A Response to 'I Quit My Concept Art & Illustration Career' by Sketch Habit

I love that you took the time to write about your personal journey arriving at the work you do today. I've been told that there are certain people who just have Concept Art brain, you look through their sketchbooks, and it's like a window into these weird odd worlds. Then there are others who just enjoy studies in and of themselves. I think the sort of art that you surround yourself with can also influence what winds up filling up your portfolio. I think, whatever approach you take it's important that you discover what it is that fuels your creative urges. What are your greatest, deepest, and all-encompassing interests. When I started taking my work more seriously, my teachers told me that if I wanted to be an illustrator than I would need to separate all of my studies out of my portfolio and fill it with things that were clearly images depicting stories. For me, stories and narratives were what made picture making so interesting. That's kind of what has led me to the portfolio that I have today and the kind of work that I always chase. https://www.alanatedmon.net/ If you're curious!

In 2015-2017 I just dove into Schoolism work, drawing nonstop and trying to do all of the classes. I started understanding that just being able to draw wasn't enough if I wanted to create the type of work that I was passionate about, I would also need to understand values, composition, and color in order to put together the right body of work. I started taking illustration classes in private schools, but I was worried that those classes weren't teaching me how to build a career. Most of the students were just aiming to get a good grade and move on; so I asked around and learned about the Illustration Academy or nowadays it's called The Visual Arts Passage. I began taking illustration classes there with multiple mentors, including Edward Kinsella, Sterling Hundley, Lake Hurwitz, and a few Blizzard artists as well; Jon Neimeister! While taking these courses, I was always reaching out to art directors at 'The Big 5', the big publishing houses that most people think of when it comes to books.

From there I worked to chat with artists regularly, people who would take the time to meet up a few times a week and discuss art and the projects that we were currently working on. It was important to me that even outside of class, I was thinking about art and avoiding creating my own tunnel vision or echo channel. I've reached a spot that I'm not altogether satisfied with; 70% of the art that I do is paid work for clients, which I've found online. The rest of the time I continue to chase my own personal pieces and continue sending work to ADs, hoping to break into the industry proper one day!

Screencap From Youtube Video

A Late Holly Jolly Paintathon

I’d forgotten to mention that the group Brodents wound up competing in another paintathon hosted by Lightbox Expo!! We thankfully made it into the top 10, which was honestly a feat considering that there were over 80 submissions. The judges seemed a bit confused by our piece because of the atmospheric look of Santa. One of the judges actually thought that he was dead and poor Grace was losing her mind over that. “OH GOOD. I killed Santa!”

Admittedly we were a bit disappointed that we didn’t get a paintover by Nathan Fowkes the way we did last year, but we were also told by the staff that we shouldn’t expect big artists like that to always be on the judge panel. They like to use guest artists for the Paintathons and sometimes people without as much industry experience were more interesting to budding artists. I’m not sure if I personally agree with this sentiment, because I think you run into strange issues when the actual people competing have more professional experience as artists than some of the panelists.

Then again, what do I know. It sounds like lots of places are starting to undervalue the necessity of professional artists, if Folio Society firing off all of their ADs wasn’t any indication. It’s a shame really.

I hope that the art world comes to it’s senses soon.

Year of the Snak

There was an ominous feel moving into 2025. January wound up being a rough month across the board with Evan being laid off from his job and me having my regular weird health issues that always crop up around the winter. I wonder if it’s something symbolic about us being a rat household and this being the year of the snake. We have to be especially cautious city rats.

Speaking of which, I joked with my husband about creating a funny little comic about the Country Rat and the City Rat. It would wind up being kind of autobiographical, since I consider myself to be pretty country and Evan’s heart belongs in the city. My family absolutely hates everything to do with Philadelphia and it makes sense when you first get here. People seem really aggressive and there is trash everywhere, to be fair, those were also my first impressions. I originally moved to Philadelphia because I believed that this was a place where an arting starvist could thrive and find their people. The trick to discovering other artists though, is to convince them to come out of hiding. Thankfully we have a few friends that we’ve known awhile, but we’re still branching out.

I’d like to spend more time at the Society of Illustrators this upcoming year; it’s about time we take advantage of the fact that we live so close to one of the art capitals of the world. Sterling Hundley actually mentioned to me that it would be worth it to stick around the cities here, since there are so many connections to make. Even Robert Henri of “The Art Spirit” used to teach at the Philadelphia Academy of Art.

First Month In Philadelphia

Moving back to Philadelphia with Evan was such a smart decision. I hadn’t realized how much I missed living in a city where so much is happening and there are accessible communities for artists. Evan and I are going to be checking out a life-drawing get together at the Society of Illustrators next week. It’ll take a few hours by train, but it’s so worth it if it means getting to meet other illustrators.

I’ve been really pushing to get more character art into my portfolio recently. I spoke with an art director at Macmillan a few months back and she really recommended I increase my speed and try to add something new to my website every week. Hearing this really blew me off my chair. EVERY WEEK?? She reiterated that it could be new sketches for the sketch section, or a new portrait to beef up my tiny portrait page. From chatting with her I realized that my website hadn’t changed much over the span of 6 full months. She was returning and looking at a lot of the same old stuff. Knowing that, I decided to push harder and create more pieces really demonstrating that I can capture teenagers and young adults for the world of YA publishing. I would like to create a portfolio that is always evolving and growing.

PS: The rats are happy as well! I bought them a book bag recently that lets me carry them around with me outside. They have tiny nose holes that allows them to catch all the interesting smells beyond our apartment.

Sweet accompanies me to the roof.

April Easter Paintathon

I spent the better part of this past weekend doing a 24-hour Paintathon hosted by the people over at Lightbox. The style of these paintathons tend to be really cute and disney-esque so I generally don’t ever assume to go very far in the judging, but it’s insanely fun to work together with the other members of Team Brodents. My friend Grace and Alejandro always pop in to spend a good 13-15 hours of straight painting. This year the theme was Space Opera: First Contact, riding the insane hype train of the Dune films, and maybe also the eclipse happening on the same week.

With this group we absolutely wanted to go with something a little creepy. All of us were agreed that we needed some kind of giant creature to be featured. The title being- ‘Negotiations Failed’.

2024 Easter paintathon submission for the theme Space Opera: First Contact. Title: Negotiations Failed.

April Showers Bring Centipedes

Happy April fam!! Evan and I have become nomadic artists and the plan is to be back in Philadelphia again very soon. We miss living in the big city and I personally miss having reproductive rights as a 30-something woman of breeding age. There is something really useful about living close to NYC also, where I can just take a train over to the Society of Illustrators. Now that the quarantine is in the rear view mirror and we’re making significantly more money, we could actually live in a nicer place. I’m hoping against hope I’ll have a garage.

Our golden doodle, Waffle, has terrible social anxiety. I’m hoping that maybe hanging out in a city with dog parks will bring her out of her floofy shell.

Social Anxiety Dog