What is “Good” Abstract Art?

Or as I like to pose it: “What’s the difference between good smeared dogshit on canvas and bad smeared dogshit on canvas?”
You may be surprised to learn that its not subjective… or almost. Good art is technically challenging (it wasn’t easy), evocative (of thought OR emotion, even zen), and knowingly considers the rules of composition and color theories (especially if it breaks them).
Unfortunately, the viewer MUST know those details in order to discern between the good and the bad. One must be familia enough with the artist’s medium and tools to judge degree of difficulty. One must be open to accepting new expressions of ideas and emotions to validate the success of the artist’s vision. Lastly, one must be able to SEE shapes, spaces (in some cases: timing) and color the way trained artists do to judge the level of success at working within and breaking beyond those rules.
Sadly, most art historians, critics, gallery managers, patrons, and even artist’s (lower case “a”) can’t do these things. Instead, they rely upon references and support from other sources they trust (or WANT to trust) to validate their own personal aesthetic. Ugh.
I love good abstract art. I’ve seen a lot of it (a LOT of it), but you probably haven’t.
if you want to learn the difference, then start creating your own. Actually TRY faithfully reproducing a Jackson Pollack splatter painting before judging how “easy” it is. Try doing recreating Nude Descending a Staircase and see how ’simple’ it is. you still might not enjoy the art form – but you will earn a greater respect for it.
You will also learn a little disdain for the success of bad abstract art – and will be entitled to it.

The All-Seeing Eye

I’m asked to give advice to blossoming artists all the time… sometimes from themselves and sometimes from supporters (e.g., parents, significant others, friends, patrons, etc.). One of the most frequent questions is “What can I do to get better?” This is usually followed up by pleading eyes begging “please don’t tell me to go to art school”.

Well, I have good news and bad news for those artists. First the good news: NO – they do not have to go to art school. The bad news is that no other environment will support their efforts to rewire their brains correctly – it will all have to be done by themselves. Notice that I didn’t say anything about learning techniques or skills… because that isn’t what art is about.

Art is about seeing. An Artist is allowed to use a capital “A” when they can see true color, when they can see negative space, and when they see grids and dominant directionals. All of this is about sight – and not with the eyes. The eyes provide information to the brain and the brain interprets it. There is no such thing as color (I should write an entire blog on that alone) – there is only the illusion our brain makes about color. The visible spectrum is a linear progression of electromagnetic wavelengths – so how does it also fit into a ‘wheel’ going around 360 degrees in back on itself? The color wheel is a function of the brain – not math (an oversimplification but not incorrect).

You can tell an artist from an Artist by exactly how they apply it in their art… Because if you can’t see it – you can’t produce (or reproduce) it. If you can’t see that blue and orange are complimentary, then you’ll never produce it correctly – even if you go by the numbers. It obvious.

But how does art school rewire the brain? They don’t – they sit you down and tell you to draw and paint for 60 hours a week. You spend every waking moment surrounded by artists, talking about art, comparing art projects,  staring at grocery shelves like they were museums, and so much more. The school doesn’t teach, it just tells you when you’ve finally ‘gotten it’.

One of the problems with university schools is that the classes include those who just want credits instead of learning a profession. Because of that, the professors really can’t get in the students faces and properly grade on their success at ’seeing’ what is really there. To earn the credit, all one has to do is show up and turn in the work. They can’t grade on quality (several professors have told me exactly that). Art schools expect everyone there to desire to improve, and so CAN AND WILL grade on quality. But that quality isn’t as subjective as you might think. They grade on line quality, positive and negative space, grids and directionals and of course, correct use of color. That ‘grade’ lets you know where you stand and how far you have to go to reach a level where you can make a decent living.

One CAN do this on one’s own – many have and several still try… but it’s MUCH more difficult. If this is what you want to do, then finish reading this – then turn off the computer and go draw. Go paint. Do it. That’s the only way to learn how to SEE.

One of the best lessons to practice to learn SEEing was something we were forced to do week after week for an entire semester of Color Theory. Put up a still life with natural lighting – then paint it at least three times. Once in the morning with morning light, once in the afternoon with afternoon light, once in the evening in twilight (not with lamps). Additional scenarios would include during rainy/cloudy days versus sunny/clear days. Another option is to paint using incandescent bulbs and again using florescent bulbs and then finally halogen bulbs. Don’t ask why – don’t ask for a logical explanation of it. No matter how well you think you might KNOW the art of seeing from being told or reading about it, you may still never actually SEE IT until you look for yourself.

