I'm your private illustrator, your illustrator for money, I'll do what you want me to do.

One of my favorite people to work with is my cousin Becki.  She's a rad graphic designer, photographer, and screen printer.  The only thing she can't do is draw (her words, not mine!).  Luckily for her, the only thing I can do is draw (that's a lie,  I'm awesome at everything).  Thus, we have formed this great symbiotic relationship where she gets me to do line art for the stuff she can't draw, and I get money and exposure.  Recently, she needed a bunch of people drawn (including herself, she's the one laying down).  Here's what we came up with!

2 People relaxing by a tree.

Becki, looking mega asian.

A dude at a picnic table.

Here's what she did with my drawings:

It's great for her, because she can offer another service to her clients, and it's great for me because I love getting paid to draw!  I also love how little comittment it takes.  It's different than illustrating books, because it doesn't require me to devote 1/4 to 1/3 of a year to one project.  It's finished in a matter of hours or days, which allows me to work on my home business while still illustrating here and there.  So, if any graphic designers out there are looking to engage in some symbiosis, I'm always here!  You can be the shark and I'll be that shitty little fish that eats the crap off your teeth...

My daughter the tsunami.

Anyone that follows this blog is probably aware that I move at a glacial pace (as can be seen by the frequency with which I post on my blog).  Change in my life is usually slow and steady.  Well, this time change has been monumental, flooding into my life and rearranging everything, more like a tsunami than a slow moving glacier.  I'm talking about a 6lb 4oz baby girl named Myriam.

Thanks to my cousin Becki for taking an awesome pic.

Now that 6 weeks have gone by, it's safe to say that I'm eager to begin working again.  Easy to say, tough to do, when an 11lb midget would rather I spend all my waking hours (and sleeping hours) with her.  Seriously, I have to plan my bathroom breaks around when my spouse is home.

My new challenge, which I am keenly interested in overcoming, is learning how to manage my time with a house, a baby, and myself to take care of, as well as a business to grow.  My first tip is this:  Get or make a sling!  Here's a picture of me hand writing the first draft of this blog post with my angel on my chest.  I actually made soup while wearing her in this thing last night.  So convenient.

My second tip is to have a spouse who can take 9 months off work so you can work at home while he cares for the midget. 

All right, reel it in.  Do not make this blog into a mom blog.  I promise I'll still write about business, but you're going to have to put up with the odd "working mom" post.  I will leave you with a couple of pictures of my new studio spaces in the basement of my house.  They're coming along!  The only thing that I desperately want to change is the little blue room.  By all rights, it should be green, no?

My printing area.

The dry studio, for drawing and sewing.

Little blue room.

Mom's Milk Only please!!

Anybody that knows me well knows that I'm a major supporter of breastfeeding, and in a couple of months when my own baby arrives that I plan on breastfeeding her exclusively.  I thought it would be really nice to have something to put on her at the hospital to remind everyone that she is a breastfed baby, and not to give her any formula.  So I came up with these!

  I'm really excited about them because not only do I get a chance to illustrate and screen print, I also get to share my beliefs a little, albeit in a really gentle way.  They're available at my etsy shop.  And finally, here's a picture of me and my hybrid clone at 26 weeks :)

Just imagine that you are a hitman, and work that way.

Imagine for a moment that you are a hit man, or a hired goon of sorts.  You've been assigned a target.  Do you:

a.)  Find your assigned target, and dispose of said target in a timely and efficient manner

or

b.) Find your assigned target, dispose of said target in a timely and efficient manner, then think to yourself who else your employer might not like, dispose of those people as well, then think about who else you could  get rid of that might look good on your resume (what? she got Nine Lives Louie?  But I thought he was impossible to kill!) and dispose of them too. 

