SF Zine Fest! Sign up now!

For all those print artists, card makers, crafters, DIY-ers, and other people who do cool stuff, you should definitely mark your calendar for the San Francisco Zine Fest! With our brand new postcard design from Jesse Reklaw, one of our featured special guests, we're one month to go to the deadline for early registration. Save your money now and get on board!

As chief registrar for the Zine Fest, Monkey can safely say that we're already half-full, with applications coming in daily, so make sure you get on it! Considering the price tag and the fact that it's not juried (although we'll tell you no if you're selling something non-DIY or really sketchy), it's really a low(er) cost opportunity to get your feet wet in the craft/art/zine fair scene and plus you get to meet tons of really cool people! Meet your audience face to face! Get out there and show us your stuff!

Overall, Monkey + Seal always have an amazing time at the Fest. Once again, we'll be live painting at the Festival, so even if you're not planning on exhibiting, definitely make sure to come check it out!

Register now!

Valuing our work

As creatives, Monkey + Seal have found that society as a whole tends to think that for whatever reason, our services are negotiable. Monkey + Seal are guilty of dropping their rates since we were "students" and not really valuing our own work. However, no other industry would ever allow this to happen.

When Monkey attended a professional designer's society's mixer, he heard a speaker who talked about this. The speaker said, "you would never walk into an automotive shop and say 'Well, can you fix my car first, and then maybe I'll pay you for the work?' You would never go 'Hmm, can I have my dinner to go, and if I like it, I'll stop by next month and pay your for it?' to a restaurant."

However, this is what we often do, because we're afraid of not getting work, never being "discovered," or of losing a bid. We work on spec, enter into contests and give away our rights, and when you compare our business to that of any other profession, it's just plain ridiculous. The public doesn't hire creatives as often (how often have you personally hired an illustrator versus hiring a doctor or a eaten out?) so it's difficult to change the way the public thinks about creatives and their work. Thus, it's up to us to stick up for ourselves and make sure we aren't under-valuing ourselves.

Now we cannot judge anyone, as we completely understand the need to make some cash. Everyone's personal circumstances are different, but we think that low-balling your work hurts the industry as a whole. If you're a student, it's a little more acceptable (you can get dental work done by students at lower prices), but once you've graduated, it hurts all creatives.

If you are a graphic designer or an illustrator, realize that there IS such a thing as an "industry standard." Check out the Graphic Arts Guild's Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. It's definitely helped us set our pricing for freelance work, and we do our best to stick by it. The best part is that is has concrete examples (and is pretty specific) for a lot of general jobs, such as a quarter-page illustration for a local newspaper versus a nationally-distributed paper.

The more work that is done on spec or is given away in hopes of getting money back is going to lower the industry standard as a whole. Although it doesn't affect emerging artists now, when/if they ever do become established, they'll find that it is harder and harder to find clients willing to pay full price. As creatives you have to realize that you have the ability to do something that most people cannot.

As a visual artist (or any other creative) you are responsible for expressing ideas in a way that others cannot. If a client ever asks you why you charge so much, ask them why they aren't doing the job themselves. If designing a complete branding identity was so easy, then why doesn't your client do it themselves? Ask them to try, and when they realize how difficult it is, then they can come back and hire you.

Monkey + Seal often have to fight the constant battle of making sure our prices are fair and affordable but also that they don't sell our work short. We have heard a lot of other artists deal with this as well. If you do, how do you cope with this?

The Empire Building Kit

So if you're not familiar with the work of Chris Guillebeau, he's sort of a badass of the non-traditional entrepreneurial circle. He is a writer and his goal is to travel to every country IN THE WORLD by the time he's 35. Crazy. However crazy he might be, he is on track to do it, and he shares his travel hacking tips, advice on starting up your own business, and how to set off on your own and make money doing something you love.

I randomly found out about him after clicking a link on twitter, and I was sold. After purchasing his guide to Art + Money, we were convinced he was the real deal. Now don't get me wrong - the dude gives you a lot of awesome advice, but it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's more like "here are the tools to go change the world, now it's up to you to start doing the heavy lifting (albeit in bite-sized quantities).

