Everything I Learned About Being a Professional Artist, I Learned in 4th Grade

Although I create a fair amount of my own independent art, I'm a producer at a commercial company where we offer video, animation and design services for hire. Due to the nature of this business, I often spend more time educating the public about “how commissioned art works” than I spend actually creating art. Whenever I’m struggling with a client that wants the “trifecta” (fast, good, and free/cheap), I return to the lessons I learned from my first troublesome client in fourth grade. For fellow artists, writers, designers, and creative people in general, I have included hover-over footnotes that relate this fourth grade story to getting paid for commercial arts in the real world.

I was always good at drawing, but I didn’t realize until fourth grade that it was a very effective deterrent against bullies. People would find some reason to pick on me, but once I started drawing popular animated and comic book characters, everyone – including the bullies – gathered around to watch.

One day, Lance* (name has been changed to protect the guilty), the prematurely humongous bully that got away with everything because his mom...
Read the rest of this entry »