This collab, as well as this new art post into the robowebs in general, was long overdue.  But, like I told Leonardo, the best I can offer up is that I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately and its taken up a lot of my time and commitments.  The good news, which can be noted by my posting this, is that I’m mostly caught up.  I worked through a couple months of freelance and other things, and now hopefully I will be more productive with some more personal work and things I can share!

Wanna be in a magazine?!

We’re looking for people who are passionate about storytelling, illustration and design to submit stories, short comics, pinups, and pitches!  If you’d like to develop work for Vehicle Magazine, or already have something you think is good enough, then you should send us a sample of your work or proposal!

If you’ve got a story waiting to get out, send your proposal or complete project to the following address:
Please send links to images and large projects only, do not attach them to your e-mail, Thanks!

info@vehicle-magazine.com

Or e-mail me directly, and for more information at:

spencer@vehicle-magazine.com

Don’t know what Vehicle Magazine is?

www.vehicle-magazine.com

If you want to tell stories, on your own time, in your own voice and with a few friends who see the world in an original, creative way. Witness raw creation, from concept to finished piece, every step of the way entirely in the hands of the most important element of Vehicle: The creator.  This is Vehicle Magazine, created by Hilary and Tyler Jenkins, now with a growing creative team including yours truly, as a place where the people who are passionate about their creative process can express themselves and meet other creators who feel the same way.

Vehicle will begin shipping with Diamond Comic Distributors in January of 2010, and will appear in your November’s issue of Previews for pre-ordering.  So, let your local comic shop know that you want to see Vehicle on their shelves, or visit Vehicle’s website for a sample of the first two issues now!

This exhibition was of special significance to me for a few reasons.  Its been in planning for quite a while, as all of us noodled away on pieces whenever we could throughout the year, along with our current jobs and other commitments.  It was also a huge learning experience, as I found out first hand some of what was involved in organizing an art show.  I was able to not just show my work and come together with some of my best friends, but I was also able to play off of them and compete.  Dawson Creek is, of course, my hometown, which made things special as well, and the curator, Ellen Corea, is also a close family friend.  It was really a great honor and a lot of fun to be able to have a show at the DCAG.  But wait… its still running!

The Converging Conversations show will be on until the beginning of November, so if you’re in the Dawson Creek/Peace River area, please go check it out and let us know what you think!  The opening was a huge success and we had a really great turnout.  A very large portion of the artwork was sold within the first couple of hours which all of us contributors are taking as a huge compliment.  For a small sample of some of the work available at the show (which is also for sale at the gallery!) you can also check out the show’s official blog: http://convergingconversations.blogspot.com

Artists that Contributed to the Converging Conversations show include:

• Karyl Gilbertson
• Terri LeGear
• Dennis Budgen
• Jacky Gilbertson
• Scott Kowalchuk
• Silas Kaufman
• Hilary and Tyler Jenkins
• Roxanne Wang
• Spencer Goldade

While I’m writing though, I would also like to draw some attention to the Dawson Creek Art Gallery.  You see, I don’t really believe that many of the people that live in Dawson Creek realize how privileged they are to have such a beautiful gallery and space at their immediate disposal.  I’ve included some photos from the show below (forgive me for not having the time to do much in the way of touch ups), but even still I don’t know if I’m doing it much justice.

The Dawson Creek Art Gallery is built inside of an old grain elevator, instantly this ties it into the culture of its surroundings and gives it the basis for being a very interesting space.  When you walk in the space instantly opens up to a huge spiraling walkway that makes up the majority of the exhibition space.  The bottom floor is usually home to many different handmade goods like pottery, jewelery, and other beautiful works of art (and those for sale, by the way, have some of the best craftsmanship to price ratios I’ve ever come across).  Where the spiraling walkway ends at the top there is a door.  If you enter this door you have two options, you can either descend a separate staircase that takes you through a visual history of Dawson Creek and the Peace Region, or you can ascend up yet another level to the artist studios where artists can work and classes can be taken.

