Weird sisters
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Macbeth (Act IV, Scene I).
I did this painting as a self-promotion piece a few years ago. Promotion is critical to any business; it’s especially important to illustrators. We are, by and large, self-employed: we work for ourselves. We operate on small budgets, so we’ve got to be clever about how we let the world know we’re here.
This image appeared in a creative directory, Picturebook. A creative directory is a catalogue of illustration (or photography) that comes out once a year and is sent to art buyers, like art directors. The art buyers receive the directory for free. The illustrators featured inside the directory paid for their page. That fee covers the cost of producing and distributing the directory to the art buyers.
Most creative directories cover a spectrum of markets, from editorial to advertising. Picturebook concentrates on just one slice of the illustration market: children’s books. A page in Picturebook works more effectively for me because it goes specifically to the audience I want to reach. So far as I know, ad agency AD’s don’t receive Picturebook.
Incidentally, this lovely image is available as a print.
I’m very inspired by your art work. Thanks for all the postings that help out us illustrators trying to break into the business. I especially love this image as I’m partial to anything involving Halloween. I work in gouache also and I would like to ask a question if you don’t mind. I have trouble working the background and characters at the same time. I usually end up painting the characters/ foreground first and then paint the background around it after the fact. This method has not been working too well for me and I wanted to know what your method is. Do you work the background first and paint your characters on top? Work them at the same time? Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated!
Great illo!
And I also have a question: I’ve been looking at joining Picturebook but also wondered about http://www.childrensillustrators.com... Any experience with or heard any opinions about it?