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Understand Illustration & Licensing

the world of illustration and license saying this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. It is something that I fell into after had already started making art and um was sort of on this path to being a fine artist or what I perceived to be the fine art world. I didn't necessarily have big gallery dreams but I just wanted to make art and the only way that I had any clue to do that was to make original work, potentially reproductions and sell them. And that's what I was doing. A lot of In the beginning of my career my a lot of what I was doing was having shows in small venues and then increasingly larger venues. And in about I was hanging out with my friend Lorena Simonovic who has who's an illustrator and also has this wonderful company called Petit collage. She makes Children's decor, modern Children's decor and she said she's from Argentina and she said lisa you need an agent, I think you'd be a great illustrator, It's a great way to make money. You want to be a full time artis...

t, you might want to check this out. Check this world out of illustration. And I had sort of started to get some illustration jobs. My first jobs with Chronicle Books who I've worked with now for years and have had many collaborations with another company called poquito which is a Los Angeles based company that has grown exponentially when I first started working with them, they were just making wallets and prints and a few other small accessories using artists artwork. And I had a couple of small jobs, one for the National Poetry Foundation. I illustrated the award winning poem of the year um from the poet laureate that year. And that was a really fun job. But that's kind of how it started and that all those connections were made because people found me on the internet and had a little bit of fun with illustration and licensing, but I wanted to expand. And so my friend Lorena recommended that I get an illustration agent which even six years ago was a lot easier a process than it has become today. So I didn't end up signing with an agent and have been illustrating ever since. And it has become a big part of what I do. Equally important to me is to keep my personal practice in my fine art practice. But I also really love being an illustrator and I also really love licensing my work so near and dear to me. Um again, just for reference back to this graphic, we're in the research um section here. You're gonna get a lot of information just like in the last segment at this time around being an illustrator. If that's not something that you're familiar with, you might want to learn more about what it's all about and also about art licensing and um again, the information you learn can be used to inform your goals and um your actionable tasks. You may learn some things that you realize you need to do and add to your list in the next segment. And I've also got an amazing special guest. Her name is Betsy Cortez and she's a licensing expert. I interviewed her for art ink. So you may have read that interview already and she's a wealth of information. I think between the two of us we can probably answer a lot of your questions. So I'm looking forward to that. But first let's talk about illustration and the first thing I want to talk about is the distinction between illustration and licensing and fine art. So the first thing to know about illustration and licensing is that it's commercial, that means you're creating work to go on something else. Usually something that's going to be sold a book, a magazine, a product and advertisement. The difference between this kind of work and it's an important distinction And fine art which we discussed in segment three is that fine art is not commercial, you may make an original piece of work that goes in a building and to a certain extent that's a more commercial form of fine art, but it's still fine art, they're still making original work to sell. That doesn't mean that illustrators and fine artists don't work in the same mediums or make work that falls into the same genres. If you look at the work of an illustrator or a fine artist, you might not even be able to tell the difference by looking at it. So it's illustration is really defined by its context, not by its medium. So what is illustration again defined by its medium? Not by its medium but by its context. Sorry, any art form, even an abstracted art can be illustration or be licensed. The difference is the artwork is used to illustrate or decorate something. Again, a book, a magazine, a product and advertisement. Okay. An illustration. You typically work within our director or an editor who hired their exceptions to this. But for the most part you're working with an art director, creative director editor who hires you to create something specific. Typically illustration and even licensing in some cases comes with art direction and this is a whole different experience if you are used to making work based on your own ideas and inspiration. The other thing to know is that there are several illustration markets and this is great because you get to find your niche or niche. Is that suit you best? So let's talk about those now. Yeah. Uh huh. All right, there are five main illustration markets. Personal clients, book illustration, editorial illustration, which we touched on briefly yesterday advertising illustration and greeting card novelty, retail product illustration, which I like to call surface design. And that's typically where you get the overlap with licensing um sometimes illustrations that are commissioned for surface