Every now and then, while standing in a bank, I'll consider robbing it.

I think it's the security camera that does it. It's sort of like a challenge. The same thing happens to me in department stores; I'll see that big, black bubble in the ceiling and think "Hmmm... where's all the other ones?" and try to casually scope out the other ones. Find the blind spots.

"If I stand right there, behind that column, I could probably make off with all those neckties. You can never have too many neckties, Kevin."

Of course, I always conclude that robbing the bank, or the department store, or the fast-food restaurant is impossible. Unless...

"It would make more sense to maybe find a good hiding spot. Get behind the column, hide under the table. Then, at night, re-emerge and clean out the place!"

But it might not be that easy. Every place is sure to have alarm systems. What about the motion-detection system? What about the lasers?

"I could slide over and under and around them. I'm not in the best shape right now... but with the adrenaline pumping I... maybe... God... I should have trained."

Other problems start to reveal themselves.

"It's hard to exercise every day. There's only so much time in the day, and I've got a ton of things to do. I never stretch."

The plan starts to deteriorate.

"Pig. Kevin the Pig. That's what you are."

My focus waivers...

"Well... I'm in better shape than that guy at least."

...waivers...

"Him too."

...gone.

"Why isn't corduroy fashionable anymore? I have all these pants I can't wear now..."

I know a large number of people who find birds terrifying — my wife and brother being foremost in my mind. Both of them manifest their fears in different ways. Approached by a bird, Kim will just quietly whisper that birds scare her and edge a little farther away. My brother, a military man, prepares to defend himself, uttering curses beneath his breath and narrowing his eyes. His main problem with birds is that they have a tactical advantage, being able to retreat to the air, or ambush from above. A couple years ago during target practice on the gun range, he was almost overcome by the urge to ignore the targets and let loose on some nearby seagulls. Suffice it to say, birds don't bring out his beautiful side.

I, however, have no fear of birds. But I have found that under the right circumstances a bird can unsettle me a bit. For instance, if I were feeding ducks at the zoo. Here you are walking along, when you see a bunch of ducks and you think — awwww, cute! So you spend fifty cents on two handfuls of corn, and you sprinkle it about. But then, all these ducks start to realize you have food, and they tell their friends, and now ducks slowly make a ring around you, and you find yourself tossing corn faster and faster, your heart racing, an ever-quickening rondo of quacking drowning out all other sound, blank duck eyes glaring up at you in corn lust, and then suddenly a goose appears, and the ducks scatter like all those goblins did for the Balrog in Lord of the Rings and now this demon-goose wants all your corn and maybe your wallet and he's hissing and honking and your ears are hot with blood and fear and you toss the rest of the corn towards some nearby children and run to your car, crying.

But... you know... that's just special circumstances.

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the pencils (and other tools of the graphite trade) that I tend to use. This week I'm hoping to answer some of the questions I get regarding Pen & Ink. These are the implements I need to create the kind of linework you'd see in a Six-Penny Anthem, or an Ambidextrous. Or a Mojo Comic. Or for A List Apart. Or in a lot of sketchbook pages. Or for grocery lists and signing credit card receipts.

The Crow Quills For Thee

Here is my Crow Quill pen — a sludge-slickened Speedball #102. Two hundred years ago this would have been just one giant feather with the end split to hold ink. Goose feathers were the most common, but if you wanted really fine lines, you used a crow feather. During the eighteenth century, when wearing wigs and signing Declarations and Constitutions was all in vogue, we killed off all the agreeable crows, the kind that didn't mind just handing over all their feathers. This left us with only the angry kinds of crows, who steal our corn and hang out in murders. So today we manufacture our own pens. That's the price of freedom.

Nibs: Man's Smallest Reservoirs

Now, the real important thing to understand about a Crow Quill pen is that it comes in two parts: the holder, which is where you do all your holding of the pen; and the nib, which is where you do the drawing. The nibs are designed in such a way that when you dip it in ink, it sucks up all that liquid into a little reservoir, where it stays suspended through the magic of surface tension. Then when you want to draw, you press the nib down and it splits just enough so that a trickle of ink runs down onto the page, and — voilà! — you are making a line!

