have worked – this can seem really tough.
However …..I feel the good out ways the bad. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I don’t know what else I’d be very good at! I get excited about each new project and love planning my own work for when there is free time and when I’m working it feels so involving in a way that I don’t get with any other sort of work I’ve done.

A stationery company is interested in playing with these for some pretty products. I am a huge fan of Diane’s brush and ink work. She’s a major gardener, so this flows easily from her hands. I hope we’ll see more of this from Diane soon.

Ok, Part 4. So Lisa DeJohn took her sketches of flora and created these amazing comps. Which do you think the client will choose? You’ll find out next Wednesday.
Yes, these are just the comps. Don’t they look incredible? It’s always important to present well to help sell your concept. When it’s hard to envision a sketch vis a vis the finished installation, a photo comp is an excellent solution.

No one draws like Ann. She did a collection of cats and of dogs for the venerable teNeues. I imagine these pieces being licensed in lots of categories. Cards are obvious. But then there are things like tiles, ceramic plates, canvas totes. If you’re going to draw realistically, be so damn good that it flows like you’re dancing. Look for a new collection of white flowers by Ann here soon.

Here is my watercolor palette and here is my oil palette.

John created these very fun pieces for shirt.woot.com where people get to create art and then the pieces are voted on. Winners have their shirts made and sold. Very cool business model, I must say. John and I talked about this after I read Inc. Magazine’s cover story about threadless.com.

Our artist Trina Dalziel was asked to illustrate an article on the “Carbon-Free Diet”, with topics like eating local, wean yourself off the water bottle, be take-out savvy, insist on sustainable seafood, eat less meat, drink organic, and so on. I am just crazy about her work. It’s delicate, yet confident. Her color is pretty uniquely hers, and she tells a good story with funky-cute little details. Here are her full-page opener and spot illustrations.

Last week I showed you photos of Lisa DeJohn gathering reference from the natural flora of New Mexico. Her next step is to create sketches for art for the 175′ watertower for Mesa del Sol. There are design limitations which include the fabrication onto the water tower itself, which is concrete, so the imagery needs to be simple & graphic, not much detail. No shading. Additionally, there are color limitations; that is, there are a limited number of colors that may be used. Third, the imagery must read well from many, many miles away.

Here are Lisa’s designs. She sends them to the client, and one will be chosen. Stay tuned.

My teensiest artist and maybe my tallest artist meet at Surtex.