He sells Unconventional Guides with topics like travel hacking and making money off your art that, from what we've read (and we own three of the guides), pretty awesome advice. They run $35 and up, from when I last checked, but they're worth it.

He just recently released his Empire Building Kit, which we invested in, and has thus far been well worth the $149 (the lowest of three tiers) that we paid. It has helped us re-evaluate business strategy, and helped spur us onto creating the free 7 Ways to Make Ordering Wedding Invitations Easier (and Cheaper). Anyway, we are so all about this that we wanted to let you know that Chris will be selling his Empire Building Kit again for another limited 24 hour period. If you want it, you'll have to visit between 9am (PST) tomorrow (Tuesday May 18th) and 9am Wednesday.

Really, for $149, reading all the interviews with small business owners who are actually making it doing what they love (a lifestyle business, if you will) was well worth it, and the case studies are icing on the cake. The case studies, which you get more of, aren't as in depth as I might want, but the interviews definitely make up for it.

Finally, you also get an email a day for 365 days helping urge you along your path to carving out your own empire in the world. Although 1/7 are recap emails (which I honestly don't find really that helpful), that's still a good 312 emails of motivational stuff, suggestions on small actions you can take, and other cool things that make it easier to keep on working towards the dream.

So Monkey + Seal are affiliates of the Unconventional Guides (meaning we do get a cut if you buy something), but like we said if you've ever checked out our affiliate policy before: we don't endorse crap that we don't use ourselves. I can't guarantee that you'll find the Empire Building Kit (or any of the other guides) useful, but Chris does come with a 100% money back guarantee - assuming you actually try his suggestions for a month and if you are still unhappy with the results, he'll give you your money back no questions asked. Not bad, eh? Additionally, Chris offers two free guides (his manifestos) which also offer loads of wonderful information, so even if you don't go to buy, at least check out the free stuff!

Go here to sign up for building your own empire! Huzzah!

Sharpening the Saw - Mileage

We're not quite certain where the phrase "sharpening the saw" came from, but it is a concept we learned about in an old X-men comic that definitely applies to art. Monkey + Seal finished with our classes at the end of 2009, so for January through March, we weren't doing nearly as much painting/drawing/making art as we were previously. However, with Seal's recent freelance project and Monkey working on his "art every day" over at his blog, we've found that we've gotten quite a bit rusty after so much time organizing and less time painting.

However, now that we're in the swing of things, we find it way easier to create. But just like exercise or any other activity, you have to keep practicing constantly to ever be great. Monkey completed the above digital painting in about ~2 hours, which would have taken him easily 6-10 hours about a year ago. How did he speed up and improve? With increased knowledge (and new tools, ie. brushes) and lots and lots of practice.

Our instructors in our Foundation courses at Academy always told us "You know what the difference between you and me is? Twenty years." Our teachers create art for our demos, then go home and create more art for their professional practice - and they've been doing it for twenty years.

When Monkey first started at the Academy, he hadn't seriously tried to draw anything in about 8 years. He had never used charcoal, and so obviously he was not going to be able to render things photo-realistically - he could barely keep things in perspective! However, three years of four studio classes per semester, look how far he's come!

It's not about inherent skill, or natural-born artistic talent. It's about drive, determination, and practice. And don't think that you have to create a masterpiece every time. As long as you are learning something, and refining a skill, whether that just be a refreshment on anatomy, your line work, or just learning more about what colors work well together and what don't, it's all good.

Draw every day if you want to be a visual artist. If you're a musician, you should rehearse every day. No matter what you're doing, make sure that you're practicing and you'll find yourself steadily improving. Just keep pushing, keep working, and keep on keeping on. It's how we do it here at the Monkey + Seal studio.

Making Space and Congrats to Monkey

First off, we'd like to announce that Monkey also received word yesterday that he got a piece into the School of Illustration's Spring Show! Yay! Seal also got a piece in for Illustration as well! Double-yay!

