light on the glue, heavy on the professionalism

 

By a pretty sweet stroke of luck, i got a very cool illustration job this spring.  I’d been wanting to start doing illustration work with my cut paper collage style, so this was a perfect opportunity.  And a big job - i did 13 illustrations and several painted papers for backgrounds.  I am so grateful for having this opportunity  and I thought I’d share the work process here - it was fun and not as intimidating as i thought it’d be.

It started with some email communication with the art director of a marketing firm.  They were making an annual report/storybook thing for a non-profit client of theirs.  He told me what the job was, approximately how many illustrations, and a general timeline.  After they had the info firmed up on their end, i went to the office for a meeting/brainstorm session with the art director.  He gave me lots more info about the job. My role was to illustrate the story book, which is the story of a woman who bettered her and her daughter’s life with the help of the non-profit family organization.  We went through each page of the story and the art director told me his illustration ideas and specific stuff he wanted to see in the illustrations.  He also asked for input and kept a lot of stuff open to my interpretation.  After we had a good idea of each illustration, I went home and sketched out rough drawings of each page.  The sketches were to show the configuration and general feeling of the future collages. At this point in the process, I felt a little weird because the collages and the sketches have such a different feeling.  My sketches seemed blah, but they really were just rough ideas.  I scanned all the sketches and sent them to the art director.  He looked at them and gave me feedback.  In general, he was really pleased.  There were a few tweaks and issues here and there.  It made me understand the importance of doing the sketches - so much easier to change course/add or subtract when the pictures are in this stage.  

After all the roughs were completely approved, I began making the collages.  I stayed very close to the approved sketches as far as the configuration of everything.  But I got to make all the choices about color and paper texture, which was super fun. 
I have a large selection of patterned papers and hand painted papers on hand.  I had to paint a few pieces of paper for the skin tone of the characters.  They are mostly African-American and I didn’t have the right color of brown.  Everything I had did not actually look like it could be a natural color of skin.  So that’s about all I had to paint in prep for making the collages.  I painted two pieces of 12”x12” scrapbook paper, and that was more than enough.  After that paper was dry, I was ready to go!  I worked from the beginning of the book to the end.  I skipped around just a bit when I wasn’t feeling it on a certain illustration.  I went through a bunch of exacto blades and glue sticks and made a nice dent in my paper stash.  As I completed illustrations, I scanned and sent them instead of saving them all up until the end.  I think it helps the person you are working for to know where you are in the process and frees up communication.
I had a week (5 days) to complete all of the collages (13), so it was pretty crazy.  Even though my style is simple, it isn’t a speedy process.  I worked really hard, but in general just tried to work during business hours.  I was thinking about it all the time, though.....
After the collages were complete, there were a few more corrections/tweaks.   Corrections had the potential to be troublesome, because I work in collage and I don’t manipulate it digitally.  I made sure that used a light touch with my glue, and anything that I had to remove or replace was easy to do.  Glad I did that or I’d have had big problems.
 
(art director wanted the building this simple, not like the above rough which shows them with a bit of dimension)

I learned a lot doing this job.  Art-wise, I did so much work that I had a chance to develop an effective work method.  When I do personal work, the timeline just isn’t there, so it’s invaluable to get a chance to learn how long something *really* takes, and be able to figure out if you’re going to get it all done.  My actual collage technique got more efficient.  The collages I did were very straightforward and normal.  I like to work a little weirder at times, but the job didn’t call for that.  

This was also a great learning experience in dealing with the professional/communication side of things.  Communication is key, I think.  I didn’t want the art director to worry about the work just because he hadn’t heard from me, so I keep up with scanning/sending and emailing during the course of the project.  I also kept my ego out of any discussion of corrections.  When I started the job, I made a conscious decision not to let my feelings get hurt if there were any discussions/corrections/issues with my work.  I figured they hired me because they liked my style, so anything else was simply business.  And you know what? Making that decision was the best thing I did.  It made me way more professional, inside and out.  It was like any work - do a great job, accept constructive criticism, move on.  

The job is just about wrapped up.  I had a last minute correction on one page, an additional small illustration, and 3 painted backgrounds.  

That’s it for now.  I hope you found this informative if you were wondering how the whole illustration thing works.  I know that the concept of illustration is less intimidating to me now.  It’s never as hard as you think, you know? But sometimes you just have to have the experience to realize it.

Up next: billing!  Since I’m doing this as a freelance person, all on my own, invoicing is a big learning curve for me.  I’ll write about that for my next installment!

Comments

[paintdropskeepfalling.wordpress.com]

Wow - that's an exciting break for you. Loved hearing all about it - really inspiring and interesting - thanks. Claire :)

[Briana]

Congrats on your illustration gig. That sounds exciting and a little stressful. Thank you for sharing your experience here. Do post more as things progress.
-Briana

[Ray]

Hi Sarah - I'm trying to get in touch with you and Phil - can you email me or call me. I wanted to let Phil know that I had to cancel the interview with Dr. Blake for this Sat.

my email is:

rfbonis@vcu.edu

phone at work 828-1108

[aijung]

hey sarah!

thanks for posting your process - it was really interesting. i liked hearing about all the things you learned from doing this gig. i'd love to see the finished product someday. i find freelance illustration to be good for me because it pushes me to see things in a new way and explore territory that i wouldn't normally. it also does make you realize how long you spend on making the art itself, like you mentioned. keep it up sarah! it's great to see you involved in so many cool things :)