New Interview

I just did an interview with theillustratorsmarketBlogSpot.com.  It's been a while since doing an interview and it was quite fun taking some time to think over the questions. Talking bout your art and your journey that got you to your current spot really helps you to see how much you've learned and helps to narrow in on what's important to consider when moving forward.
http://theillustratorsmarket.blogspot.com/2014/04/matthew-gauvin.html


    I also spent the day going to a couple of art galleries in nearby towns. One gallery acted like they could care less about my art and didn't feel my art was a match for them but the other accepted four pieces!!! It has given me the encouragement I needed to keep moving foreward with more landscapes throughout the upcoming summer.

Illustrator of the Month on childrenillustrators.com

       

 I promise this isn't another April Fools joke, even though I thought it was when I found out last night. While checking e-mails I discovered that www.childrensillustrators.com actually made me their Illustrator of the month!!!!! That means for the month of April they will have a link to my page on the front page of their site! What an awesome early birthday present! I've been on the site for less than a month and I'm pretty excited to see if this might possibly get some business coming my way. I kept putting it off for years and years because of the cost to join but finally bit the bullet knowing I need to do something different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results. Barb has pushed me out of my insanity and encouraged me to get myself and my art out there a bit more than I would on my own.

 

       I'm sure I'll make another post at the end of the month to say whether I got any work out of it or not. This will be the ultimate test for this site in my mind because If I can't get any work or offers from publishers after being on the front page of a major children's illustrator site like that, then either the site isn't as great as they claim or my art isn't as good as I hope! I've worked for more than seven years as a full time illustrator trying to figure out how to get noticed by brick and mortar publishers.  Hoping for the best.

How to Build up Your Illustration Career

This was originally a response to a young illustrator who contacted me a few years back asking what she should do to prepare for an illustration career. Today I spent  bit of time reorganizing my thoughts to post in response to a blog post from one of my college teachers asking the same question for the benefit of his current senior class. Sooo much more could be said on the topic but here's my response to what I feel is most important for an illustration senior to consider as they contemplate entering the "Real World".

Don't Say 'No' and Try New Things

     I’ve learned that you should never say no to a project until you find out as much info as you can even if that means spending some time conversing back and forth just to figure out if you can work something out with the client. Sometimes the people who start out wanting you to work for free or for a split profit situation is the one who ends up paying you the most if you only take the time to talk with them and be honest about your pricing. It can also be instinct to say no if they want something done sooner than you could provide it. Always ask them if they are willing to wait a few months if you already have a project going as you’ll be surprised how many will wait. Sometimes the initial gig may be too small or not of interest to you but I’ve had logos turn into more work and I had a CD cover that lead to my first book. I think in a way it’s best to start out a bit ignorant as you will have less fear to try new stuff. I’ve done a bunch of random contests and illustration work for individual clients in between books to stay in business. Everything from sign painting, logos, pet portraits, architectural renderings, Point of purchase display illustration, landscape painting etc. etc. Some things you’ll enjoy and some you’ll never do again. I did some portrait paintings and quickly learned that wasn’t my best skill but then discovered a particular style of caricature that was more in my comfort zone. The one place I would advise to say no for sure is if they want you to work for free or for some sort of split the profit scheme and won't budge on that. don’t do work for free unless it's a competition or you are getting compensated with something comparable to the worth of your work. Children's illustration for example is filled with self publishing authors who want you to work for split profit scheme but who may never even figure out how to get their books published in the first place.

Get a Website and Build a Portfolio

     The number one thing I can suggest is to build a website or at least a blog to post your art. No one will hire you if they can’t see your work samples. Every single illustration gig I ever received started with me sending a link to my illustration portfolio for potential clients to view. Most potential clients are looking amongst tons of illustrators at once and most illustrators already have websites and such so if you don’t have one, the other illustrator’s will beat you every time. I built an easy website on freewebs.com now called webs.com . If you don’t have time to worry about designing your own website then get on blogger.com and post some pics onto a blog to send potential clients to. There are of course large illustration portfolio websites but you want your own little nook on the web to send people to where they wont be tempted by the work of thousands of talented illustrators.

       Do your best in college or in your current state to make the best art you can, so that when you branch out into illustration as full time career and build a website, you will already have some great pieces to show to potential clients and not just some paintings of fruit and nudes. I wish I could show you my very first website and the images I launched on it so you could see how far I’ve come over the past few years. Post what you have and just keep working at it and make more and more new and better stuff to replace the old stuff. When you start looking back on the old stuff , and can see all of the flaws , you’ll know you’re making progress.

      Even most art competitions are debatable as many are just out to get your money. For the first few years of my career, winning competitions kept me in business but I did my research and tried to only enter competitions I felt I had a chance to win where the judges would be interested in my style of art.

Learn the Major Illustration Digital Software

      If I had to say one program to learn, Adobe Photoshop would have to be the one. Adobe Photoshop elements is a smaller version that basically does everything I need it to do and is much cheaper. I got a free copy with a cheap digital camera and more recently got a copy with a new drawing tablet. You can also get free photo editing software online like Gimp. That will let you re-size and crop art for the web as well as a ton of other stuff I’ve come to rely on it for. In the past few years I made the switch to digital art using photoshop to create final art. The majority of publishers are only interested in digital art in my experience as its easier for them to request changes, it's faster and they don't have to worry about scanning/digitizing the original art. More recently I started working with vector art software called Inkscape which is basically a free version of Adobe Illustrator. That software is great for logos and images that will need to be scalable for banners, truck decals etc. and of course many artists use it for more graphic styles of illustration or for creating smooth line drawings.