Go on. Go. Really.

First Question to Physicists

Every once in awhile Ill go back to my roots in the physical sciences and check on what everyone is doing. When that happens, I quickly regret not having pursued math more strongly – however not every genius thought came from a mathemetician, despite what the labs would have you believe.
So to this, I posit a very simple question someone should be able to answer clearly.
#1: In the experiment supposedly “demonstrating” the existence of multiple realities, a device is used to shoot individual electrons through a filter and it behaves as if 2 electrons travelled through. This is then described as if a duplicate electron from another verse or reality or somesuch is suddenly making an apearance to prove something about multiple verses. My question is this: what are the OTHER possibilities besides multiple verses that could render such an effect? I grew up in a practical engineering facility (really) and my first instinct to is to doubt the equipment, then doubt the understanding of the equipment, before doubting the universe. For example, does everyone agree that the equipment could never hav ejected more than 1? Then does everyone know for a fact that an additional electron could not have been introduced (e.g., by deflection from another atom on the filter itself, by spontaneous creation out of excess energy from the device, etc.)?
I ask because it seems like a lot of effort is being pushed into philosophizing and/or spiritualizing physics and lesser geniuses are striving to outdo their gargantuon predeccessors in the weirdness of their theories. Quantum foam is so ill-explained to the public that I sometimes wonder who drank the cool-aid: the media or the physicists themselves?
On quantum foam, the description to the public tricks the audience into believing that a single point in space could time travel into producing matter out of a pure vacuum. “…borrowing energy from the future in order to produce matter now.” I call this the Wimpy Theory because it will gladly pay on Tuesday for an electron today. In truth, the scenario is flawed because it only looks at that single point instead of looking at all the points around it. Its like a person in flatland watch a wave because something is there and then its not – ooh its magic! But if one looks at all the points one sees the positive and negative waves of matter and energy pass through quite visibly but still averaging out to a zero energy level. Thats a basic sin wave folks – theres no magic there.
Anyway, TV is making modern physicist either look like priests or impractical nerds – and Id really like to know that its the medias fault and not glory desperate intelligencia.
Thanks.

The Scale of Knowledge Skills

In my eternal search for knowledge, I have experienced so many discussion with teachers and arguments with students of so many various subjects and professions that I have observed a scale about the art of knowledge and even the knowers themselves. This scale can be applied to all knowledges about all subjects. Even if one doesn’t know the subject – one can easily determine the level of knowledge a person has by their behavior relating to it on this scale.

All Knowledge can be ranked on the following scale:

Rank 0: “Huh? What?”  - At this rank, the knower knows nothing. It is possible to rank lower than zero. For that, the knower must actually be deliberately inventing false knowledge to satisfy the hole in their own ego for being ignorant.

Rank 1: “Ah. I see.” – Rank 1 begins with the student discovering the subject. They learn this level of knowledge to satisfy some requirement. Some people have no interest in furthering their knowledge about a particular subject, and so rarely go beyond this rank. When questioned about this topic, at most they will only be able to regurgitate whatever facts they learned originally.

Rank 2: “Wow! Really?” – Rank 2 (aka “The Sponge”) is the student that is actually fascinated by a subject – and who is self-motivated to learn more. They know they don’t everything about the subject – but they eager to know more, so please share.

Rank 3: “Cool.” – Rank 3 is a new stage I’ve defined as when a person has reached a comfort level with their knowledge in a subject before mastery and doesn’t need to learn any more. Despite the volume of facts an individual has at their fingertips – they may never go beyond this rank of knowledge. One cannot master a subject with the passion to continue.

Rank 4: “You’re wrong – it’s like this.” – Rank 4 are the over-excitable students who have learned enough to apply self-worth in relation to the knowing of the subject (each person has their own thresh-hold). This self-worth can often lead them to feel that everyone on earth *MUST* have at least some basic understanding of the subject – or they couldn’t function properly in today’s society. These are the geeks. They understand the basics of the knowledge, and a ton of details… but frequently don’t make the connection between the two. Furthermore, they are so excited about their knowledge that they want to share their knowledge with every one. This often causes problems when confronted by anyone with any related knowledge that conflicts with their own. They’re comfortable in the basic rules of the subject and facts that don’t fit in with those rules are obvious errors or lies. In their proofs to investigate those erros and lies, Rank 4’s are so passionate that they can often overcome the methods of higher ranks to discover new knowledge and even new rules (e.g., most scientific break-throughs are made by scientists before the age of 30.)