design end up being licensing contracts um which are slightly different. We can talk about that leader when Betsy comes up. So personal clients, typically personal clients do things like invitation illustrations and lettering. Um, blog headers, logos for small businesses, that kind of thing. You're doing work for an individual and not a big company in this case or even a small company or maybe a small company or an individual. Okay, so your client isn't necessarily corporate, but it's still illustration. If you've done fine art commissions and you like working with personal clients, this might be a good path. It's also a great way to build your illustration portfolio because you can work with individuals and friends and on sort of smaller projects. Um, if you enjoy making things that are sort of festive or um, you enjoy doing logo design. If you're a graphic designer or an illustrator who likes doing identity design or design elements for other people, wedding announcements, birth announcements, uh, blog headers, that kind of thing. Um, this could be a great niche for you. So if you're interested in getting personal clients, I recommend just either advertising or advertising yourself through social media and your blog. That's what you do. And you might want to put examples of course in your portfolio, you need to fill your portfolio with the kind of work you want to get that you're interested in an illustration, that's really important. And that's how you get the work is that somebody finds that you are doing the kind of work that fits in a certain market. And again, even if you haven't been hired to do a job and you're really interested in being an editorial illustrator, make a set of maps, maps are really popular things in editorial market or make some um, illustrate some, some make some editorial like illustrations or illustrations that narrate something. We'll get more to that in a second book illustration. So this includes book interiors typically that others right, it's always possible to write and illustrate your own book in the Children's market. That's very common that the same person writes and illustrates a book. So if you're interested and getting into book illustration, I highly recommend going on to the websites of publishers who you admire. And the way to find the list of publishers you admire is by looking in your local bookstore for books that you think are beautiful or interesting. Um and this is the same for licensing and we'll talk about this, you know, look for products that, that resonate for you and feel like your style would fit in. And then you see if those publishers have any submission guidelines and you can submit your work. I think we talked about that a little bit yesterday. It's similar to a gallery, you're contacting your sending samples of your work. If they have specifications about how they'd like your work submitted, they'll let you know. And then oftentimes when you submit to a book publisher, like I know Chronicle looks at chronicle books, who's my main publisher, they look at every submission of artwork or book proposal that comes in, but sometimes it doesn't happen right away. So you might submit and then not hear anything for a long time. But that doesn't mean that they haven't put you on their list of people they're interested in or that they won't eventually look so be patient. Editorial illustration, magazines, newspapers and blogs, if you've ever dreamed of seeing your art in the new york times or the Washington post, the new yorker, which is creme de la creme. I'll actually all three of those illustration. Our editorial illustration is an exciting market and it requires both critical thinking and that is because oftentimes you're illustrating somebody else's essay or story and the art director might give you a few ideas. But often editorial illustrators are hired to come up with the idea for the illustration. So editorial illustration often requires critical thinking, reading a story, thinking outside the box concept. Ng I'm working on an editorial job right now that I have to finish tomorrow um where I have to draw something that can be interpreted in a variety of ways and I still haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to do, but it's kind of fun. It often unlike book illustration, where sometimes you have a lot of time to work on something requires a quick turnaround and that's because newspapers come out when every day magazines not as often, but even though sometimes you're getting last minute requests for things. Advertising illustration. Um Typically advertising illustration, you're working with large companies are marketing firms hired by corporate clients. Sometimes the corporate client has an in house advertising or marketing um office. Um so sometimes you work directly with that company, but often it's an outside marketing firm. Um advertising illustration because advertising budgets and big companies are large often pays well or better than um uh book publishing, which is Sadly one that often doesn't pay quite as well. It can and you can feel prestigious to have these clients in your portfolio. Unlike I think unlike books and some other products, your name doesn't always appear on, you know, nobody would know that that beautiful illustration on that billboard is yours unless you told them because your name is not going to be, it's not like it's his artwork by, you know, lisa Condon or whatever. So you have to be okay with that. You may have less input than in other markets. Oftentimes, you know, campaigns are fully concept ID by the time they bring you in so it's really different than editorial illustration where