I'm guessing (hoping) that your answer is a.  You do the task assigned to you, no more, no less.  This is a good way to work.  Sometimes, in very special circumstances, it is fine to go over and above what is expected of you.  Like if you're trying to snag a really great promotion, or you want to do a really fantastic sample piece to impress a potential client.  However, constantly putting more into your work than is expected of you (or more than you're being compensated for) can quickly start to work against you.  We all want to look like fantastic skilled professionals, always outdoing ourselves and blowing our competition out of the water.  But when you do extra work, 2 things happen.  First of all, your time is money, and by putting extra time into a project you are essentially working for free.  The free hours you dumped into one project could have been paid hours you spent on another project.  Secondly, you run the risk of setting up unrealistic expectations of yourself.  If your clients come to expect all kinds of freebies and extras, they may devalue your work and will expect the same kind of perks with every project.  If you were a hit man and you wasted 3 people for the price of one to be impressive, then next time your client wants someone whacked, they're going to expect to either pay a third of the price or get another 3 for one. 

I feel like I'm in that situation right now.  I'm working on illustrating a coloring book in which the illustrations are supposed to be VERY simple.  So, I quoted the job based on how long I thought these simple drawings would take me.  But when I got down to it, I started doing some really detailed images and trying to come up with some really cool ideas.  Well, now the job is taking me way longer than I anticipated, and I feel unfairly compensated.  It's totally my own fault, and I can't go back now and say "uh, I'm doing more work than you requested of me, so can you pay me more than we already agreed on?"  The time that I'm putting into these elaborate drawings is free time I'm giving to my client, and in the mean time I can't even buy myself a pair of socks.  I should be putting my hours where they count instead of putting myself in the poor house to impress my client and have a good portfolio piece. 

I'm not saying not to give 100% to every job you do. Doing shoddy work, as I stated in my last post, will make you look like a crap sack who isn't worth hiring. But doing too much work may make you look like a pushover who can be taken advantage of.  Perhaps I need to take my own advice, and work like a hit man.  BANG,  BANG,  BANG.   3 simple drawings in an hour or two, just what I'm being paid for.

Have conviction (not a conviction, the character trait)

An important lesson I've learned over the years is that you should choose your challenges wisely.  You aren't going to win every argument you get into, so only get into it when it's something you feel strongly about.  My mother got it right.  She didn't care for the way I dressed as a teenager, but knew it wasn't important so she didn't fight with me about it.  There was, however, one pair of size 36 second hand beige wool old man pants that she hated.  She felt strongly about it, and refused to be seen with me in said pants.  It was important to her, and she stuck to her guns, thus she was never seen with me in public wearing the old man pants (she would use her knee high horse-decorated upholstery riding boots against me, and we would both end up changing outfits as a truce). If she had fought with me over every ugly sweater, or every time I wore hiking boots with a dress, she would have been one tired lady.

The same is true when agreeing to do things for others, whether it's a favor for a friend or a job for a client.  If you say yes to every piddly little thing, you're going to be one tired lady too (or a tired gentleman).  Don't accept any challenges that you don't know for sure that you are able to, or have the desire to see to the end.  To be respected as a professional, it's imperative that you put as much effort into every job you do as you put into fighting for your right to party.  The more half assed jobs you do, the more you look like a crapsack who isn't worth hiring.  Don't take chances pumping out sub-par work, you never know who might see it and how it might affect your reputation!  In my past, whether I was working as a filing monkey (hate) or a screen printer (love) I always put the same amount of effort in: all of it. 

Some important things to consider when deciding on whether or not to say yes to the request are:

• Do you have time for this new project as well as other projects you're already working on?
• Can you finish it by the deadline set?
• Is it worth your time? (i.e. will you be getting paid enough for the time you put in)
• What does your gut tell you?  Do you really want to do it or not?

If the answer to the last consideration is yes, then all the others might not matter much to you.  The final question is usually the most important to me.  We've all thrown common sense out the window at least once to help out a friend, or do something really fun right?  If the answer to ANY of the considerations is "NO", you should seriously think about saying no to the request, or else you better have a really good reason for agreeing to the task.  If you do end up accepting the challenge, then see it to the end!  Just think, if my mother lacked the conviction to continually say "No, Jillian, those pants are ugly and you look like a homeless 68 year old man who crapped his pants" then she would have had to be around a 15 year old girl who looked like a homeless 68 year old man who crapped his pants.  It would have slowly chipped away at her happiness and life force, just like doing a job your heart isn't in chips away at yours.

