This unit has pushed me to think about a lot of things I preferred not to consider. Networks, Artist Statements, Audiences, Collaborative Efforts, Project Plans are all extremely intimidating prospects as someone who has worked solitarily for years. I have narrowed down and put into words a lot of things about my practice, or at least what I would like my practice to be like in the future, but I think I have that same incurable bug a lot of artists have. The one that hates boxes and being placed in one. Or at least being forced to place one’s art in one.

So, both aspects of this section are challenging. Networks, because I am a hermit artist to the extent I verge on stereotype. Audiences, because I don’t think good art or good stories have an age limit or are meant for a single group of people and I have a pet peeve about people discounting the value of a work because they think it looks like it was made for children. That being said, I understand the value of being very specific and intentional when addressing these to aspects of making work. As an illustrator, knowing who you’re making something for is technically the first step in making anything. And connecting to other people is how that work gets shared and how it grows.

There are two directions to tackle networks and audiences from: for myself as an illustrator and for a project.

Networks:

As an illustrator and a person in general, I want to find people to talk to who also work in the same industry I do and share the same experiences. It might start as “Networking” for pragmatic reasons, finding people to gain advice from or give advice to (eventually. not sure I have much advice to give to anyone as of right now), finding people to collaborate with, attending events to gain the lay of the land, so to speak. But hopefully I could for connections that are more than temporary.

I will be entirely honest and say this is a difficult thing for me. Reaching out isn’t something that I do for fun and advocating for myself in a professional capacity is extremely daunting. Most creatives have impostor syndrome, and I am no different. It takes true audacity to be advocating for one’s work when still in the beginning of one’s career (especially when the lack of real industry experience is visible on the work itself), and I’m afraid that “audacious” is at the very bottom of my descriptor list. I threw down a gauntlet for myself in the previous unit about showing my work for this very reason (more about this below). To put myself out there would require attempting to provide others with value in some capacity, either with my actual images/stories or with advice or encouragement, I think. I don’t really have a way to connect with other illustrators where I am staying now (at least not that I have found, will keep searching), so I’m really left with the Internet as a resource for finding other artists and writers, even though in-person events are superior for interacting with anyone.

I have not attempted to reach out, or at least to be consistent about reaching out, to other artists in a good while, and I confess that I don’t have a lot of faith in social media as a medium for this, but I will be on the lookout for others who are in the same position as I am and attempt to make some sort of connection.

I will also ask for portfolio reviews once I’ve finalized the images, I’ve set out to make for the portfolio section of this project. This is also one way to connect with other artists and get and give advice.

Audiences:

Audience-wise, I think I’m still working on who I’m addressing. I expanded on this in a previous post, about how an illustrator can address employers, writers, other artists, parents or the young readers themselves depending on their goals/project. One presumably presents themselves differently (and brings a different selection of work) when addressing an art director of a board game project vs a children’s book author vs a general audience on social media.

If I were to write a sort of Artist Statement about how I approach my work in general and not a specific project, I suppose I would write about how my influences from mythology, Eastern European folklore, Western media, and my love for history have created an obsession with the stories people tell about the world and themselves and how they show the dizzying variety and astonishing (and occasionally baffling) sameness of humans. And something about how as part of a generation whose brains have been irreversibly changed by technology, I have a fascination with the mixture of words and images together as a method of communication and how the physical object where the story is contained, be it digital or not, affects the way we perceive narrative, especially in the context of the Internet, which in itself changes how we use text and image to interact with each other. I would probably also address my original roots in traditional art, which have since expanded to the digital in a way that hopefully does (or will eventually) show a balance of some traditional painterly techniques with the efficiency of digital tools. I think I would say something about trying to use the skills at my disposal to tell stories of the fantastical variety for people who have found the world to be bleak and people disappointing and cruel, and hopefully unearth a ray of hope from where it was buried. Because I think the fantastical, the so-called frivolous escapism found in stories where the best and worst of humans and the world are heightened to ridiculous proportions, is the best vehicle for the difficult, the divisive, and the tangled problems that all of us must face. Something along those lines. It’s a bit general.

My work doesn’t quite communicate all of this yet, but with this portfolio project, I want to dig into these ideas and try to put them on paper. Especially in a landscape where AI art can mimic the superficial aesthetics of the fantasy genera, but not the true soul of it, I want to infuse all of my images with depth, expression and real storytelling.

Audience-wise, if we’re talking about a single project, specifically this comic, the safest bet would be that I’m addressing a middle grade and up audience. PG, in film terms. It’s essentially a story about making friends with unlikely people and navigating reconciliation. There will be some violence and perhaps some difficult themes but not anymore than most classic Disney films have. This is something I will be checking in with others about because sometimes applying fairytale logic to a modern children’s story can get dicey. This project is basically a Hans Christian Andersen crossover, most of his fairytales are depressing. Half of the reason I chose most of these characters was because I thought they could use a happier ending. I also may have something of a blind spot around dark themes, because as a kid I never thought the Bluebeard story was different from any other princess story, even though looking back I recognize Cinderella is very different from a young wife being entrusted with the key to her Serial Killer Husband’s trophy cellar. Which happens to contain the other wives. I suppose that would be one point in Ethical Considerations when I make a proper Project Plan/Possible Query Letter for this comic at the end of this unit.

