Deadlines

I fist became acquainted with deadlines working as a manager for Jab Art Enterprises.

Every job we shipped had a tight deadline that could not be missed. Work crews would most often be at the destination site and scheduled to hang the art on a specific date. 

Year in and out I hit those dates though many times I might be the last one there, loading a truck at 11:00 at night.

Later as the art director at Jack Nightingale Artworks I was responsible for scheduling our workload and getting the art out on time and also making sure it was good art. 

The business JNA was in is competitive and there was always lots of good art for the buyers to choose from.

Glacier Point Illustration by M Francis McCarthy Copyright Jack Nightingale Artworks

I never missed a deadline at JNA in the thirteen years I was there and we put out some great stuff on razor thin time margins. 

Deadlines can actually stimulate good work even though time is tight. I feel that this is because our subconscious mind becomes more fully engaged in an emergency situation and works double time to provide us with needed answers quickly. 

The ability to access that part of our minds when it would help most is one thing that separates the winners from the losers in commercial art. Personally, I found it annoying when the other artist there Rico would tell me that I could receive art from him fast or I could have it good. 

What utter bollocks and completely untrue. 

I saw the work that other artists were doing in our field and I knew damn well from chatting with some of them at trade shows like Magic in Las Vegas, that their schedules were just as full and the times just as tight as in our art department. 

I'll blog a bit about Magic some other time but for now I'll say that its the worlds largest apparel trade show and that I attended it every year from 2000 to 2009.

If your looking to produce more work and of an often higher quality, set yourself some deadlines and stick to them. 

You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish. 

Also if you, like Rico thinks it can be fast or good, hopefully I've disabused you of that misguided attitude and you can now start getting the art out a bit quicker and stop farting around.

Cheers,

A bit about "Glacier Point": This is illustration number 1001 I did of Yosemite's Half dome .. Just kidding, but I did illustrate half-dome at least 100 times in different ways, shapes and colors. 

I was always fond of this design. I think the illustration is real nice and I also like what Jack did with the type here. Jack was and probably still is great with type. We could be a great team as he was strong with design and I was with illustration. 

Unfortunately, sometimes he would lay some real stinky designs that I'd be forced to send out. He was the "Creative Director" after all, not to mention being one of the owners of the business. 

I did my best to polish those turds...

Illustration - Challenges

As an illustrator hired to do whatever came into the art department, I was often faced with challenging subjects.

My personal approach was to gird my lions and concentrate on the essentials. Contrast, composition and style, these can be applied to any subject.

Mt Rushmore illustrated by M Francis McCarthy Copyright Jack Nightingale Artworks

Mount Rushmore is a great example. I had to illustrate these guys about twenty times in various styles over a ten year period. The illustration I'm sharing today is one of the best and was re-purposed many times for many different designs.I'd say this illustration was done somewhat near the end of my time at Jack Nightingale Artworks.

Most of the art I did there was based on or supported with a strong black line drawing. This helps the printer as it covers over many registration issues with the end result being a crisper design on the tee shirt.

Creating art specifically for screen printing is a dying art as there are many "separation" programs like "fastfilms". They do have a learning curve but nowhere near as difficult as doing the art color by color for custom screen-printing.

Anyway, back to challenges, how to deal with them?

Well, for starters you can always take refuge in craft if inspiration is hard to find. Applying a fresh style or new perspective can take you to some great places as well. 

I'd have to say that having a good attitude would be the greatest approach to any challenge. I always try to cultivate an attitude of fun and hard work with a positive outcome assured as the result.

Cheers,

What is a Hack?

A hack is an artist that will do poor quality art, very quickly that they do not care much about generally for money. They are artists whom abuse their gift as artists until they have no gift any longer.

I've know more than a few in my time and not all were artists. Most were though, because becoming a hack is actually the loss of something that was at one time precious.

Copyright Jack Nightingale Artworks

A hack is somebody who used to care but does no longer. The reasons this happens are many but the biggest reason is taking an art job and doing too much art you don't want to, to quickly until eventually you become unable to even create worthwhile art just for the pleasure of doing it.

I know, I may come off a bit melodramatic, but my drama stems from real world experience of the graphic artist grind.

I did not go to university and my college is also limited. My actual qualifications as a graphic artist rested only on my proven ability to get the job done on time and with style.

As a young man it was my dream to make my living doing art full time. My job at Jab-Art Enterprises occasionally allowed me to paint some graphics or do other art related projects but predominately I was a manager there first and artist last.

