When somebody offers you money to do something that you love and would do for free, it’s sweet, right? Everything’s working the way it should be.
But what if you don’t want to do it? That’s the situation I found myself in this week: I met someone in one of the workshops when I was in London a few weeks ago, and after she saw my work, she offered me a side-job doing some illustration for her.
At the time, I said I’d be interested. Unlike the other offers I got, which were about writing business copy (I get enough of that already, thanks), this would be a fun thing for her to give to clients. But as our scheduled call about the gig came closer, I found my gut saying not to do it.
My doubts weren’t because of her; she’s really lovely and sweet. It’s just that I did a gig for a friend of mine recently and it grew arms and legs and got totally out of control. The problem was I just breezed into it and didn’t use my brain or my experience.
It was a website, for Pete’s sake, I should have known better! Yes, the thing we launched was a lovely work of art, but the first thing that happens with websites is that everyone and their niece writes in to say “It’s broken! This is wrong, that’s wrong, it should be like this!” And, understandably, this is the point where the client freaks out and wants the whole thing changed to accommodate every single piece of feedback. You thought the job was done, but here comes three times as much work all over again.
This is dangerous territory with friends, because I never charge enough in the first place, and I don’t really have spare time, so very quickly I come to wish I’d never said yes. And when it’s a friend-of-a-friend, or in this case a relative stranger, why do I feel I need to provide the skills just ’cause they’re needed, and why do I feel like it wouldn’t be right to just say no and point them in the direction of another professional? “Because that person would charge them a lot of money!”
Uh huh, because that’s what this work costs.
When it comes to drawing, I know what I’m doing. When it comes to being an illustrator, I don’t have a clue. So two things occurred to me:
I don’t want to do gun-for-hire illustration. I want to do my own thing right now. (More on this in a moment.)
Even if I did want to do illustration, I don’t want to do it until I’m set up right to handle the jobs properly — which might never happen while I’ve got a permanent job.
My dad shared a great quote with me the other night:
If you’re planning a project at the village, remember the tiger in the woods.
Exactly. And it takes some experience to learn how to cost jobs for villages with potential unseen tigers.
So I said no to this drawing gig, and I tried to e-mail over as many helpful resources as I could — which is difficult, since I seem to always wander into lines of work accidentally, and thus don’t know anyone else who does them.
In this case, one of the people I pointed her to is a comic artist I’ve been a fan of since we met at a London book fair. We’ve had a few conversations on Twitter, but it’s got to the point that I feel like a rabid freaky copycat fan. He teaches comics art in Wales, though, so I figured he might be able to help her out with a student referral, or maybe might be happy for the commission himself.
So you just never know who’s looking at your stuff. Case in point: my dear pal Wendy told me last week that she’s been looking at my recent drawings as inspiration for her new website. It’s weird how we’re all looking around in circles at other people’s work, unfortunately feeling inferior much of the time.
Speaking of which:
(Ugh! Also not liking the watercolour paper much, and my brush-pens are narking me off, being either too dry or dangerously liquidy.)
I did do two drawings for the show that I’m happy with, though:
…But I have to come up with another two before the weekend, and this pressure to make “art” has me a little stumped. I’m really enjoying this sketchblogging, and exploring that is what I really want to be doing now. “Art” seems like it should be really involved, or be empty scenery instead of comics.
I’ve no idea what art is, but I do know there’s a happy click when I’m using my abilities to reflect on the world around me.
Like this:
Last weekend we saw Highland Fling, a ballet by the Matthew Bourne company, who are most famous for producing the all-male Swan Lake that featured at the end of Billy Elliot. It was light and fun and surprisingly short, but I absolutely loved seeing a piece of work that set a fantastic story (La Sylphide) in Scotland. There are so many wonderful things about this country, and sometimes it takes a stretch into the fantastic to really capture them. (Hell, I got a book out of that, and by the end of this ballet wanted to step back into that imaginary neck of the woods.)
The show came at the end of a particularly difficult week: Craig and I were in the Central Belt staying with his family, and we got to see nearly everyone we know and love down there, except we were both sick. He caught his niece’s cold, and I developed some weird lymph or nerve infection that made my face swell up, hurt, and break out in sores. Yeah, whilst being paraded in front of nearly everyone I know. So that was an exercise in swallowing my pride and soldiering on. (This is also why I have a beard in the comic strip above.)
I’m still hiding out at home this week and healing. Then we’re off again this weekend to friends’ civil partnership. I’m starting to not like travelling because it makes me sick.
And, finally in the world of news, I had to draw Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who’s just returned from spending five months aboard the International Space Station.
This man is an absolute hero, not just because he’s a space jockey, but because he seems like a really swell guy — and talented, too, as he demonstrated in his cover version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, performed in freaking space.
In short, Hadfield comes across as Canadian in the very best way, which is a reminder the world sorely needed — for Canadians, because that country’s been under the voodoo zombie spell of a hideous government for far too long; and for the world, because that same malign influence seems to have crept into the halls of power everywhere else, too, like it’s the 1980s all over again. But Hadfield shows us that there are still heroes doing good, brave things for good, brave reasons.
