Artist Representative for Illustrators: Pros & Cons

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Will Terry

Should I have an Artist Representative or not?

Girl at a desk posing as an artist representative

Not a real rep, but an actress, acting as one. See how busy she is, finding you all that work?

An Artist Representative can be a good thing or not.

I am often asked, “Will, should I have a rep?”
I don’t really know if you should have an artist representative or not, or even if I should, but… I have certainly played this game with and without a rep. So I can make a list of pros and cons and give my opinion. So here goes.

Pros of having an artist representative

Can get more work

Can get better work

Can get different work

Can make more money on each assignment, because your rep will be charging more, or should I say, the rep is a better negotiator than you I.

Can avoid doing a lot of paper work.

Can avoid doing the collections part of the job.

Can avoid doing all that prospecting, finding work, advertising, marketing, constantly hunting for jobs. All that stuff that you DID NOT become an artist to do. Stuff your artist representative can do and probably wants to do.

It’ validating to have a rep, Makes you feel good about yourself. You can say, “I am such a good illustrator that I have a rep out sorting out all kinds of clients that want my artwork.

Can spend more time creating and being an artist.

So there are the pros, or some of the pros, the ones that I was able to think of.

Cons of having an Artist Representative

On the Cons side, well…

You have to pay for that rep, they aren’t going to work for free. That is usually 25-30%.

A lot of times you give up the right to find or seek your own work.

You don’t know if your jobs are being diverted. Sometimes reps will give work intended for you, to another artist that they represent.

Takes longer to get paid.

You may be persuaded to take jobs that are not a good fit for you. This happened to me and is the reason I parted ways with one of my earlier reps.

You will probably pay your rep a commission on any job you land on your own.

You are dependent on that rep, so if for any reason you part ways, you are done. You have given up so much control and now you have to either find another rep or get back in the game.

Your rep might be a crappy artist representative. A lot of the good reps are not eager to take on new illustrators. They have the ones they are comfortable working with and they are established and they may not even want you.

And there are the cons.

Advice for artists considering getting a representative.

I have three points of advice.

1) Don’t even think about hiring a rep until you’ve been freelancing, on your own for at least two and better yet, three years. Learn the ropes, work in the trenches etc. This will give you a good perspective. Otherwise you may not be ready for a rep. You could end up, tied to a looser rep. If they were willing to take you on when you were such a beginner, it may be because they were a beginner too.

A better illustrator can attract a better rep. Have some clients already, have some work under your belt and some experience. Learn the marketing, the negotiating, the communicating and the collecting.

2) If you are considering a rep and they are willing to take you on and you are going to join their group, ask them for a list of who the represent and for their contact info. If they say no, that’s a bad sign. I know of three or four that would say “No” and it’s because their artists art all mad at them, there are problems. A good rep will have happy artists working with them. You want to know if the rep will pay you on time, if they will actually rep you.

My first rep gave me the names and numbers of her artists and I only had to call a few to know that she was a good rep. Those artists said I was lucky that she was considering me.

And 3) Don’t ever give up your right to marked your own work. You can look at a contract and cross things out or ask them to. After being an artist for over twenty five years, I would NEVER give up that right. You never want to be sitting on your hands, waiting for them to find work for you.

Remember, that contract is ONLY to help and protect the rep, look at it closely and strike a few lines if necessary.

One of my favorite reps ever was JoAnne Schuna. She was kind, ethical and everything that you would want in a rep.

I hope this helps, I am sure I’ve left things out, and I hope some of you have some great things to add to this, if so, feel free to add your comments on this subject.

PS, today, June 6, is my best friend’s birthday. Wayne Andreason is 54 today. Happy birthday Wayne.

Keep drawing and painting and if you need a little help, there’s folioacademy.com

Photoshop tutorial for artists and illustrators

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Will Terry

Digital Painting in Photoshop is still a best seller

When switched over to Photoshop 5 I thought it might be nice to offer another tutorial.

This is a little sketch I did on my ipad with my finger – I’ve gone paperless by the way – I never intended to go green but when technology makes it easier to use than paper…

I’m calling this painting “Class System”. I find it ironic that often it’s the working class/poor who are much happier in life than the rich who control everything but still turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. Oh no – I actually have something to say? This is weird.

Digital Painting in Photoshop Tutorial

It was a lot of fun making the video course for Digital Painting in Photoshop and it has been very successful but it was good to do the sequel. I call it Part 2. Part two was a lot of fun too, and it is very informative for illustrators learning to illustrate in Photoshop.

