Best posts made by Amanda Bancroft

Here's a photo of my sketchbook - currently I'm studying Botanical Illustration in colored pencil, and doing one drawing every day in July. The first was an orange day lily using a reference photo I took in a field of flowers. July 2nd (today) was "Dancing Cherries" from a tutorial by Ann Swan. Generally to do a good drawing in realism, I should spend a week on it (or longer). But this is just to practice daily discipline, so the challenge is to draw these faster but not uglier, and to still learn how to create better drawings, which is working for me in this challenge. Yay!

I LOVE everyone's "Love" entries! So much humor and talent. This is my first ever contest entry.

I'm a greeting card artist by trade, and I use old-fashioned things like paper. So my goal for this submission was to just learn how to submit! I didn't have access to a scanner so I took a photograph of the drawing on paper and used GIMP to sorta make the white areas not-grey. This is totally different from the kind of art I usually do, but I got sick this month and couldn't begin working on my first idea (which would've been time-consuming) - so I came up with a new idea and had fun with it. "Finished, Not Perfect," right?

I'm thankful for SVS and the forums because I work from home in an off-grid cabin (it's a tiny house on wheels) in Arkansas, so I'm isolated from other people and artists. Without SVS it would be more difficult for me to keep myself accountable to my art, because the challenges of keeping our home going plus the day-to-day busy-ness of business (I own a greeting card business) would drown out the little voice inside me that says "Make great art!" SVS amplifies that voice. I've gained so much knowledge and new skills since joining a few years ago.

THANK YOU SVS!

This is a Christmas gift for my best friend. I just finished today, been working on it for about two weeks. It's also the piece I enjoyed doing most this year, coincidentally! This is my first drawing of a furry animal on drafting film using colored pencils, so it was new territory, I had so many skills to learn and feel like I leveled up (sometimes I'd think, no way is it possible to do the white hairs without paint, and then I watched tutorials, experimented, and did them!). 14 hours drawing the final piece, 5x7 inches in size.

Here's the final version I'm submitting to Leanin' Tree, unless you all have feedback about something I should change. This piece isn't my best work but it's been the most time-consuming single piece I've worked on. I started thumbnail sketches for it in 2018. Whew!

I want it to feel like we're out in the graveyard with a flashlight and come upon a scene humans aren't supposed to see. As though this magical, Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween version of Frosty the Snowman put out Trick-or-Treat candy for animals who befriend it; we're not sure its alive, could be just fireflies in its head and a bag of candy left for kids. Yet that squirrel in the pointy hat...and the fact that the right twig is unnaturally higher, holding up the crow instead of sagging down. Hopefully a bit mysterious! Or at least cute enough to buy off a card rack.

THANK YOU everyone for giving great feedback! I'm learning a lot at SVS.
-Amanda

Update:

Thanks to the information you all provided to me, my friend and I were able to chat online about it very calmly and politely. @NessIllustration you were right after all! We just had a misunderstanding that was quickly cleared up, and actually it was good we discussed it because we were able to share a lot more information than just about who owns copyright. This positive experience helped counteract my past negative experiences explaining copyright. Also I recorded notes from this thread so if the issue comes up again I'll have the information quick at hand and will know to discuss copyright up front with either the gift recipient or buyer. I feel much better about gifting artwork now! Thanks!

Hi! I know it's June, but I'm working on a Halloween card because the next deadline for Leanin' Tree greeting card design submissions is July 17th for the categories of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas 2020. This image was done in mixed media (colored pencil, copic marker and a few digital corrections). It's not perfect but it finally felt finished today after about 6 months of as-time-permits concept work and redrawing. I wanted to create this playful fantasy I've had about a "snowman" for Halloween! What do you think? (I'm not very experienced on the forums, so I hope I added the image correctly).

Thanks for your feedback! -Amanda

Wow it can be really hard to face a situation like you find yourself in, but it looks like you have a great plan in place! Everyone's given excellent advice already, so I'll just add my own experience.

