Contents -Development -Inspirations -What Now? -What Next? -The Future
Development
“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.” -Steven Pressfield
That is a quote from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, although I don’t have that bleak of an outlook on things (and neither does Pressfield if you read the entire book) I do think that every artist can relate to those words, and especially so at the very beginning of their careers. I have certainly felt that way for the past years during my studies but fortunately right at the end of this course I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I am more aware of my abilities and the potential within them. My illustration revolves mainly around narrative, specifically sequential illustration and graphic novels or comics. I enjoy creating a sense of location and setting through atmosphere and tone. During my four years at AUB, including my Foundation Diploma and BA, I have gained a much higher understanding of arts and illustration and started developing my own path and language using the aforementioned aspects. I try and find the interesting and unusual angles, I think much like one would imagine a film director creating the layout of a scene in a movie, imagining the object(s) that need to be in the shot (in my case image) and moving the imagined camera around them, visualizing the different images it would create in my head. Some of my best work is inspired by locations I have visited and by trying to recreate the atmosphere I experienced there through, usually, a fictional story. My first successful project was developed in such a manner, during my foundation year. Subsequently I formed our location drawing project, where I created a small wordless narrative of the street I’d chosen to draw from, showing the passing of an afternoon in a typical Bournemouth area. (opposit) Again, in my second year my favourite work was a self-directed, wordless comicbook inspired by a recent trip to New Orleans and Louisiana. It featured a fictional story of a homicide detective but focused mainly on showing the everyday life of some of the people of the poorer parts of a southern town. As my time at university is coming to its end, I feel that my work has developed greatly from when I first started University. Throughout the course, but specifically during the last year, I have started indentifying my own language through understanding what type of image-making suits me best and in what context. Honing down your skills and finding that “voice” is an important step in any artists’ development and it is a little frustrating that it started happening so late in my studies.
Inspirations There are many things that inspire my work, I have, ofcourse, my favourite artists who’s work has influenced me during my own development, and each has left their mark on my image making. One of my earliest “heroes” within art and comics was american artist Tim Sale, who’s greyscale tonal work is among the best, most likely because he himself is severely colorblind and thus creates most his work in black and white ink, leaving the coloring to another artist.
Illustration by Tim Sale The other significant inspiration source for me early on, and even now, is the art of the animated documentary Waltz With Bashir (2008) which was created by several artist but most importantly Asaf and Tomer Hanuka, who’s illustrative work has become some of my favourites only recently. Other artists include brittish illustrator Bill Bragg and fashion illustrator René Gruau.
Other sources of inspiration include movies and they often generate ideas that over time grow into their own stories that I use for my comics, they also help a lot in teaching me angles and viewpoints for my panels.
Still from “Waltz With Bashir�
What Now? Because of the fact that my work has, up until this point, lacked uniformity I have been slow to develop an online presence, feeling that a lot of my work did not quite reach the quality I wanted. During this unit, however, I have started this task by designing my own website and various social media pages. These forums will have to be maintained and kept relevant which is something I’m not used to. To assist this I have looked into registering a personal company within Cool Company (https://coolcompany.com/se/in-english/to-invoice-without-your-owncompany/), which is an employer company that allows one to act as an independent contractor. It also allows one to set up a calendar function that reminds one of several important tasks, such as updating websites, including other partners, etc. The graphic novel or comic medium has become an increasingly popular medium both for cartoonists and illustrators alike, with many artists working mainly with commissions doing personal work in the comic book form on the side. Some of my favourite illustrators have worked in this way, including Bill Bragg (Marcel’s Appendix) and Tomer Hanuka (The Divine). At present there is some unceartainty regarding my future in that I do not know where I will be based after graduation and I am poised with the choice of staying in the UK or relocating back to my native country, Sweden. By working with the independent contractor profile in Cool Company, as well as being a member of AOI and Svenska tecknare will allow me to remain active whilst deciding my final base location. Sweden has a different market for illustrators, with some possible pros and cons. On the one hand, illustration is not as established as an art form and there appears to be less jobs around. On the other hand there are also far less high level illustrators in Sweden and some national forums have been established (detailed later). Nevertheless, as stated earlier, work does not necessarily have to be restricted to the place you live in these days. So, depending on where I end up living the course of action will be slightly different, in Sweden, the first step would be to join the organisation Svenska Tecknare (Swedish illustrators) which is more or less an equivalent to the Association of Illustrators here in the UK.
What Next? I have always worked well from home, so I think I would have to put off getting my own studio for the present given my financial situation. In any case my course of action would be to try and establish myself with a part time job that could pay the bills while working on my art on the side. Once again, the independent contractor approach will offer me this flexibility. I feel like I’m really making great progress and with each project I feel a step forward so I want to keep pushing as I feel I am close to breaking through some sort of barrier to where it “clicks”, the challenge post-university will be to support myself while continuing the pursuit of illustration. For promotional purposes I have divided up the different objectives into different sections. To showcase my work I have my website, which works primarily as an online portfolio, with a selection of what I consider to be my best work and which sums up my practice.
