Rich Sigberman Art & Illustration 90

Getting started on a big, new project is always an interesting challenge. No matter how many times I've done it, no matter how excited I may be about it, no matter what the budget or time frame, getting it started is not unlike Sisyphus pushing that giant boulder up an incline: that boulder keeps rolling back.

The difference between what I know about my work and what I know about that poor guy, Sisyphus, is that eventually the momentum will change, and that at some point I will get that boulder over the high point of the incline. Until that point, however, all the momentum must come from moi. If my cllient happens to be enthusiastic, so much the better. I can use his/her energy to fuel the work at the early point, when the most energy is needed.

Case in point: I'm just beginning to design what will be a 5' wide mural, quite large by my standards. This piece will include some 50 characters, great costumes and colors, and will be a great piece of art for a great client. Right now, however, I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting at a small scale to indicate composition and placement of the characters, and it is time consuming. Maybe the fact that I'm still coming off of a rotten cold is leaving me with a bit less energy than I normally have, or maybe I'm getting older and the energy of old ain't there no more. I just know I keep sitting down and thinking about taking a nap!

Working alone can be great. It works for me, generally speaking. I get to play loud music of my choosing. But, right now, it would not be a bad thing to have a co-worker or two to bounce ideas off of, assign some of the grunt work, and usurp their energy like some sort of blood-sucking creature. Hey, it's Halloween! I must be thinking in ghoulish terms today.

The real good news is that with my experience, I know very well that this piece is going to be great in the long run. That helps me in the early stage, when the sketches look like a mess, and I may be the only person on earth who knows that the finished art is going to be hot a few months from now.

Labels: the working artist

What a provactive title for today's entry. Maybe the writing won't be that controversial, though. I'm going to try and type more carefully, at least.

I just got through with a fine gift, that I spent a good 14 hours on. Way too much time, but once you get going on one, you treat it with as much tlc as if it were a paying gig . This one was for our friends in Zurich, and was entirely based on photos I took of them and their home, which I "montaged" into a semi-abstract piece of art in their favorite color scheme. It came out well, and I sent it off today, bon voyage, or whatever they say in Switzerland. It is a great gift, they're going to flip when they get it, and I'll know that I've made the world a slightly better place.

Today, I spent a good amount of time rendering a building from a photograph. This is not my favorite type of drawing at all. The building happens to be one that Pam and I own, in Conroe, Texas. What? You don't know where Conroe is? Just 35 miles north of Houston. So, it is a rental property that is vacant, and Pam thought that a watercolor version of this house by me would be more appealling than the photo in a flyer. I'm not sure I agreed, but sometimes one has to just give in to one's spouse, for peace. I spent a good four hours on it, and I doubt we're going to have the time to do anything with it, as Pam leaves in the morning for Conroe. So, that's how I spent my board time today, bored.

Cleints have been strange of late; and I'm doing my best to take it all with grace. If I were smart, I'd just do a creative piece, like the one that is lying about here, but I nearly always make my clients my first priority, and relegate the creative art to last place . I have a lot of fun with the latter, but it really generates so little income that it's hard to justify the time spent on it. Except, of course, that no artist becomes great that way.

I pride myself on getting into everything I draw, to do the best I am able to do, but on this house, I'm not sure if I really did that. There was some grumbling I heard coming from me while I was working on it. I do compromise often enough, and admire those who don't.

Tomorrow, I'll be meeting with another relatively new client, who has treated me very generously in the past. There are a few nice possibilities with him, and I'm going to try for a few. One of these days, I'll make my more creative work my priority, someday for sure....

I've come down with a fine case of bronchitis, blech. It and some interesting events have made me a little crabby, but actually, underneath it all, I feel strong and clear.

The cllient I mentioned in yesterday's entry has continued to belittle the work I did for him, saying it is unusable, does not fit, overpriced. He left out attacking my Mom, at least. This diatribe was remarkable for its 180 degree turn from everything that lead up to it: "great, great, great" was all I heard until then. From my point of view, this is not the feeling I want to get from my clients, to put it mildly.

On the other hand, some very nice things are coming in: a 5' wide mural for a fantastic, creative organization that is going to be great fun, an illustrated map, and some new projects from a company that has treated me very well in the past. Even if this were not going on to assuage the painful bifarcation, I would have to stay clear in that I can only work with clients from whom I feel a sense of appreciation.

I spend much of yesterday creating an elaborate watercolor gift for friends in Zurich. It is entirely based on objects in their home. They will love it, and for me, it is a case of doing art in the purest sense, no money issues involved. It works for me. I'll finish it up while I wait for the Doctor to call back.

What a week of ups and downs in my art life! It is almost too much, if I put so much stock into it all that I feel it is life and death. I used to feel that way. Now, I'm trying to realize that I'll be fine, no matter what the cirucmstances.

The pizza client, which should have been a great ongoing one: gone! I don't know why.

