The unexpected project: Victorian prostitutes.

I was approached by a nice man who came across my work because we had a mutual friend in Facebook (hey, social networking has been working for me!). He had a small personal project and he liked my art, so we talked about it and it happened that he needed portraits of Victorian prostitutes! So, though I would have never thought I was going to be illustrating a series of brothel ladies I jumped in. Especially since we both had the idea of keeping it tasteful.

This is the result:

 

This is a commissioned piece, it is copyrighted to me and belongs to my client, please respect both of us and do not redistribute, modify or commercialize without or express consent.

 

The project was absolutely fabulous. I thank Doug that he was patient with me during the months that I felt sick through my first trimester and had no rush. We had a good time working together, he allowed enough liberty to work and have fun with the girls and gave enough directions as to have a solid basis to start building up from. The lovely ladies are Jana, Jasmine, Lauren, Bridget, Irene and Aiko, we were trying to have different body types and ethnicity included just to keep it more flavorful.

And you, have you ever had an unexpected and fun project to work in?

 

Social Networking and it’s not so wanted consequences

In continuation to my post from earlier this week, and after a couple of incidents happening in Facebook, I decided to go on and write this post too.

 

Stock provided by precise-pixel.deviantart.com

The thing with being an artist is that you want to showcase your art, you want to show it to the world and hopefully get to sell. You can display your art in digital galleries, but you can also make use of social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, for example. The problem with Facebook, though, arises that the people you connect with are called ‘friends’ and this blurs things a bit, in my opinion. One sweet girl I know through Sketchfest and whom I keep in touch with through Facebook was a little disappointed because one of her ‘friends’ treated her ill.

 

Later on I discovered that an artist whose art I admire very much ‘unfriended’ me because I told him it was bad taste to call another artist’s work ‘a piece of $#!t’ in public. This did not break my  heart, by the way, he is not my friend, he is just an artist whose are I admired, but obviously he could not take educated criticism to his words and he felt that he did not want to be in touch with me anymore.

This brings me to the point of how much do we actually believe this people to be our true friends and how much it affects us to interact with said people through social networking? In the first place I think it is important to keep in mind that just because Facebook calls them ‘friends’ it does not mean they are really your friends. A lot of these people are utmost unknown to us! Some of them are even ‘friends collectors’! So we do not mean much to them, we are dispensable. Plus, since we do not know this people we really do not know what their values are, and maybe to them it is not a big deal to say the things they’ve said.

And also, how do we keep our real friends and family away from all this not needed internet drama? Do we want them seeing the petty side of our ‘friends’ or ourselves? In my case I have two Facebook accounts, one for personal things, family, real friends, real acquaintances and some few internet friends whom I trust will not say anything terribly out of place, or become confrontational, or make me be a horrible person. And I also have an art account. That account I use to promote my art, to keep in touch with e-friends, to keep track of artists I like. I do have two parts to my life, one is the biologist the other one is the artist, and though both are very important in my life, they need to remain separate… for once thing academia does not take nudity as lightly as artists do, and God forbid scientists hear me talking about faeries and goddesses! 😉

I also have a twitter account, and that one is *only* for my art side, I do not want to have the rest of my life into it, I do not care what my cousin ate for breakfast… really! And I rather to use it again to promote my art and to keep track of other people’s art.

I think that keeping things in perspective is very  important. Why did you add those people in the first place, to be real friends? To promote yourself? To have someone to talk to late at night? If you can keep things straight and clear, you will avoid a lot of conflict.

Is networking really worth it?

I have been thinking for a while what to write about, there are a lot of things in my head but mostly I cannot write about them here. Some of them include ups and downs of my pregnancy, but I really rather to keep this blog non-personal, professional oriented. On the other hand I am working on a bunch of projects but I cannot show them until I get them finished and get the approval of the clients, so expect a shower of new images soon to come! 🙂

What brings me to write today is a question that I have asked myself several times, a question that I have asked to other artists and that has been asked to me too: “Blogging and networking, are they worth it?” From a ‘getting jobs’ point of view that is. My answer to that is “yes, very much”.

I started my online life as an artist about 5 years ago (I can’t believe it’s been so long!) but back then I was sooo green and not a good artist at all. I had a lot of potential and drive, which was good, and I started networking with other artists in sites as Epilogue and a year later Deviantart, as well as some other today dead forums. While DA was a nice place to showcase, Epilogue was the place that gave me a big push to get into studying art on my own and improving greatly. Once I started to feel more confident I started to dream of that time in which I would be an independent artist and do freelance work. It was scary as heck to put myself out there, to expose myself, but after all that is what you need to do, expose yourself to the good and bad, to the possibility of being rejected and of having your art scrutinized.

At the moment I was an international grad student and the terms of my visa and my acceptance into school forbade me of making any money besides the meager stipend I was getting, so I decided to hold back until I was out of grad school and take that time to get better. Once I graduated (and my incredible husband gave me a tablet as a graduation present!) I started to search for small jobs at different art communities. And though the initial jobs were for little pay they allowed me to get a feeling for the field and start amassing a small ‘commissions’ portfolio to show. It was about that time that I started to blog, by late 2008 and somehow, slowly but surely, I started to get hits.

I spent a lot of time going through forums, searching for ‘wanted’ ads. Really, I was putting way more time in searching than in arting, and most of my emails and PMs were never answered, of those that were answered only a few ended up in something good. But one of them would lead to this beautiful tattoo, which brought a lot of attention. Through that tattoo in this blog I got 2 or 3 commissions, one of them would bring a wonderful returning client with a larger commission. Other tattoos in this blog also brought in some clients. I found this year, after May/June, I was actually not spending any time in job forums and all my art time was being put into art itself!

I also got commissions though Facebook because someone that was commissioning a friend of mine saw my art and wanted some custom art for himself. Also, earlier this week I got some inquire from someone that saw my art in EMG‘s Sketchfest. something I hoped for but never really thought it would happen, Sketchfest harboring artists of great caliber.

 

Sketches for Sketchfest#9 (c) Constanza Ehrenhaus 2011.

So, is it worth it? Absolutely! It won’t come easy, it won’t come fast, it does take time and constancy, but put yourself out there enough and people will see you.

Have a great week!