In the last section, I proposed a mini portfolio project for the last five parts of this unit. The portfolio is necessary because I feel like my abilities as an artist have grown, but I don’t have enough finished pieces to show for it and when I present my work to others I want it to be representative. When I began 3.2, I had hoped to finish the comic by part five and continue with the second project without overlap, but it seems I will be making adjustments to the comic as I work on the individual illustrations. By Assessment, I will have the Project Plan in the form of a dummy graphic novel Query Letter for Verner’s Tale as well as the beginnings of an updated online portfolio. So far, I have completed the final two pages of the comic, but have yet to add the ones I had talked about in the previous post and have made 2 of the 5 character-based illustrations. That leaves:

• 3 More Characters (extremely simple background/no background)
• 3 Exteriors (no more than 1-2 characters)
• 3 Interiors (no more than 1-2 characters)

I decided to focus entirely on fantastical characters and settings. The first one is a very sensitive woodcutter orc character. I imagined him to be something of a poet and a dreamer. I have had a similar character in my head for a while and plan to include him as some type of temporary ally in Verner’s Tale. The first sketches were on paper and the first inspiration image was just one I found on Pinterest, as I do with a lot of my images. I eventually deviated and made him more similar to what I had conceived in my own imagination.

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Photographs of Residents of a Small German Farming Village
By Melissa Breyer

The art below inspired me in theme more than style, with the working farmers being the focus. Ramón Frade’s piece especially, because the gentlemen portrayed is both monumental and heroic.

Ramón Frade, Our Daily Bread, 1905, oil on canvas (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan)

“Dappled Light” by Liz Hoag. 36” X 24” Acrylic.

N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882 – 1945) ‘Crusoe Harvests his Barley while his Parrot Stares” 1920 Illustration for the book “Robinson Crusoe”

I attempted to use the more common method of inking-filling in-overpainting for this piece. It worked out decently, but I need more practice with rendering light. I will also be adding more storytelling elements. Now that I look at it, I see the expression and do think he isn’t necessarily a “fierce orc” stereotype, but I think I could lean into the “poet” thing more explicitly. Perhaps I could include a notebook and a quill somewhere. He’s clearly using the absolutely enormous axe for actually cutting wood instead of enemies, like most orcs would be expected to do, but I think the pile of wood could look a little more natural. He’s also lacking in embellishment. The furry vest could be embroidered, and he could wear a fancy medallion that marks him as a guild member, or I could include a family crest somewhere on his person.

I like the atmosphere, which is what I was looking to get right, but I think I will be making some adjustments later to better tell this woodsman orc’s story.

In this second image I focused on the Snow Queen, mostly because I had that introductory scene I want to include in the comic on the mind. She’s stalking a couple of the characters from the group as the trespass on her land. The comic probably won’t actually show this perspective, because I’m going to make the scene a bit more mysterious.

I went with something far more painterly here, to make it more similar to the comic and because I am trying different techniques to see what is the most efficient.

Character Design Reference Sheets and Sketches

Even though there is other stuff going on around her/the image isn’t entirely without background, I wanted her to be front and center. I really like the initial sketch I made, composition-wise, and I think I should have kept a more wide and less tall canvas instead of the standard printing size I chose. The shapes looked more interesting when she was a bit more squeezed in the frame, I think.

The final is pretty good, but I think the figures in the background aren’t clear enough, so she looks like she’s just kind of passively on the lookout instead of stalking someone. I’m also constantly going back and forth on whether or not I want her dress to have more embellishment. On the one hand, I really want to include the initial concept I had where her dress had traditional Norwegian design, but I also like the black and white simplicity. This is actually a bigger problem with the comic in general, because I would theoretically like the characters to be more detailed but If I want to continue to draw it in the same vein it would not be very sustainable. I’m probably going to end up making certain panels more detailed than others and see how I like that.

In an effort to combat my fear of showing my work regardless of how good or bad or how inconsistent I’ve been over the years, I have challenged myself to post shorts on YouTube with daily sketches. I have not actually managed to post every single day since challenging myself, but I’m slowly getting there and I’m trying not to put pressure on myself when I break the streak and simply take it up again. Breaking a streak has often been the thing which has led me to giving up, so I’m actively trying not to do that.

My YouTube Channel

To make things easy, I chose to do the easiest thing, which is just copying. I have references piled up in a Pinterest board and a brand-new program to learn (Clip Studio Paint, I’m giving up on Adobe), and I’m having a surprising amount of fun with it. The most annoying part is waiting for the videos to export, but I’m also liking the process of editing them, which is unexpected. It’s all still very anxiety-inducing, and I have had an unexpected number of views (500 on one of them after three days) for a set of videos which absolutely do not aim for virality in any way. I’m not sure whether the number of views is better or worse. I included several of the images here, but if one wants to see all of them, they are up on YouTube.

Photo by: Gekoo-Photography

Photo by: Douglas Herring

Model: Dawn Vice

Photo by: Priorattire

Photo by: Geraint Lewis

Roger Allam as Falstaff at the Globe

Photo by: Douglas Herring

Models: Dameon riding Knarr

Screenshot from Mulan: Rise of a Warrior (2009)

Chinese Title: 花木蘭 (Hua Mulan)

Photo by: Tieieru Cristian

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