My new, great client with the toy company: looks bad! My style of work is not fitting in with the characters, so they are saying, and my format of pen and ink is time consuming for the computer company to rework. It looks like a dismal future, if any, for me with them. My hopes had been high, and I was lead to believe that my work would be an important part of the company's art - everything has now chnaged and I've been told to not work anymore. Of course, I am disapointed. I had also been told abut the shares of the company I would receive and, let's face it, that isn't going to happen either. The carrot on the stick remains out of reach.

This is the sort of thing that would have plunged me into a deep depression not too long ago, and believe me, the impulse to do so is still there. But, I also got a fine commission yesterday and am on the verge of another good one today, so I need to roll with all this as best as I can. "I do great art for great people for great money" is one of my affirmations and I'll stick with it.

What can I do? I long ago made up my mind to work in my style and medium, and, in this computer-driven age, I have become quite the anachronism. It may only get worse over the years, or I will find a niche. Who knows? If I want to cripple myself with fear, I can. If I want to stay steady and strong and continue to do my best art, I will.

I guess it's all a test, pass-fail system. No grades fall in between. When you are preparing to leave this world, you get graded for how you bore up under times whent things were not going your way.

Today, that new great client I was so excited about just a few days ago, the perfect client with the perfect product for me to advertise, told me that it was not working out, that the process felt "cumbersome" and maybe he really just wanted a graphic artist. Yesterday, i anticipated this when I wrote "what if your best isn't enough?", and today I have to absorb that fact of life.

No matter how you slice it,(no pun intended as the product was pizza), no matter how good your attitude, no matter how well you reason and rationalize - it don't feel good. Such is life, and it really pays to be mentally tough. I am having some trouble shrugging this off, after having such high hopes and working so hard to make the first one go well. I met the deadine with two days to spare, and the paper that the ad was going to appear in also met their deadline for setting some type, yet the client didn't want to run the ad or do any subsequent work with me. Go figure, because I can't.

It is a beautiful Autumn day here in Northern California. My wife and I went for a lovely walk downt he hill this morning to the coffee place with the dogs, I have my health, and I still have plenty of good art to work on. I would be a fool to focus on this one minor setuback, right?

So, a few days ago, I triumphantly announced that I had turned it around with my new client, by doing extensive revisions to a piece he was not satisfied with. I wrote that a bit prematurely, however, as he had yet to view the art. When he did, he give a less-than-ringing endorsement to it, saying it was better, but still not quite.......something.

A year ago I would have gotten so exasperated with him, myself, life in general, that I would have been depressed for a few days. This time, I said to myself, "I've done all I can possibly do. I've doubled the time I had allotted to work on this piece, and did everythig I could think of to make it work. If he is still not pleased, then I just have to write it off to fate, subjective chemistry, anything but failure of some kind on my end". Even that is hard to swallow, but it's much healthier than the state this might have once left me in.

I could imagine how an athlete who has given it his all must feel after "leaving it all on the field" in a defeat. I had extended myself physcially, beginniing the work at 4 am to "make it right". This was, after all, a very promising new client whose work I was excited about, and I had a lot to prove, or so I thoght. But, one thing that mkaes the art buziness a bit different from others is the subjectivity involved in a given client's acceptance of the finished product. I can give it everything I've got, incouding some 30 years of experience, and still wind up with a disatisfied client. This doesn't happen frequently, but now and then it does. What is there to do at that point, but sigh and say, "I tried" knowing that one did, in fact, do everything one could do.

It's not nearly as much fun as a client who gushes, "I love it!". The ego does take a beating. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" was not well received by the good burghers of Amsterdam who commissioned it either.

Rembrandt and me: a pair for the ages.

For anyone who is actually reding these entries, my apologies. This is the longest I have gone without making a new one, some 5 or 6 days. I much prefer to create anew entry every three days at least.

Clearly, I am in the midst of my best commercial art period in many a moon, maybe ever. Not only do I have a lovely batch of stimulating, fun jobs, but two of them are for relatively new-looks-like-long term clients. For me, great long-term clients have been an elusive and much sought after commodity. Still, there have been a few ups and downs regarding the work for them.

The newest one is only 5 days old; we had a great first meeting and the work was right up my alley: black and white line art illustratioins to be used as humorous ads in the local paper. If all goes as planned, the work looks to be fairly steady too. The day after our meeting, we got off to a fast start with a tight deadline for Halloween, and a sketch was approved to go to final art. The next day I executed the final art, and faxed it to him for his final approval, and when he called me, his first words were, "Is this the finished art?" . It was downhill from there, my heart sank as he told me he didn't like it, that the art was just "not making it". It is hard to talk about why a visual medium is not satisfying , and I understood that the art was compromised by the fact that I was trying to do it in someone else's style: that of the cartoonist my new client had been using for many years. So, even though it was hard for my cllient to verbaize exactly what was missing from the picture, we both knew that it lacked the humor, spontenaity, and exuberance that my best work has.

