Physical vs. Virtual Networking

-By Lauren Panepinto

As many of you have seen across various social media channels, Illuxcon was this weekend (and was the best one yet, in my opinion), and it's a really great opportunity to talk about the importance of networking, and the differences between physical and virtual networking.



By physical networking I mean going to conventions, having your portfolio reviewed, office visits, going to lectures, sketch nights, gallery openings, really any events, including just hanging out and socializing informally with peers. By virtual networking I'm talking about emailing and social media—mostly facebook and twitter because those have the most interaction. 

Art Directors don't bite, I promise! Stewart Craig escaped unscathed.

This is going to come as a surprise to no one: In today's world you must put time and effort into virtual networking. You must make your work available online, even if it's via the most basic website. You have to target clients and Art Directors by email and keep them updated every so often of your new work and your website. I'll even go out on a limb and say you must be on facebook, even if just an artist fan page rather than a personal account. I think you can take or leave twitter as an artist, since it's not a visual medium, but there's an interaction style on twitter that is really different from facebook and works well for some people. You all know by now that I love instagram and pinterest, but we'll consider them bonus activity for this post, along with Behance, DeviantArt, CGHub and all the art-specific networking sites. You don't have to be everywhere, but pick sites that mesh with how you work and the devices you use most, and then keep them updated. Third-party manager apps like ifttt.com are amazing, just remember the idea is to not make the auto-posting feel like a robot is running all your social media interaction.



Why is it so important to keep a steady presence online? Well, for one thing, most Art Directors spend a giant portion of their day online and on social media, keeping tabs on artists, keeping an eye on fresh talent, gossiping about artists (anyone who was just at Illuxcon will agree: ADs gossip like fishwives). Also, the art world is changing. There's a world of artist-as-entrepreneur opportunities online to sell your art and personal projects directly to fans via sites like etsy, society6, kickstarter, etc. Building an audience of people who love your art just because they love it and have no business motives is a lovely self-confidence (and financial) cushion when that evil AD keeps not calling you for commissions. Look at artists like Tara McPherson, who was fabulous enough to come to Spectrum this year and talk about how to diversify your art career and audience. She sells prints and merch, does gallery work, and still takes commissions for bands, comics, book covers.


While online, just remember the rules from the Approaching Art Directors post: no tagging people in your artwork just so they look at it. No posting your work on ADs pages. No facebook-messenger-stalking or twitter-stalking. Just be as polite online as you would be in person and you'll be fine.



Ok, now let's go on to the harder of the two: Physical Networking. It's more expensive, it's more work, and it's potentially very uncomfortable.

There were so many artists and ADs in that one restaurant it was ridiculous.

Artists ask me all the time, how important is living in NYC (publishing & editorial) or CA/WA (film & games)? Is it mandatory to go to cons? Do you have to meet Art Directors in person? 



No, physical networking is not mandatory. I work with a lot of artists I've never met. I know a lot of artists who don't go to cons and who live in remote places—thanks to hi-speed internet. And while I think it is critical that you establish a network of people who can give you honest critiques, yes, that can be a virtual network. 



Relieved? Well, let me add this caveat: One hour of physical networking is worth 100 hours of virtual networking. I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I'm probably underestimating. I underlined it just so you know I'm serious. There is no real substitution for meeting someone and having a conversation with them. As a human being you take in so much subconscious information about a person when you meet them that it makes an impact you just can't replicate virtually. Skype and Online classes come close but not close enough. Meeting someone is a giant leap towards trusting them and starting a relationship with them. And as an Art Director, you're asked to put your job in someone else's hands every time you hire an artist—the more trust you have for a person, the more you feel like you know them, the less risky that feels. Again, you can establish strong connections virtually, but it's like walking while physical networking is driving a ferrari.



You know that world-famous artist you've admired since before you ever picked up a wacom pad? At a con you can walk right up and meet them and show them your work and get feedback. You know that Art Director who never answers the phone and doesn't have time to answer every email from artists they don't know? At a lot of industry events you can sign up for a portfolio review with them, and if you miss that you can walk right up to them and ask them to look at your work. (Just remember the no bathroom solicitation rule.*) At sketch nites and gallery openings and lectures you can meet other artists up, down, and at the same place on the career ladder as you are, and get an infinite amount of perspectives on your art and the business of art. These kinds of interactions only happen in person. There's just no replicating them virtually. Late night ichat conversations and facebook posts just aren't the same as being up until 4:30am debating art with other artists in a Holiday Inn lobby* or a dark bar somewhere.

Did someone say world-famous artists?

So why do many artists find physical networking so hard? (Besides the fact that living in NYC as well and/or traveling to cons costs a lot of money, of course.)