Depending on how much force you use, you can vary the thickness of the line. The nib I prefer, a #102, is generally the most flexible of the Speedball nibs, and so I can usually get a pretty thick line before the end of the nib snaps in half, shooting shards of metal all over my face and arms and eyes and groin. Or, put another way, before the nib bends so much that it no longer holds ink in the reservoir. As you can see from above, I have a whole big box of nibs ready for such situations.

Ink: It's not just for Squids anymore!

Of course, a Crow Quill is completely useless without a bit of ink. To be honest, I've never done any real research into ink; all I look for is that it's black and waterproof. That being said, I've used this Sanford Higgins Waterproof stuff since I was old enough to be accountable for spilling it on the carpet. I don't really pay attention to whether I'm using the normal ink, or the Black Magic brand. There's certainly some difference; judging from the name, I'd say Black Magic is a good stand-in for chicken blood in voodoo ceremonies.

For your viewing pleasure, here's a sample of a drawing made only with a Crow Quill pen:

Truth be told, though, I rarely use the Crow Quill for hatching and adding shadows. The majority of the time I use a single-width pen, like this:

But more on that to come.

Brushing Ink

On numerous occasions, I'll have large areas of black I'll need to fill in on a drawing. There's two ways I can do this: one, I can fill it in digitally, or two, I can use a brush. Option one is usually the way I go when the final product will be digital; but if I'm doing a drawing to hang up on a wall, I'll break out this guy:

This is my angled brush. He's pretty versatile. That tapered tip means I can get into really tight areas, but also make pretty broad, sweeping strokes if I angle it just right. Here's a few cases where I used the angle brush for filling in blacks¹:

As you can see, the angle brush can take care of most of my needs. But in certain situations, I may want to letter something, and I'll want a bit more precision. In such cases I'll use a lettering brush:

Its longer bristles act as kind of a "shock absorber", and hide some of the natural jittery-ness that comes with inking, so you get a more controlled line. I used a lettering brush for this bit of onomatopoeia:

That's the sound of a flaregun, kids. Good to know in case someone fires a flaregun and blinds you. Then later, when you hear the foosh, you know someone sent up a flare for help and you can help them.

Micron: The Pen Of Choice

If I didn't mention it already, the Crow Quill can get pretty messy. And what's more, it takes a while to dry. So I actually don't use it near as much as this fellow here:

This is a Sakura Pigma Micron Pen. I've been using these for years now. Chances are if I drew something in pen it was with one of these, and that's because they've got a lot of things going for them. They have a reliable single-width line; they dry relatively fast, and the ink is water-proof and archival. There's also a variety of point-sizes to choose from, so you can get either a really thick or really thin line. I actually prefer to use these for all the hatching I'd do in a Crow Quill drawing. Except for the wanton physicist J. Joseph Carter, all the drawings in this article are hatched with a Micron. Most Mojo comics and every Ambidextrous are drawn with a Micron, for sure.

Not to say they don't have some drawbacks. Microns tend to create a really dark grey line rather than a rich black like the Crow Quill & Higgins Ink combo, and often when I'll use a Micron for hatching on a Crow Quill drawing, the Micron lines almost look brown to me. Also, even though they're waterproof, you can't really do a wash over them (unlike Crow Quill lines, which are pretty steadfast), so if you plan to use microns with a watercolor, you need to do your linework after the watercoloring is done.

But the biggest problem with them is probably that they're expensive, and disposable. I've torn through an estimated 200 in my lifetime. That's a lot of waste. So, much like I'm trying to do with the mechanical pencils, I've switched to a refillable pen, also known as a Rapidograph.

