Monday, March 28, 2011

My Painting Class - Art Puzzle



Just for fun I took a picture of my mentor- Perry Stuart an amazing illustrator and figure artist and teacher at UVU. I enlarged it, printed it, mounted it on foam board, textured it, and cut it into pieces. The video begins with the pieces being handed out so my students could begin painting on top of the cut up photo. The fun part was watching them piece it together at the end. They had no idea it was a portrait of Perry.

Perry just started a new blog on figure drawing - check it out here!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Pollywog To Frog




I just released another ebook on Barnes and noble.com! My other books have really been encouraging. There are two things I really like about ebooks: 1) I love to draw fun simple little characters and 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 was written in the few hours I have in-between the two college classes I teach and the digital paintings were done in-between assignments.

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 any of you feel comfortable illustrating but not writing and would want to work on producing an ebook I have a professional well known author who would love you to take one of his manuscripts and turn it into an ebook. My brother in law is also 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: will@willterry.com

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Just For Fun!




Last night I decided to avoid working on the projects that pay real money and do something just for fun. I painted this in photoshop last night sitting in our new recliner watching "The Thing" (1982 John Carpenter version)with my boys. I rendered it on my little netbook just to see how far I could take an image on that little $248 computer. Technology is getting really affordable for everyone.

I combined the background photo (google images) with my rendering to save time. FYI I would never do this for a paying client - I don't like confrontations, threats, law suits, etc. :)

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

What Flavor Are You?


I've been a freelance illustrator for almost 20 years and for the first 17 it was business as usual. In the last three years I've seen more changes in our industry than ever before. In some ways I must confess that if given the choice to see big changes or keep business as usual I would have ignorantly chosen the latter. Change isn't fun. Change is usually painful. Change is scary because not knowing feels insecure and most of us crave security. But the reality is that change is on the menu to stay - so our choices are to dine or leave the restaurant and starve.

In the past you were odd if you called yourself a freelancer. To most of the "normal" 9-5 crowd a freelancer was synonymous with freeloader or at best someone living on the fringe. Over time freelancers became more mainstream. Most freelancers (myself included)own their job. In other words, they get an assignment from a company and then through their skills, crafts, or abilities satisfy that assignment. If they aren't working they usually aren't earning so while they have more freedom they still have to work to earn.

Now we're seeing a whole new job description - The artist as "The Product". Greg Spalenka a world renowned illustrator calls it "Artist as Brand". In the past and present artist relied on companies to function as the liaison between them and the consumer. For gallery artists it was the gallery. For book illustrators - the publisher. For video game artists - the studio. These entities provide big money to produce and market products using art - the kind of money few artists could generate or commit themselves. The artist's risk is time - the companies risk is money. A symbiotic relationship that was virtually the only way - until now.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the days of these entities are over by any means but their roles are changing very quickly. The internet has in many ways leveled the playing field. Artist now have a direct line to the consumers of the products they create. Never before in the history of the world have artists had the opportunity to reach their audiences so efficiently. If you're a fine artist you can develop a following through social networking, blogging, emailing, etc. The same is true for children's book illustrators, art book artists, graphic novel and comic artists, art educators and so on. You say you want to produce your own video game? What's stopping you? Many iphone games are now being produced by solo tech savvy artists or artists teamed up with a tech person. A simple upload to itunes and if the game is good they could start raking it in.

The idea is that you can no longer use "nobody will hire me" as an excuse not to produce your own products. Many companies will go out of business in the near future. Many will adapt and thrive. For me I'm looking at each new request for my services in a different light. I'm trying to balance my freelance assignment time with time spent on producing my own projects.

I've realized that even though I've been illustrating children's books for over a decade and sold over 750,000 books (all combined) a very small percentage of my audience associates Will Terry with the books I've illustrated. This is a huge problem! We usually buy name brand products because people associate the brand with quality. I need to be constantly working on the Will Terry brand and for me one of the easiest ways to do that is to also start to write some of the books I illustrate. The reality is that it's an authors world and illustrators really take a back seat in many ways. As I see it an illustrator can complain or become an author.

Last year as I was getting my brain around the changes I was seeing in art related industries I became frightened and depressed. The insecurity was really getting to me. Now that I've started to take control of my own branding I'm finding the future exciting and I'm always thinking of new ways to take advantage of the technology that has fallen in our laps.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

New Book with Helen Ketteman


So these are some character sketches from the new book I'm working on with Helen Ketteman - author of Armadilly Chili and The Three Little Gators among many others. This book is due out next year from Albert Whitman. Senorita Gordita is a re-telling of the little ginger bread man story in a south west flavor. It's full of fun characters and desert imagery and plenty of fun chase scenes. In short - I'm having way too much fun to be getting paid - don't tell A.W.