There's a pervasive stereotype that artists (especially SciFi/Fantasy artists) are weird introverts that do all their work at night, chain smoke cigarettes, and don't venture into the light of day.* Now while there's certainly the cases that prove the sterotype, in fact artists are some of the most social animals I've ever met. So let's go back to the actual definitions of extravert and introvert. It's not as simple as shy or not. These are terms created by Carl Jung and further codified after him by Myers & Briggs. If you look these personality types up on the Myers-Briggs chart you'll find these profiles:



Extravert (outward-turning): "I like getting my energy from active involvement in events and
having a lot of different activities. I’m excited when I’m around
people and I like to energize other people. I like moving into
action and making things happen. I generally feel at home in the
world. I often understand a problem better when I can talk out
loud about it and hear what others have to say."



Introvert (inward-turning): "I like getting my energy from dealing with the ideas, pictures,
memories, and reactions that are inside my head, in my inner world.
I often prefer doing things alone or with one or two people I
feel comfortable with. I take time to reflect so that I have a
clear idea of what I’ll be doing when I decide to act. Ideas are
almost solid things for me. Sometimes I like the idea of something
better than the real thing." 

 

You don't even have to make conversation, you can just stand and watch an artist's process,

in this case Travis Lewis's crazy pencil skills.

We all have aspects of both in our personalities in different amounts, and that gives us a greater leaning towards one or the other. Think of it this way: You go to a con. You spend the entire day introducing yourself to strangers, showing your work to strangers, having random conversations with strangers. When you retire back to your hotel room (or bathtub*) that nite (or morning*), do you feel relieved that you have some time to yourself to recharge (introvert), or do you feel recharged by having had those interactions (extravert)?



I think most artists swing radically back and forth between extravert and introvert, I don't think you can create without having introverted periods, but the truth of the matter is, it's the extravert side that you really have to activate when it's networking time. I definitely fall on the extravert side of the scale naturally, and that's why you find me running around cons talking to everyone. I enjoy random conversations with people I don't know so much that I subconsciously gravitate to wearing things (like Lord of the Rings leggings, or tentacle necklaces, for example) that are easy conversation-starters. I love networking. But I learned to love it. A lot of people find networking in person really stressful and awkward. You might be shy, you might be an introvert by nature, or you might just be a young artist just overwhelmed and nervous in the presence of a crowd of people more accomplished than you.

Clearly introverted.

I realize I'm at an advantage because I am naturally an extravert, and I'm also an Art Director now, which means people are more willing to overlook the times when I'm awkward and weird and consider it a job quirk, but I wasn't always this confident in a crowd. Here's some advice:



• Fake it till you make it. This is a public speaking trick that seems trite but actually helps a great deal. If you aren't comfortable starting up random conversations with people, or walking up to an artist you admire and asking for advice, then spend a few moments before you enter the room visualizing a new character for yourself. You are confident, you have interesting things to contribute to conversations, you have no reason to be shy. (Bathroom breaks are great for self-coaching sessions.) Eventually you will automatically adopt this more confident persona in social settings without thinking about it.



• Practice opening lines. The hardest part of networking is starting a conversation with someone you have decided you want to talk to (Art Director, Famous Artist, Cute Girl, etc.) Once a conversation gets past the first 10 seconds it usually takes care of itself. Try to have a few lines ready for each of the type of people you want to talk to:



Art Director: "Excuse me, Lauren, I really love the books Orbit publishes and I would love to work with you. If you have some free time now or later would you be able to look at my work?"



Artist: "Hello, Boris, I've admired your work for a long time, and I was wondering if you minded telling me a bit about your technique for painting lighting effects."



You're on your own for the Cute Girls. This is an art blog, not a dating advice column, ha.

Clearly my scary Art Director face didn't faze Andrew Cefalu. (Makeup demo by J. Anthony Kosar.)

• Power through the awkward.
Everyone is awkward sometimes. A joke falls flat, you freeze up, the
conversation dies...you feel the awkwardness level, and tension, and
stress ratchet up ten degrees. Just ignore it. Awkward moments happen. Push past it and either keep talking or make a joke or excuse yourself
politely and everyone else will be more than happy to ignore it because they were as much responsible for the awkward moment as you were. Do not retreat back to your hotel room to hide. Do not replay the awkward moment the whole way home on the train.



• People are judging you less than you think they are. Most people who are networking at a social event are so concerned with not looking like an idiot themselves they don't have time to notice your hands are trembling and you're sweating through your old spice.



• Networking events are the easiest places to network. Cons are big and crowded but people are there purposely for networking. That means ADs are expecting you to awkwardly break into their conversations. Other artists are expecting you to walk up and gush at them and push your book at them. If they hated doing these things they would not go to a con at all. Thus, the atmosphere is much more forgiving. (Just remember the golden rule. No networking in the bathroom.)