What I've been up to.

Well, it's been a busy busy winter! There's been lots of creating going on chez moi. I've finally gone ahead and put up an Etsy shop, and I've also been working on ANOTHER book. This one is a kid's coloring book though, so most of the drawings are really simple and don't take more than an hour or two to complete. It's based on Newfoundland, so it makes me really happy to work on! Here's a few images of what I've been up to this past winter!

Working in the studio,



Illustrating in the kitchen,



Making cute headbands, (view them all at http://www.etsy.com/shop/lestudioelephant )



and making a hybrid clone of myself to help me in the studio!

Not everyone needs to know my life story, but I tell them anyways!

Of all the lines I have difficulty drawing, by far the worst is knowing where to draw the line on disclosing personal information to people. You know that person that's always telling you way more than you wanted to know? That's me. My pie hole is constantly flapping. I usually end up sharing far more information with others than I intend to, and frequently leave conversations with people I barley know with my hand firmly slapping my forehead thinking "why did I tell them THAT?!". Sometimes it's irrelevant information, like how no matter what I do I can't seem to enjoy the taste of grapefruit, which is unfortunate because my fruit cup came with 2 pieces in it which ruined the flavour of the whole thing. Other times the information I share is not so irrelevant, like how much money I make illustrating a book. I was taught that it is inappropriate to talk about one's finances, or ask about anyone else's. The ease with which I open up to people about my life leaves me wondering if I'm repeatedly crossing a line that I can't see.

The problem gets even more complicated when you throw more standards into the mix. I have a number of business contacts who I deal with on a regular basis. Not only do I have to try to be appropriate on a personal level, but now I have to learn how to be appropriate on a professional level as well, which is even more formal than personal. Here's where my life turns into a swirling pit of confusion: I have a really friend-like relationship with one of my editors. When I go home to Newfoundland, I visit her on "business" but always stay and talk to her for an hour or two about other things. We shoot the shit. We canoodle. In this circumstance, all my rules are thrown out the window, and my yapping maw runs on its own.

Here's an example of a confusing event. I recently had to ask for time off from one of the series of kids books I illustrate. I need to put more time into my business, I want to develop and produce a line of accessories, and I'm trying to save for a house. What it all comes down to is that I need more time and money, and the books are stripping me of both those things. When I do a book, I basically work for free, living well below the Canadian poverty line for 3 to 5 months, and collect nickles and dimes a year later. I can tell this to my close friends, but it's not cool to whine about money to your professional contacts! But, I did have to give her a reason for needing more time, and that reason is money. It was really difficult trying to find a tactful way to say "I can't work for you because I'm poor".

My favorite book about freelancing, My So-Called Freelance Life, by Michelle Goodman, states that when dealing with a client, one should not divulge the the stupid banalities of one's life. If you need more time, say it, but don't go on and on about how your dog got sick, and you had insomnia for a week, and last night you had a bad dream, and then this morning you had diarrhea so you can't get the work done by Friday, and could you maybe pretty please have a little extension. At the very most, you could say "due to personal circumstances", or "family emergency". Such vagaries convey the sense of urgency, without making you seem like an amateur hack job who sucks at making up excuses and at life as well.

Being perceived as a professional isn't just about how efficiently you perform the task assigned to you, but also on your attitude and the manner in which you present yourself. It is hard to keep all this in mind when you aren't sure whether you're talking to a friend or a business contact, but perhaps it's best to err on the side of caution and talk about your gastric emergencies with your mom instead. As for my dealings with my editors, I'll just try to keep the business emails businessy, and the personal emails...um... less about diarrhea and my taste preferences regarding citrus fruit.