Rapidograph: The New Pen of Choice

I had to buy a set of these in college, though you can purchase them individually. Like I mentioned, these are refillable; you basically unscrew the pen from the holder, and inside is this little cartridge you fill with ink. A nice plus is that rapidograph ink blends into a Crow Quill ink drawing better than a Micron. But a drawback to these babies is that they can clog, so you have to clean them every once in a while. Which is disappointing. I hate cleaning my tools. But then I remind myself that decreasing my environmental impact requires sacrifice. If I can give up ramming beaver dams with my car, what's a little extra cleaning?

A Further Note: Scanning your Blacks

One last thing I'd like to do is give a suggestion for bringing your pen and ink onto the computer. I'll scan almost all of my black and white work as a bitmap (scanners might also call this a "line art" setting), at 600 or sometimes even 1200 dpi. Then, for presentation, I'll convert the image to greyscale and shrink it down to the dimensions and dpi I'd like. You'll notice when you scan your image in at 600 dpi, and it's being displayed at 100%, it's quite pixelated. Well, once you convert to greyscale and shrink the image to at least 300 dpi, those pixelated lines will smooth right up. So there you go.

Next time, installment three: Painting Tools.

Footnotes

¹In the case of an A List Apart drawing, I don't use ink to do the wash. I prefer to use watercolor to add tone in an ALA drawing, but the linework is always Crow Quill.

I know, I know... this week was supposed to be Part II. of Bear Tools. But on Tuesday night we had one nasty thunderstorm that knocked out my internet until today. Consequently, I didn't get as far with Part II. as I'd like. So in lieu of learning, I figured I'd offer up a comic about learned goats.

Or... maybe this is Part II. I couldn't imagine doing a drawing without a goat. My desk would be littered with tin cans. And what would I sacrifice to Ba'al?

Occasionally, someone will write me asking what sort of pens, pencils and paper I use. And just as occasionally, I'll write back with a legitimate answer or gypsy curse. So I've decided to preemptively answer some of these future emails by posting an article, much like I did a few weeks ago with Entering Illustration, that will address some of these common questions. Of course, pretty soon into this article, I realized there's just too much to say for one piece. So I'll be examining my various drawing apparatuses over a series of articles, with this first part concentrating on...

Pencils and other Starter Tools

As I've mentioned before, every drawing almost always starts as a pencil rough. While some of these eventually turn into ink drawings or paintings, a good percentage of them really don't progress past the rough stage, and just turn into a refined pencil drawing. For both roughs and refined pencil drawings, I generally only require the use of 2 or 3 specific pencils, and some supplemental tools.

Blue Faithful, the 3H Pencil

Meet my oldest friend in the toolbox — the 3H Pencil¹. We've been together so long, I'm not even sure when I got him. Or who made him. But the majority of drawings I've done in the past 5 years or so started out with him. I generally use him to "feel out" a drawing, lightly penciling in shapes and space at the start of a drawing. He's sort of the pencil equivalent of Lewis & Clark, venturing into the vast wilderness of the white page and returning to me with an important outline of what's there. For example:

See? Before 3H, I didn't even know Reginald existed. His sweetie, however, remains a mystery to all. Moving on...

A Family Tradition: The Mechanical Pencil

While hard-hearted 3H and his ilk live long, steady lives, Mechanical Pencils tend to live fast and hard, and then quickly die out, their soft guts splayed across a hundred scattered sketches and drawings. So I find that I need to employ entire families of Mechanical Pencils in order to keep drawing. This is Red the XIV, from the Bic-Matic Grip Pencil clan. All the members of Bic-Matic Grip Pencil clan have served me well. Their soft #2 Medium graphite tips have stayed perpetually sharp, and provide most of the line and tone in every drawing. In the example below, we see Reginald has now been blocked in with a few Mechanical Pencil strokes. From this point I could either smear those lines to get tone, or go in with another pencil (whom you'll meet soon enough).