Rank 5: “Pencils Down.” – Rank 5 is the rank one would hope a professor to have. It’s the patient position that the rules of the subject are more complex than the student may accept – and they are willing to share and educate students in those complexities. Students in the Rank 4 stage will only accept information from a Rank 5 if a respected 3rd party make the introduction. Rank 5’s can often be secure in their own knowledge to the detriment of the subject. This is usually due to the fact that they used to be Rank 4s themselves and pride themselves on their own contributions to the subject.

Rank 6: “You don’t say?” – Rank 6 is the highest level of knowledge one can achieve. When a teacher never ceases to be a student, they will eventually uncover so many rules and facts that they will actually come to a peaceful acceptance that new facts and rules will always emerge. They accept that knowledge itself is fluid and ever-changing, and that any ego cemented upon a foundation of that knowledge is destined to collapse in ruin. By accepting that there is more to learn than they have time to learn, they spend their lives incorporating new information with a quiet acceptance that it will all fit into place someday – even if it’s not going to be them.

If should be noted that 3’s can think they are 5’s, that 4’s can think they are 5’s AND 6’s. To determine the difference in the Ranks without knowing the subject oneself, there are a few tricks.

First, ask a simple but open-ended question about the subject. For example: “What is baseball?”  Here are the answers the various ranks will give:

R1: “It’s when one guy throws the ball to another guy who hits it with a bat and then runs around some bases for points.”

R2: “It’s awesome.”

R3: “Baseball is a 100+ year old sport. Their are two teams…”

R4: “Where have you been?”

R5: “It’s a distinctly American sport. What do you want to know?”

R6: [Picks up a ball and hands you a bat] “Let’s go outside and find out.”

Use this knowledge wisely… For it too can lead to a Rank 4.

Laz

Undoing yourself.

One of the most vigorous arguments on digital art from ‘traditional’ artistes is the fact that computers allow the artist to ‘undo’ mistakes with a simple keystroke.

Before considering the argument, I hold the arguers to the following criteria when producing their own art:

1. They can never use any chemical (e.g., thinner) or mechanical means (eraser, dodge-tool, scraper, etc.) to correct any mistake at all from a work-in-progress (WiP).

2. They can never use any chemical (e.g., thinner) or mechanical means (eraser, dodge-tool, scraper, etc.) to remove any foreign substance (e.g., hair, dust, etc) from a work-in-progress (WiP).

3. They cannot correct any mistake by modification, re-composition or omission for any reason.

4. Their work must be perfectly executed – flawless really.

The number of times I’ve had to create something from scratch due to power failure or data corruption completely trumps the difficulties a ‘traditional artiste’ has changing the color of leaves from gold to green. Artistes will even often admit that their own works are imperfect – but then they hold up their imperfections as value-added features to the collector. Huh?

After weeding out the offenders through this criteria, I am left with only one select group of artists with a valid position to voice that particular opinion… Those are the abstract Artistes. However, abstract artistes never attempt to create anything out of their imagination (they instead prefer the let the methods and medium of the act itself create thoughtlessly) and so their point cannot be directed toward the digital – they instead must be directed towards ALL attempts to create or recreate art out of considerate logical attention to detail.

Too bad – it was an interesting argument.

Postdigital Art – Getting Over the Digital Era

I didn’t coin the phrase – but dag-gummit, I’m going to use it to death. Postdigital is here, now and forever.

Digital Art can now be defined as art where the medium (a computer) is part of the world-view being conveyed. Think back to the 1980s in which every way of using the computer in music and art was experimented – just to show off what new use for computing the ‘artist’ could create. Even if the drawing, melody or composition (both kinds) sucked – we were all wowed by the fact that a computer was used to make it.

Postdigital Art couldn’t give a flying rat’s ass about the computer. Really. The art is the art is the art. Was it done on a computer? Yes? No? Who cares? Get over it.

Simply put, the world of DIGITAL ART is so frought with crap out there that there needs to be a distinction between the good and the bad. I’m not an elitest – so I should define what I mean by “Good” and “Bad” digital art. Basically, if the point of the art is to show-off a new software tool or filter that someone else invented, it’s “Bad”. It’s like using primary colors in a painting – it’s unimaginative. Sure, there may be a few works out there (e.g., Mondrian) who have found a new and unique way of presenting a stock technique – but even impressionism stopped being interesting once everyone learned to paint blurry. Whoopee – it’s blurry. Yawn – it’s still blurry.