Copyright Jack Nightingale Artworks

That all changed when I got hired by Jack Nightingale Artworks as an illustrator and production artist. As you can imagine, I was excited and happy to be able to make my living doing the thing I loved all day.

It was great for a good while. My enthusiasm carried me through much of the disillusionment that I experienced.

Why did I become disillusioned?

Well for starers Jack was not in the art biz because of love. He liked money and him and his wife Deidre spent plenty of it. It's no sin to love money but for me the gratification of doing my art well is worth more than any cheap payoff.

Also, the buyers loved to kill good stuff by mucking with it, but even worse Jack himself would make stupid changes based on what he perceived as marketable. Stuff like taking some beautifully colored and rendered dinosaurs and just crapping all over the design by making us recolor them brown and flat.

So many times things liked this happened I could feel the grind wearing on me. But, I never gave in. I never sold out.

If you're in the commercial art business. I'm sure you need your living, but on every job you work on, you should ask yourself. Can I make this better? Is this good? Why is this good?

Never let them get to you and fight the power. I did, I fought every chance I could for us as an art department to produce great work we could be proud of.

And, if you're getting ground down to far. Ask yourself  Is this worth the price I'm paying? Couldn't you make your living doing what you love or at least doing what you love on your own time and making your bread another way that doesn't compromise your soul as an artist?

A bit about these illustrations. Both of these designs were purchased by the San Diego Zoo and printed on a bunch of tee shirts. I'm proud of both of these and they represent some of the good work that we did at Jack's. Both of them exhibit the hand stippling technique that I developed specifically with an eye towards printing on tees.

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Illustration - Limited Pallets

Prior to my time working at Jack Nightingale Artworks I had done a lot of Black and white representational art and I'd also done a good amount of colorful abstracts using Photoshop  What I had not done a lot of was colored illustration.

The majority of the designs we did at Jack's we're for tee shirts. Lot's of Screen printers have 14 color machines, however many of the jobs we did were smaller runs with local printers. Most of these printers had 8 color machines. So, for many, many years I had to do complex illustrated designs with a very limited pallet.

Cougar by M Francis McCarthy

Today's illustration "Cougar" is a good example of a limited pallet image. His colors are: Black, brown, orange, tan,cool grey, warm grey, white. The astute reader might notice that makes seven colors. 

Often the eighth color had to be reserved for a white flash plate in case the design needs to be to be printed on dark colors. It was always a good idea to keep this in reserve as buyers tended to change things and without a bit of leeway the design could be radically altered by a color being taken away. Also other colors might be required by other elements in the design like type for example.

I now have unlimited colors at my disposal to paint with but my many years of working with restricted pallets have served me well. I always consider the tonal pallet for each painting that will be most harmonious. Too many colors thrown at the viewer creates disunity. That said it's so awesome to free of the eight color straight jacket that I worked under for so long. 

Obligatory Disclaimer - This image was created for Jack Nightingale Artworks and they own the copyright. I show it here for review and portfolio purposes only. Cheers.

Dinosaurs

I executed a lot of dinosaurs while I was at Jack Nightingale Artworks. Most of them in collaboration with the other illustrator there who I'll call Rico out of respect for his privacy. Rico was a good artist and we we're buds for most of the time we worked together. We both worked on the dinos, passing them back and forth in an effort to make them better and better. 

Quite often we'd base our dinosaurs on reference from Jacks extensive morgue files and later on we'd use images from good ol' Google. Unlike animal illustrations that you can find photo reference for, dino photos we're not available. There we're no cameras back when they ruled the earth.

Rico did the preliminary sketch for these dinos and I did all the rendering. Every year we'd have to try and top the last. We'd add features like scales that were printed in puff ink or we'd do special glow in the dark plates. 

These guys pictured here we're done near the end of the dino days at Jack's. The new technique that was added to them was the reflected highlights. White on one side and taupe on the other in this case.

Doing dinos every year was fun for a while. I must say though that the printing of our designs often fell way short of the comps we produced. The reps that worked the dino account would often make "creative" contributions to the designs before the actually got printed. The additions or subtractions could be nightmarishly bad. 

Another case of non artists expressing themselves at the expense of the artwork and the final product. I cannot say I miss viewing some of the train wreck tees produced from our painstaking renderings.