Sadly, I plan to abandon this particular Bic-Matic Grip Pencil clan once the last member of the clan leaves the box. I've decided to start using a Mechanical Pencil with refillable insides, so to be a bit more environmentally responsible. But I shall not forget their many contributions to my important work.

The Versatile Mr. H

This is my second oldest friend — the H pencil. His chief value, for me, is his versatility. On occasions where 3H goes vacationing in the couch cushions or the bottom of my bag, good ol' H is willing to do the initial rough exploration on a new drawing. But he's not limited to that. H very often is used for hatching and shading, though the amount of darkness he provides depends very much on what paper I'm using. I've included a sample of H in action below, but he's also appeared in a couple other articles.

Rubber Eraser

What we have here are rubber erasers, also known as a kneadable erasers. I use them for almost all my erasing needs, though it's not like I have anything against other erasers (for instance, I'll often use the little chap topping Mechanical Pencils). I suppose I use them because they last a long time, and their pliability means I can combine them into a supereraser for cleaning broad areas of a drawing, or I can tear off little pointy nubs for erasing tiny areas. Like noses. Or Elephants... in drawings of the Earth from space.

The only problem with these guys is that they tend to pick up every bit of detritus they touch. It's probably the filthiest thing I use on a daily basis, not including my aforementioned library of gypsy curses. Often I'll start to erase with one, and not realize a piece of mechanical pencil got lodged in its side, and dark strokes will suddenly appear where I'm supposed to be erasing. Their idea of a practical joke, I think.

Tortillon

These fellows are called Tortillons. I employ a number of these to create tone in a drawing, by smearing the loose graphite lines of the Mechanical Pencil. While they are probably my favorite tool, they do have a bit of a drawback, mainly the fact that the concept of dry paper rubbing on dry paper makes my skin crawl in the same way fingernails on a blackboard would affect someone else. Luckily, I'm able to tolerate it while drawing, but man... the hair on my arms is sticking straight up just typing this paragraph... let's just go to the samples so I can relax:

A Quick Note on Digital Tools

I would be negligent if I didn't mention the use of digital drawing tools, particularly Photoshop's paintbrush and brush shapes, when talking about drawing. I won't get too in-depth on the subject, at least not in this article.

Often, when something doesn't erase as well as I'd like, or if I'd like to add a line here, or a highlight there, I'll add these touches in Photoshop. I still try to get everything as perfect as possible in real-life, but to be honest it's rare to always get things just how you want them. And it's important to note, that in preparing a drawing or painting to be seen on the web, you'll almost never get a scan or photo that looks exactly how you're seeing it in the real world. Tools like Levels, Hue/Saturation, and Sharpen help you more accurately translate the real-life appearance of your art to the web format.

Well, that's about all I have to share regarding the tools I use for roughs and pencil drawing. Next time, I'll be going over pens I think. Or maybe hot air balloons. You can't do a drawing without a proper dirigible, right?

Footnotes

¹In case you're unfamiliar with the naming convention for pencils, H stands for hardness. The higher the number, the harder the pencil (and lighter the line). As pencils get softer, a "B" is added. And then the higher the number before the B, the softer the graphite (and darker the line). I'm not sure what B stands for. Probably Bsoftness, where the B is silent.

I can't really remember the last time I was in an emergency room. I vaguely recall a visit when I was at least old enough to fill out the forms myself. There's a couple memories I have that seem pretty recent, and make me think I was older, but to be honest I might be appropriating a couple of scenes from television and movies. That happens to me quite a bit. Like, I know I never met Fonzie, but I can easily remember him standing in the bathroom of my art school. Fonzie would have hated that bathroom. Nothing opened when you hit it.

Come to think of it, I can't even remember any emergency room visit. I've broken my arm twice, my thumb once (I fell down and broke it while wearing the cast from my broken arm), and my collarbone once. I've also broken a couple of toes... I think... it's hard to tell because my toes are so ugly anyway. So I know I went to the emergency room on all of those occasions, I just can't remember the actual waiting room.

