You've got plenty of words... but I can still add a little extra variety to your list, that you might find helpful or to enhance some of the other fine suggestions. 🙂

Melodramatic Odious Spielbergian^ verklempt Victorian Loquacious

^ = a nod to Animaniacs

@tessaw I hadn't thought about the marketing aspect of it. I had a friend who moved to the southern US and she said as soon as the thermometer dropped below 65, everyone broke out their flannels and sweaters because they wanted to wear their LL Bean clothes 🙂

@smceccarelli Thank you for the tips! That was really helpful. I'll see if i can contact that teacher, I've not seen that class on here either.

Also on a side note I just need to say, your artwork is AMAZING, so talented, im just in awe of your website ❤

Use whatever media makes YOU happy. Inktober was a personal challenge that Jake made for himself based on something he wanted to be better at. So the only rules should be "Do something everyday that you want to be better at".

Thanks for the pointers everyone, I have reworked my site to incorporate some of the changes and hopefully with the reorganization my style is coming across a little more clearly already. Of course I know that a little time and a lot of hard work will be necessary to get it up to the level I want to be at. It's still a work in progress. I have the list of 100 things to put in your illustration portfolio and I will slowly be working toward crossing them all off.

I am neither a teacher nor a parent, so my experience is extremely limited in this realm, but reading your post I thought of something that happened to me when I was around 11 years old that I think has stuck with me my whole life.

I was always drawing cartoons as a kid, I was influenced by the newspaper strips and tried to emulate the cartoons I liked. All the adults around me always thought I was good at it and it was like, oh great, you have this talent. So my aunt suggested that I send some work in to Disney. I put together some pieces and my parents sent it off. I had no idea what to expect, but someone from Disney wrote back, a brief note, but they told me that it was great that I was drawing, and if I was serious and wanted to be an animator someday, that I should learn to draw from life. They explained a little bit that even though animation isn't realistic, the practice of drawing from life was essential to being a good animator.

I guess the point is that for me, it wasn't so much about having someone critique me, but the fact that A. they wrote back B. and that they gave me a sense of direction. I wish I had more of that when I was growing up, adults who told me that they believed in me and had the knowledge to guide me to challenge myself.

I think it's awesome that even though you're far away from her, you are so eager to help!

Neil Gaiman (one of my favorite writers of all time) said something that fits to this conversation.
“The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself...That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.”

I highly recommend watching his commencement speech at UArts:

Neil Gaiman Speech 2012

I'm imagining @Lee-White as one of those people in infomercials who struggle to use everyday objects. And now I'm imagining @davidhohn as Yoko Ono.

@TessaW I do have some experience with this and it lines up with @Christine-Garner info in the post above.

Years ago I had a theater company that wanted a specific prop from the play (a pair of converse shoes) to be featured on the poster. I knew enough about trademark to know that I should check on it. Using the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, I got in touch with an IP attorney here in Portland Oregon. The advice I got from him (for free I should add) is that technically using a logo is illegal BUT that most companies won't pursue litigation if the use does not damage their brand.

I explained this to the theater company and we all decided that it wasn't strictly necessary to include the logo on the shoes. That said we did decide to still make the shoes look like the classic canvas converse high tops, essentially gambling that Converse wouldn't mind.

For my part I made sure to get a clause in my contract that clearly stated the choice was made by my client and that I (as the illustrator of the poster) wouldn't be held liable.

There was never any action taken by Converse.

@lauraa That is great! Getting info directly from an IP attorney is always worth it!

@kevin-longueil hahaha I remember that!

@art-of-b
I do actually have that book and I love it - the image and lighting quality isn't the best in some shoots though, and that drives me a little nuts - but I do love all the different kinds of people he used and their range of expressions.

I think sometimes it's harder for us to critique our own work because we're so close to it. If you have the luxury of no deadlines or distant deadlines, put the image you're working on away. Don't think about it, don't look at it. Then, after several days, get it out and look at it with fresh eyes. You might see things that need resolved that didn't stand out before. This also helps if, like me, you sometimes over-analyze things and think everything about the image is going wrong. Although sometimes I find that things ARE all wrong, ha ha.

Other things that help are: turning your image upside down, and/or backing away from it. A simple change of perspective sometimes brings new issues to light, particularly when it comes to tonal variation and focal points.

It may just be something you can solve with layering. Have her try to place the images "behind" the text. Most text wont have backgrounds and youll be able to see through the letters to the background images. Also, if you didn't design these without a background in photoshop even a PNG can have a white background so, a few questions:

Are you illustrating these digitally?