We ended the conversation by saying we'd talk the next day, and I was really feeling bad for something that had begun with high hopes that now seemed to be on the verge of being dashed. These feelings were hard to deal with, but the next morning I happened to get a call from a musician friend of mine, and we hashed the situation out, comparing it to similar situations he had had as a studio mucician, and put it into perspective. And then, an email came in from my new client saying, " maybe we can salvage this and still make out deadline by augmenting the art. I also wast to pay you in full, no matter how the art turns out as I know you put a lot of time into it." The sun broke through the clouds and I knew this would now turn out to be a successful job.

Another client hired me to do a Thanksgiving card for her, but had rejected the first two sketches, and then sat on the third for 10 days. I had to call her twice before she got back to me and did, in fact, give me my approval to go on to finished art. It had been a long 10 days for me wondering what was going on, but being busy with other projects, and also feeling that she had to call me at that point, that I had done all I could do. Managing my clients is not something I enjoy doing, but I suppose it is part of my job. "I'd rather be painting" is what I ought to have on my personalized license plate, if I ever get one.

One other good thing: despite all the commercial work I have at this time, I began a new creative piece of art. This is something I have vowed to always have going, and so I have started my own "History of Art", which is entirely irreverent. Picasso's "Guernica" meets Archie and Jughead, at last. The meeting we've all been waiting for.

So, today is a free day, no plans and no schedule. I decided to devote a good protion of it to doing some kind of creative art, non-commercial, and just something I felt like doing. Of course, I should be working on the Thanksgiving card for the jewelry store, or the new sketch for the toy company, or something that generates income, but I decided for once that just doing some kind of art-art would be the top priority for at least today.

What would it be, though? A new jazz piece, an abstract, a pop piece? I went into the attic where I have lots of old comic books and magazines (not to mention old illustration art of mine) to see if some kernel for inspiration was there. In fact, I did fetch out some ancient "Mad" paperbacks that came out around 1956 at 35 cents. I also recalled an art book I had purchased, "the History of Art" not too long ago with the express purpose of using for a satirical collage. Yes, I bought the book knowing I was going to cut it up, a real travesty for book lovers, of which I count myself as one. But it's ok if you know you're going to do that when you get the book (that's a new rule I just made up).

The basic ideas was to find as many iconic art pieces reproduced in the book and collage them with some drawing of my own, and cartoons from wherever I could fine them, see if I could get them to interact, put them in some sort of hallucinogenic blender, and watch what strange combination of high and low art would come out. And, I began cutting.

Right now, this most irreverent piece lies on my table in little shards, awaiting integration. I have no idea if I'll be able to pull them all together, nor if I will give myself the time to do so. There are a lot of "shoulds" waiting for me, demanding their time allottment. But I'm going to hang in there with my new collage, to be entitled, appropriately "The Hisotry of Art". So it's subjective? What isn't?

Mostly, it's fun. I'll get back to my "shoulds" tomorrow.

A few days ago, a friend of mine half-jokingly told me that I was spoiled. He had asked me if the three jobs I had worked on that day were fun, and my reply was that I worked well and efficiently with a craftsman-like approach, but that no, I could not call the process fun. He then asked what would be fun for me in my art, and I replied that it is the state I get to when I am working on more spontaneous and fluid art. In other words, art that is not illustration since the latter involves many boundaries inherent to pleasing one's client.

That's when he called me spoiled and told me that any time I'm doing art of any kind I should thank my lucky stars, and said "you should try working in a factory sometime." I had to admit that he had a point. I well recall the times when I wished I could be doing art, any type of illustration art, as my full time profession, as I stood in a newstand in New York City waiting to sell the next pack of cigarettes on a cold day.

For many years once I became a full-time artist, I did, in fact, take on any and all jobs with a grateful mindset that I was making money drawing. I still do this. And, any time I make my living through my art talent, I am having fun. But, there are degrees of fun, different levels to the type of art I do.

Right now, the job I am working on is an architectural rendering of a house not yet build. I am working off a blueprint. Thhis job requires precison, accuracy, a sensitivity to color that will make the house look welcoming, btt no imaginative or whimsical touches on my part. In fact, those touches would not be welcome or appropriate to this type of job. But, I'd love to hae Groucho Marx poking his head out of one window, and a portly sax player blowing leaves of the nearby trees with the force of the notes coming out of the bell of his horn. I can't do that? Oh, what a disapointment. Well, technically speaking, I can do that, but not expect to receive payment if I do.

So, yes, I am pleased to be doing this work, and no, it is not nearly in the same "fun league" as a picture where I create the rules, the world of no perspective and faces emerging out of inanimate objects, or even abstract art that is created spontaneoulsy. When I'm creating that work, I'm nearly unconscious in another zone altogether - that is, until I start to think, "now how is this art going to earn me any money?". The fun quotient slips considerably at that point unless I remind myself than nearly all my original art eventual finds a buyer.

My father used to say, "Why do you think they call it work?" when I said I wanted to work at a job where I could have fun. A fun-loving guy he was not, and I've spent a few years un-doing the lessons I learned early on. I define fun as "reaching one's truest, happiest self, the joyous kid who laughs in delight at discovery".

Have a fun day.