Getting the colors right

Just trying to get the colors right – this piece was a challenge because there isn’t a lot of warm light which means almost everything needs to be on the cool side. I usually like to light things with a warm light and then use cool shadows and cool reflected light. Very traditional I know.

It takes patience even when you know the process

Here it was pretty slow going but I’ll get there. Here I am just starting to add lighter values and colors and trying to figure out my color scheme as I go. One of the advantages of working digitally is testing colors on “throw-a-way” layers.

a Multiply layer

I’ve now added a “multiply” layer and started to work color into the background using the airbrush with the “texture” turned on in the brush pallet. The texture is a scanned texture I made with acrylic heavy gel medium and black and white acrylic paint.

I added the value on the ipad using the airbrush tool.

I want to try to figure out where all the dark and light areas are going to be before I start adding color. This is crucial because once you get deep into the color process it’s hard to fix value problems.

Starting out with a good line drawing and a composition

Fix all your problems in the design, not as you go. You will be glad you did.

Art Lessons OnLine – for 5 years

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Will Terry

FolioAcademy opened it’s virtual doors in 2011

Old Site We were so proud and excited to announce our new creation – Folio Academy – online art lessons for everyone. You can check it out here.

Back in 2010, I was driving home from a long day teaching at UVU here in Utah and he heard a woman being interviewed by Dave Ramsey on the radio. He was talking back skeptically and sarcastically to the radio. The woman was saying that EVERYONE has something they do in their spare time or professional life that they could use to earn extra income. I was thinking, “I’m an illustrator and a teacher…what else could I possibly have time for??!!!” It bugged me for about a week when a thought popped into my head – I teach…why not teach to the video camera and then sell the videos on my website???…I love teaching and video editing has been a little hobbie – so I did.

And then I heard the voices – “this is a waste of time”…”who do you think you are anyway?”…”you could be watching Flintstones re-runs.” But I silenced the voices and forged ahead. In between a book project and some text book covers I grabbed 10 days where I basically didn’t sleep. At the end of that torture session I emerged gleaming with my finished product: “How To Illustrate Children’s Books“. I was so proud. It was a labor of love indeed. I should probably back up a bit – I was lucky in that I had a programmer living at my house – my brother in law – and he assured me that he was up to the task of programming my website so that we could sell streaming videos. He would take care of the tech end and I would take care of making the videos.

Because I had to jump right back into illustrator mode I was only able to spend one day marketing my little video series. I contacted a few illustration bloggers like Angela Matteson – Angelato and children’s book blogs like Mark Mitchell’s How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator and invited them to do a blog post and give-a-way of my video series. They accepted as did about 4 other bloggers and from there I started selling my videos. Every now and then someone who purchased my videos liked them enough to do a blog post on them like Paula Pertile who used the photoshop concepts I put in my videos to achieve an unbelievable digital version of her colored pencil drawings. I know I’m leaving a lot of wonderful people out but there are too many to mention…but Sue from Moab was a great supporter!

Fast forward through a few more video series and I started getting asked by fellow artists about how my videos were selling and if I thought it was worth doing. Of course I told them I did but the problem most artists have is the programming side of selling videos from their own site. I put my head together with a few artist friends and together we decided to make a site available to artists of every kind. One of my illustrator friends said, “Can you imagine what it would have been like to have a resource like this when we were going to school?”

So our goal is to find the best artists from around the world and see what they have to teach. We’ve partnered with several local video studios like Amber Media Pro and Provo Creative and are inviting artists to come into the studio for a day and do their thang in front of the cameras. Of course not every artist can get to us so we’ll also offer their videos if they can produce them themselves. We are still kida small but we plan to change that here in the near future when we start releasing more courses and start growing this like we should have a long time ago.

So, woman on the radio talking about monetizing your hobbie whoever you are – thank you! – and my apologies for doubting you.

Illustrators and Artists need to practice, at least I do

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Will Terry

Oil Study, Practice for next Fall

Oil Study/Sketch I can’t believe school is already out, again! This means school is just a few months away.

I teach at UVU here in Utah and I thought I’d get a little practice before I start again this fall. I’m really looking forward to learning right along with my class – I like to think of it like we’re a bunch of mad scientists in our laboratory (pron: La-bore-a-tree) tinkering, combining, creating…basically making a mess and calling it work.

