Chewing Pencils

Tip 10:- Think Long term

The final installment in my series on Tips for Becoming a Professional Cartoonist involves long term planning. As much as we like to dream about it, no cartoonist has ever sat down, picked up a pencil and become an instant hit. There has always been long hours, days, weeks and years involved in becoming an ‘overnight success’.

There has also been many, many, MANY rejection letters and knockbacks, failed projects, non-paying clients, late nights and moments of despair. Quite frankly, there is not a hint of romantic illusion in the life of a cartoonist - just lots of plain, hard work.

But, hard work pays off with time. Putting in the hard yards to learn more about techniques, style, markets and basically anything involved with the industry, will have a positive impact on your potential to earn an income from your art. Time is the critical factor thought and we have to be prepared for a long journey.

Here’s a few tips that I think can keep us thinking long term.

1. Practice a lot

Like everything, you don’t get better unless you practice! If you want to get into editorial cartoons, practice drawing ones relevant to world events and post them on your website. Practice drawing at least one cartoon a day for no reason other than to see if you could maintain a daily cartoon gig. Practice with different tools and media. Practice drawing a comic strip series. Practice your caricature technique. Practice, practice, practice.

Get the picture?!

2. Generate and record ideas

At some point you’ll get to a point where you seem to run out of ideas. Inspiration is gone and you wonder if you’ll ever be funny again. Unfortunately, these times are inevitable. The good thing is that we can prepare for them. Train yourself to look for the funny side of everything. Look for the funny quirks in the people you meet, the irony of situations, the ridiculousness of decisions or the perplexing nature of nature herself.

Once you start looking for, and finding, the funny side of things - WRITE THEM DOWN! I have often thought of really funny things while I’m on the train and thought, “I must write that down when I get home.” Of course, when I get home, I know I had something to write down, but can’t remember it. Thus, I’ve taken to carrying a spiral bound exercise book with me virtually everywhere I go. In it I record ideas, thoughts, observations and just general stuff that I want to record.

I keep my notebooks on my shelf and, when the ideas dry up, get one of them down and browse through the notes I’ve taken and draw inspiration from them. It’s a way of ensuring the flow of ideas is steady and helps me keep drawing for the long haul.

3. Expect knock backs

When I received my first rejection letter, I was gutted. Why wouldn’t they like my work?! The second rejection letter was not as bad, but still hurt. Now, they rarely have any impact on me at all. I still get disappointed when my work doesn’t sell, but knock backs are part of the business.

And besides, a knock back makes a successful submission seem all the more sweet! 

4. Persist

My little boy is three years old. He enthusiastically offers to help me with all sorts of jobs around the house, but when it all gets to hard, or doesn’t seem much fun, he ‘downs’ tools and goes off to do something else, leaving the old man to complete the task on his own. This is acceptable in a three year old, but never in someone trying to be a professional cartoonist.

If you chuck it all in as a result of a knock back or some criticism, you probably should look for another career. People will always have an opinion of what you do and will always feel it is their right to tell you what they think. Listen to what they say, learn from it, but don’t take it to heart.

You’ll need to develop a bit of armour to protect your esteem. Persist in what you’re doing and you stand a better chance of earning some money from your art work.

5. Set up a work space

There are fortunate people who have a dedicated studio, expensive drawing desks and all the latest computer hardware and software at their disposal. One day you might well have that too, but none of us start out that way. The reality is you don’t need most of it anyway.

I know a number of cartoonists, that make a decent living, who work from their dining room or coffee table. Others have a desk they use, but it’s just a simple office desk, shared with others in their house. Some even do their work out in the garden shed.

It doesn’t really matter where you do your work, but it is important that you have a dedicated space that you use all the time. By that, I mean you should have some sort of ’space’ that your mind associates with producing cartoons and illustrations. I’m no psychologist, but my experience tells me that if I have a special space that I draw in, my work is much better than if I just draw wherever and whenever. It also means that I can walk away from it when I need to and do something else.

6. Become good at administration

It’s amazing how quickly your collection of cartoons runs into the hundreds, even thousands. If you’re going to be selling them multiple times, you need to be able to reference them quickly and efficiently, which means a decent filing system.

How you file your work is totally up to you, but you need to be able to identify what and where a cartoon is quickly and easily. One suggestion is to save your cartoons in folders that are labelled by theme (eg Kids cartoons) but then to label each piece of work by number and date (eg #123 August 2006). You might also set up folders for specific customers that commission your work. And the same system can be used for both hardcopy and digital work. Not that I know many artists that store all their work in hard copy now…

Storing everything digitally means you need a good back up system. Hard drives crash. That’s a fact. Another is that they will crash at the most invconvienient time. I have an external 200Gb hard drive that I use as a back up for my main drive. It’s portable, so can be stored away from my work space, and is used only to back up my work. Special projects also get stored on CD-R just for added security. 

7. Have a back up plan

Or, to put it another way, don’t give up your day job!

There is money to be made from drawing cartoons, but it takes time to build up the confidence, experience and client base to make a living from your drawing and nothing else. Let your cartooning career develop during your lunch break or before/after the hours your regular job requires. I distinctly remember having to go down and finish a cartoon in my car during a lunch break in my first year of freelancing! It’s what I had to do to meet a deadline.

Having a “day job” job eases the pressure of having to find a client or sell your work. It means you’re not going to be always worrying about food and clothes for your kids, and it gives you time to experiment with style, technique and the like.

One day, you might go full time. You might not too. I choose to be part time on purpose - I have another job that I love, and I want to keep doing them both. But there are times when the drawing dominates and vice versa. For me at least, it feels like the best of both worlds!

But whatever you do, don’t quit what you’re doing, hoping to become a full time cartoonist right away. At the risk of sounding harsh, it’s simply not going to happen.

Success takes time and patience. When you’re earning around $10 000 a year from drawing, then perhaps it’s time to pull back a day or two on your other job. When its $20 000 then it’s worth spending more time on drawing than anything else, but you’ll still need an additional source of income. Beyond that will depend on your circumstances as to whether full time is appropriate.

I’ll say it again - success in this game takes time. You need to think long term in every aspect of your drawing.

Hang in there and good luck!