I'd love to be able to quit my part-time writing job and have more time for freelance art, including writing/illustrating my own stories, so here's a bit of a chuckle to maybe brighten your day: each week when I haven't been fired, I'm happy because that's money coming in and the job is actually pretty decent. Each week when it looks probable that my publication will go out of business and fire me, I'm happy because if I get fired I can DO MORE ART! haha So I love the attitude and determination you're bringing to the situation. A bright side to everything. I wish you the best of luck in making these big decisions on direction, and a smooth path forward these next 6 months or so!

I've had the same negative experiences mentioned here with some of the same Facebook groups. I don't follow them anymore. SVS is way better at meeting my needs. On the plus side, I learned to narrow my focus for these groups. I join and follow social media accounts for colored pencils, for example, because that's my main medium. Or for the company that I want to license my work to. Or for an artist/teacher who gives great tutorials. I've had a good experience doing that. Hope that helps!

For Christmas, I gave my best friend an original artwork. He was very impressed and happy with it, even claiming it was as good as a drawing in a book he owns that was written by a successful artist. Then he "gave me permission" to use the scanned digital version of the drawing on my website and social media, saying that "it was reasonable" in his opinion for me to use it in my portfolio or similar ways. He thinks he now owns copyright to the intellectual property, not just the original drawing! Uh oh.

Of course I signed and dated the drawing. I didn't explain copyright to him, because I knew he would contest it and demand I show him proof from a source, and this debate could harm the friendship. Besides, I don't foresee any future issues with him or this drawing (I can't imagine selling prints or needing it for promotions in any way, and I'm fine with him reselling the original I gave him if he ever wants to sell it, which is his right anyway.) I'm very happy to have created and gifted the artwork and glad he and his family enjoy it, but I think maybe I'll never gift art again to anybody, because the recipient could misunderstand and think they own copyright / can restrict my use of the image, and discussing this with future recipients could go poorly.

Has anyone had this happen to them?

Do you think it's best not to gift artwork in order to protect the relationship with the recipient? Or perhaps some of you use a special "insert" to accompany the artwork or written on the back, which clearly states copyright ownership and uses the recipient is allowed to do?

My most memorable "bad art lesson" involved one bottom half (legs) of a woman's mannequin upside down in a trash can with a wheel...I don't remember much about that class besides wasting a lot of paper doing speed drawings that we were only given seconds to complete (to capture the sweet lines and spirit of the image or something like that).

That was college. A huge contrast to my middle school art teacher, who was fantastic at critiquing my drawings so they'd improve, helping me really see what I was looking at by pointing out details I missed and explaining important things like sharp pencils and getting darker darks, lighter lights (better value range) and countless other skills she taught me.

Yes! THIS! I haven't seen much detail, only references to book covers, in other SVS classes. I turned down a client who requested I do a book cover because I didn't think I could handle it, but book covers sound like interesting jobs and I'd like to know more so that next time I can say confidently "Yes!" Great topic idea.

I don't know if anyone cares to know but in case someone is thinking of pet portraits as a side job -

My client absolutely loved version "A" and is getting it framed for their home. So they're happy and that's great! I charged $150 for this original portrait and did make a quote form and contract I'd be willing to share if anyone needs examples. Thanks again for the awesome feedback!

Thanks for making this slideshow! There are so many good ones I'd consider my "favorites" that I can't pick one haha! Everyone had such unique ideas.

THIS! Exactly everything you said in your post @ShannonBiondi - I have been worrying about these same points. We transitioned into an off-grid tiny house (which turned out to be broken in multiple ways, so we are still fixing various parts) and life became chaos. I keep feeling like if I practice, it needs to be the kind of practice that gets me closer to my drawing goals, not the kind of practice that just teaches me how to draw badly something unrelated to my career path. Maybe your PDF is just what I need for more structure and to feel I'm on the right track! Thank You!

