Thursday, February 25, 2010

Art Licensing

greeting card done for Marcel Schurman (aka Papyrus)


I dreamed about licensing my art last night. You know something is really on your mind when you dream about it! (Like those waitress dreams I used to have back in school, when I waitressed to pay the rent, and then dreamed about waiting tables all night long!).

The reason I was dreaming about licensing, no doubt, is because I listened in on TWO teleseminars about art licensing yesterday.

The first was a licensing class presented by J'net Smith, of All Art Licensing. She is the licensing agent responsible for making Scott Adam's Dilbert character what it is today - BIG. She knows her stuff. I've listened in on a few of her presentations, and have always been pleased with the information she shares.

The other teleseminar was a talk about Branding by Paul Brent, presented through Tara Reed's Art Licensing Info series of seminars. Paul Brent is a BIG name in licensing, and the nicest man, and he shared so much really fantastic information in the seminar. Tara Reed is a licensed artist and super helpful font of information about the whole licensing industry.

If you are interested in licensing your art, I would recommend checking out both Tara and J'net's websites for starters. I have some of Tara's ebooks on how to do repeat patterns and also her product mock-up templates, which are great! J'net has some product templates too, as do other people. (Product templates are 'blanks' of plates, cups, napkins, mugs, shower curtains, etc. etc. etc. for you to apply your art to to show manufacturers how your art would look on their products, so they will get all excited and license your art.)

greeting card done for NobleWorks


This is just a really brief post about all of this - I'll probably come back from time to time and share more info as I delve into this more. In the past I've licensed my art for greeting cards to a few companies, but would like to do a lot more. I'm quietly working behind the scenes to put together some collections and a body of work just for licensing.

I'll add some links to sites and blogs here in the next couple of days.

But for now, its off to work I go!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

1906

Check this out. Its a movie shot from a streetcar going down Market Street in San Francisco a few days before the big earthquake in 1906 destroyed most of the area. Its a trip.
And I thought the traffic was crazy there now.

I've been in a weird place, art-wise, lately. Working on different things. I've also been distracted by the Olympics and triple loops and those mogul skiers who look like they're wearing pajamas. And am just a little disturbed at how Bob Costas doesn't seem to age.

Green things are sprouting in my yard, so Spring must be on its way (I'm in California, remember- no snow here). It looks like I will have a lot of roses, hydrangeas and figs, at the very least. One bearded iris has already bloomed and faded out, and the camellias are going crazy.

So I'm kind of hunkered down and hibernate-y. Maybe I'll have some new art to show pretty soon.
Go USA!!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Painting with Painter


Sigh. I've graduated to painting now. I decided to take a piece from a book I did while back and redo it digitally. Its a simple 'shapey' style - line and watercolor. Should be easy, right? Ha.

Actually, the painting itself isn't hard. Its fun to choose which kind of watercolor brush or drawing tool you want, and how big to make it, etc. etc. etc. What's driving me nuts is trying to understand WHY if something is a 'gel' layer, then it goes back to 'default', or back to 'gel' again, it looks all crazy. Or WHY some other thing will do something that doesn't make any sense, and screw up something I just spent an hour doing. Or WHY do you have to remember to save as a Painter RIFF format to preserve the layers - and if you forget and don't when you save for the last time late at night, when you reopen the file in the morning its all flattened and you've lost everything you worked on all day the day before and can't fix it, and you have to start all over.

Stuff like that.

But I will keep on. I think its like learning to drive. Remember how at first it was all so awkward, and each thing you did you had to really think about, and it took forever for it to become automatic and intuitive? I guess this is the same way. I do like the simple round watercolor brush to fill in shapes with, and the crayon to draw with. I can't figure out how to get a good sky though. At this point it would still be faster to do it the old fashioned way.

So that's where I am. Hopefully next time I'll be happier.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Old dog new tricks


Here it is. My first all digital piece done with the Wacom. I know, I know, its pretty simple. But its a big deal for me. I've been resisting (why?) going digital for way too long now.

You remember in the last post I had a sketch - a traditional pencil on tracing paper kind of drawing. I scanned that, and traced over it with the Wacom pen to get what you see here. Then I dragged the 'traced' digital layer over onto a new file and flattened it (I could also have just deleted the background sketch layer in the original).

It took me way more tries than I care to admit to figure out what kind of 'line' to use. At first I was trying to get a really clean, "Illustrator" line, which wasn't possible. It was taking sooooo long. The whole idea here is to speed things up a bit. Then I did a fatter, even width line. Etc. In the end I decided to just 'draw', the way I draw when I draw. Kind of sketchy. And I like it.

What's great about this is when you make a goof, you can just erase it and its gone! You can completely change your mind, do a new layer, try something and decide it doesn't work, etc. - and not ruin your paper.

I look forward to getting more proficient with this and doing some color as well. Right now I'm thrilled to be able to do this.