“It’s about staying focused on a clear goal and message and being as concise as possible. Art directors are bussy people, so you need to cut to the point promptly” -Darrel Rees On that note, I have tried to design my website so that it opens up right to a showcase of my best work.
A link to this website can be featured basically on most of my other promotional materials such as a blog, business card and so on. Speaking of blogs, I decided to place all my blog like entries, that is, in-progress work and sketches, on an instagram page that is meant to be more interactive towards followers, whereas the website is more professional and only there to show my finalised work. Dividing work like this seems like a good approach, since you can show both sides depending on the audience and situation. Furthermore, I will make use of printed postcards to send out to potential clients. Due to the fact that I have developed a very distinctive style it will be easier to select work that will give the viewer a clear idea of what I do and whether it could suit their purposes. Therefore I think an effective idea is to have a card with one large image on the front and a few smaller ones on the back together with my contact details. These would tie in with the main image and clarify the different facets of my style.
My strategy upon leaving university will be to approach some smaller printing houses with my latest self-printed work and try and generate some interest in my work and perhaps get something published that way. Such small press publishers are becoming more popular in recent years thanks to the increased marketing possibilities enabled by the web and there are many notable ones in the UK alone including Gosh Comics, Nobrow and Self Made Hero.
“Ten years ago the idea of a running a printworks that specialised solely or even mainly in comics was a bad joke. Creators are spread too widely for a purely local business, and national marketing would have been a huge risk. Today there are three or four specialist comic printers in the UK alone, largely because the Internet has made it possible to find customers (and receive their 2 gigabyte files…) in a totally different way. Word of mouth, which once would have been helpful, but not sufficient, is now lifeblood thanks to social media.” -James Oliver Another marketing idea would be to sumbit work to creative annuals such as Contact Creative or LeBook, which offer yearly publications featuring artists work. This costs a sum of money but could be worthwhile since it can be hard to get your work seen by the right people at the beginning of your career. Since getting your career started in comics can be quite difficult, I plan to set myself some briefs after graduation which include illustrating a couple of novels with fitting subject matters to my artistic style, as well as perhaps one or two movie posters for noir type films such as Taxi Driver (1976) and Le Samurai (1967). This way I can build my portfolio with more variety and recent work, since such projects tend to take less time than creating an entire new comic and might help to generate some work outside comics. After this I will look into the online publishing possibilities. There have been many success stories of artists publishing their work first online, gathering a following that leads to physical print. The most interesting to me personally is Marcos Martin and Brian Vaughan’s PanelSyndicate website, which they created to publish their own comics online. The website is based around releasing series ranging from 5 to 10 issues and having readers “pay what they want” for each issue. Their most successful series to date, Private Eye (2015) which ran its last issue just a few months back (March 2016) won both an Eisner and Harvey award in 2015 for best digital/ online comic, as well as having been picked up for physical print by Image Comics. Publishing serialised work like this online can be an efficient way to gain a following early on and generate some interest in your comics. The advantage being the low cost as compared to having physical copies printed on your own budget.
The Future
A t t h i s t i m e m y f u t u re i s s t i l l v e r y m u c h u n d e c i d e d , b u t t h e n a g a i n i t o f t e n i s e v e n w h e n w e t h i n k w e h a v e i t a l l f i g u re d o u t . I w i l l h a v e t o c o m m i t t o a c h o i c e o n w h e re I w a n t t o b e b a s e d a n d w h a t I want to do to make it work for me. My time at university has been f i l l e d w i t h h e s i t a t i o n a n d s e l f - d o u b t o v e r m y c re a t i v e p o t e n t i a l b u t I re a l l y f e e l t h a t m y M a j o r P ro j e c t h e l p e d e l i m i n a t e s o m e o f t h o s e f e e l i n g s , w h i l e a t t h e s a m e t i m e h i g h l i g h t i n g a re a s w h e re I s t i l l n e e d t o i m p ro v e . A l l i n a l l I n o w f e e l f u l l y c a p a b l e o f a c h i e v i n g t h a t with dedication and time.
Upcoming events
This year: - Bristol Comic and Zine Fair, 1st October 2016 - Thought Bubble Festival, 1- 6th November 2016
Next year: - Elcaf, London, June 2017 - AngloĂŞme International Comics Festival, January 2017
Bibliography Darrel, R (2014) How to be an Illustrator, 2nd edn., London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd. Oliver, A (2015) State of the Small Press Nation – Comic Printing UK’s Rich Davids Gives a Printer’s Eye Perspective on the Self-Publishing Scene, Available at:http://www.brokenfrontier.com/statesmall-press-nation-comic-printing-uks-rich-hardiman-gives-printers-eye-perspective-self-publishing-scene/ (Accessed: 25th April 2016). Pressfield, S (2002) The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. FastPencil PREMIERE [Online]. Available at: premiere.fastpencil.com (Accessed: 1st May 2016) Sale, T (2013) James Bond by Tim Sale (ONLINE). Available at: http://midtowncomics.tumblr.com/ post/42881768216/james-bond-by-tim-sale (accessed 1st May 2016)