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Written by : Travis Schmied |
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such a big experience that wow like it changed me as an artist hello everybody welcome to today's video my name is chalene and today i'm going to be going over three things that i really love about being an illustrator the first thing i want to highlight about being an illustrator is how much freedom that i have to be honest i've always known since i was a child that i never wanted to like have one job and i felt like i wanted to have several jobs throughout my life i've always known that and it's never really been something i felt i couldn't do and there are two things that i always found myself saying i really want to be studying korean right now and i i really want to be drawing i could be working on my drawing right now i could be working on my portfolio i could be working on my book i could be working on someone's book right now those are the two things i've always come back to and those are my two passions the first thing what i mentioned was the free time and being an illustrator allows me to make my own schedules and to work whenever i can whenever i want to i love that about my job i love that about my career and i thank god every time because i hate and i say it i really like hate hate the feeling of like being somewhere working knowing that i could be doing something else as it pertains to my job because for some strange reason i i always felt it inside me that you know i have this song i have this book i have this thing i need to do it burned me inside as much as i enjoyed working in like educational setting or just at any other job i've always struggled seeing myself as a part of a vision long term beyond like the short term because of that and being an illustrator gives me the privilege of learning other things in order to become a better artist because i heard this piece of advice five or seven years ago i was listening to a podcast i'm not sure who said it but if you do know who said it please let me know because it changed my life and this artist said that in order to become a good artist you have to have more life experience at the time i considered myself competent enough that if i thought of something i could at least sketch it down and it's not about being the best at it i always felt like do i have the basic skills and i really did feel like i did but my challenge was when you said that i really had to look at my life and see the things that i had done and i realized i hadn't done a lot of things or i felt like i had done a lot of things at the time but the scale of what that meant for me was a little different really contemplating you know what haven't i done and me being christian living my life in a way where i was earnestly trying to do my best before god in physical things like the way i live the way i dressed the way i spoke and even just how i thought honestly down to my thoughts i really felt like man like after everything i've gone through i still haven't lived and that's why i'm not the artist that i want to be yet after going to south korea and living there for a year teaching english there for a year i can honestly say that that experience genuinely transformed my outlook as an artist in my perspective and i remember reflecting on what the gentleman had said because up to that point i had went away for the first time and lived in another province right after that i went straight to korea for a year so it was back to back i had these two like out of home experiences i had always lived at home i'd always been with family and i always had that feeling of everyone kind of like checks if you're in line with kind of like the thing and until i left home is when i realized this is who i am and this is who i choose to be when i'm not around the people who reinforce those ideas the ideas i thought were important so going to korea told me who i was and what was important to me and why i choose to live the way that i do and things that i don't want to do anymore when i reflected on that artist's teachings or that quote or that what he shared i was like i guess you know what i am better because of that because there are experiences and hardships and joyful times that i've gone through it was such a big experience that wow like it changed me as an artist what it actually gave me was something different than just you know art skills it gave me me it gave me actually an identity clarity that kind of highlights why one being an illustrator and the freedom it gives me is one of the things that i love about being illustrator like i can do anything i can work from anywhere as long as electricity i can essentially work from anywhere it's like circular just like the more experience i have the better my art becomes that's that's something i really treasure about being an illustrator definitely the second thing that i really love about being an illustrator is the power to influence and create like god does and i kind of sounds really cheesy like i can see how it sounds cheesy but you have to hear me out for a second the way i've come to kind of like rest in being an illustrator is that i come from a place in my own childhood and my own upbringing in my own thoughts that i repeated to myself that you know if i become something like a therapist something that's reputable to society my value as a woman as a person will go up because i worked really hard to attain a career that's really hard to get and not everybody gets into and that's really respected because i have all this knowledge so i should be making a lot of money and i should be well situated and i won't be in poverty and i won't have all of these things because i held those careers to such a high esteem me being an artist now humbles me it humbles me so much at the ability for me to choose to bring forth and i just a thought in my mind into physical reality like when i really sit on that when i really sit on it it's mind-blowing it's crazy because it made me really see that i was doubting the woman that god was making me to be by feeling like i needed to put it inside of other careers that would help make me feel like i was something and it's so interesting that god chose art one of my first loves in life to kind of like show me that my potential is endless where my place of you know always searching for something came from because it wasn't until i accepted you know i'm gonna be an artist and this is just what i'm gonna do until i accepted that i realized i could do anything i wanted it's not that i felt like i couldn't do it before but i always felt like i had this time limit i always felt like i had to do it before i was 22 for us 28 before i was 30 before this time before i had kids before i got married before i always felt like something had to happen and it wasn't until i really rested inside of being an artist that i seen that oh my gosh like i can do anything in my mind like i can if i want to design a new couch then i will literally just design it i feel like i have more power now being able to influence my life knowing that i can make anything and the only person stopping me is me or of course resources access to resources and all those other things but it
Thanks for your comment Luisa Gould, have a nice day.