There is also plenty of bad painting going on out there – and surprisingly there are collectors out there who prefer bad traditional oils to good digital art. Really. Why? Because there are collectors out there (they know who they are) who want art to impress their friends with. They want to horde a painting, to bathe in the pleasure of ownership, to salivate and sneer at the world in their superiority, and to hunch over their coveted “precious”, making cooey noises and gooey messes. Those are the collectible-collectors. They don’t care about art.

For the rest of the world, there is just art – true art in all it’s wonderful imaginative, evocative, soul-revealing splendor – regardless of technique or medium.

This Postdigital age will be a violent one. There are so many struggling and starving elderly artists with a firm grasp on the ‘collectors’ market who are doing everything they can to shred the legitimacy of the computer as an artists tool. Of course, the sheer number of crappy “Digital Art” out there makes it easy for them – but luckily, the new guard is upon them like Spartans on a high road.

Artists like Echo Chernik (http://www.echo-x.com), whose work completely transcends the medium, gets even the most hardened anti-digital foe to admit “she doesn’t count”. Yet even she is still chided by the occasional ignorant and whiney collector who want ‘originals’, even though they could never afford them. Let’s do a little math here. Echo charges $100/hr and up for her illustrations, plus the standard 250% copyright transfer fee. So if she were to produce a one-of-a-kind original and never produce prints of that art, for 100 hrs of work – she would have to charge $10,000 plus $25,000 copyright transfer – that’s $35,000. By the way – yes, she has been paid that much for posters. Of course, one *could* ask why she couldn’t do an ‘original’ before making prints. For that, I have 2 answers.

1. Art Nouveau is a lithographic art. There are no original lithographs besides the plates – and no one sells the plates.* (some fine-artists clean or destroy the plates, but commercial artists never do – they can’t! What if the client decides to reprint for additional advertising? There are such things as ‘original runs’ – but for some reason some ignorant collectors don’t consider the GICLEE process to allow for that.

2. Art Nouveau can’t be properly created in a ‘painting’ – it is a lithographic art form.

Echo has graciously created an Original run set of 10 Artist’s Proofs each in her series of her personal works. If that’s not exclusive enough for you, then you’ve got issues. Sure, she has other sizes as additional runs – and those will sell to others who collect the art instead of the ego-llectibles.

So the Postdigital age has began – which, in brief means art is art, regardless of the tool used to create it. The novelty has worn off, and the true artist doesn’t let the power of the computer to be a crutch in making ‘easy art’. Gone are the days of photographers taking bad O’Keefian images and throwing a stock photoshop filter over it – then selling it for hundreds of dollars. It doesn’t sell anymore because we see through it. But so too are gone the days that a ‘Painter’ is considered a real artist because they produce a physical object with their hands. Technology doesn’t make things easier – it makes making bad things easier. To make something correctly still takes an amazing amount of thought, imagination, intelligence, careful consideration, planning and precise execution. You think making a GICLEE is easy? Ask your print-maker about Color Calibration and watch him squirm.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdigital

Why art should never be removed from schools.

[First, let me say that I've always been very good at sports. Volleyball has always been my favorite, but I played on basketball teams, baseball teams and bowling teams and I love football. The only sport I've not been very good at is Golf - which as George Carlin said, is actually an activity and not a sport.]

School has one value to society that explains why tax dollars are used for it – to educate people to perform technical jobs. If all anyone were expected to do was work a sales floor or flip burgers, math and science and other classes would have no business in school. Having said that – why is there art in school? Art is for people who CAN’T do math and science, right? It’s all about snooty fine-art galleries and champagne for the elite, right?

Art is $70 Trillion dollar industry… Okay so that number is made up – but consider this. Publishing prints every book ever made and they need cover-artists, typesetting artists, prepress artists and press-men. Ever product ever made needs an industrial artist to design the final product, a logo artist, a package artist, product photographers, model photographers, catalog artists, web-site artists, technical illustrators and typesetting artists for the manuals, pre-press artists, sign-makers, and let’s not forget advertising! Every product or idea in the public’s awareness REQUIRES advertising which means creative directors, art directors, concept artists, layout artists, logo artists, product photographers, model photographers, location photographers, studio photographers, photo-retouch artists, pre-press artists, web-site artists, web ad artists, flash animators, film directors, cinematographers, lighting artists, make-up artists… gasp. I’m not running out of artist professions – I’m running out of energy typing all of this. In fact, there isn’t a single industry besides academia that doesn’t REQUIRE artists. (echo wants me to remind everyone that morticians require makeup artist skills).