If No, there is little that can be done about the white around traditional art, short of creating complicated clipping paths and masking the white in post editing (photoshop)unless you mess with the layer properties in the final layout software (more about this below).

If Yes then make sure you dont have a white background on your end. Keep the art (lines and colors) on a separate layer than the "background". Come time to export from photoshop turn off the background layer and export your png. check the "transarency" box and make sure you see the grid in the preview like this:

0_1537463796058_Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 1.16.01 PM.png

Is she designing them on a light colored or textured background? If yes, try setting the layer to some sort of transparency in the final design software similar to photoshops "multiply". It'll make the white basically blend in with the the background and not block out big chunks of other elements but only slightly alter the color of your art, like this (pardon the typos):

0_1537463498564_Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 1.11.00 PM.png

OK. If none of that works and push comes to shove...drop the jpg into powerpoint, "set transparent color", select the white then right click+save as the image from ppt with the background removed and, voila. PNG with transparent background:

"set transparent color"
0_1537464248357_Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 1.21.47 PM.png

Right click+Save as
0_1537464291970_Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 1.21.57 PM.png

Hope that all helps!!

(Im a graphic designer by trade, layouts and working with files is a lot of what i do :))

Also make sure your image is no bigger than 1000 or 1200 pixels in width and height. That threw me when I first tried posting.

Hello everyone,

Out of curiosity, if one were to sell original prints and/or illustrations, and you sign them, how do you get your signature verified so that the purchaser of the artwork knows that it is legit? I've bought works of art that come with papers verifying the signature. How would one go about getting that verification? I'm not saying it's always necessary or saying that I am even at that level of needing it, but out of curiosity, I thought I'd ask.

Thanks!
~Sarah

@chrisaakins I’m Trying to find my direction too. I hadn’t done a mural in ages. Childcare was always an issue. Youngest is now in kindergarten. I painted a mural yesterday. One that I had put off for two years. It was so much easier than others I painted. I didn’t realize all those lessons we learn here and other places were so transferable. I planned the mural like crazy. (Like they drove home in the critiquing podcast). Thumbnails and colorstudies. Transferred the image from a small drawing to a large paper. Then transferred it to the wall and painted. My hand was way steadier because of all the inking. So many small lessons turned out to be a very relaxing mural experience! And it turned out nicely.

Murals vs illustration. More legs on the table or stool, right! I would be so happy if I sold the illustrations and made what I did for the mural. Then I thought, I probably need to do both. It’s good money. They can coexist. And if it gets too much mural and you’re not liking it, cut back, or stop it all together.

Good luck!

@kaitlinmakes Thank you! I'll have in mind all that things!!!!
Yes is the direction I want to go. The nudity is not sexualized nor is a whim or purely aesthetic reasons, I want to convey a natural approach to nudity but I understand that every country is in a different place and I don't mind to change the target potential audience on America, for example.

Bytheway, the book is online, in ongoing or in-progress if you prefer, and is totally free. I work every day on it and I updated constantly, so you don't need to buy it!!!
My goal now is to reach as many people as possible and if my work is good and I create an audience, then I can print books, sell prints, merchandise, etc. At the moment only develop the story and reach people.

@robgale Yes, thank you for that. I agree with just putting more time in front of the Cintiq because for me, it's the slickness that I'm not crazy about. Whereas paper has some more resistance. I think it's a matter of putting in those hours to get to that comfort zone. And I like your idea of warm up time too. I'm also going to try playing music as well to see if that helps.

@heidigfx
I'll try to explain:

fact: The digital photography size is the number of pixels that we express in "Wide x High". You can express this in Inches, cm, pixels, etc.
Example: 10 MP photo has 10036224 pixels, which is the result of multiplying 3872 pixels Wide x 2592 pixels High. (this numbers can vary slightly from different manufacturers)

ppi is the number of pixels per inch a screen has.
dpi is the number of dots that a printer put in an inch of paper.

ppi and dpi are used indistinctively normally. Is a common error. You have hundreds of pages talking about this.

When you set your photo to 72ppi, 300ppi, 10000ppi or 1ppi you don't change the size of the photo (at least that you resize). The thing is you can set your photo to whatever number of ppi without changing the size of the photo or any other thing. The photo is exactly the same.
What you just did is changing the metadata which orders the printer how to print the photo, how many dots per inch has to put on the paper. For that, they should express this in dpi instead of ppi

So you can forget about all this and focus on the real size. For screen show is completely useless and setting to 72 or 96 or whatever is completely useless. If you know you are going to print at 300, for example, stack to that setting just in case you forget to change it latter and waste a paper

There's a lot of pages talking about this. For an explanation about where this 72 number came up for example:
https://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/the-72-ppi-web-resolution-myth/