Giving Up is for Quitters

Life can definitely be discouraging at times, especially when you're trying to be a professional artist. Now, not to say that other professions don't have as much personal investment, but when you are a visual artist, it is easy to get down on yourself and quit. I think a lot of it stems from the personal investment that you have in your art, especially as a fine artist. It's not like a car salesperson is going to take it personally when a customer asks for that Civic in blue, not red. The car salesperson doesn't care - they're still making a sale. For us artists, sometimes something as simple as that defeats the entire purpose of the piece. For designers, "just change the font" can completely ruin a piece. For artists, changing color schemes (besides potentially taking a huge amount of time) completely shifts the mood/symbolism/feel of a piece.

It's easy to take stuff like that personally. It's easy to feel like crap when you don't sell anything at a craft show. It's easy to feel down when you post a new painting on facebook and no one says anything about it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. There are so many billions of reasons why XY and Z happened, and I bet you that it has nothing to do with you as an artist. How do I know this? Because art is subjective. Yes, we have classical realism which is often touted as "good" art, but even if you draw like a two-year-old with no fingers, I guarantee you that someone out there is going to dig it. It may be hell trying to find that person, but someone out there is all about your art. The trick is finding that person, or those people.

Case in point: This was a painting I did in a class at the Academy. As 1/3 of my total grade, I did not do well, grade-wise. I was told to integrate my text into the image more. I ended up barely passing the class with a C-. Not the best feeling in the world, but when I made giclee prints out of these and took them to a craft fair, I sold out of the prints. Just because my instructors (who, granted, are trying to teach classical realism) weren't into my painting, doesn't mean that others won't be.

So, what I'm trying to say is: Don't give up. Maybe you won't be able to live solely off your art. Monkey + Seal both aren't able to do that. Right now, we have to work day jobs to support ourselves. This won't be the case forever, but it is a reality right this second. But we're not giving up. We're marking ourselves and doing what we can to get our art out there, so that people who are interested will buy. It's all about finding your audience.

But at the end of the day, it really isn't about sales. It's about knowing that you're doing the very best you can on every single piece, and doing it because you love to make art. Now, just because you could spend 50 hours on a painting doesn't mean that you should. If your best is 30 hours, then spend 30. If it's 5, then spend 5. Hell, if your best, for that given time, day, energy level, and general circumstance is a 5 minute sketch, then do that 5 minute sketch. Just make sure you're doing it for yourself, and buyers, and fans, and people into your art will definitely follow.

Seal's Process: Designing Shapes

Seal recently finished one of her animation background layout - a violin antique repair shop (above). She was inspired by the renown violin-making city of Cremona, Italy. She likes the shape of violins, but has never drawn one before, nor seen one up close. So in her process, she had had to research some of the essential shapes associated with a violin. Below are some of her sketch studies.

Every recognizable object has an essential shape, it's what makes them identifiable and separates a cow from a violin. Back when we were cave people and even today, our brain likes to quickly categorize shapes- "friend or foe- that is the shape of an edible fruit, or that is a lion I should run away from," "that is my friend across the street, or my boss coming down the hallway." So as an illustrator/artist, we have to make sure that we clearly communicate the shape of objects (if you want clarity). Sometimes as fine artists, we want to play with our audiences' expectations and create ambiguity, in which case, we can deliberately distort shapes.

It often takes several drawings for our brain-hand muscle coordination to get into sync in expressing the right line or curvature and shape. Below is the line drawing used for the final illustration. You can see that some of the violin shapes are good (recognizable, typical, relatively realistic) and some are a little off (perhaps too elongated, not having quite the finesse). It probably would take me another month of practice drawing the violin, to be able to draw them from memory.


Sometimes it is good to "push" the design of the shapes (as seen below). In the animation world, this "cartoony" style is called "wonky." Going "wonky" helps my brain to loosen up and to experiment on how far I can exaggerate the shapes of the violin while still keeping them recognizable.


Thinking about shapes is not only applicable to illustrators or 2d artists, when designing anything from jewelry, to bags, to hats, to hairpins, you want your products to be recognizabe, yet different from anything anyone else has done before. In order to do that, you have to start at the basic shapes. What makes a top hat different than a beret? Before anything else-- color, texture, material -- it inevitably boils down to their essential shapes.

Low on sleep

Due to crazy schedules, Monkey + Seal have been a bit low on sleep lately. However, we are depriving ourselves of sleep in order to have some amazing stuff for you come this holiday season.

Monkey is currently working on some holiday card designs, as well as organizing a brand-new craft show that we actually got sponsored by Etsy! If you are interested in participating, please contact Monkey at: info [at] monkeyandseal.com. Affordable table prices, an amazing venue, and much much more, we've got it all! Additionally, he's been hard at work doing some quick painting studies to sharpen the saw. Below is a quick scan of one of his 60 minute paintings.

Seal has been burning the midnight oil to come up with a whole slew of new illustrations. Currently she is working on a long (12" x 24") illustration of a modern fashion designer's studio - set in a lavish French interior.

We may have posted this before (the lack of sleep is getting to us), but we now have a fan page on facebook! Please fan us!