Second, the Monkey + Seal studio has been quite cluttered and busy these past few days as we've been cleaning up and going through old work and organizing our studio. We bought yet another rack for our art supplies (we already had two 72" x 36" x 20" racks, now we have three), and a nightstand for our printers.

Some of you might be all tidy tidy, but we're both (especially Monkey) pack-rat-ish, and we're always stocking up on different mediums, surfaces, and paper, so with all of the stuff we have going on, a perfectly tidy apartment is not the highest priority.

Although it's a time consuming process for us to move everything around and clean up (especially when we both could be doing more things to directly bring in money), it is a necessity for us. As artists, we have to constantly make space for new creations, new art, and new phases in life.

Purging old things that you no longer need doesn't just clear up physical space but also a psychological space. Old clothes can be donated (or repurposed), and we find that when we get rid of old stuff that "doesn't feel like us anymore," it allows us to think about stuff that does "feel like us" now. Although we're still not there yet, the moves and new fixtures have already made the space much more spacious, and we can already feel the difference in the energy level of the apartment. It is a much more conducive space to creating, and we hope to keep it that way for the year to come.

Are there any tips you'd like to share on making space? We're more interested in the metaphorical than literal, but if you've got some great cleaning tips we'd love to hear those as well!

Congrats to Seal and a Question for You

Today we got some good news - The visual development project she worked on all last semester has been accepted to the Academy of Art's Spring Show! Yay for Seal! The best that can come of this is that Seal gets a job offer from an animation studio, the worst is that she now has another award to put on her resume!

In other news, for all you readers out there, Monkey wants to know what your dream guide would be. Would is be about how to make a living as an artist? Would it be how to do prepress for commercial printing? Would it have something to do with the wedding industry? A design for dummies? A guide to essential tools for self-promotion? A beginner's guide to painting?

We want to hear about what YOU want. Ideally. Even if we've never talked about it before, what would your ideal guide consist of?

Getting off the rump

To steal a worthy topic from the ever-awesome Chris Guillebeau, we gotta get ourselves in motion, people. Often, our sometimes crap-tastic situations are blamed on others, or other external forces. And sometimes, which I think a lot of forward thinkers fail to mention, it is these outside forces' faults. However, as Chris points out here, a lot of it is our own failings, our own fear, and our own inaction which really causes us to miss out.

Now, let me explain this from the Monkey + Seal point of view. In this crazy world we live in, there are most definitely circumstances that are out of our control. Things like the genocide, murder, rape - terrible stuff like that is not something that you bring onto yourself with the Law of Attraction. Monkey + Seal are very understanding of how traumatic events and our upbringings are extremely difficult to work past - socialization is a huge factor in our day-to-day lives (partially because we don't even realize it).

But (and this is the big But), we can take ownership of our agency and turn bad situations around by doing the most you can do every single day. What you can do is different from what Monkey can do, or from what Seal can do, or from what Barack Obama or Kobe Bryant can do. It's not about changing your entire situation in a day (although we'd all wish it was so easy). What brings about change is doing what you, not anyone else, can do in a day. If all you can do to work towards a clean house is just wash a single dish, then do it. If you're looking to start a business, and the only thing you can do today is to google unreserved domain names, then get on your computer. No matter how small or insignificant, if you start today and keep at it, eventually you'll be surprised at how much you've accomplished.

We are all about sustainability over here at Monkey + Seal. Even though sometimes it looks like we're totally overworking ourselves in an unsustainable manner, we don't push ourselves to the point of burning out, and if we do, we know to take some recovery time. Yes, sometimes you have to push yourself to meet a deadline, or to go above and beyond, but for the most part, we like to practice sustainability, as we are artists working with socialized norms that are detrimental to our dreams. If we push ourselves too hard and too fast, our pasts can catch up with us and paralyze us in emotional poop-storms. We've since learned to recognize when we're going outside of our means and to step back and take a night off (or at least to take a break).

So I just want to advise people to take action. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering at first, but as long as you are taking constant action, things will move into place for you.