It has been so long since I’ve used real live oil paint. I don’t think I am too happy with the way this one turned out but oh well. Practice makes perfect. It may do me some good to look at a few of our own lessons at folio academy. Maybe Beginning Oil Painting by Emily Gordon, or Portrait Painting by Kirk Richards. Either way, we all need to practice. Well, most of us do.

I hope you have a wonderful summer. Practice practice practice.

How to: Painting with Acrylics Video Course

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Will Terry

Learn How to start Painting with Acrylics, using my Dry Brush Technique

acrylic painting painted with the Will Terry dry brush technique

There are many ways to create a painting with acrylics. The way that I do that is, I use a technique called a dry brush technique. I paint with a very dry paint brush with acrylic paint. Little by little, I build up layers of acrylic paint on a textured surface, to create my Acrylic Paint look.

It is so hard to explain my Acrylic Painting Drybrush style without video.

close up, Acrylic painting

I’m still amazed at how amazing the internet is – I almost think that it’s a blessing to have grown up without it. I don’t think my kids can appreciate it as much as I do.
The internet has made it possible for illustrators and artists to show and teach our students our techniques. Instead of the frustrations of trying to explain how to dry brush, I can now show it. In the how to paint videos I take the painting you see above from start to finish in real time. I didn’t speed this one up so anyone viewing it can see exactly how you can dry brush with acrylic paint. I start it with a sketch, transfer to paper, add acrylic texture, under-painting (or Grisaille), and finally the finished painting using wet paint, glazes, and dry brushing. I talk about everything from materials to design.

Acrylic Paint won’t do what it won’t do

Pencil sketch to be produced as an acrylic painting

I often hear my students complain about how much they HATE painting with acrylics– I tell them, “It’s because you want them to do something that they aren’t good for.” In these videos I show you why acrylics have been the workhorse medium for illustrators world wide.

Bonus Videos

Acrylic painting dry brush technique picture

I also included two bonus videos – two different approaches on how to paint using acrylics: Painterly and cross hatching. I really hope these videos are helpful to anyone trying to learn how to paint with acrylics! Click here for more information

And of course, see Folio Academy for all your art lessons on line.

iPad painting, with my Finger

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Will Terry

iPad Painting; Finger Painting on the iPad

finished pic of a strange fish ipad painting by Will Terry

Complete with color.

iPad Painting is too fun. I’m having way too much fun with the “brushes” app fro painting on the ipad. I painted this at a doctors office and in the car waiting for my son and a little while watching old episodes of “The Office” on NetFlix with the fam. My favorite Michael Scott line: “Would I rather be feared or loved?…I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”

iPad Painting & the lack of Pressure Sensitivity

ipad painting/sketch of the strange fish by Will Terry finger painting

Black and white finger painted on the iPad

But back to ipad painting – while the touch screen leaves many to complain about the lack of pressure sensitivity I find that an easy work around is just lowering the opacity to almost zero and making lots of little strokes. I love the portability and the fact that I can use it with or without a stylus. Like the title of this post suggests – I never used my stylus to paint this image – only my finger. I was surprised that after a while my finger did actually get a little tender but was fine the next day. My goal was to see how far I could take a digital painting using only my finger. I guess you could say I gave my ipad the finger :)…in a good way. I think I still like it better with the stylus. With the ability to zoom in and out so quickly – fixing and smoothing line work was a snap.

The iPads are still wonderful fo digital painting

I still enjoy digital iPad painting however I feel that the perfect tablet for me would be about half again bigger than the this ipad size. And pressure sensitivity would be nice too. I think there are better ways to paint digitally but this works. As more and more artists and especially illustrators are switching to digital painting, there are more and more devices and apps and programs to make it even easier. I love it.

For art lessons online, be sure to visit FolioAcademy.com

Free How to Create Your Own E-Books? E-Book Over Achievers

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Will Terry

Any one can create “your own e-books”

17 of Kari and Von Brimhall's e-books Some close friends of mine, Von and Kari Brimhall have gone completely nuts on e-books! They are two of my very best friends from college and have always been into art and design. We had a conversation about producing e-books and they opened the flood gates on their creativity. Together they created 39 – YES! – 39 e-books in about 4 months but I’ll let them tell you more about that below. Von is a computer geek and has a great full time gig working for the chain saw company, Stihl, and Kari is a home schooler, storyteller, and artist and they have a gaggle of successful kids.

