Rich Sigberman Art & Illustration 90

I guess we all like to get our egos stroked and feel appreciated, even if the more savvy clients try to use that en lieu of money. I'll try to give you an example or two:

My longest running client has ,generally speaking, been a lot of fun to work with and paid me reasonably well over the years. Our last job was a major piece of work, full of good gags and good design and drawing by moi. I put untold hours into it, and was paid $2300, and gave explicit instructions to the printer, the most important one being that I had to view a printer's proof of the job before it went to press. My instructions were ignored, no printer's proof was provided for me, and the end result was a disaster as far as I'm concerned, as someone decided that it would be just fine to compress the major image into a proportion for which it was not structured. I felt demoralized and disrespected.

After that, we compounded the hurt when I spent a few hours attempting to come up with ideas for either Halloween or Thanksgiving, all of which were rejected by my client withouut his giving any positive feedback of any kind for me to work with. I didn't feel too great about that either. Now, he's given me an idea for an end of year card, and my enthusiasm level is below that of a person being offered the chance to be dragged along side a moving automobile by the scruff of their neck on a dirt road. With spikes in the road. I want the income, but I want to feel appreciated too. Oh, I forgot to mention that for some three years now, my client has been talking about photographing the best of the many pieces I've done for him, putting it on his website, and linking his site to mine. It has yet to happen.

On the other hand, I just completed a job for a corporation that went as nicely as it could, with my two clients there repeatedly expressing their excitement over the design. They will pay me reasonably well too, but I feel so much better about the way they are conducting themselves, that I'd run through a brick wall for them, and have done all I could to ensure the job coming out well by taking it to my photographer and giving him instructions. I hope to someday work for them again, and appreciate their feedback.

It's not all about money, although that is a big part of it. A well timed compliment, or even minor apology can work wonders too.

We got the call around 5 a.m. Saturday, made our arrangements, and were on the plane by 1 pm. My Dad passed away some time in the middle of the night, after a long, slow decline where his body ceased to work for him any more. It was time.

At the funeral, I gave a short, dignified eulogy talking about his integrity, love for music, work ethic, and good example set for his family. All of that was true. What I left out, of course, was the basic lack of rapport between him and me, a resutl, I suppose of two people having two very different personalities and styles. Of course, to a child, that is beyond understanding, and there were many needs that went unfulfilled for me, so it went, and so it must go for many.

Just the same, he was a good man, and did the best he could with the limitations he self-imposed, and those that may have been imposed by the times and culture he lived in. I've more than forgiven him, and have made my peace with him, and wish him well on the next lef of the journey if, in fact, there is one.

As I chose art as my livliehood, there was a rebellion to the family ethic. As I complain about lack of money, I am loyal to the family ethic. I've only gone "so far" within my own self-imposed limitations , so in that, I've remained loyal to my Dad. It's time to break that loyalty, and go further.

Oh, I was so proud for thinking of doing that enlargement for the lettering for the logo I'm working on, and I did such a nice job of cutting away the insides of the letters to expose the watercolor paper underneath. And, I tested the bond paper that the rest of the art was on, and it seemed to accept watercolor reasonably well.

But when I began the real painting, the drying time was far less than a more absorbent paper would be, and the bond paper buckled with water too. In short, it was quite unforgiving and nearly impossible to work with in the ways I've practically mastered on real watercolor paper. So, we battled it out. Over and over again, I had to wait for the paper to dry (It took ages!) and flatten out, only to apply some color again and again, to get the sort of gradation I was after. Since I was working on relatively subtlle rays, as if from a sunburst, I needed those gradations, and I needed them to be on the subtle side against the background ....the more the paper got wet, the less effective was the glue that was holding it against the watercolor paper, so the bond paper began to separate itself from its background. It really felt like a fight between me and this damned piece of paper, and there was no way I was going to lose!

It took hours, but I pretty much got it to where I needed it to be. Finally, I was able to work on the watercolor paper that was exposed for the more detailed areas, and what a pleasure it was to be back on that - paper that responds beautifully to wet areas, and that I can control perfectly to the smallest nuance. Whew!

I began work on the art this morning around 8:30, and worked on it until 8 p.m. There is much more to go, but I think I got the hardest stuff done. It's absolutely imperative that this comes out well, as the company gave me a job that probably could have been done by a graphic type of computer artist, although perhaps without the charm and feel. I feel like John Henry up against that steam shovel, and we all know how that turned out!

This job from the corporation is a good one, paying well, and "up my alley" in most ways (except for whimsy, and a prescribed lack of people, you can't have everything!). It is a play on one of those many old postcards that say, "Greetings from......" and the major word is in big, fat letters that have photographs in each letter. You've seen them. We've all seen them.

One of the reasons they are so effective is that they are bold, using fat letters and a 3-D effect for "punch". Another reason is that they combine that boldness with the illustration in the letter, which often can be detailed and delicately textured. So, the combination of the two works very well.

That's what I'm doing here, and I was faced with this challenge: how may I make the letters large enough for me to work within, and still have the curves in the letters be accurate. In other words, how may I make printed letters big and clean and then work within them, as my hand done lettering was not going to be good enough. Here's how I solved it: first, I recreated my letters by tracing them on to paper from a printed page (when I had enlarged the print, it really looked shabby and ragged), then I used a one-point perspective to create the 3-D affect. I made this as clean as I could, and took it to Kinko's to have enlarged on the biggest machine they have, with the best bond paper they have. I was hoping that this paper would be good enough to accept some of my watercolor paint, but not all of it.

I enlarged my type to 25" wide, took it home, and carefully cut out the inside of each letter, then spray mounted this bond paper on to my best watercolor paper, thus giving me the surface I really wanted on the inside of the letters, and still hoping that the bond paper that had the copy would be good enough to handle less taxing painting, as there were some touches that needed to be done outside the letters too. When I experimented on this paper, it worked well enough. Now, I had what I needed, except that the enlarged letters didn't look so great, and needed to have thicker lines anyway, due to the fact that eventually this art was going to be used at only 3" wide, among other sizes. So, I went over each letter with my pens, thickening them up - this was a painstaking process that couldn't be done free-hand. It took my about 3 hours to do.

Now, I've got it where I want it, and began projecting images into the letter areas. Nice craftsmanship, if I say so myself. The color work will be similar in apprach, using color value a great deal to highlight some of the images and let others sink in to the background.

I'm trying to generate more income. I'm trying to generate more fine art. I'm trying to be a happy person with a good life. I'm trying my own patience.

For now, I've got some good work going for a company, working with their marketing department. The pay is excellent and the work is pleasant, and I know the finished product will be very good too. I'm pleased about it, as it's been a company I've been courting for nearly a year.

I'm also up for a big job out of New Jersey, and am still in suspense three days after giving the bid. It will be a lot of work in a short time frame, and I already know that my bid was high, so, if they choose me, I have to ask myself, "how low am I willing to go to get the job and the income?" That's a good quesiton, one I hope someday I won't have to keep asking myself.

On the art front, the only really inventive fun thing I did was take an old commercial piece and transform it into something much better. That was fun, and I had a frame for it too. Someday I hope to sell it, and therefore wring some more income out of the piece in part as revenge on the people the art was initially for. We parted on terrible terms and it was entirely their fault. I'm being objective here, I swear!

This weekend, I'll have three days to myself. I'll do some money generating art and maybe some fine art too. The one thing I need to force myself to do is make those cold calls to companies, my major hope to get better paying gigs.