Hi everyone, so last week on a Facebook group I posted this image and it got me four commission requests just this week. I am still waiting on one of the clients to get me the photo she specifically wants me to draw.

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But I made $125 drawing these commissions. You can find my new listing here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/969958502/custom-margaret-keane-inspired-disney?ref=shop_home_active_2

John Pabalan.jpg John Pabalan 2.jpg Imelda Pabalan-Llamosa.jpg Jeff Zataros .png

@Julia It is super fun and easy.. you just start with a sphere and add the "clay"...coolest thing is that is doesn't droop like real clay so there is no limit 🙂

@mag it’s good to hear about good some having good experiences on these sites. We hear so much about horror stories with clients, but the truth is a lot of clients will respect your rights as an artist if we explain things to them and open lines of communication early and often. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a lot of freelancers working with both individual clients and publishers. It starts with the contract. If things ever don’t feel right at that stage, we need to just bow out gracefully and try again.

@frankiiij 😹 🍺 🍺 cheers mate

@Asyas_illos I love him. 🤣🤣

You're absolutely right! 😃

I do bust these things out really fast. I've considered myself a fast worked and prided myself on that, but if I can produce quality work in a short amount of time, let's see what I can produce in maybe 2x or 5x the time. I have been exerting all my energy when I should really be conserving it for the major blow.

I might even take a break from seeking agencies or focusing on illustrations overall until I'm ready to make a major comeback. Thank you so much Ness you and everyone in this forum has always been helpful in my art journey.

Congratulations! Well done, you! Here's a round of applause:
👏👏👏

@fmb I’m so happy to hear that! Good luck ❤️❤️❤️

@xin-li I used to have it checked out from the library so long that it felt like I owned it.

I would check it out again as soon as I turned it in while this over and over and over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_k8fVNzbGU

Posting here reminded me how much I love it and need to keep it in mind - "what is it that I really need to get good at?" and "I realized I needed to be a much more ruthless editor and a much more careless artist" and "I really feel at this point i'm not good at doing something on command" - it is always comforting to hear someone so brilliant talk about the same difficulties i'm having.

Also, your question got me thinking - ideas of sleep are so abstract in themselves that it is probably much easier to use conventional ideas about it. He doesn't talk about working on One Minute till Bedtime in this video but it's one of my favorite things to review when considering how he works through a project. When my daughter was 4, she finally admitted to me that she believed we did everything fun after she fell asleep, like eat ice cream and play games. No wonder she was so comforted by watching me fall asleep, haha. Bedtime always felt like a game. It will be so fun to see this project when it comes out.

@NessIllustration @jimsz @demotlj @Molambo thank you all so much for your reply.

I just spoke to the company that it was for and they said they thought it was as neutral as possible and don't have a problem with it. I'll put it down to a learning experience and be careful to make it more obvious next time.

@Valerie-Light Hi Valerie, I'm not sure about the numerical association of the values - it was a chart that I screenshot from one of Marco's videos. But those numbers look like they would fit the values.

I love your idea about the different age groups! That would be really useful to me too - especially with my children's book illustrator career aspirations!Prompts.png

Hi,

Yes, I recommend Adam's talks at the 'Adam Duff LUCIDPIXUL' YouTube channel. In fact, I've started to download the audio and listen to it while out for my long walks.

He's a lovely man and I find his calm inspiration very motivating.

Another thing that I would recommend is to look back through your artwork that you have done, particularly your early pieces, and see how far you have come. Sometimes I will look through my early SVS courses assignment work and I find it both motivating and educational. The time away from it, as I've worked on other areas, has allowed me to mature a bit more as an artist so that when I come back to old pieces I have fresh eyes and a greater understanding and ability. I find that motivating.

Best wishes.

Adam (a different one!)

@Niels Yes, I think WEBTOON is a nice complete package honestly. It can be strange going from traditional style page turns to long scrolling. You have to think about how to set up you cliff hangers a little differently and keep the reader scrolling. There are a lot of directions you could go. I started by just having it available on my website as standard comic pages. But I have heard that people upload to both WEBTOON and TAPAS. From what I gather WEBTOON has a very large audience but it's mostly teenagers. Tapas has a smaller audience but they are typically older and mostly creators supporting eachother. I haven't dug to deep into TAPAs yet but there is also comics for Amazon Kindle and Comixology. Plus I'm sure there are a few other smaller up and coming sites. The cool thing about Webtoon is you load your comics for free to read and if you gain a large enough following you can get add share revenue.

I highly recommend looking to these options. My goal is gain a small following and then I can pitch my next project (which I'm still a little afraid of). I can pencil and ink comics all day but one it comes down to coloring and lettering it takes forever haha.

We all know the Yeti is just 3 raccoons in a trench coat trying to get into a movie theater.

Hey everyone, my website has gotten quite the makeover this year. I wanted to share that I am starting a new blog on my website so I can share the most basic tips people need in order to become a children's book illustrator. https://www.michaelangelogo.com/blog-1

I also started a new discord dedicated to animation and illustration and I would like to invite anyone interested: https://discord.gg/KEbUQZ4kKV

I was about to work on my illustrations for my portfolio, but I think I should start turning my attention towards my Etsy shop. I opened maybe almost a month ago, and while I've gotten some views and even a couple of likes, I haven't managed to make a sale. I guess cartoonified, cutesified portraits of people's pets aren't appealing enough?

I was thinking of trying to broaden my work just a bit. Maybe do portraits of people and families in my cartoon style? I have a redbubble account so maybe I could put people and their pets on tshirts and mugs? I was thinking of also doing some paintings they can put on the wall, stickers. I was about to suggest to myself to create keychains of people's pets as cartoons, but I think that's already broad enough.

Yeah I'm really stumped and my business is not going anywhere. Here's my Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/GOMADCARTOONS

@chrisaakins Just moved here in November!

@Asyas_illos I like the little seedling head critter it super cute as well as the the one with the floppy drooping leaf ears.

Ooh nice find, thanks for that. I do a lot of Christmas themed stuff so this should be useful!

@MarksByMallory

Thank you so much , I really wasn't sure what to make of this but I had a strong feeling I wasn't going to like doing work for this author. Its one of the reasons I didn't want to take on self publishers now that I have an agent but I was like why not hear this person out.