Beside the DC Art Gallery is the old train station, which has since been modified into the Tourist Information Center.  There is also a large blue train car that holds a lot of history as well.  When I was a child this train car used to be an ice cream shop called the Blue Goose Caboose.  Every now and then, when our northern weather permits, someone opens up the car for business again.  Even more, across from these is our traffic circle.  I mention this because it has always been the center of so much amusement.  Watching tourists try to drive around it backwards, sometimes two at a time, or even watching the locals as they often can’t seem to get it right, has become a pass time of many in our little but quickly growing city.  So, if you’re in the area, I strongly suggest checking out the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, if not for our Converging Conversations art show then for all of the history, culture, and innovation it represents!

The Cow was my starting piece for the show.

The outside view of the gallery

A view from the bottom floor

An elaboration of the previous view

From one of the ramps

A different ramp view

From the opening: Jacky Gilbertson, Karyl Gilbertson, Spencer Goldade (me), Terri LeGear

And an expanded view of the bottom floor!

The website is in the shape of a hot dog… get it?! Nom nom nom…

Basically, I illustrated some garlic and called it the Anti-Vampire Shirt, and then I did another one of a radish just for the hell of it. I mean, everyone always forgets about radishes, and that’s not very nice.

make custom gifts at Zazzle

The model shots are © Zazzle.  I wish I could claim I illustrated those cool dudes as well.

The adobe pdf and dropbox icons, as well as the stock photo of the orange, are © their respective creators/owners, of course.  As per the usual no brainer, click the image for a full view!

For the new website I’m trying to incorporate SEO, as I find that very few art and design company sites, personal sites, or portfolio sites ever do so. I’d like to use it as an experiment to see just how much of the site traffic I could boost up.

Here you can see the site design so far, although its still in development.

In other good news, if you’re in Saskatchewan tonight, feel free to drop by the launch of Issue 2 of Vehicle Magazine!

So,

For getting consistent work as an illustrator you’re going to have to start out slow.  The first misconception a person needs to get over is that if they want to be a full time illustrator and can just dive in and have a ton of work right off the bat.  This isn’t how the industry works, especially for freelance (except for the rare cases where someone is mind blowingly amazing and everyone wants work with them).  A lot of times if a magazine uses you, they use you once for that month, and you may be lucky if they call you again.  So, using that as a template for the rest of the industry, you have to constantly be searching out new work.

The postcard method is a very effective way of getting people to notice you.  Not buy into you, but notice you.  If your work still isn’t up to snuff or doesn’t fit the business or client you’ve sent it to, then they still aren’t going to contact you!  The point of the postcard and business card is to give clients something physical to hold onto.  They go to your webpage or deviantart, and so what?  There’s 100 more tabs open with people just as amazing if not better, and there’s a thousand times more files saved onto the art director’s computer, what’s going to make him choose you?  Giving him a hard copy of some of your work helps!  It has to be something with content, one of your best pieces, both in technical merit and in conceptual.  If they like it, they put it up in their cubicle or on a wall or whatever.  Either way, the point is that they see you first and they can hold you in their hand.  You can print out around 250 or so for $40 or $50 at www.aladdinprint.com which is the best deal I have ever even heard of.  They have free shipping, and I swear by them.  That’s the cheapest advertising you’re going to get.  Then all you have to do is mail them out to different companies or clients you are interested in doing work for.  As for where you get the addresses… you can browse around on the web to your favorite magazines and websites and find the contact for their art director or art department, or pick up the magazine or work in person and see if its been printed in it or on it, or there are super expensive books that you can buy that have addresses in them as well.  I’ve never looked much into the books though, they’re expensive and so many people do it that I’m not as interested.  Send your cards to other people you know when you have extras as well.  You never know who knows who that needs what done for who.