This leads me to believe that I might have just sent the broken part to the emergency room and stayed at home. Which explains why emergency rooms get so backed-up, because it would take forever for a severed leg to fill out a form without any help.

Benjamin Smole, as you can tell, sells premium-grade holes. We're talking high-quality cavities here, not those cheap, knock-offs you see on TV, calling themselves a hole when they're — at best — a ditch. No sir, you put a Smole Classic™ or a Benjamin's Choice Ultra-Wide™ in your backyard and all your drainage, trash, and burial problems are over. So you can understand Benjamin's enthusiasm — he believes in his product!

Oddly enough, the hole-selling game has been abysmal, just abysmal, these days. He's been traveling the country, going door-to-door, and yet just can't seem to drive home a sale.

Even that sure-fire technique for sales success, the Town Square Medicine-Show Demonstration, just isn't bringing in the Sacajaweas. In fact, most people almost seem to leave before the demonstration even starts!

But rest assured, Benjamin will keep at it, because if there's one thing anyone in the hole-selling game knows, it's that people just can't live without their holes.

Speaking of Traveling The Country and Holes

Good friend and frequent Bearskinrug model, Rob Weychert (pictured above), has been traveling the country throughout May, and has recently begun his return trip home. His adventures, documented here with brevity and humor, have been amusing me throughout the month — you might enjoy them yourself, so check it out!

I often think I should take up some sort of hobby beside drawing. Model building seems like it could be fun — what could be more exhilarating than assembly? Or instruction reading? Though there is one significant problem — I don't really care for decorating my home with tchotchkes, or baubles, or knick-knacks. Whatever you call the crap that takes up all the flat surfaces in a home.

For a while there, I was learning origami, the ancient art of bending and yelling at paper until it becomes dirty and wet from my filthy fingers. This was a fun distraction, but all too soon I had built up a sprawling army of doves, cranes, boxes, stars, and some sort of rabbit or dog. This then triggered a unique mental crisis. where I'd just stand there, my mind oscillating, one moment thinking this is obviously trash, and the next thinking I spent 3 hours trying to get these wings to flap — I can't throw this out!

In the end, my dove/crane/box/star/rabbit-dog army bivouacked in my office closet for over a year, before I was finally emotionally detached enough that I could break the loop and toss them away. So I imagine that moments after finishing an elaborate model ship, my life would come to a crushing standstill, my body wasting into nothingness, doomed to stand there vibrating, unable to scuttle my three-masted piece-of-junk Junk for all eternity.

Yup — better to be cautious and find a safe hobby. Like Crossword Puzzles. I've never been able to fill out more than three clues on one of them. No chance of emotional investment there.

I can easily identify with this — it took me forever to be able to eat a mushy banana. I also don't care for eating the end of the banana, that part that gets impaled by the little spike at the bottom of the peel. Yet I do it anyways, because potassium helps me grow. And it's surely working, because all around me I see signs that I'm maturing.

For instance, I spend much less time thinking about my outsides, and much more time thinking about my insides. I worry way more about my prostate than I ever did about my hair.

Also, I am no longer satisfied by anything I build with Legos. When I was a kid, I had enough imagination to pretend that the big flat 16×8 piece with wheels on it was a car. Now, I refuse to accept that any discerning Legoman would pay good Lego money for a vehicle with such obvious flaws. For heaven's sake, there's no ignition!

And lastly, I started to make a conscious effort not to use the word "fucking" as an adjective in daily speech, replacing it with the much classier word "rather". Observe:

I'm... uh... still getting the hang of it.

When I was younger, I thought acting must be a pretty easy job, and consequently didn't give actors much credit. This might have been because it's so much easier to weave intricate webs of lies when you're a teenager. But as an adult, I've come to understand acting isn't easy. I certainly can't do it. I tend to not be able to keep a straight face, and it takes me forever to memorize anything. Plus, I'm barely comfortable watching sex scenes, much less performing one.