When public schools dump money from “the arts”, what they are saying is that they want to sabotage every industry known to man. Is this deliberate or accident?I have to believe that it is by accident. Consider that the education industry is usually run by well-meaning people who have never been in an business or industry besides education. While that may mean they know ‘how’ to teach children, it doesn mean they know ‘what’ to teach children and rarely do they know ‘why’ the children need to know the subjects they teach. Consider that in elementary schools, there is no specialization required to teach a subject. Any teacher can teach any subject – even one they personally got all “D”s in when THEY were in school.

But why keep sports? Worse – why dump money INTO sports? I will avoid the whole ‘hero-worship’ thing in all of human history and the obvious health benefits of keeping children active but there is no reason to take money from art and spend MORE on sports. For example, football is an industry – but there are less than 1,500 people in the entire country at the pro level in any given year. That 1,500 out of 400,000,000. That’s not even one person per COUNTY! Contrariwise, every football team wears logos, wears fashionable sport-wear an equipment, published programs and books, uses signs, advertises in print, the web and television, sells infinite numbers of products with their brand emblazoned across it… in short, there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of artists working on the products sold by football teams. Add that to Baseball – which has fewer players, and basketball – don’t get me started on basketball marketing (Nike anyone?), there are MILLIONS of artists working in the sports industry – but for no good reason schools think that the sport players are the ones worth spending money on.

Pretty soon, artists will become rare an expensive. That means that every products will cost more. That means that it will become elitist and the good ones will become ever more desperately needed. There may even be few enough to warrant certain celebrity status over time… maybe they’ll be worshipped and heralded… people will start desperately fighting to become the next art SUPERSTAR and reap all the fame and glory and money and sex that comes with it. Schools could start pouring money into art programs just to keep up with the screaming demands of student sick of doing anything so common as sports.

On second thought… I’ve changed my mind. Dump art. Dump it now. The faster we get through this cycle the better for all of us.

My two cents.

Laz

How to negotiate as an illustrator or designer.

How do you negotiate your rate?

Figure out your total expenses for the week. Divide by 40 hrs and that is your minimum hourly rate for you to remain breathing on this earth… IF you created art for 40 hours straight. If you can only do 20 hours of art per week than divide expenses by 20… or 30 or 15 or whatever it is.

Then budget your hours for each project and figure how much you want to make as profit. NEVER enter in a proposal for less than 25% over your expenses. That will give you some wiggle room if the client begs you down. Standard wiggle-room in retail is to offer 5%-15% off the original estimate. That will still get you your profit margin.

However – there is more to it than that. NEGOTIATE USAGES RIGHTS!!! If the client is making money off your art, then you are entitled to a portion of that. That includes logos. With logos, the compensation comes in the original profit-margin. In the illustrations, the usage comes in ‘copyright buyout’ or royalties.

How much for rights and royalties? The best resource is the Graphics Artist’s Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines.

That’s it. Pretty easy huh?

Lazarus Chernik

Illustrator Contract Blues

Here is some advice to artists and illustrators out there… READ THE CONTRACT!

A lot of businesses use art and will praise you endlessly on how talented you are and how they wish they were like you and how their entire brand or business model will revolve around your work – and then kill you in the contract. Learn how and why contracts are important and be vigilant in your professionalism. Your REAL client will appreciate it and you will earn more clients in the long run.

There are two reasons why this happens: First, there are always young up-and-comers dying to make a living making ‘art’ and will take anything on their ‘way-to-the-top’. Second, even established artists can get swayed by praise into expecting the ’spirit of the contract’ to be more valuable than the ‘letter of the law’.