If you make a business card or a postcard the important thing for an artist or designer is to put a sample of your work on the actual card, like I said.  From there, you must have your contact information, and a website where they can see more work.  Deviantart accounts are great for personal use, but in my experience is it considered an industry taboo to send a potential client to your DeviantArt page.  So, if you don’t have a website, that is also very important.

What do you put on your website though?  This place that you should constantly be sending people?  First and foremost, you want an easily updated gallery for your best work (best work only), and a blog which you should try to update as often as possible (which most of us rarely find the time to do).  For gallery software, I find zenphoto to be one of the best, and for blogs, wordpress is one of the most customizable and best solutions out there as well, although a blogger account would work as well.  Zenphoto and Wordpress also have a few plugins and dunctions out though that allow you to use them together.  I have heard art directors in person say that when they watch artists on the internet for consideration to do work they will often stop watching the person’s blog and website entirely if they don’t update at least 2 or 3 times a week.  One guy even said he got picky about the person’s work ethic if they weren’t posting in a sketchblog every single day.  From what I can tell, this is potentially just a scare tactic.  It is important to update your blog as often as possible, but the MOST important thing is to practice, practice, practice, and put your absolute best work on your website.  From there, put your website in your deviantart signature, in your signature on forums, on your postcards, on your business cards, at the bottom of your e-mails, and so on.  What you’re doing is making a large network of advertising that constantly comes back to you.

Forums are another big part of not only promoting yourself, but getting better at your craft as well.  Find a couple forums that suit you (note that I’m using forum as a broad term that encompasses deviantart, cghub, conceptart, gfxartist, monkeyslunch, satellitesoda, and everything inbetween) and post some of your work.  The one thing you have to remember about forums though, is do not ever expect anyone to care about what you have to say unless you care about what they say.  You have to take the time to critique other people’s work (always friendly and in a positive way, of course!) and to add your opinion and talk to people.  You aren’t just putting your work on here in hopes that people think you’re amazing.  With all due respect, you need to humble yourself and realize that most people on any given forum are either better or have seen better.

So, why are you posting there then?  First, to get better.  Second, to make friends and contacts.  One of the number one most important things that we can do as freelance artists and designers is to network.  Be amiable, be friendly, be funny, and be memorable as a person, not just with your artwork.  If you start making friends on forums and other places the next time you make a submission for DesignByHumans, Zazzle, Etsy, Blurb, or anywhere else that people can either vote on or buy your work, you’ll have a large network of people willing to either check out what you’re offering or talking about, or to actually vote on it or buy into it.  This isn’t to say though that you should just be on forums, other websites, and networking for the end goal and sake of making money and being popular.  If so, I’d discourage you from starting.  There’s enough egomaniacs and lame-ohs out there.  One of the most rewarding things about networking is making friends or meaningful relationships with people.

There are other things that forums and websites do that you can participate in to get noticed as well.  Things like contests, challenges, collaborations.  All excellent ways to meet people.  You can do things like this in the real world as well, not just on the internet.  There’s usually an art school or atelier near by that hosts workshops, parties, contests, and so on that you can attend to not only get better at what you do but meet even more people.  If you attend a comic con or something like that, go around to all the tables and give people a free postcard with your work all over it.  Not just publishers, fellow artists as well!  You never know who knows who, or who knows what, or what you could gain, or what kind of relationship you could develop by spending 5 minutes to talk to someone new and give them a sample of your work.  Some people bring their portfolios by for artists and publishers to look at, which is sometimes a good way to get feedback, but at the same time they walk away afterward and those people forget about them.  Give them something to hold onto with your postcard and business card, or sometimes even a free print if you’re feeling really good about things.

Another good experience is being published in a local magazine, or others that support artists.  In North America, there’s Applied Arts, CMYK, and Communication Arts just to name a few.  Locally near me there’s even Vehicle Magazine, and I went after our school magazine when we had one as well.  Everything helps, makes you learn, encourages you to develop, meet people, and get out there.