Physical networking can be exhausting. Just ask Cynthia Sheppard and Noah Bradley.

Whether
you're an extravert or introvert, virtual networking is easy and
necessary, and physical networking is harder and more expensive. But
it's also a hell of a lot of fun. Don't rob yourself of the joy that can only come from con-induced sleep deprivation.



And see you at Spectrum in May?







*You know who you are.

Hi*Fructose Feature

-by Eric Fortune

Hello everyone.  I'm still settling from an awesome week at IlluxCon that was quite inspiring and as always a ton of fun. On a separate note I'd like to share the cover for the next issue of Hi*Fructose magazine.  Be sure to check out a copy when it hits your local book store.

Sam Weber Interviews Greg Manchess

The Patron TV Spot: Behind the Scenes

-By Greg Manchess

“Camera....speed....and--action!”



The painting I made for the Patron Tequila bottle led to a live action TV spot for the company. The agency, Cramer-Krasselt, called me a couple weeks after the print ad campaign broke, and asked if I’d be interested in helping develop the TV spot by providing a new painting for the commercial.



Of course I was delighted. But it wasn’t as easy as the first painting. This time, they wanted me to paint on-camera for the spot, following the strokes as they were laid onto the surface. They would need me to paint the bottle again, only larger, and they wanted to track the strokes across the canvas, as close as possible to the pigment. I loved the idea!

Building the table-top set

They would need about 3 stages of the painted bottle, as if I was completing it right in front of the viewer. This would take painting it in mock stages. One stage was the finished bottle, another the cork and neck partially painted, and finally the cork, neck, and shoulders of the bottle nearly complete.

My equipment, plus a large set of brushes, stripped of their paint and logos, prepared by the production company

They wondered how I’d get wet paintings to the set. “That’s the best part,” I told them. “Each stage will be bone dry, so if I put down a bunch of strokes and the director doesn’t like it, I can wipe them off clean, and repaint on a second take.” They were thrilled by this. It would free the director (and myself) from the stress of getting it right on one take.



They also wanted a hand model to do the painting. What?! If I had to coach a model on how to lay down strokes, we might’ve been there for a week. As it was, I told them my hand wasn’t so ugly. Long story short: they would use my hand, but they hired a hand model to stand by.

The camera, with production notes

After a few phone conversations with three directors and one in-person meeting with the agency, the production company, Alma Mater, was chosen and I was given the ‘go.’ I had one week. As I was due to fly out to Oregon, I painted the stages there. I then flew back with the new art to NYC on a red-eye to shoot on the scheduled day. We had 24 hours to capture the right look. It was a very tight schedule, despite the fact that I had be back in Oregon the day after for a planned vacation.

During the shoot. The lights are almost right to the table. I painted next to the camera dolly.

On the day of the shoot, I rushed to the set early and was promptly given a manicure! (My hand has never looked so good.) Painting under hot lights and obliquely to the lens was awkward, but challenging. The conditions were not the best, but I didn’t complain. I wanted my hand in there, not the hand model’s, to lend authenticity to the client’s ad. (Though I did ask the director, “what’s my motivation?” which got a few laughs from the crew...)

The DP adjusts the lens between shots...you can see the edge of the palette to his right

I had my palette right next to the lens and pre-mixed most of the colors. Then the director, Brian Mah, and I would talk through my movements, rehearsing with an empty brush, so that he could get a feel for what might happen, and decide if he liked the plan. Once we agreed on how to proceed, I charged the brush for the first strokes, had my piles ready, and waited for ‘quiet-on-the-set.’ Action was called, and I laid down the pigment.



The cinematographer, Patrick Otten, flown in from Belgium, had a special lens that was positioned so close, it made the brush look huge on screen. The pigment piled up in glorious ways, but since our setup was so flexible, we shot take after take, to get the right motion.

Director of Photography, Patrick Otten, with the cameraman on the right

We had a problem when I used green pigment for the bottle ribbon as it stained the gesso and I wasn’t able to clean it as perfectly as I’d hoped. So we moved around the gessoed board to work with fresh areas of substrate.



A few times, I felt I had finished the sequence with the right strokes, but the camera man said, “Still rolling...!” and the director called for me to continue painting! I had to mix faster than I ever had before and start piling pigment and strokes on top of one another until, to my eye, it looked quite the mess.



But on looking at the playback, I could see how the strokes and pigment all looked fresh.



The last stroke I made was the accent mark over the ‘O’ of Patron. I figured I could nail it in one take. Instead, it took 8 or 9. The brush was not a familiar one and the hairs were separated and misaligned. Finally, the director asked if I could paint the stroke off-camera, and then fake the stroke in action. I did, but even that took several tries before I had the right hand movement down. I felt I had let them down, but according to the agency team, the client, watching from the sound booth, was loving it all.



