My New Facebook Page

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I’ve had a Facebook account for a while now and have found it to be a terrific way to stay in touch with friends, clients, and other artists. It’s also a great way to meet new people and make stronger connections in the industry. While there’s no substitute for personal one-on-one relationships, Facebook makes it possible for me to stay connected to more people in more ways than I could ever do offline.

As great as Facebook is, there’s one drawback: It’s too easy for my personal and professional life to get blurred. All of my connections are lumped into one big network. My family photos and personal comments to friends are mixed in with blog updates and news about my business. In some ways that’s a good thing. Certain clients and colleagues may appreciate getting to know me on a more personal level. But I have a strong suspicion that others could care less about my personal hobbies or what happened on my vacation. From a marketing standpoint I walk a tricky line on Facebook. Often when I post something personal I catch myself asking, “How might this make me look to a potential client?” Whether that’s a good thing for me to worry about or not is another subject, but it’s one of the realities of being a small business owner in the age of social networking.

So I’m trying an experiment. Facebook has a feature called “Pages” that lets you create a page devoted solely to your business. Large companies like Coca-Cola and Disney use them in an attempt to create a community around their brand and to connect with their customers. But thousands of small business owners also use them to have a more professional presence on Facebook while building a more personal connection with thier clients.

So I’ve created a Facebook page for my illustration business to see if I can’t take better advantage of what Facebook has to offer. For starters the page has samples from my portfolio, my latest blog posts, and a couple of links I’ve found interesting. I’m planning to post news, my latest work, and links I think potential clients or other colleagues will enjoy or find helpful. I’ll also be running a fun contest soon (both here and on the Facebook page) so stay tuned for that. To follow my Facebook page just click on the “Become a Fan” link under my photo.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly where the dividing line will be between my personal and professiona life on Facebook, but I’m having a Page devoted solely to my freelance business should go a long way towards helping me make the best of both worlds.

Any thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Creative Freelancer Conference Is Coming

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The second annual Creative Freelancer Conference (sponsored by HOW Magazine and Marketing Mentor) will be held in San Diego August 26-28, 2009. I attended last year’s conference in Chicago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even though I’ve been freelancing for over twelve years I still picked up quite a few tips and tricks. As a result of what I learned I’ve been able to give my clients an even higher level of professional service. I also learned a few ways to boost my bottom line. I only wish this conference had been available back when I started my business.

This year’s lineup of speakers and topics was recently announced. There’s a lot of new stuff that wasn’t on the line-up last year which means I’ll definitely be attending again.

Topics to be covered include:

  • What Will Your Freelance Business Be When It Grows Up? (Petrula Vrontikis)
  • Money-Saving Tax Solutions for Creatives (June Walker)
  • The Essential Rules for Writing and Presenting Proposals (Peleg Top)
  • Effective Presentations for Creative Solopreneurs (Darryl Salerno)
  • Dealing With Nightmare Clients (Michelle Goodman)
  • The Astoundingly Simple Secrets to Making Social Media Work For You (Colleen Wainwright)
  • Freelance Success Panel (moderated by Ilise Benun)
  • Speaker Panel Q&A (moderated by Ilise Benun)
  • Create or Die: Thriving in the Create-On-Demand World (Todd Henry)
  • Workshop: Hands-On Marketing Lab (Ilise Benun)
  • Workshop: The Price Is Right (Lee Silber & Peleg Top)

If you register before July 15 you’ll receive an early-bird discount of $50. Register or get more info at www.creativefreelancerconference.com.

This and That: Money Edition

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Need to waste some time on the internet? I’m here to serve.

With the economy on the skids people are thinking a lot more about money, and tax time is approaching fast. So even though this is an art blog several of the items below relate to money and finances. Hey, why not?

The Credit Crisis Visualized — This brief 11-minute animated film does a great job of explaining how we got into the financial mess we are in.

Now That’s A Business Card — Check out this sampling of 60 very creative and very stunning business cards.

