music fix

some time back i lamented a dearth in new music (to my collection, not necessarily recently released). as i spend most of my days listening to talk radio or music, it was getting pretty sad on the music front. part of the problem is that cds continued getting disgustingly expensive. and if you think they’re bad in the states, realize that they are almost twice as expensive in england and parts of europe, after you factor in currency conversion.

so shortly after i made that post i decided to give itunes a whirl—and this, mind you, without an ipod and while running winxp. i gave myself a budget of $10 a month to spend on music—since this was at the time the standard price for albums on itunes, it was perfect. an album a month, which would allow me time to really absorb it. and so i began downloading.

now $10 a month for music doesn’t go all that far, as you might realize. and when you factor in that double albums cost me a 1.5 months’ budget, and that itunes has slowly started raising the price of some new albums, well, it was slowing down a bit right when i was getting hooked on never having to buy cds again. that last bit is especially important since this whole living abroad thing requires i keep my possessions slim.

so last september or so i went on over and checked out emusic. the deal was tempting: 50 songs in mp3 format for free the first two weeks, no strings attached. one issue i have with itunes is, obviously, the proprietary (but quickly becoming standard) format. another is i can’t stand itunes as a media player, preferring winamp hands down. well, with the itunes plug-in for winamp (m4p input plugin), this became a negligible issue. without it, i wouldn’t use itunes at all. still, having songs in mp3 format (reasonably encoded) is always better.

so i tried and then signed up for emusic: 10 bucks a month for 40 downloads, or roughly $3.33 per album, after the free trial. the downside has been that emusic caters heavily, almost exclusively, to those interested in indie music, since indie labels happen to be the few who will allow their music to be had in unprotected mp3 format. so if you want the latest hott hitz, well you’re out of luck on emusic. i’m not deep indie, yet a lot of bands i do like or have been interested in trying out were generally available. the upside is that at $3 an album, i’m more open to experimentation than i was on itunes where i’d buy only what i knew i already wanted. on emusic i’ve begun by filling in collections of bands i was missing albums by but am quickly going to be running out and moving towards some new stuff, or at least stuff that i never had bought before. in the meanwhile i’m busy filling out my yo la tengo collection, for instance.

the final problem: 3-4 albums a month is ending up being more music than i can properly digest! i’ll probably just pile music on my plate until i’ve dried up what emusic has that i’m interested in, then i’ll drop my subscription and go back to itunes where, at a slower pace, i’ll be able to more fully enjoy what i’ve been grabbing lately.

Economics of Improvement

One unfortunate thing about card art is the speed at which it needs to be done. A typical month has me doing roughly 5 of them depending on if I want weekends or evenings off. Things like interior illustrations for books or magazines throw the equation off entirely. This is pretty slow. For reference, I know some illustrators who can turn this amount of work out on nearly a weekly basis. They tend to have faster styles whereas I have something of a snooty artiste in me who wants the original painting itself to be super-special, gem-like to an extent. Add to that the artists I admire and try to stand on the shoulders of, and it comes down to the realization that I knowingly put way more detail and finish into pieces that will be shrunk down to near nothingness in print. It’s financially stupid but artistically very gratifying. There are a lot of things I could generalize in half the time and you wouldn’t notice it shrunk down to an inch tall or so, but I choose not to.

Only the portion in the box was reproduced in the end and I knew this would be so. So why the rest, which I was not paid to produce? Because I’m an idiot.

One of the things that an artist may do when faced with multiple pieces and quickly approaching deadlines is wing it more. I’m not so good at "jamming" on the pencil: I like to work from life or photos. Incidentally that sounds like an admission of something that needs to be made an improvement-goal of…. Anyway, once I have a piece nailed down using reference and the rest I often hit the canvas and do my jamming there. There have been many occasions where I’ve sat in front of a board ready to paint, brush in hand, and noted to myself that I had no clue what colors I was going to use. Thankfully I’ve developed that side of things fairly well (for now), and so often succeed as long as the preliminary work was good to start with, even though color studies are rarely part of that preliminary work unless I’m doing larger, more involved paintings.

So, one thing about goal-setting is that the improvements gained are often at the expense of already-limited time. My current goal has me doing more preliminary work to arrive at a better composition. This goal therefore has the disadvantage of losing me about 2 days of work every month for the aforementioned 4-5 pieces by adding the time spent fiddling around with compositional ideas for each painting. since illustrations pay flat rates, I’ll be making less per hour as a result. I have essentially volunteered for a pay-cut, which is painful to consider. This is the messy economics of illustration: balancing speed against quality. The upside is going to inevitably be consistently better images, however, and could end up benefiting me in the end by having the resulting work get me more and better paying projects and possibly by increasing the value of the originals. That’s always the upside to improvement, really. Each improvement in knowledge or process is added to the next ones, hopefully snowballing into continuous growth. For instance, since I started doing tighter pencil studies I’ve lost a half day to each one, again, for no more pay. However, they have made a noticeable difference in the finals which have resulted in more steady work, and I now have a nice drawing for most pieces that I’m happy to show and sell at shows. In that case risk was rewarded.

where does the time go

after a good run of more in-depth posts this year i’m taking a short break to give a less work-intensive post. a bit busy and a little harried. you understand. i’ve got like 8 different blog posts in various states of finish but i can’t bring myself to complete any really content-driven ones this week.

so….

i was going to write an article sometime about composing art for cards, which is a very strange format that has its own difficulties, but fellow daydream graphics artist matt cavotta did an excellent job here which i encourage you to read. he also just posted an article detailing a bit more of how a magic commission works, for those interested in learning more. matt actually works at wizards these days and so is great for writing these from an artist’s and r&d person’s perspective.

and then there’s shane white, a really versatile and a machine of an artist whose output scares me. he has a blog that’s updated far more often than my weekly thing and it’s usually chock full of goodness. he’s also a swell guy and keeps a sketchbook that i lust after, especially since i have never kept one.