I can't imagine Mojo being much better than me, though for different reasons. First, he seems to have seems to have sub-par language skills, and secondly has major problems working in a team environment. I mean, he works well enough with Lewis, but that's because Lew is an exceptionally accommodating monkey.

I suppose for the first couple weeks of a show Mojo isn't a terribly bad cast member. But pretty soon the rest of the actors start to notice their glamour shots have all been pre-autographed by "Mojo The Magnificent". And it just escalates from there, until one day the show is delayed because he's put on every costume — and all the make-up — at the same time.

For some sort of one-man show I think it was.

Reviews weren't too bad.

Being a parent is tough. Though, having no children myself, I can only say that through my experience as a child who made things tough for his parents. And of course, I can observe the toughness of parenthood through my peers. I am now passing the phase in life when all my friends are wedding, and entering the phase where they're begetting.

I do slightly understand the difficulty of parenting through my experience of pet ownership, but this usually isn't anything a real parent wants to hear about. On numerous occasions I've made the mistake of countering a "my child does this" story with a "my dog does this". I can understand a parent being insulted by this comparison — unless of course their child is feral, in which case I turn out to be a better parent than them even without a kid.

For a while now, I've fielded emails from folks looking to enter illustration as a career. And for that same while, I've been replying with an almost uniform compendium of tips, thinking to myself it'd probably more efficient to just write a post instead of having to type the same answers over and over. But I always held back, the chief reason for it being that I never really felt qualified enough to give such advice in as public a forum as this site.

These days, I still don't feel super-qualified, but I have made a great deal of progress since those first anxious months of 2004. And as I get older, and more established, chances are I'll forget how it was at the start, and forget the important points that can really help a beginner. So I figured it was time to at least write something.

With that in mind, I'd like to share some lessons I've learned about entering the field of illustration:

There Is No True Path

The first thing to get straight is that every illustrator is going to have a different path to success. Ninety-percent of illustration work out there is freelance work, and you make a living in freelancing by keeping your eye out for good opportunities, and pouncing on them. So don't worry about doing things "right" — the only things you can do wrong is curling up into a ball and whimpering when the path forks.

Protect Your Love

Not everything you draw should become public. You need to preserve your love for drawing — there needs to be art you do for fun. Find a balance between what you create knowing someone will see it, and what you create for yourself.

Don't Give Up

Many would-be illustrators seem to quit illustration after a subtle war of attrition, where tiny roadblock after tiny roadblock wears down their passion to make a living by the pen or paint, until finally they give up. I've gone through some very lean times as well, and I certainly understand the feeling. But I truly believe that anyone can make a living if they just keep at it long enough. If you can draw, chances are there's someone out there who will pay you to do it — you just need to keep trying to find them.

Give Yourself Time

I'm a strong believer that instant and overnight success are absolute poison. Don't look for the big job that will instantly launch you into the center ring; you'll often find you might not have the experience you need to keep you there. When starting out, look for small, short jobs that you're confident you can handle, and build your career slowly and patiently.

Have A Goal

When I left my old job to try my hand at illustration, I set two relatively achievable goals — make a living doing something I love, and earn enough to support both Kim and I within five years. I'm three years in now, and while Kim can't quit her job just yet, we can at least split the house bills. Every job I have is measured against those end goals to help keep me focused — if a job won't meet both criteria, I don't take it.

Understand What You Have To Offer

Try your hardest not to underestimate the value of what you do. The ability to illustrate is a skill, a skill some have and some don't. That means you have something you can market. It's especially important to remember that when starting out, because the public in general perceives illustration as a cheap commodity. Remember, when you take a job for a mere pittance, it hurts the illustration community at large; that means there's one more client out there with the wrong expectations on price.