You know what's funny? I worry about these things, but some of my greeting card designs (which I consider rather random and unfocused or showing poor skills) actually sell well. I put about 4 hours into a 2014 card design drawn while I had a headache and rushed to finish; the shadows are off, the bunny's fur isn't crisp because my pencils were dull, the elipse shapes are wrong etc etc Like Will Terry says, once you send it out into the universe you can't take it back even if I want to, haha! Yet this card keeps selling and selling...and I have to keep restocking it at retailers at their request... Makes me wonder how to define success. Always pondering whether to put my sub-par work out there now, or wait until I learn more and can draw even better.

Edit: the latest version! It's funny, I just saw some of the recent comments @KathrynAdebayo @BichonBistro and they were so spot-on that I'd already added more shadows earlier today having had the same thoughts! Or actually, since I don't really do digital art, what I ended up figuring out how to do (in order to "get my moon and sky back" from the original drawing, @demotlj ) is take one of the darker scans, layer it behind this lighter scan layer, and erase the top layer in various key areas to reveal darker shadows. The richness of the sky and the moon texture is visible now, I'm very happy about that.

The eyes, however, are all digital inside - just some firefly effects which I also added to the nose and mouth. Does that look ok? I'm trying to get the pumpkinman to feel alive and in relationship to the animals rather than staring at us viewers.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. How's this version? Better?

@BichonBistro I've seen your work before! Really like the dogs. Happy to have another greeting card person at SVS - we should chat sometime I hope Leanin' Tree will like the design. It's my first attempt at licensing.

I've loved seeing the work of past featured students, especially Shinji Fujioka and Judy Wilson.

I don't know if my work qualifies for this thread? I'm primarily a greeting card artist so storytelling isn't the main consideration in that industry - but - the reason I'm a subscriber to SVS is actually because my greeting card customers kept saying "Oh, you should be illustrating children's books, this card could be turned into a story!" and finally one of them hired me to do their book in 2016, so here I am learning and loving SVS!

I don't know how to remove the text from "Trick or Treat" because it's inked on paper (drawn by hand) but I got such helpful feedback from the forum community that I wanted to include it. Sorry, does the text also disqualify me? Thanks!

I could learn a lot from a podcast or series with these topics, so yeah, I think go for it! And maybe someone already mentioned it, but I'd like to hear more about illustrators who are on the autism spectrum like myself. Are there any really successful illustrators that manage to balance getting through life with a career and autism both? Some days I feel like I can't possibly make it in my art business because of my challenges, but I also feel like we in the autism community have unique strengths like special interests or focus ability or something that gives us an edge. Would like to see that on the podcast or linked to an autistic illustrator in podcast resources for that episode, maybe

I did this process twice, with many months in between. The first time, my dream portfolio looked like yours with a lot of different kinds of artwork. What finally helped me was this:

What 5 artworks from other artists look the way I want my artwork to look just for the next long-term project I'm working on, AND I can replicate the feel of them using mediums I know well? Each image had to meet both requirements.

Gone was anything I knew I couldn't do without many years of study, and gone was everything that I enjoyed looking at but wasn't exactly precisely how I want my project to look when finished. It helped me to use only a few images instead of a bunch. Also, because I realized I can't find anything exactly like what I want to create, I used 3 full images that represented the overall feel / colors / composition etc, and 2 images that I cropped very narrowly to show the way I want to draw my characters.

Next, I added 3 pieces of my own drawings (also cropped to show a specific part) which I felt got the closest to my goal for my project. I made a collage of the other artists' work touching my own (no spaces just one big image). I immediately noticed where I was headed, what about my work was wrong, what about my work I liked better than the other artists' - lots of insights. I put this image as my desktop background to see every day an idealized version or symbol of the kind of work I want to do.

I am a fellow fan of Miyazaki's work too

I really like your study from Miyazaki! Nicely done. I too feel like this isn't exactly the place I "belong" at least in terms of my primary industry (greeting cards). But I think this is just a misconception based on some things I hear in the podcast. It's certainly most tailored for picture book illustrators.

I discovered SVS while illustrating my first children's picture book for a client, and it helped me so much that even though I'm not currently illustrating books, SVS is a great place to grow as an artist and learn more about the business angle too. I may someday illustrate another book or use illustrations in greeting cards, too, so the applications of these skills are endless.