While trying to find my place here as an artist on Steemit, I’ve been developing a series of regular columns, where I give you a glimpse inside my process.
I will continue to post about technique through step-by-step posts, as well as continue the discussion about creating stories in my personal work with my Stories in Art series.
But today I introduce a new series, On Assignment, where I breakdown how I solve problems conceptually in my commercial work. This series will be less about technique and more about finding ideas within the framework of an assignment.
Assignment: "Only in Los Angeles"
Client: Los Angeles Weekly
How I got the job: I sent postcards of my work to local and national newspaper and magazines. I sent one postcard a month to 500 art directors and editors for six months. One day, an art director at the Los Angeles Weekly called and said that he liked my postcards and he offered me an assignment.
I was given the opportunity to draw an image that aligned with the theme “Only in L.A.”. They gave me the dimensions and said that it would be printed in full color. Those were the only guidelines! This is, by the way, VERY open-ended for an editorial assignment. I thought that this would make it fun, but it seemed to make things more difficult.
When I don’t know where to start, I often make lists of ideas. So I wrote up a list of observations about people and life in Los Angeles. I filled a page with them, but here is a sampling:
-Los Angeles residents wear full-on coats when it is 60 degrees outside.
-EVERYONE belongs to a gym even though the weather outside is always nice.
-People obsess over their tiny dogs as if they were celebrities.
-Everyone is an actor or an agent or a producer, and the few who are not are writing a screenplay.
-People in Los Angeles have time to wait two hours for cupcakes (most likely due to my previous list item)
-Every child in Los Angeles is a parent-proclaimed prodigy.
-If you live in Los Angeles long enough you will see celebrities on the street, but they always appear significantly smaller than you might think.
I could go on, but this is enough to make my point, which is that starting with many possibilities before committing to any one idea is important.
If I had gone with my first idea without thinking of more, (and people and artists often do) I’d be stuck trying to draw a picture that shows how warm it is outside, while also showing people in coats. This is possible, but not easy to do in an elegant way. I’m not a fan of images that need obvious labels to make a point (i.e. a thermometer to show the weather or a flag to show a place). Visually, this idea was not my best. I made sure to walk through the potential of all of possible scenarios before choosing which way to go. I then sketched out four before narrowing the images down to two. This step is almost always worth your effort.
I ended up showing two final image sketches and they had me finish both and printed them in different issues. So my extra work led to more work! I do realize that both of the final themes are not only apparent in Los Angeles. They still did the trick.
You may have felt pressure in high school to get into a good college, but what about today’s toddlers vying for exclusive preschools? Many private preschools and kindergartens have entrance interviews and exams. My visual take was a line of tiny prodigies trying to score a spot at a prestigious pre-K. I wanted to draw this from the perspective of an average kid, who may have thought that he was above average before he arrived. To help focus the image, I opted to take the parents' faces out of the picture, eliminating unnecessary visual noise. The "average" boy’s popsicle-stick picture frame is being heavily overshadowed by his neighbor’s popsicle stick galleon, and the baby with super-powers (her pacifier is floating in mid-air!) suggests that this may be an impossible battle for him to fight.
Yes, I know you all love your pets. There is nothing wrong with this. Alas, Los Angeles sees many spoiled pooches on its sidewalks. In my Beverly Hills boutique just for pets, a neglected baby feels the pain of a pampered princess pup. Perhaps they each want what the other has, or they understand the other’s plight.
The takeaway from this post is to think through a number of options before diving into an assignment. Some ideas will come together much easier than others. Carefully exploring your options may seem like extra work, but will inevitably lead to less, and yield a better result!
Notes on Technique: For those interested, these images were created with acrylic paint and digital collage on illustration board, and the original paintings are 10" lengthwise.