In most countries there are also graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, or general art and design guilds, clubs, societies or otherwise associations that you can also join to help yourself out.  Here in Canada, we have the GDC and CAPIC, most notably.  Communities like this are great for many different reasons.  They give you a standard to work by, for one.  Meaning that there’s a code of ethics that everyone should adhere to when working with clients and other designers but often times people don’t know what those are.  These associations will usually help you figure that out, and the GDC even lets you use their contracts and terms and conditions for use with your own projects.  They will also usually invite you to be a part of exhibitions and other functions as well, which helps, but one of the most notable things that they can provide is an RFP.  RFP stands for Request for Proposal, which is an easy way to find work.  Companies post RFP’s to the association’s website, artists and designers like you get together a proposal, and sometimes the little guys land big contracts and are suddenly on everyone’s radar.  Cool beans.  The only drawback to being a part of an association like this is that it usually costs money to join before you can take advantage of everything they offer.  Luckily a lot of art colleges may offer a 1 year membership to some of them as part of your program or upon graduation.  We were lucky enough at my college to have a local company sponsor our memberships if we wanted them.

Some of the best friends and contacts I made though to date were in that art college.  Everyone helps each other, everyone works late into the night together, and then afterward you never know where anyone is going to end up.  Its been quite interesting to watch where all of my friends end up.  It was an ex girlfriend from art college that referred me to an editor at a publishing company that she knew, that helped me become part of the Popgun Anthology team.  Its not paying work, but its been some of the best advertising and networking opportunity I’ve ever come across.  I’ve continued to work with those people ever since.

So, there’s practical ways of promoting yourself, where you actually send out physical mailers and update websites and all that, but there’s also a very important other method and that is to be an amicable person that gets along with others and is always interested in each new opportunity and possible friendship.  And, of course, you get a lot of work just by practicing and being amazing at what you do.

The cool cat that hit me up for advice was http://jets.deviantart.com so check him out too!

That’s all I’ve got for now!  Some of it I’ve tried and had work, and some of it has been advice from industry professionals, art directors, and instructors that I know.  I hope that helps you out!  If anyone else has anything to add, go ahead!
Feel free to hit me up any time!

Howdy folks!

As alluded to in various posts I have made already, my good friend Scott Kowalchuk and I have started a little gallery/studio space called the Sandbox Studio!  If you’re in the Calgary area, feel free to join us Thursday, Aug 6th, 2009, at 7PM at Art Central for the Grand Opening of the space!  We couldn’t of made it this far without the support of many of our friends, family, and, of course, fans.  Thank you very much!

We’ll be using this space largely as a gallery space, to show and sell our work, but also as a studio (hence the name) to create new work as well.  The legal side of things (registering the business and name and all that) was quite the education process and very interesting.  It was incredibly relieving to have the first name we had opted for come back as available when checking for business names.  Thankfully as well, the local businesses in Calgary that share Sand, Box, or a variation or combination of those two, aren’t galleries or illustration based studios!  If any of you have registered a business in Canada you know how aggravating it can be to search for names and do all of that sort of thing, so we feel really lucky that its all worked out!

Once you get to Art Central, you can find us in the art loop right behind our good friends from Vehicle Strategic/Magazine!

Hope to see you there!

Also, here is a drawing I found from an old, old party while cleaning… enjoy.

So, I hope you all enjoy those and check out the new issue of Vehicle Magazine!  If you are in the Calgary area, you can find them in Art Central.  You might even see me and my buddy Scott there soon too… but more on that in my next post!

