So, I've had people digging for info on how I'm doing - some already know how I'm doing and actually get more worried heh. I've also realized that I've yet to do my usual lil end of year Happy Holidays update for you folks.

Have you ever heard the statement, "If _____ was on fire, I wouldn't even piss on it to put it out"? Be it a person, place, thing, whatever. This statement sums up my feelings about 2009 very well. I've had tons of emergencies around me, several drops in health, a dive in my career, and generally speaking - have been fairly unhappy as various issues stagnate and don't get resolved.

I am not well. I will put it bluntly. Many of the issues are exceedingly personal and I won't talk about them publicly, but I'll leave it at the fact that some people have gone to great lengths to damage aspects of my life and they succeeded heavily. My girlfriend and I went through hell this fall, after a long financial struggle as a precursor.

But I don't want this to be a depressing entry, I'm just trying to be honest for a moment. With all of this in mind, I'm pushing harder than ever to revitalize my happiness and find solutions to everything. I'm rebuilding from the ground up and won't be held back by anything.

If you have an existing commission with me and are waiting patiently for me to complete it (I think there's two of you right now), thank you for that patience and your interest in my abilities. I will get these done very soon. We were hit by a bad situation shortly after I opened up my commissions and trying to get moving again is like trying to bicycle uphill with a flat tire. Every day is a step in the right direction though. As it stands now, I'm looking to do one image for myself to make sure I'm performing efficiently, and then I'll finish those off.

I'm going to start 2010 off strongly, I'm starting over with my work a bit, taking steps back to restrengthen my foundations and clean up holes in my technique and habits. I imagine you will see more studies from me this year, hopefully some work that explores my creativity a little further, and generally you will see things that come more from my interests and less from my client's wishes. It's time to be an artist again and not so much a commercial production line.

To all of the friends that I have here, have met here, and who I may get to know better in times to come - thank you for being on this page and viewing my work. Thank you for the conversations we've had and will have in the future. Thank you for being an influence on how I conduct myself here in this gallery. Have a great holiday, spend an extra moment to remember what you DO have in life, and who you can appreciate it with. Go smile at a loved one and thank them for what they've done for you. It can be taken away far too easily, and we should remember to appreciate it all during the holiday season. We owe it to ourselves.

-CMalidore

Last Friday, courtesy of the fine programs at conceptart.org, I had the amazing opportunity to get a portfolio review from Jon Foster and Carl Dobsky. If you aren't aware of who these two folks are, go find out - it's worth it.

I had the privilege of sitting through just a fraction of their bajillion hour portfolio review for a huge line of folks (myself included) and in doing so got to see a lot of recurring themes on what people need help with. I wanted to take a moment and share a thought that was highly brought on by this.

KEEP PRACTICING FUNDAMENTAL THINGS.

You don't have to be horribly knowledgeable to understand that there are foundation things that many of us need help with. Not only that, but foundation things that we will ALWAYS need to practice to stay on top of things.

You've all heard it before - anatomy, composition, lighting, focal points and movement, etc etc. These aren't all the easiest of things, but they are all things that are important to study often. Yet we saw, for hours on end, people who were avoiding these very things. Growing complacent with things that we know aren't right, isn't what art is all about.

Some things that I really want some of you to think about:

-Figure studies. We always need some help with people, the tighter your knowledge becomes on people the easier you will have convincing an audience that this figure is real. How do you do this? You draw a lot of them. Borrow a friend, draw them. Find awesome stock artists here on DA and draw the poses. Go to a life drawing class. Whatever it takes, do more figure studies. Afraid of nudes for some reason? Fine, don't bother with nudes. It helps a lot, but you can learn plenty from clothed models too. What matters is that you study these forms. Especially in different lighting.

-Lighting. Do more of it, move the light source around - set up things in your own living space under different angles of lighting and draw it. I loved doing this with crumpled up blankets, perhaps I'll do more of this soon. None the less - see how light falls over a form.

-Time. Take longer than 20 minutes on the base level of your sketch guys.... I'm not kidding... I'm so tired of watching friends spend less than a half hour conceptualizing and then painting it up and spending weeks fixing the errors that they created when they could have just fixed the sketch with another half hour of tweaking. Really now, get the foundation strong before you build the structure. Stop rushing though.

-Composition. Many of you over-complicate this (I know this because I get questions monthly about how to make a composition). Think of simple geometry and then how to make your image structure fit within that to keep things interesting. Then think of how to make the values and colors support this with depth. Think simple, then work up to the complex juicy bits.

There's more, but hopefully you get the jist of it all - think through your pieces, slow down a bit, do studies to get solid on your knowledge, and generally treat yourself like a student. We're never done learning, so why slow it down out of complacency?


With this in mind, I think it's fair to talk about the criticisms against my own work. None of us are perfect, I'm certainly far from it. It came out very quick in the review that my work is too contrasty. Too many dark darks, not enough mid tone. I need to work on this! I got complacent as I found it sped me up and allowed me to hit deadlines... but perhaps it's keeping me from the next tier of clients.... I need to find out. From there, at times my focal points got funky, this is on a few newer pieces (and will be changing before most of you see said pieces ). And through a critique on another person I started to believe that I use the same lighting too much, so I need to move this around a little more, change the Point of View a bit perhaps, and generally direct the image into more exciting views that keep a viewer more engaged. And finally, my anatomy use didn't come up, but I know I know I need to work on faces, especially female faces.