Young artists are extremely easy to manipulate… They are often desperate for both money and praise. They are also inexperienced with contracts and often accept emails, handshakes or even verbal telephone requests as enough of a commitment to begin and complete a project. In the combined 30 years Echo and I have been dealing with clients – there IS NOT A SINGLE CLIENT WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT A CONTRACT THAT DIDN’T BREAK IT. Every client who was professional and signed our contracts without incident were polite, professional, responsive, pleased with the work that was done and paid on time. Every single time a client said “Um… I don’t know about this…” or “Can we work something out?” or “I don’t like contracts” they have been a nightmare client to please – and at times abusive – and without fail, every one of them refused to pay on time or at all. They teach entrepeneurs to get anything and everything they can for free – and to especially push those who are inexperienced or desperate. One of the classic tricks to get an artist to work for free is to exclaim “…I don’t know much about art or advertising or how it will make me money and I’m hesitant to spend the money on something I don’t know about – so what I’ll do is pay you as soon as it pays for itself. The better you do, the faster it will pay for itself and the faster you’ll get paid.” This is a lie. They have no intention of paying the artist. Without being able to look at the books, you will never know when it becomes a successful venture for the client. Often, the project will work perfectly and make tons of money and the client will poor-mouth the project and blatantly lie about the value the art had to the result. “Well, it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped but I enjoyed working with you and will give you another chance. Why don’t we knock down your rates and try again?” If this sounds familiar – you have been PWNED!!!! I know, because not only has it happened to me – I was an unwitting party to it on the client-side where my boss did it regularly to my vendors and insisted that I use that exact technique. Seriously!

Established artists can get into trouble too. Every once in a while, a project can arise that really intrigues the artist. It may be the lure of an exciting client, subject or medium. It can be the enticement of a long-term relationship or licensing deal. It could simply be pure fear of losing a project during a slow time of year. In any case, the experienced illustrator or designer can sabotage themselves by glossing over the importance of a contract. Worse – they may be poorly represented by a p.o.s. agent without the intelligence to ask for more money. Echo worked a project recently for an agent’s client and the client suddenly asked for $9,000 worth of more work. Echo contacted the agent who should have excitedly revised the contract and submitted for the new estimate. Instead, the agent whined “I don’t think we should rock the boat – just do the work for free”. $9,000 for free? So knowing the agent was a complete bozo, she contacted the client directly and renegotiated for the $9,000. The client wasn’t upset – they actually expected to pay for the extra work and signed without complaint. Better yet 0 they PAID IN FULL ON TIME. The agent – have I said exactly how much of a moron he was? – yelled at Echo for going around his back but still TOOK HIS CUT for the project. I must mention that this agent is NOT the one she lists as one of her contacts. She now only deals with reputable professionals like Tom Mendola – a great guy and good friend.

The biggest contract area an artist could dream about is art licensing. The business of licensing is huge – which means contracts are mandatory and reading them is default. In recent weeks, i have read proposed licensing contracts offering to market Echo as the origin of an entire line of products, to proposals where she would have to give up full copyrights to her art for 5 years without compensation while the agent ‘considered’ selling it. Obviously, the latter is a scam. Because there is so much money in it, there are many more unscrupulous business people involved. There are specific trade-shows where art is presented for licensing. Those shows are expensive and can make or break an artist. The business is about mass-production and personal relationships – art has little to do with it. Stick figure art can sell better than master paintings. Because of that, it can be a painful experience for an artist to venture into that arena. Be warned. However, if you find a good representative, agent or company, nurture that relationship well. Again – the contract is everything – and since the people in that business are IN BUSINESS they will not balk at contract talk and will only respect artists who do.

I could list dozens of problems Echo and I have had with contracts for the years – but it all boils down to this… Art and Illustration is a business and contracts are part of the business. Artists can be afraid of contracts because it can be confrontational, when one just wants to get the fun part and create art, hoping that they will get paid for their effort. The reality is that those who want the art will never question the contract. Anyone who questions the contract wants something else entirely – usually that means screwing over the artist to get what they really want. The most common of which is money from the other ’suckers’ they do business with.

The simple advice is to be professional about your business. Don’t be an ‘artist-first’, small-business owner second. You can’t. You have to be a business person first and an artist second. If you can’t manage paying work, then you will have no work to call yourself an artist with. 4 hours of business and 36 hours of art may get you $1,000 a week – but 20 hours of business and 20 of art could get you $2,000 a week. It’s all in how you negotiate.

My two cents.

You were hoping it wouldnt come to this.

You know me or have heard of me and you knew it was inevitable that this day would come. I’m blogging. I avoided it for so long because, despite what others think, I seriously don’t expect anyone to care about what I have to say. So why bother? Well, posterity really. My father raised me with an oral traditiin of sharing everything he knew with me and that made a large impact on me. I’m not the same kind of talker that he is, so my daughters will learn differently. Maybe some day something I write here will be read by them (or someone else) that will make a difference in their lives. I doubt it – but if I don’t try, it DEFINITELY won’t happen. Peace out. Love, luck and lollipops, y’all.
- Lazarus Chernik