Understand Copyright

This is a tough subject to address with any brevity, but a basic fact you should know is that everything you create you own; a client pays you not only to create the art, but then on top of that they're paying you for rights to use that art. Some clients want to buy the copyright to that art outright (at a standard cost of 200-300% the price of production), or just pay for certain small rights — for instance, the right to use that painting on a website for a year (I'd say... 15-25% the cost of production, but this varies in negotiating). Writing up a contract and not specifying what a client can use the work for is irresponsible. The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines is a helpful resource for industry standards. I also found that it was useful to see how much rights-managed artwork on stock photo sites would charge, and use that to help you judge an accurate percentage. Oh — and just so you know, purchase of the original artwork on a client job is negotiated separately as well (usually at 100-200% the cost of production).

Be Fair In Business

Business should not be a cutthroat endeavor, where you're always looking for an upper-hand. Negotiate with clients; understand what they want, and help them understand what you can give, and find a price you're both happy with. Your talent might bring in first time clients, but your integrity, honesty, and responsibility is what will bring them back.

Protect Your Liberty

I didn't get into illustration to rock the world. I don't want to win awards, and I don't want to be a millionaire. I just want to draw for a living. Not being seduced by high-paying or high-profile work allows me to turn down jobs, and do the work that makes me happy. Whether or not that can work for you only you can judge; but if you want to draw for a living because you love to draw, that's what's worked for me.

Hedge Your Bets

It can be difficult starting out to earn money and pay the bills. If you plan to go into illustration, there's three ways you can provide for your future when times are tight: have a nest egg in place, have a supportive working spouse or parent, or have a part-time job. With luck, you'll eventually carve out a place in illustration, and be able to support yourself. Starting out is hard — jobs are few and far between — but if you weather the lean times, opportunities will come.

Find Your Market

There's numerous markets for illustration. Some people want to do children's books. Some people want to do greeting cards. Investigate the different markets you could work in, find the one for you, and concentrate on getting work there. Just don't be too picky at the start. A job is a job when you're trying to make a living.

Have A Portfolio, And Maintain it

This should go without saying. No matter how good you are, no one can hire you if they can't see your work. And remember, not everything you've ever done goes in your portfolio; a portfolio should reflect the kind of work you want to do, the best work you do. If you're unsure if something should go in your portfolio, then it doesn't belong there.

Build A Reputation, Not A Network

While friends and former clients may have the capacity to push jobs your way, you need to earn that recommendation. If you're honest in business, and if you do good quality work, the people you've worked with in the past won't hesitate to give out your name. And then you'll have a network.

You Will Get Screwed

Accept it — there will be times where you get screwed. It's inevitable. One day, you may look back and think — damn, I should have charged more, or damn, I shouldn't have sold off those rights. Or perhaps even... damn, this guy hasn't paid me and I can't find him, or damn, these guys are using my art without permission and without paying me. You will get screwed. But don't let the fear of that keep you from trying. Every time you make a mistake, you learn something. And it would be impossible to make a right decision every time, especially starting out, and being unfamiliar in the industry. But you CAN minimize the degree of screwing by taking a few precautions from the start:

Try and find as much information as you can on trade practices, industry standards on pricing, and charging for copyright. Again, I recommend the GAG guide, with the caveat that it's not a magic book that you open and you immediately have your answer; I often have to use its numbers as a starting point, and have to come up with my own figures (which mostly has to do with the fact that illustrating for the web is still a relatively new market). And there's plenty of other literature out there, I'm sure (recommendations welcome, my fellow illustrators). And while I haven't been in contact with any Graphic Artist Guild members, I have spoken to a couple people who've contacted them and gotten some helpful advice.

Always, always, always work with a contract. A good starter contract comes with the GAG guide. If you just can't interpret the legalese, write up something yourself that dictates in plain language what the client is asking you to do: what it is you're supposed to illustrate, how much they've agreed to pay you, how many rounds of revisions they're allowed to have, when the job starts and stops, and when you're supposed to receive payment.

Try and get deposit from a client (either a half or a third of the final fee) up front. When a prospective client is willing to plunk down actual funds to get the project started, you know they're committed to the job just as much as you are.