We shot for over 8 hours and had a lot of footage. As I had assumed, the filmmakers took some of the best shots and blended them to perfection. I don’t think anything of note was left on the cutting room floor. They made it all look like it was meant to be that way. Such is the magic of sequential editing. 



Now I’m fired up to do another painting demo, but with the lens right down in the paint. I love the way it allows the pigment to ooze across the screen.



Hand model anyone?

MORZOG! Lord of Drestruction

-By Justin Gerard

After a week of shameless self-promotion, I am now offering a post with what is hopefully something more artistically useful...



For those of you who missed it, I had an artist's booth at DragonCon in Atlanta.

For the show this year, I decided I would do a dragon mini-portrait painting.  (Do you get it? A dragon for...Dragon... ?  I know, I know, highly original. I am living right out there on the very edge of the fantasy art world.)

Anyway, so I started sketching. I was thinking, "This guy, he's a huge dragon, and he's really ripping this castle up; just trashing the place. And he is loving it. Yeah, yeah this'll be great."

As I went along I added a lot of smoke and more of the castle falling down around him. It was a lot of fun.

Then I finished the painting.  (It was watercolor and gouache on bristol, by the way.)



But it was missing something.  It was so...



boring.  



I mean, I should have known right?  There is literally no story here.  And I felt like, surely I can do better than this. I'm a high school graduate after all.



There was just nothing of any substance here.  Sure he was real mad.  And that castle was getting real trashed. But there was no context for any of it.  I mean, who cares right?  I don't even know or care whose castle this is. And the audience certainly doesn't know or care.



I got kind of depressed about it.  How am I going to sell this at the show?  Everyone would be whispering at the booth unaware that I was spying on them.

"That Gerard is an over-rated hack."

"Yeah he is. I hear he doesn't even really paint anymore. Just talks about how great a painter he is on blogs mostly nowadays."

"Isn't he running some kind of pyramid scheme?"

"I don't know what you are talking about. But say, have you heard of Amway? You look like a smart guy and who would like to make a lot of money working from the comfort of his or her own home..."



Anyway, so I light the curtains on fire, crash my car, stumble off into the night and wake up the next day wearing a pancho, several garbage bags, a tear-stained face and a stray cat.  But with a resolution to not do such a boring painting.

On the flight back home I drew this guy. (Cory Godbey was there. Thanks Cory.) I had realized what I needed. I needed some kind of further context; some kind of irony.  



Like most people I read books, and when I do, I find myself imagining myself as the hero, the dude, the gunslinger, the knight. Who is it who is imagining himself as this giant, fire-breathing dragon?  And that is where this little chameleon comes in.

Now the piece makes more sense. It has a story to it.  It wasn't much of an addition, but it works better now.



All in all I was much happier with the final piece and I think it did better at the convention for it. (We sold out the first run!) So I guess the lesson here is don't be afraid to stop and think about the message in your piece before finishing it. Even if you have to do some reworking. Make it tell something good that touches us in some way.



We need more than just a picture of someone who is real angry.



------------------



ALSO: More shameless self-promotion: I am selling the second run of prints on etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/JustinGerard.  

Seven Deadly Sins Carousel: Greed

-By Tim Bruckner

About a dozen years ago I started doing research and preliminary design work for a group of statues, The Seven Deadly Sins Carousel. The plan was to create a statue for each sin as a stand-alone and then group them on a pivoting platform that would act as a carousel. There would be a tented cover, at the apex on which would be mounted a harlequin holding a long undulating scroll with the names of the sins and their various punishments. I roughed out five and focused on completing the design for Greed.

And then something happened that is not uncommon to a free-lancer trying to do his own work. Most of my time belonged to my clients and there was very little left over for me. So, the Carousel idea went to the Someday File.



I recently retired from commercial work and thought I’d like to try my hand at illustration again. I hadn’t done anything 2D with any seriousness for a decade. I had a peek at the Someday File and saw Greed. I knew I was never going to be able to produce it as a statue but maybe I could illustrate it as if it were one. I found a sheet of heavy velum stored among the Someday Materials, a box of Turquoise 2B leads and went to work. After a few weeks of a couple hours here and a couple of hours there, it was done.

Greed and Gluttony share many of the same characteristics and I’d planned on sharing some of the same symbolism of each with the other.



The frog symbolizes greed because it is a greedy creature in desiring to live in both worlds- on the land & in the water.

My first drawing in ten years. Twenty by twenty inches. I propped it up on a chair, stepped back and felt a real sense of accomplishment I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I’m going to produce a small edition of Giclee prints for a couple of up-coming shows. Who knows, maybe I’ll get that Carousel done after all.

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