10 Tips to the Perfect Portfolio Website — Worth reading. How does your website stack up?

15 Key Elements Every Website Should Have — More tips for designing the perfect website.

25 Useful Financial Rules of Thumb — Here’s some great tips to keep in mind after you bring home the bacon.

50 Tips for Do-It-Yourself Savings Around the House — More good advice on pinching pennies.

How to Handle Tightwads and Charge What You’re Worth — It feels great when you save money, but not so great when clients get cheap on you. Here’s some great advice on handling tightwad clients.

NEA Should Spread the Wealth — I’m highly skeptical of the idea that the government should be spending money on the arts, but for those of you who feel otherwise this idea seems to me like it would be a great way for the government to promote the arts while also saving money or even profiting from it.

Drawing Facial Hair — another great tutorial from Tom Richmond.

Sketchbook Pro 2010 — My friend Robbie Halvorson sent me a heads-up about Sketchbook Pro 2010, the newest release of the popular drawing/sketching software (due out in April). I’ve never used Sketchbook Pro but have heard so many people rave about it that I’m thinking seriously of giving it a go.

The Return of “Ask Mr. Artist Guy”

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It’s been a while since I took the time to answer reader questions. These posts take longer to write, and with life getting crazy and my blog moving from a daily to semi-daily format, they fell by the wayside. I decided it’s time to try to weave this feature back into the mix.

To make up for lost time I’ll answer not one but two reader questions:

Tony LeTourneau writes: “I found your posting a while ago that you are using a Cintiq. I wanted to touch base with you to see how you have liked it and if you have found it to be a significant difference from your older Wacom Tablet. I am considering buying a Cintiq and wanted to get another illustrators opinion.”

A Cintiq is a huge improvement over a Wacom tablet. I used a tablet for years, and while I enjoyed painting digitally I never could get the hand-eye coordination thing down. It’s just too unnatural to look away from your hand when you are drawing. I made it work for painting/shading, but for actual drawing and inking it was faster to work straight on paper than to wrestle with the tablet.

A tablet also lacks the “rotation” factor. Many artists like to rotate their paper back and forth as they draw/ink, myself included. But since a tablet’s orientation is tied to the monitor, and the monitor doesn’t rotate along with the tablet, when I would spin the tablet the lines I drew never went where they were supposed to.

A Cintiq solves all these problems. Drawing is natural and rapid. You can rotate the Cintiq almost 360 degrees, and tilt it as steep or as shallow as you’d like. It’s also very efficient. You can fix mistakes much easier than you can on paper (just hit “undo”), and you don’t have to waste time scanning in your artwork and then cleaning it up. A Cintiq is expensive, but for me it has more than paid for itself in terms of the amount of time I save.

However, the Cintiq does have some shortcomings. First, if you work digitally from start-to-finish (as I do) you have no “original” artwork to frame and hang on a wall. Inking is also tricky on a Cintiq. Inking in Photoshop can be wonky, and inking in Illustrator takes some getting used to (although with practice I’ve achieved some nice results). Some people ink in Painter or Sketchbook Pro with good results, but that means buying additional software. Finally, a Cintiq is very smooth—you are drawing on glass, not paper—and some Cintiq users say its just not the same, they miss the feel of drawing on paper. Fortunately for me that’s not a big deal.

John Beatty writes: “As I was doing my errands the other day, I thought; ‘I wonder how other Freelancer’s deal with going to the post office, going to the bank, getting office supplies, etc, etc.’…how to you work around your errands that ‘must’ be done, while in the middle of a deadline, when every minute is precious!…I know you’re married and that probably can help, if you wife isn’t a full time employee too?”

Great question. As a freelancer you have to wear a lot of hats including bookkeeper, errand boy, and janitor. The better you are at time mangamement, the easier things go.

Like many creative types organization does not come naturally to me. I’ve had to train myself and pick up some tricks and shortcuts along the way. The most important thing is to prioritize and plan ahead. Everything should revolve around your clients’ deadlines. Decide which tasks are urgent and which can wait until a rainy day, and then plan accordingly. If you manage your time well you will very rarely find yourself so swamped that you are unable to spare an hour to run an important errand.