How to create and publish your own e-books

Before you read their letter you have to check out the amazing tutorial Von has made for anyone to download and make their own ebooks – he’s made it available for free right here – click to download. If programing your own e-books sounds scary you have to check out Von’s step by step tutorial – he makes it really easy for you.

Von and Kari are proving that if you have ideas, motivation, and hard work you can realize your dreams in this new medium. Have a look at their titles and read a little about their new journey.

Confessions of the e-Book dudes

We’ve been friends with Will Terry for years and avid fans of his art! When he posted his two awesome video series How to Illustrate Children’s Books and Digital Painting in Photoshop, we signed right up! Both my husband and I like to draw and paint, and I love to write. Just watching the video courses on Folio Academy’s website, opened our eyes to all kinds of possibilities.

Self Publishing our E-Books was fun and easy

We instantly pulled out a story that I had told for years to our children when they were young… and Von started drawing and painting–digitally! We couldn’t believe how fun and easy it was. Thus, our first eBook was born! Freddie Frog is Hungry was so exciting to share with friends that we decided to take the plunge and upload it to Barnes and Noble.com.

With e-books there are no boxes of inventory in the garage

This is not my first book, I have self published and still have copies of a fabulous book in the garage…just waiting for a market. Having Barnes and Noble sell our books is great. They take care of the money end of things and I take care of the marketing. Writing eBooks is very nice–the expense of self-publishing and printing, then marketing and working out prices, taxes, mailing to customers, and buying all the supplies that go with it, etc. is a thing of the past. With eBooks, you don’t have boxes in the garage of unsold books.

E-books available at a PC near you

All of our Nook E-Books are available for sale on Barnes and Noble.com. We currently have 39 eBooks for sale and hopefully more on the way! Our target demographic is 0-6 years old so these are all books that parents would be reading to and with their children. Besides being clever, our eBooks have an educational slant to them. They include learning basic colors, numbers, animals, seasons, the alphabet, etc.

We’re not selling large volumes like Will Terry yet, but we’re working on it. If you would like to see what our eBooks are like you can download a free a PDF version of our eBook ‘Who Says Moo?’ right here. If you are interested in how we make our eBooks, you http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcan download a detailed PDF tutorial that my husband wrote at http://vonlogan.com/sunshine/indesign.html . It describes how to create illustrated children’s eBooks using Adobe InDesign.

Hope you enjoy it and go on to create your own fabulous eBooks. ~Kari Brimhall

Figure Drawing? I’m done learning art and illustration

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Will Terry

When can you stop learning your artist & illustration skills?

I’m so glad I don’t have to learn anymore! After all I’ve been a professional illustrator for nearly twenty five years now, and I think I’m entitled to a break from improvement!

figure drawing of a nude woman by Will Terry Of course I’m kidding. One of my core beliefs is that we can never stop learning and so I even started taking figure drawing classes awhile ago. I went nearly twenty years since my college days and it was painful. In fact, I have to say, I still don’t feel that comfortable figure drawing. Will teaching illustration I sometimes sneak into Don Seegmiller and Perry Stuart’s figure drawing classes at UVU here in Utah. Both are very talented artists and teachers and I have to admit I was a bit nervous because I’m supposed to be a colleague right? Now what I should do is post my first drawing I did in that class so we could see if I’ve improved at all, but I stuffed it into the garbage while nobody was looking. It was awful. I had that warm flushed feeling of shame and embarrassment. How could I be a college art teacher and produce something so poor.

I realized that I needed improvement

It was after that first drawing that I resolved to make it to their classes as often as I could to finally learn to draw the figure. I must say that not only has it been extremely rewarding to produce drawings that I’m somewhat proud of but it’s also helped my everyday sketching. So I encourage all of you to break out of your comfort zone and learn something new. Even if it’s figure drawing. You can’t go wrong learning to draw the human figure.

And remember, you can learn something new at our wonderful Folio Academy website. I don’t think we have a good figure drawing course yet, but we do have a good portrait painting course by J. Kirk Richards

Ebook; from Idea to Publish to Prosper, I Hope

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Will Terry

Ebook: Think, Write, Paint, Publish.

I released another ebook on Barnes and noble.com! My other books were really encouraging. And I wasn’t sleeping anyway. So behold, Pollywog to Frog.

0011a

Two Things I really like about Ebooks

1) I love to draw fun simple little characters

2) I like to be able to pay my bills.