you're really being asked to be involved in the process. Oftentimes they want you to access execute an idea that's already been concept ID and they'll give you very um specific art direction. And then finally, um there's this book that used to be the way that most art directors found illustrators and graphic designers who did illustration. It's called the workbook. You've seen it before, You know, it's like this thick um and it's very expensive to take out an advertisement, especially a full page advertisement, but it is still how many art directors who work for marketing, big marketing firms or um, you know, our on our folks are directors who work for big print publications or even publishers find illustrators more often than not now. Our directors and editors use the internet, but they still often use the workbook. And um, so sometimes it's beneficial to take an ad out there if you're interested and being an illustrator, you can also send promotional postcards to our buyers and um, larger advertising agencies to if you're interested in getting into advertising illustration. Yeah. Okay. Last but not least. And I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this because there's a lot of overlap here with art licensing. But if you enjoy less conceptual and more decorative illustration work and you dream of having your artwork on journals and wallpaper and greeting cards and pillows. This kind of surface design and might be for you. Those are typical products. Some illustrators spend their entire careers creating surface and, and patterned designs to adorn apparel and fabric. They make the majority of their living doing licensing work. But that's rare. Um you really have to devote a lot of time and work very hard over a number of years to build your portfolio to make her entire living from licensing your designs, even if they're commissioned. So it's good to also supplement with other um, illustration markets. And most often if you're an illustrator, you don't just work in one market, you work in several markets, you're often paid in licensing royalties more on that shortly, Sometimes you get a flat fee, but more often you um, you want a royalty because if the product does really well, you make a percentage of the sales, okay, you got the assignment, you've, you've got all the information you need, you said yes to it, you've negotiated the fee, you know how much you're gonna be paid, you know how much time you have, you know, pretty much what they're looking for you to do, you're going to get another brief that's even more detailed usually than the email that you got where you accepted the job. And hopefully there aren't too many more surprises in it and you can expect several rounds of changes. So making those changes is sometimes going to hurt because you may be so attached to the drawing or painting that you made for them based on their art direction. And you may think it is the best thing since sliced bread, the thing you're most proud of in your entire career and they may say, you know, this isn't exactly what we had in mind. We'd like you to make these changes and that's often going to hurt. Now. Hopefully this all happens in the rough phase, which we'll talk about in a second. Um but it's part of being an illustrator and it's also part of in some cases licensing your work. When you get commissioned licensing jobs where they ask you to create something special, it is your job to please the client. This is commercial work. You may be very attached to what you do, but ultimately your job is to do the work that the art director hires you to do once you've accepted it and your inclination may be to fight them. And at some point down the road, if you've been through too many rounds of changes, you may need to, but your job is really to execute the assignment and give the client what they want and always say say yes more than you say no. So make sure you understand the assignment clearly, once you execute it you're going to be, Sometimes they love what you turn in in the first round and there's no changes. But that's pretty rare even for the most accomplished illustrators. And usually it's not about the quality of your work, it's about something in the illustration that needs to change or be adjusted. So, again, separating the professional from the personal, because there's a lot of feedback that happens in the illustration market, that doesn't happen in other art markets. So as I mentioned in the world of illustration, we have these things called rest and this is uh they're really sketches and most of the time they're in pencil or pen and they're pretty simple. This is what I did for a book I illustrated where I had to illustrate some maps and obviously not to scale maps. This is a map I did of Sonoma County. Everything starts with a rough for a sketch. Um you want to make sure that your rough or your sketches approved before you move on to final or or the idea is that you're getting as close to the final illustration without detailed color permanence, especially if you're somebody is working by hand. This is really important because you don't want to get through all of the struggle of painting something just to have to change it. So you want to make sure you get as close to the final and that your final gets close to as close to the final in your rough or your sketch as possible. Usually as I said, there's 2-3 rounds of changes, sometimes fewer if you get lucky then once that final sketches approved, yeah, you move to the final artwork and you can see how similar they are except this one is inked, line work colored. This happened to be just a one color book. So not a ton of color