As a side note, these illustrations are copyrighted by Jack Nightingale Artworks and I show them strictly for review and portfolio purposes. BTW Jack didn't draw any dinos. He had a pretty good gig for many years adding type and background squiggles to the designs while taking credit and getting paid for the entire enterprise. Rico and I got a paycheck. 

Hopefully, Jack is still receiving income from these dinos as I have seen reworked versions used on items like swim trunks and tees as recently as last year. 

Illustration - Hired gun

Let's go back in time to Jack Nightingale Artworks in 2000. Actually a really great time for me there. Jack Nightingale Artworks was a division of a company I will call Sales Today. Sales Today mostly sold tee shirts. 

All the art was done by myself and the other artists at Jack Nightingale Artworks. While the actual printing was contracted out to local screen printers. In 2000 things were doing well there. We were selling lots of tees at the national parks, the San Diego Zoo and also money was flowing in from our newest account Starbucks.

I had started as art director after my friend David had left the position to work in New York and I was busy but nowhere near the crushing kind of busy that was in my future. I'd recently bought a home and life was good. I was happy to be making a good living as an artist and I'm still thankful to the universe for granting my desire.

I was however a hired gun. In 2000 I was pretty content to just be that hired gun and shoot the hell out of whatever came up. I really put all my creativity and passion into my work and I always endeavored to make each illustration the best I was able.

This bison was done for a Yellowstone tee shirt design. Yellowstone was a frustrating account as they always bought only a few designs but we did tons of art for those few. 

This guy was never actually used in this format on a tee but was recycled for many designs over the years. I am proud of the hand stippling on this bison. I used to love to stipple the different colors on animal designs because it always printed well.

I'm happy with this dragonfly. I created it at my home studio. It was printed on a tee for The Nature Company. A now defunct chain of stores that sold scientific stuff, Cd's and Tees. I was so happy they choose it but unfortunately it was printed super tiny on the tee shirts. 

A "creative" decision made by the buyer. Many buyers loved to put their stamp on others work. My theory is that many of them were frustrated artists. That said I've known some awesome buyers that were a joy to work with.

These cats represented a break through for me at Jack Nightingale Artworks back in 1998. The cats were never used with these colors on a tee. I did these illustrations while Jack was on a golfing trip in Hawaii. Something he did often in those days when Sales Today's business was good. 

I had only been at Jacks for about 5 months and was still getting used to the compromises a professional hired gun has to put up with. By this I mean my art getting changed and quite often just so Jack could put his stamp on it.

He came back from his trip and loved my cats but decided to have me rework them in muted grays and tonal browns. The end result looked pretty good and sold great but I still feel these brighter cats have more appeal. Being the hired help though I could only cooperate in the dilution of my originally stronger idea. 

Making a living with your art is great but it comes with a cost. Sometimes the cost is minimal, other times it's devastation to one's core passion as an artist. If this price is paid to frequently an artist runs the risk of losing their creative spark altogether. Like a horse thats been rode too hard for too long.

Animal Illustration

As an Illustrator working for Jack Nightingale Artworks I was called upon to execute many different styles for projects. A big account was San Diego Zoo. BTW all the illustrations in this post are copyrighted by Jack Nightingale Artworks. I just drew them and got paid. I show them here on my blog for purposes of review and education only.

Indian Elephant by M Francis McCarthy

The style for this guy was taken from a image I saw of a elephant on the web. I simplified the color scheme and drew an Indian elephant in a quick line and shaded in Photoshop. What I liked about this illio was how it looked good on any color. Never got bought but looks like a winner to me still.

In my Early days at Jack Nightingale Artworks I had lots of time to really detail my illustrations but as each successive year passed less and less time was available. I feel that this was true for any art department in the early to mid 2000's. 

You can still get great results in less time if you keep your eye on the prize and have the right attitude. I know from first hand experience that spending hours on a piece of artwork will not guarantee a great work of art.

Indian Elephant by M Francis McCarthy

Ok, the Zoo was going to have a special Indian elephant exhibit and they needed a good image for a design. This image was definitely in consideration but not selected for the final design. Pity cause I really like the effect I got on this gal. This is a strong combination of photo shop and hand drawing. One day I would love to teach a class in this type of illustration.

Wolf by M Francis McCarthy

I've seen this wolf illustrated by others, the reference is available online. This is a pretty detailed brush and pen drawing that's been scanned into Photoshop and then colored. I always tried get a certain look in the eyes of the animals I illustrated and I really enjoyed the work for many years.