Publishing my own ebooks in my “spare” time allows me to do both. I carry my sketch book everywhere and so if I’m not writing I’m sketching and vice versa. Pollywog to Frog was written in the few hours I have in-between the two college classes I was teaching and the digital paintings were done in-between assignments. And oh yeah, an ebook costs so little to publish. Now anyone can compete with the big publishers.

ebook graphic, a little polliwog, Flippy floppy little sprout,

ebook graphic, a little tad-pole, All his arms and legs pop out.

Ebooks: How to make money as an artist.

One of the best things we can do as artists and business people is develop passive streams of income. The ability to earn money while you’re sleeping, playing, or working on other projects is a really cool thing. I’m already working on my next ebook.

If you can’t write an ebook, find someone who can

If any of you feel comfortable illustrating but not writing and would want to work on producing an ebook, ask around, everyone knows someone who wants to write a children’s book. Find a friend or relative, (Can relatives be friends?) to work with. If that doesn’t work, I have a professional well known author who would love you to take one of his manuscripts and turn it into an ebook. And my buddy, also known as my brother in law is probably still available to take the finished jpeg files and produce the epub files necessary to publish your work. Just email me off list if you’re interested: willterryart@gmail.com

Stay tuned for some Shameless Marketing below

5 ebooks that I recommend

So my three little claims to ebook fame are: Monkey & Croc, Tickle Bugs and Pollywog to Frog. none of which have made the New Your Times best seller list. A young friend of mine, OK, Wayne’s daughter, has written two ebooks. I Love Chickens Eggs and Baby Chicks and When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Frog, and she is just a little girl. I think I told you this in my last post, but Hey! I want to encourage you.

PS Learn how to draw and paint, and other fun art skills at FolioAcademy.com.

E-books, Now Anyone Can Publish, Even YOU

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Will Terry

E-books, A fun easy way to get published

Tickle Bugs e-book. Now in E-Stores near you

“Publish or parish” They used to say. Maybe they still do. E-books make it so much more possible. And it can be fun.

In a recent post, I said that illustrators can either complain, or they can become authors, write AND illustrate. They can write, illustrate and publish now. Self Publish. They/we can still complain too if we want. There is always something to complain about right? Isn’t that what Facebook is for?

I have been so busy lately that I haven’t really been writing and illustrating, or publishing any e-books. But a few short years ago. Well back in 20011, I was all over it.

E-books success with Monkey & Croc

My first e-book, Monkey & Croc was a lot of fun to write and more fun to illustrate. It wasn’t fun to publish, that is left brain stuff I am sure. But I had a buddy. If you don’t have a buddy, you should get one, or hire one. And that buddy was a left brain kind a guy, that, for a fee, would get my story and artwork all published as an e-book for me. Monkey and Croc still hasn’t found it’s way to the New York Times best seller list, but it did pretty well. So I made another e-book. In doing that i was moonlighting as a second illustrator – the one that doesn’t sleep. Sometimes I think I need to see one of those mad scientists like Michael Keaton did in the movie “Multiplicity” – I could use a few extra me’s around to get everything done.

Cute e-books Illustration of a small bug eating a leaf

E-Books in a Simple Form and for kids

Tickle Bugs was an attempt to explore a much simpler form of e-books void of backgrounds and complete with very simple characters. The audience is extremely targeted to the teething ring and diaper crowd. If you’re wearing pull ups and sucking on a pacifier you just might like Tickle Bugs. So if that is you, stop reading this boring blog post and get yourself a copy of my e-books, especially Tickle Bugs and read like the wind.

I aimed it for the younger kids because there just weren’t that many e-books out there that were for children ages two and under.

Chalese Andreason, a young lady and friend of mine, wrote an e-book or two as well, and she is just a little girl.

How To Draw, Paint, and do Art

PS Learn how to draw and paint, and other fun art skills at FolioAcademy.com.

It was so much fun to take an idea from concept to finished product and published!!! in less than a month!!!

Tickle bugs didn’t climb up the search ranking as fast as Monkey & Croc – I had a feeling that it would get progressively harder to get the same attention but I had to keep trying. The idea of author/illustrator as brand is way too exciting.

Tickle Bugs doesn’t wiggle but if the reader holding the toddler is on the ball the little tike will be giggling at the end. Tickle Bugs is available at Barnes and Noble – click here.