- Travis Schmied, Staff Member
if you can't take correction I don't know what to tell you hello everybody Welcome to the channel today we are going to be talking about five signs you should not become an illustrator or better yet a children's book illustrator because I've been doing this for several years now and I have come to accept and realize that this road is not for everybody so I'm gonna make life simpler for you by breaking down five signs that this is not for you the first reason you shouldn't become an illustrator is if you value having your paychecks on time you can be paid within 30 to 90 days from actually invoicing your client and so because of that there's a sense of not really feeling like you're standing on sure grounds and you have to be very on top of your financial literacy your financial understanding of what your situation is and so not a lot of people would want that and especially in an industry where you're working with so so many different Publishers some of them are really big names that you want to be known by I've been in several situations where I thought I was going to get paid at least within 30 days and you know 30 days past 35 days 40 days 50 days 60 days and you're just wondering and that was in the very early times of my experience working as an illustrator and to be honest I found that the income is reliable so that's not really a question but if you want to know when it's coming you can't really guarantee that because depending on the actual publishing house that you're working with there is a standard of how they already pay out their clients and they pay out their artists their agents can be so so so frustrating because you're living your entire life you are trying to do your your best you're putting out your best work and you believe that the reward is going to come soon but that's not exactly what happens and you kind of have have to become a creature of delayed gratification and I feel like being an artist that is definitely a skill set unless you're putting that into your own contract that you're signing with your client one-to-one don't feel like it's an expectation that everybody's gonna deal with you that way so I just wanted to bring that to your awareness because it is a very important thing that I feel like you should know second sign that you should not and I seriously mean this that you should not become a illustrator children's book illustrator is if you cannot manage your time well or properly I'll give you the rundown about pretty much how this goes so you would imagine if you're coming from like a regular job mindset you always have somebody or groups of people to keep you accountable to do your job but the thing is when you're working as a children's book illustrator if you're somebody who cannot work without Direction all the time every single day and you don't take initiative without someone giving you an order this is not the field for you because you're going to be given an idea a concept that needs to be fleshed out and then they're going to give you potentially a deadline maybe three weeks out maybe four weeks out maybe two weeks out but you need to find out how you can get this work done within your already pre-existing daily life activities but you need to find out how to get that work done by that deadline because it's so easy to feel like you have a lot of time and depending on how many projects you're taking at a time you will come to find out that time goes by very quickly when you are not accounting for the fact that life is still happening if you're not somebody who can manage your time well that can be realistic about how long it actually takes you to do a piece how long it actually takes you to color something is your sketching phase faster is your final coloring stage faster What stages do you save time and what stages do you end up taking more time away from these are honest questions you really have to be asking yourself because it all factors into how much time you need because if you do not have enough time you need to make that known as early as possible whether to your agent or directly to the art director that you're working with your reputation is honestly on the line and that is something you do not sacrifice or put on the line for no reason or reasons that you could honestly get ahead of because in this industry working in children's books everyone is going to be talking about what their experience working with you is like and one and you're breaking in already in the beginning stages it's like you really have to outperform yourself so that you can have lasting make sure the art directors because so that they feel comfortable working with you again and if not in a similar fashion and on the same types of projects maybe they'll be the reason that will encourage another agent or another person or another opportunity to come your way because of the positive experience they had working with you and so time management is so important because I tell you these deadlines that they're giving you and that they're depending on you to fulfill we have to know early on so we can advocate for ourselves we can put ourselves in the best position to finish the work in a healthy way in a mindful way and in an honest way so that we can deliver work that you like and you enjoy but also so that you can still have a work-life balance because that's what it's about there's no reason to kind of like fight for this thing in this dream that you've wanted and you can enjoy it because you're stuck at a computer screen I'm just giving you guys the real 100 because I've been through it and going through it so I'm being honest with you guys the next thing I wanted to share with you was an invitation to like this video if it's something that you're enjoying so far or if you even stayed this long so thank you for watching here we go back to the video the third sign or the third reason you should not become an illustrator or a children's book illustrator is if you cannot handle correction if you can't take correction I don't know what to tell you if you don't know how to survive the fiery darts or seeing your work being picked apart and I don't even mean in a harsh way I just mean if you can't handle seeing other people expressing their idea about your work this isn't for you this isn't for you a big part of being a children's book illustrator is understanding that your work is not isn't necessarily yours so yes it's your ideas and it's coming from your creativity and it's yours and that you made it but you're making it for a commercial purpose or for somebody else you're bringing another Vision to life and you have to kind of get to a place as an artist where you separate yourself from your work and it's its own person I like to identify my work as you know they're their own children they have their own personalities they have their own um likes and dislikes but I can only impose so much onto them you know because they have their own life of their own and that they will live and they're going to go and depart into the world and I honestly feel like when you're working as a illustrator which is like doing commercia
Thanks celiare4 your participation is very much appreciated
- Travis Schmied
About the author
I've studied aeroponics at Montreat College in Montreat and I am an expert in post-processualism. I usually feel loved. My previous job was bicycle mechanic I held this position for 6 years, I love talking about pipes and sake tasting. Huge fan of Kevin O'Leary I practice snowboarding and collect premiums.
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