Taking Advice for What It's Worth

It's sort of a funny thing to give people the advice to question advice, but that's what we're here to do today. So make sure you even take this with a grain of salt.

You see, Monkey + Seal are big fans of taking advice and well-meaning suggestions and that sort of thing in context. Why? Because no one knows you like you know yourself (in theory..sometimes Monkey thinks Seal knows him better than he knows himself). Often times Monkey + Seal will buy information products (ie. books or e-books or guides) to help further their knowledge base. However, we know that not everything everyone says will exactly apply to us.

While it might be nice to start up an e-business that can make us $30k a year in a few months of really hard work, it's not really what we do. We'd much rather go the arguably harder route of doing silly things like making pictures and selling them, and teaching other artists about how they can do the same. Sometimes business models just don't work for us or our plans, and we just learn from them and move on. Sometimes they will provide a valuable insight on how we can adapt our own plans in an innovative way - but either way, we have to evaluate the information for ourselves.

An example of "advice" that artists often hear which can be totally contradictory revolves around pricing. Many of us have heard the story of that one artist who "suddenly" raises their prices to astronomical rates and becomes the biggest thing around. If we take this at face value, then shouldn't we all start selling 16x20 paintings for $4000? Alternatively, we hear that we need to lower our prices as in a struggling economy, a "luxury" item like art needs to come down in price as people don't have as much money to spend. Faced with these conflicting pieces of information, do we raise or lower our prices?

Well, it depends. The artist who suddenly had the price jump in their paintings probably suddenly went from showing in a cafe to showing in a well-established gallery. The gallery wouldn't let you charge $200 for a 16x20 since it's not worth their wallspace, while if you're showing in a cafe you probably won't run into someone willing to drop $4000 on a painting (but then again it also depends where you are). Alternatively, if you're already selling work and you lower your price, suddenly collectors might think that you're devaluing your work and then people might stop buying altogether.

The correct answer is that it depends on you. We can't answer all the questions for you, but can only advice you really exploring and figuring out if any given piece of information is right for you and your situation. We can always (and will) let you know what has worked for us, but you have to take that information and figure out if it'll work for you in your situation.

All in all, the message to take home is that there are no easy answers. Without sitting down and talking one-on-one with you, most guides and books will only take you so far (although sometimes you'll find a writer who works perfect for you!). It's up to you to sift through the advice and get to what is your own personal answer. Good luck!

Why people won't pay for your art

Pricing and getting paid decently for your work is one of the hardest things to deal with as a professional artist. Ideally, we'd all just create and have people give us enough money to live happily ever after, but the reality for most of us is that we have to constantly sell ourselves.

We have to submit to galleries, show portfolios, scan craigslist and other job posting sites for freelance work. Some of us get agents. It's not the easiest profession in the world.

A huge hurdle that lots of us face is that if you don't work in a creative field, you often don't know what art/illustration/design is worth. I'll be honest, in the past, Monkey + Seal have taken a lot of low paying jobs since sometimes you have to do what you have to do to pay the bills. However, if you can at all help it, turn down these jobs!

Often, we get approached at conventions and shows and asked to do book covers. Unfortunately, it's not by large publishers (although we're hoping to change that soon) but by everyday people who have an idea they want to see made into a children's book, or who have written a novel and want a cover for it to self-publish.

According to the Graphic Arts Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (which all creatives should own, btw), for a small press (runs of 3000-7000 units) book cover, you should be looking at anywhere between 1,200-2,500. Even assuming it's smaller, offers of $200 are a bit insulting, to be perfectly honest. We're super happy that you like our work, but for some of our illustrations we have spent upwards of 50 hours on. Illustration takes research, thumbnailing, colors and value studies, and piles of sketches before the final execution.

Besides the 50 hours, what clients are paying for are the years invested in honing our craft. Even for our paintings, if you see us whip something up while we live paint, even though we might finish something in an hour, that doesn't take into account the thousands of hours we've spent sketching, researching, studying other artists, playing with color, learning how to use our paints, experimenting with various mediums. So there is a lot of time invested in what you don't see. After all, Michael Jordan didn't just play basketball for those 48 minutes in every NBA game. Every day that you weren't watching him dominate the court, he'd be practicing in a gym, first there, last to leave. He got paid the big bucks because all of the behind the scenes work that the average viewer doesn't see.

Another large hurdle is that our culture doesn't value art like it does other trades. For example, for some reason, people think artists "just paint and draw" unlike, say, auto mechanics or doctors. This, however, is plainly false. The best analogy I've ever heard is like this: you don't go into an autoshop and say "Can you please fix my car, and then maybe if I like the way that it drives and it makes me some money, I'll pay you." You'd probably get thrown out. However, all the time, we hear "Can you please do this book cover illustration for me, and then maybe if I like it and it sells a lot of copies, I'll pay you." Not cool, people, not cool.

The more of us that take this spec work (which is highly looked down upon), the more and more people hiring us will come to expect that as a norm. Not cool.

If you think of hiring a creative:
-Our work takes time! Please be respectful of this - we usually can't do an illustration in an hour!
-If we can do an illustration in an hour, you'll probably want revisions, and those take more time.
-If you think we charge too much, please try and do it yourself. What we do is a craft - it takes lots and lots of practice.
-Please don't try and sell us on "exposure," unless you're representing 200,000 viewers/readers, or have a name like Nike or Pepsi. Even then, you should have been around long enough and have enough funds to pay us anyway.

So if you are a creative:
-Stick up for your work! Don't be afraid to ask for what your time is worth.
-Don't take spec work! You're working for free!
-If you have to take a job, we know that sometimes if its between a low paying gig and paying rent, you need to take the gig, but resist if at all possible!