I’ve found it helps to get in the habit of keeping a work log on every project. Over time tracking your hours will help you get a sense of how much time you actually spend doing different types of client projects. Eventually you will learn to predict with a fair amount of accuracy how long each project will really take, and that will help you to figure out how much time you will have left over for errands and other tasks. My wife created a template in FileMaker Pro that I use to log my time spent each project, but you can also buy one of several desktop or web applications designed specifically for freelancers to track their hours.

If you can carve out a big chunk of time it’s best to run several errands at once (and being a freelancer you can do them while everyone else is at work, avoiding rush hour traffic and long lines). It’s also a good excuse to get out of the studio for an hour or three. Sometimes deadlines pile up and then it gets tricky. If I have to I can send my wife to run errands for me, but when I was single I had to learn to plan ahead and run the errands either before or after things got crazy. In today’s fast-paced world that’s a vital skill to learn.

Modern technology makes it easier than ever to get organized. I use Apple’s iCal software to keep track of my deadlines, meetings, etc. On my iPhone I use a great app called OmniFocus to organize my to-do list. It lets me know when something has to be done soon or if it’s overdue. Most smart phones will also let you keep a shopping list on-the-go (I use an iPhone app called Zenbe). When you find yourself in a big-box store just whip out the list and get everything you need at once.

Most of this is just common sense. It just takes practice and discipline. Believe me, if I can learn basic time management anyone can.

24 Creatives Share Their Best Career Advice

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Sorry for the slowdown in posts. This has been a crazy month. Our second daughter was born (which means as parents of a newborn we snatch sleep whenever we can grab it), I packed up and moved my studio, and the other day my computer died and had to be replaced. In addition I’m currently loaded down with seven freelance projects and two more (hopefully) on the way.

Still, I want to keep this blog rolling so here’s a quick link I found on Twitter:

24 Creatives Share Their Best Career Advice

I haven’t had a chance to read any of the articles but judging by the titles they look fascinating.

My New Studio

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I’ve spent most of this week painting, packing, and moving into my new studio. With the recent birth of our second child my wife and I decided it would be best to swap a couple of rooms in our house. My old studio is now our master bedroom and our old bedroom is now my studio.

I’m still tidying up and reorganizing a bit, but here’s some photos of what I’ve done so far. (This is also probably the cleanest it will ever look):

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Here’s where all the magic happens. I bought a Cintiq over a year ago and have been working all-digital ever since. I haven’t used my drawing table in over a year so it’s stored away in the garage.

Having a Cintiq with a second monitor is a really nice setup. When researching a project I can grab reference images from the internet and spread them all over the top monitor and do all my drawing/painting on the Cintiq. In Photoshop I can also have my illustration open twice with two windows (Window > Arrange > New window…). On the Cintiq I’ll zoom in and do detail work while the window on the upper monitor stays zoomed out. Simply by glancing up I can see how the detailed work looks in context with the larger image.

studio5To the left of my desk is my “library corner” and next to it a treadmill. Everyone tells me the recliner looks like a “granny chair”, and they’re right. It used to belong to my Grandma, and it’s super comfortable so I keep it around.

Both the chair and the treadmill are pointed towards my computer monitor in the corner so that I can watch DVD’s and even TV shows. A while back I bought an EyeTV unit which turns my computer into a DVR. Nice!

studio4

Here’s another view of the treadmill. I used to be a runner and in my mid-twenties I regularly ran seven miles at a time. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Over the years I’ve put on a lot of weight and degraded into a marshmallow schlump. Its high time I started losing the weight. I try to walk/run for at least twenty minutes every day (except Sunday) and for the most part I stick to it. It’s also a nice way to take a quick break and re-energize during a midnight stretch on a tight deadline. There’s also a couple of barbells on the floor that I’m getting back into using (baby steps). My job is very sedentary so any exercise I can get is a good thing.

The Batman standee was a gag gift given to me by some friends when I moved to the Minneapolis area back in 2003. He stares down on me to make sure I meet my deadlines.

That’s the nickel tour. If anyone’s interested here’s what my old studio looked like, and here’s some links to the studios of a few other freelancers.