Constantly Promote Your Work

     I would also say it’s important to constantly promote yourself and search for your next gig while working on your current gig so you won’t be out of work for two months in between each project. In college we were told that it wasn't the most talented who would succeed but rather the most persistent and those with the best contacts. Artists tend to be a very quiet folk who keep to themselves. In order to break into illustration you really need to be able to self promote constantly and almost have to overcome your own desire to sit in a corner and draw, without others seeing your art. No matter how good you become as an artist you simply won't get the jobs unless you let people know who you are.

     You could start with something as easy as doing marketing e-mails about your progress. I used to send them out once a month but these days it’s getting to be more like a couple of times a year. That basically lists art competitions I’ve entered, galleries, book reading events coming up, new blog posts, projects I’m working on and sometimes helpful websites and advice for my art friends on the list. I include friends, family, past clients etc. as a way of keeping me and my art on people’s minds and hopefully generate more work. It’s also been a great way to hear back from old friends about what’s going on in their lives.

      During your senior year you are asked to create mailer postcard illustrations. At first it can be tempting to think those won't amount to much but My first real publishing gig with a brick and mortar publisher came as result of those mailers I did my senior year. That client has now hired me three times.

      Another way I've started to get recognition for my work in my hometown is by attending various craft fairs and having gallery shows of my work. I generally don't make a ton of money at the actual events but I do often meet people at those events who become good clients asking me to work on small projects every now and then. Give out tons of business cards and chat with the other artists at the events to learn from them. I've had people buy stuff on my etsy store who I met in person at a craft fair, one guy has commissioned me for about $500 worth of work over the years, A lady from one gallery book reading event later contacted me to do a book reading at a local school which paid $200 plus sale of any books.

     You'll find many ways to promote. Just do your best to post your work all over the web on sites like artwanted.com, deviantart.com, craig's list ads, facebook, linkedin, children's illustrators.com, zazzle, etsy, tophatter etc. etc.

New Website Design

A client recently went on vacation so I decided it would be the perfect time to finally fix up my website and work on various other neglected illustration related tasks. I'll tell you about some of those things separately as some aren't quit ready to reveal yet. But for this post I thought it would be neat to look back through the years at my website design. 
            This first image is from my website back in 2008 I think my first design was in about 2005 but for those first few years I kept to this basic design of having the resume on the home page. I have no idea what I was thinking,LOL. The "logo" had it's own issues as most people couldn't even figure out that it's supposed to be a birch tree.

my updated resume with a much cleaner design.

at some point along the way I decided it would be a good idea to throw a close cropped pic of myself up on the web header. Again, what was I thinking? LOL

finally I began to get the idea when I decided to put some close cropped illustration samples for the header.

Then I eventually decided to add one larger illustration to the home page to welcome guests. So the whole site and home page was black with these bright illustrations on it as I felt my illustrations looked good on black. It took me another year or so to realize that all of my favorite children's illustrators had very light themed websites. That realization then gave me the point of view to see my own website ina whole new light and realized it is waaaay too dark for a children's illustrator website.

This past week I did my most recent adjustments to my site and now have four buttons on the front page that link directly to various kinds of art in my portfolio. I may decide to change the images for those button over time but I have a feeling this concept will work the best to help folks get where they are going. I've also updated a number of other things to make navigation easier and have lots more in store to add interest to the site. This theme is still a bit dark but much better than before. I tried some lighter colors but realized it would take a complete redesign from scratch to get everything to look good on it.

When I say web design I should be clear that I am only using a template and uploading images and using apps. There are all kinds of things I would love to do but don't have the know how or money to do. One day if I ever get rich and famous I'll have lots of fun with the design.

How to Have an Online Presence

          I'm taking the day off from illustrating books in order to catch up on a few neglected illustration business related tasks. Sooner or later you can expect to see an increase in blog posts, update my illustration website with recent work, my Etsy Shop with some of my landscape paintings, additions to my Zazzle Store and my number one goal is to finally edit some art tutorial videos I started a month ago to post on my YouTube Channel.
     Each of these things are great ways to alert your followers and fans to updates and to make a bit of extra income from your illustrations. None of them will generate a ton of income without putting a ton of work into them to begin with. Blogs can be monetized by becoming an amazon associate and things of that sort, websites can be used to sell your art and products and services, Etsy of course can be used for selling your original art products, zazzle is great for putting digital images of your art onto various products in a  POD format yet with a quality result for sale and youtube is a huge way to get people interested in your art and products. For me they all tend to take a back seat to actually creating the art but even just the little work I have put into them has brought some results. I just finished my previous book and am a ways into my current book so I'm hoping I will finally be able to steal a bit of time for such tasks as these. I'm on tons of other art websites but the above few are probably the most important for my promotional needs.

     Recently
-One of my favorite children's digital artists, Dani Jones* launched a website called the illustrated section in which she sells the works of various artists in digital PDF format for e-readers.  (ipad, nook, kindle, computer, iPhone, or just about any other electronic device.)  She excepts most any art books from individual artists so long as it follows certain guidelines, which probably explains why she accepted My book The Caterpillar and the Express Train  there are also FREE books available on the site!

- I participated in an illustrator interview for the facebook group "facebook Author's and Illustrators". The interview was posted about a week ago at this link.

- The author of my caterpillar book discovered an interesting review of the book online on this blog in which our train character was compared to Thomas the train on acid.



*Dani Jones