artalicious

So I'm trying to get back into the swing of Illustration Fridays. This weeks concept is Instinct. I'm also just trying to blog more and maybe go back through some older pieces, so I thought I'd use 4 pictures from my "Dick and Jane" series.

To sum up the project briefly, I think it's crap that depictions of men doing "traditional women's work" (cleaning, cooking, child-raising) is often emasculating. That the men are somehow, less manly for doing such things. I think it devalues the work that many women do and it lets men (in general) off the hook for learning how to do these tasks that are essential to maintaining a home and family.

Since the biggest way to effect change (in my opinion) is to start young, I took some of the old "Dick and Jane" stories and re-illustrated them, turning all the female characters to male ones. So Mom becomes Dad, Jane becomes Johny, etc.

How these relate to IF? I hope these illustrate (haha?) that divisions in labor that run along gender lines, are NOT instinctual.




And now for everyone's favorite part: the gratuitous pet photo! (I'd also like to say, that I still can't spell gratuitous correctly after all these GPPs. Thank god for spell check). Today's GPP comes courtesy of Katie and Rhiannon. I thought this one was super funny. Rhiannon is being a beast! (grrrr…) and doing pushups, while Oliver attempts to…help her? thwart her? make her laugh so she falls and crushes him? It is a mystery. But it's also super cute!


This reminds me, so that the GPPs aren't all of Aggie (I think she's cute, but I understand not everyone holds the same opinon), if you have your own GPP and would like me to use them, please send them to me! You can email them to: julia at julialutgendorf dot com.

~JML

Posted in: Digital, Feminism, Illustration, Illustration Friday, Rhiannon on February 20, 2009 at at 12:35 PM 5 comments    

I think I've mentioned on here that Robert and I submit photos and illustrations to various micro stock sites.

*Warning, the following may be very boring if you have no interest in stock photography.*

For those whose eyes just glazed over, a micro stock site, is a place like Shutterstock, where people (mostly graphic designers) buy royalty free images for between $1-$50. They are different from the macro stock sites (Getty Images being probably the largest and most well known) where images are sold as either royalty free or rights managed and typically prices start around $100 and go WAY up from there.

The other difference is that most macro stock sites (like Getty) hire professional photographers, models, make-up artists, stylists, etc. While the mirco stock sites (like Shutterstock) have photographers and illustrators go through an application process, and then accept the images that they feel are up to their standards. Which means if you're not very good, they're not going to take very many of your photos. It also means that if you're an amateur, this is a good way to make a little money while improving your skills.

Both micro and macro stock agencies pay their photographers some set amount per image sale. This fee ranges for anywhere from .25 to several hundred dollars. The most we've ever earned on one photo for one sale was $28. And that only happened once!

Now that's an incredibly simple description of how stock sites work. I could go on and on, but 1) that would be boring and 2) I'm also no where near an expert in this area.

Ok, so boring explanation over, here's some of what Robert and I have been doing in the studio lately. Mainly we've been working with different models and perfecting taking portraits over a white background. These are useful to designers, as the white background ads a lot of versatility to the image. When we first started out taking photos of models, we didn't have the set up we have now, so we had to hunt around for backgrounds. This meant we have a lot of photos like this:


And it means that these don't sell very well. She's a pretty girl, but her outfit and her setting aren't clearly selling or stating anything. Compare it to this image, which can sell just about anything, by photographer Yuri Arcurs (who, by the way, is probably the top selling micro stock photographer out there):


See the difference? Now that's not to say that images without a white background will sell like crap. They don't, but the background needs to support the overall look and message of the image. Something that our random bricks weren't doing.

So now that we have a "for real" set up, I'm hoping that images like this one:


Will earn more sales. The model above, by the way, is one of our favorites to work with. She's got a great personality and is so comfortable in front of the camera. Two great qualities when you're spending 3 hours locked in an 11x19 foot studio with someone!

The other kind of image that sell really well (and that I need to make more of) are vector illustrations. They're great because designers can pull them apart, edit them, scale them to any size, etc. Our top selling vector illustration is this one:


It's not sexy, but it's handy and it's earned over $100 since it's been accepted at various stock sites.

So our goals for this year are to shoot, shoot, shoot, edit, edit, edit and illustrate whenever we can. I've currently got a backlog of at least 500 images to go through (of which probably only 70-100 will be stock-worthy, and of those, probably only 50-60 will be accepted by the sites we submit to).

The sites that we currently work with are: Shutterstock, Big Stock Photo, and Dreamstime. I'm in the process of getting us accepted and set up with a host of other sites. I really need to get us going with iStock.

Ok, I'm stocked out for now. I need to get back to practicing some fine art. I'll be thinking more about that in the coming days.

~JML

Posted in: Big Stock Photo, Dreamstime, Getty Images, Illustration, iStock, Models, Portraits, Robert Hill, Shutterstock, Stock Images, Studio on January 14, 2009 at at 10:12 AM 2 comments    

Well, one thing I would like to do more is post more about art that I made this year. To start that off, here's an illustration of sorts that I've been working on.

I'd like to modify it enough to try and screen print it in one and two colors with my (new since Nov.) screen printing kit.

Right now it's got too many colors and screens to do that, but I think I can work with it. I'm also going to keep working on the letters and such a bit more. It's not quite done.

In other news, Robert and I did get the studio space. We've had it since late October and we really like it. It's allowed us to move a lot of the "art stuff" out of the house, plus it's let Robert set up a seamless white background for stock photography purposes.

We're now using SmugMug to host galleries of client photos and I'm really happy with it. Now I need to make sure we start to make money off of it to justify the yearly fee!

~JML

Posted in: Illustration, New Year, Robert Hill, Studio on January 9, 2009 at at 11:35 AM 2 comments