AKA: Be Smarter
I just completed a fairly small but substantial project. It was for a book illustration contest held by The House Of Illustration and The Folio Society, both in England, which I found out about at the beginning of October 2017. This year’s contest involved three different Sherlock Holmes stories. Entrants were to draw a single illustration for each story, plus design a book binding. The contest deadline was Wednesday, January 17, 2018.
October was full of conventions for me, but I started to read the stories so I could start thinking about what I wanted to draw. November came, then the holidays. During that time I’d finished the stories and was having a hard time coming up with what I wanted to draw.
I will admit, I did procrastinate. There were many things other than the contest that I wanted to work on. Especially after the three week stretch of constant work I did on the Pinocchio triptych. While I did sign up for the workshop that dictated that project, I wanted to work on something that wasn’t regulated. A personal project. I had to make myself, will myself, to put off those other things to do this contest.
On 12-22-2017, I finally opened up Photoshop and sketched out the ideas for each story that had made themselves prominent in my mind. On 1-8-2018, I opened up Illustrator and created the template that would become the book binding design. Altogether, this totalled mere few hours of work.
On Saturday, 1-13-2018, I started and finished the final pencils for all three pieces. It was a long day. Luckily, it was a open weekend.
On Sunday, 1-14-2018, I worked on the book binding illustrations in Manga Studio, Photoshop, and InDesign all morning, afternoon, and early evening. I completed two ink drawings later that evening. Another long day, with me going to bed at 4:00 AM. I got 3.5 hours of sleep before needing to get ready for work.
On late Monday evening, 1-15-2018, I completed the final ink drawing, touched up the other two illustrations, scanned everything, made some preliminary crops, and went to bed at 4:00 AM. Again. I got 3.5 hours of sleep. Again.
On Tuesday evening, 1-16-2018, I cleaned and cropped the scans, made some adjustments to the book binding, and prepared my entry files. The site had been down for hours, at least since 2-3:00 PM PST, and submissions needed to be made by 1 AM Wednesday morning (9:00 AM GMT, Greenwich time). I sent emails to the contact I’d made, and posted to their Twitter account. Eventually, someone responded, saying that the site had essentially crashed due to so many people trying to upload their entries. Since I hadn’t gotten much sleep in 2 days (about 7 hours total within 48 hours), I spent the remainder of the evening trying to relax and doze off, which was difficult because, well, my sleeping schedule, such as it is, was off.
I spontaneously woke up at 3:30 AM, decided to check the site, and it was working again. I thought I’d wait until it was actually time to wake up to get ready for work, but decided to get it done and over with. I submitted my entries (hopefully without messing up) a little after 3:30 AM, PST, on Wednesday, 1-17-2018.
If I combine the time spent doing preliminary work in Photoshop and Illustrator with the hours spent on the evenings of 1-15 and 1-16, together with my long weekend, I basically crammed what might ordinarily be a month’s worth of steady work within reasonable hours into what is essentially three very long days. I am tired, my mind is cloudy and slow, and now I need to spend an evening simply resting, as if I’d been out on a week-long hike.
I don’t know why I do this to myself, but it isn’t healthy (I won’t even go into the diet I’ve had since the holidays). Pro tip: don’t do this, artists. Don’t screw up your health for any reason, no matter how noble. I could have started, little by little, much earlier. 30 minutes worth of work here and there over two months until I’d made time to really sit down and work would have saved me from a lack of sleep and really long days over a weekend.
The House Of Illustration is a gallery in King’s Crossing, and The Folio Society is a high-end publishing house specializing in literature for adults. I don’t know what my chances are in this contest. I’ve seen the past winners, and man… those artists took their time to put together some incredible entries. Either that, they’re good enough to put something fantastic together in a short period of time. But, art is subjective, and tastes and needs change with time. Who knows what the publisher is looking for this year, with this project?
Regardless of whatever chance I might have, my entry into the contest is, at the very least, worth it as a portfolio project, and it will be looked at by professionals. Hopefully some of them will take note of my work. At the very most, I could win a paid commission to do the drawings for the rest of the book, or win a cash prize as a runner-up.
I’ve been asked, by the very few who have seen my entries, if I’m happy with how they turned out. On one hand, I think they’re pretty decent. The more I look them, the more I like them. On the other hand, I can do better. The more I look at them, the more I wish I’d made time to spend more time on them, to put together something really special.
There is always the next project. In fact, I have a few lined up already.
(I will share the images and my process after the winners are announced in February)