For now I am trying to get back into the swing of things.  Karyl, Jodie and I are all fixing up the forums, with valuable feedback from lots of people, I’m getting out cycling and working out more, bought a light table off of Kijiji so I could get more artwork done, am slowly converting to vegetarianism, checking out some new dojos in the area I just moved to, and my big news of the moment is that I found a really rad job!  Right now I am working at lulu lemon athletica in Market Mall!  I think its actually pretty sweet.  Free yoga, cool people, great vision and values, they’ll sponsor two fitness related classes of your choice a week, great discount, everyone seems happy… so far its all around pretty awesome!  This brought my morale up considerably, too.  With the recession and so many people losing jobs I feel really lucky to have even found a job, let alone one that might be fun!  So, if you’re in the Calgary Market Mall area, stop in and say hello!  I’ll be training for the first few days though, mind you!

The past little while has been a bit of a rush for me.  A lot more freelance work has been coming in, and I’ve also been trying to contribute to a few projects friends of mine are trying to get off the ground.  I’ve been helping The Blacksheep folks get their Vehicle Magazine up and working, and I’m also preparing to contribute to the new nyummm magazine.

Vehicle magazine has already released one issue, which you may have seen, along with me, if you were at the Calgary Comic Expo where I helped them run a booth!  Vehicle is basically like a rebirth of pulp but so far not as Adult.  Nyumm is a foodie magazine for foodie type people.  Basically, that means, its not a cooking magazine, and its not a pretentious conossiuer magazine either; it’s just for people who like food.  Both magazines are run by really nice people, some of which are good friends of mine, and I’d really encourage you to check them out.

Other things that I am also working on are updates for the Monkeyslunch Art Forum, so any of you users out there can rest assured that new and better things are coming, and some freelance web and illustration work that I so far can’t mention!  I’m trying to get a little bit more work for myself though, so if you know of anything in the Calgary area (I’d normally be open to moving, but I just signed a year lease) then please let me know!

See something you like on the site? Comment on it and let me know if you think it should be put up for grabs or included in an upcoming book.

My first book is a large format hardcover which I’ve printed through Blurb.com.  I’m constantly seeking new ways of self publishing lately, so if anyone knows of any alternative methods please let me know!  I am now familiar with Blurb, Lulu, CreateSpace, Photoboook Canada, and Viovio.  I’ll be testing each one of them over the coming months and reporting back to you about the quality for those of you that are also interested in self publishing.

Self publishing is a great idea if you’re trying to make more income, sure, but that’s not all its about.  Self publishing, for artists, is an excellent source of promotion.  Being able to leave a functional book in a potential client or employer’s hands is going to do wonders compared to lugging around your portfolio and then taking it with you again when you leave.  I plan on making a few promotional books of varying sizes using the services I outlined above and then testing the waters at comic cons, which was what drove me to make some books in the first place.

I’ve also had an international printer recommended to me by a few friends that I recently tried out on some new business cards, which I now recommend to other people.  AladdinPrint is cheap, decent printing, has lots of paper choices, and free shipping, so check them out.

Current Work

Preview Book - Buy Book
Hardcover, 38 pages - 13 x 11 in
Dust Jacket - $67.95
Image Wrap - $70.95

Current Work sums up some of my personal highlights from 2008 and the beginning of 2009. 38 pages of hardcover art. I’ve got a couple copies of this myself and I’m quite happy with how the printing came out. These come straight from the printer when you order.

This first issue to be released at The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo and will feature the local talents of Sander Sarioglu, Spencer Goldade, Thomas Rhodes, Kurtis Wiebe, Hilary Jenkins and Tyler Jenkins telling a variety of stories.  Come check it out!

Blacksheep Studios was founded by Hilary and Tyler Jenkins, two friends of mine that also happen to be super nice!  They’ve recently started expanding and brought a few of us other folks on too.  I can’t speak for myself, but the whole team is great!  All super friendly, and incredibly creative.  We welcome all of you to stop by and say hello at the con, check out the new magazine and everything else at the table, and stay in touch because like I just mentioned above, this is going to be a new ongoing magazine that comes out once every 3 months!

If you would like to help promote Vehicle, or Blacksheep, please save any of these images to your computer and repost them!  No hotlinking directly to the images though, please!

Thanks everyone, hope to see you there!