When starting out, and not completely sure of how much you can deliver, it's best to play it safe and take small jobs that don't overwhelm you. And make sure there's plenty of room in the schedule to protect you from accidents and mistakes when creating your piece (my biggest problem with early jobs was getting to the end and hating what I did, and needing to start over — luckily, I always had time to do that).

I know. Getting screwed is still a dreadful thought; but even the smallest peon in a huge company is just as susceptible to a swift kick in the weekend plans. And I'll tell you, one of my major motivations in leaving the agency world was that if I was going to have to fix a fuck-up, I'd rather it was my fuck-up from now on.

Experience Is Your Best Asset

There is no substitute for experience. A thousand tiny little lessons in business, drawing, and administration can't be taught or downloaded. You may want to conduct yourself like someone who's been working for five years, but you can't. What you can do is put yourself on the right road right now, and consciously try to avoid delaying things because you think you're not ready.

Ask For Help

One of my biggest struggles starting out was finding other illustrators who could share their wisdom. Part of this has to do with me coming out of a web design background, with absolutely no illustration contacts. But here and there I contacted a couple names whose work I appreciated. And while (sad to say), the majority of them didn't reply, the few people who I did get to talk to really help alleviate a lot of the burdensome doubts I had when started out. I encourage you to ask for help and advice when you need it.

Give Help

Like I said, I didn't get a lot of support from a majority of other illustrators starting out. Consequently, I've tried particularly hard to answer anyone who's written me with questions. I'd advise anyone else starting out to do the same, when they have a chance. And if you're balking because you don't feel qualified enough to answer, even that is a good enough reply for someone just starting out.

Do what I say...

So there's some of the lessons I've learned since starting down the long road of illustration. I can't say I always practice what I preach. I'm certainly guilty of underquoting for a job, and I definitely did (and still do) my fair share of curling into a ball and whimpering. But they're still practices I try to adhere to, ones I truly believe have helped me through these years. I certainly hope they can help you.

Additional Notes

Regarding hourly rates versus flat rates, Niff makes a great point in the comments. As an illustrator, it's in your best interest to quote flat rates. It will be easier for you to quote the cost of selling copyright, since that's usually done as a percentage of the final production cost, and it also keeps you from penalizing yourself for working efficiently.

As some of you may or may not know, last week was South by Southwest 2008, the interactive web conference. I made the trip again this year, and it was lovely to have been unshackled from the desk for a weekend. One welcome bonus to making the trip was the chance to fill up my sketchbook, and one welcome bonus of that was the chance to document one of my many lunch adventures in comic form, as seen above.

(Hands behind back, looking around ol' Bearskinrug Manor)

Very well then. Everything seems in order here...

We now return you to the Great Bearskinrug Hiatus, already in progress.

Well I hate to say it, but after 3-going-on-4 years of weekly BSR posting, I'm going to take a hiatus of sorts. Between an uber-job I can't quite talk about yet, my other recurring online duties, and a work pace in January that resulted in no weekends, something has to give before my brain or my wrist do.

I will, of course, still be answering email, shipping store items, and also posting at The Superest.

But if there won't be a new article for a month or two, I'd want to leave everyone with a Mojo comic. Feel free to take your time reading it. Perhaps a panel a day. Or if you read it too fast, and want more, there's always 296 other comics and articles to read.

Decompression initiating in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Here's a page from Sketchbook Eleven, dating this comic at... oh around 2004. Wow. It's four years old. Since then, I've been on real Beef Tours, led by real cows. You'd be surprised how much beef comes from the ass. Well, not the ass, but the cow tush.

Though I suppose the amount of donkey meat we consume would be surprising as well. For instance, in Lucky Charms, three of the seven marshmallow varieties are actually burro. I won't tell you which ones — I mean, I don't wanna get sued here. No one can afford better legal representation than a leprechaun.