I urge you all to look upon your own work with honest eyes, truly ask yourself if anything is holding you back from what you want to be doing with that work. Write down what you discover, and slowly work to cross those things off of the list. We owe it to ourselves.

This winter I believe I'll be doing more studies and posting them up. Work by example, I was taught, I hope some of you will join along

-CMalidore

I've run into a lot of freaking out freelancers lately here on the internetz. It's to be expected though, the economy is shot and people are desperate to make ends meet. I'm freaking out plenty as it is (just ask ~ShadowGryphan), and naturally the biggest concern is "WHY CAN'T I GET ANY WORK?!!?". Ironically their first thought is, "I Suck!", when the reality is not that you suck as an artist... it's that there's bajillion people out there that you're competing with who also all think that they suck. Eventually one of those artists is going to get picked - you can't really blame yourself for not being that person when there's 70+ applicants for a position.

As it stands, the general thought is that if you can't secure work, you're doing something wrong. You may be, but let's explore this further. There's a lot of competition out there and a client has a vision for a product that very few will likely match. This obviously is stress inducing, right? You gotta be at the top of your game right now to secure work.

With that in mind, I know a LOT of you are already working on this aspect of your art, I get requests for critiques a lot online, through notes here, on twitter, on facebook - wherever, there's people who are pushing quality and want real feedback. So I'm not going to preach on that side of the fence. Let's assume you're all pushing as hard as you can on your skills (I'm proud of many of you folks around here - I got a productive group of people following me here on DA!). What comes next? Promotion.

One of the big reasons people can't secure work, even in a good financially level time is due to promotion. They just don't do it! Or if they do, often it's not enough. Just how much time do you put into making yourself known, speaking to prospective clients, and being seen? Or are you just waiting for your skills to sell yourself for you?

Let me tell you how this is going to go - if you don't hunt them down, they will not find you. There are notable exceptions, but usually that's because they FOUND you somewhere. Why? Because you promoted somewhere. Small bit of promotion? Small bit of notice. Lot of promotion? Lot of notice. You want more eyeballs on your art stuffs.

Let me provide two stories before I continue on my ramblings:

~Not too long ago I was leaving my apartment to go to band practice. I was walking to my car when an individual approached me and said, "Excuse me sir, you're an artist, right?". Panic set in briefly as I don't advertise out of the apartment unless it's a convention or something... and lets face it, chances of running into people from a convention a half year after the show and them remembering me? Slim chances. It's not like I wear a stuffed penguin on my head.

Anyway, turns out he's an entertainer and was looking for some album artwork. We exchanged some information and it went from there. He had noticed me from one of my local displays, likely a street fair from a year ago (Go Pink Death!) - promotion is how you handle yourself around people, no matter who you believe they are. This individual spoke to his friends like a street thug, and completely changed his behavior around me.. he spoke courteously and straight to business. This means that I promoted properly at whatever show he found me, and that his meeting with me was something he wanted to be careful in - HE was promoting the very moment he said "Excuse me sir".

You MUST handle yourself with care when presenting this as your livelihood. It represents you.

~Second story, there's an artist who creates some neat work here online. I like his stuff. But he never spoke to people, so he was easily forgotten. Every time I saw a new piece by this individual my first word was, "who?". Suddenly he removed a lot of work and put it all up again in a more formalized way - grouping images like in a gallery, replying to people and forming discussions. He added a bunch of artists on facebook, and networked. This was in the span of like 3 days. Now, a lot of people know his name as he became a person. He was no longer just a username with pretty pictures. He was an artist who had creative ideas and knew what he was talking about. This was a week of promotion that I guarantee brought him work. Sure he's an amazing artist.... so that recognition came fast.... but the presentation is what helped him the most.


With those stories aside, I urge you all who plan on making a career out of this industry to really think about how you present yourself. Put up great artwork. If you don't feel it sells you - don't put it up just to fill gallery space. Talk to people and be involved in the industry discussions. Put your work up in a multitude of online places. There's a ton of galleries, go find them and put up the art - talk to the people who are commenting on your artwork, thank them or answer questions, whatever.... just be a person, a username that doesn't communicate doesn't cut it.

And finally - go send your work to potential clients. Stop waiting for them to find you. It may happen some day.... but can you afford to wait for that moment? I sure can't. When I am actively looking for clients I am investing a lot of time into my online functions. These art journals, displaying new artwork, discussing things on various online forums or wherever - these are all my way of promoting. I like doing it this way as I get to help people at the same time, but still... it pulls people in, and that's good for business.

Keep up the effort guys and gals - the business of surviving these times has to go beyond Photoshop.



Aaaand that's it for me on this one - I wanted to develop this further but I got a lot of work to get done. Keep up the good work, folks

I'm looking for any book recommendations on Scandinavian folklore. Anybody have any suggestions?

-CMalidore

It occurs to me that only various bits of you know that I'm on other communities/networking social sites, figured it might be nice to get some new faces on my friend lists if any folks are interested.

For those who want to keep more apprised of my daily activities or banter a bit more, both of these links will provide that.

[link] <--facebook
[link] <--twitter