rough sketch of my seamless heart pattern

and then used Adobe Illustrator to vectorize this. I followed this wonderful tutorial by Rype – he makes awesome vectors and offers lots of tips on his site.

Here is the end product! Hope you like it! I just uploaded to dreamstime, hopefully they approve it (=

(ps…yaaay May 11th it got accepted!)

Another inspiration: Cora’s, the Canadian breakfast chain from Quebec. I had the chance to eat there and I really loved the atmosphere and menu – because of these window-art-esque vibrant illustrations. They are bloated to a ginormous size and posted up all over the wall on Cora’s.

I love it!

Because I love window paintings so much, and Mother’s Day is coming up, I decided to draw one for my own, not on the actual window but using Illustrator. Here’s my creation:

Happy Mother's Day (window painting style)

I uploaded this to dreamstime, and because my recent clip art has been accepted quite easily, I had thought this would go up in no time too. Unfortunately, it got rejected, and here are the reasons:

Reason: Poor execution. Please pay more attention to rough/jagged/faceted lines/curves. Lines and curves should be smooth, not aliased, in order to best serve the concept of the image.
Illustration is too simple – this illustration contains few elements or the subject is too simplistically represented. Adding more elements or improving the existing ones in terms of creativity and overall appeal will increase the sale potential of your image. Please note that long series of subjects like alphabet letters, world flags, web buttons and other such illustrations will not be accepted separately but only in sets. Please do not resubmit your work unless you improve it according to the above mentioned.
- Poor execution, please pay more attention to the details. For illustrations, please look for: poorly traced/auto-traced and scanned images, noise and innacurate texturing on 3D renders, too simplistic works, faceted curves, aliased/jagged lines, banding effect on gradients, open paths (vectors), noise/distorted pixels on various textures and images used within the illustration, moiree due to downsampling. For collages, please improve the technical execution (distorted pixels, noise, blendings, etc) in order to best serve the concept of the image.

Eek! I had thought my technical part has improved but it appears I have yet to learn more! Darn! I have fallen back on my vector stock upload (remember, note to self, the goal is 500 by the end of the year!?) so I need to practise more!!!

Anyhow, Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers in the world (=

Earn $24,000 / year by December 2013.
-> $12,000 / year from cartooning etc
-> $12,000 / year from other part time (fun) jobs

That means I have to earn $1000 / month from freelancing.
Reading other vector artist’s pages like this one it appears $1000 / month from vector art seems feasible. But I have to post more art – I need to upload 100 vector art to 5 microstock site.

My goal by December 2012 is to earn $500 from my freelancing, so I need to upload at least 50 vector art that SELLs.

One thing about goals is that it has to be realistic. There’s about 30 weeks left, so that means I have to finish roughly 2 vector art that sells / week.

March 2012 is over, and so far I only have 7 stocks, in one microstock site (dreamstime), and only 2 sales ($1.35!). I need to bump this up. I researched the top sellers on dreamstime and it appears the top sellers are templates & patterns – as Hiba suggested: “I would suggest you to draw scrapbook elements or website elements like banners, tags, labels, headers, templates, etc. They really sell well (:” (thanks Hiba!). Time to practise my vector skills more!

Poor execution, please pay more attention to the details. For illustrations, please look for: poorly traced/auto-traced and scanned images, noise and innacurate texturing on 3D renders, too simplistic works, faceted curves, aliased/jagged lines, open paths (vectors), noise/distorted pixels on various textures and images used within the illustration, moiree due to downsampling. For collages, please improve the technical execution (distorted pixels, noise, blendings, etc) in order to best serve the concept of the image.

Rejection is never easy – especially if it’s your artwork that you thought it was great.  Looking back, I can see why it was rejected.  All my vectors are jagged and the overall balance of the drawing is bad (see sample rejected artwork here).  Since then I did numerous tutorials on the web, like this one.  I started uploading simple patterns like this one, but finally, my more complex, cartoony drawing (my passion!) like this one of my mom was accepted today! Hurahhhhh!  Now, so far I’ve only sold one drawing ($1) so now I just have to make vector art that SELLS, so that I can earn my living as an artist So my action plan is:

(1) Research drawing that sells online

(2) Upload to many sites as much as possible

Check out my dreamstime portfolio here.

What motivates me is financial freedom! But that will take some time so I am going to motivate myself by setting a short term reward – when I make my first $500 from creative project I will buy an IMAC! Right now I am creating all my artwork on my small MacBook, which is hard to draw Adobe Illustrator with. I think I’ll get a 27inch iMAC Now that’s motivation!

Illustrator Chess Board Pattern

To sell your image on dreamstime you can to go to this link.

Now I need to work on my craft (i.e. practice illustrator even more!) I think I’ve improved tremendously since the start of this year. I really have to thank the internet for that for directing me to great tutorials like this one and that one.

“Congratulations, your image has been approved and will be available online soon. Please note that it may take up to 24-48 hours for the image to show up in all areas of the website.”

I gasped “OMG” and my boyfriend got concerned and asked me “what’s going on!?”. I told him what happened and he said “many more to come!” (he is such a sweet, encouraging boyfriend!). I was telling him how I was feeling discouraged because “so many” of my submissions were recently rejected. He asked me how many and I said “4…or 5″. He of course rolled his eyes. I need to keep trying!

Here is the chess board pattern I submitted to dreamstime that got accepted in 2 days! If you’d like to purchase it please click on the image.

Illustrator Chess Board Pattern

Now need to practice illustrator more and more an more to get more and more and more published on microstock site! This is my first big step to the journey to become a freelance illustrator

fluid - Illustration Friday Feb 17 2012

The fluid is crying because it’s getting sucked by a paper towel! Oh no!

My rejected 3D cupcake

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a cupcake for you…
I woke up this morning with a rejection email from dreamstime for this 3D cupcake. I thought it was pretty cool cupcake but they said

Reason: – Poor execution, please pay more attention to the details. For illustrations, please look for: poorly traced/auto-traced and scanned images, noise and innacurate texturing on 3D renders, too simplistic works, faceted curves, aliased/jagged lines, open paths (vectors), noise/distorted pixels on various textures and images used within the illustration, moiree due to downsampling. For collages, please improve the technical execution (distorted pixels, noise, blendings, etc) in order to best serve the concept of the image.

Hmm my guess is that they don’t really like lines that aren’t totally symmetrical or smooth? Looking at istockphoto’s experts’ drawings and tutorials I think their shapes are mostly derived from pre-defined Illustrator shapes so they have a much cleaner look.  I’m such a newbie so I appreciate any feedback. Maybe I should join one of the microstock forum to get other people’s opinion.

Anyway, I won’t give up! I already learned a lot this morning (by putting one hour before I’m heading to my 9-5 job) by performing this awesome tutorial about drawing simple faces by bortonia.  Here’s the end product,

The face I drew from Bortonia's awesome tutorial

feel free to use them as I’ll link it to the free download section.  I also linked the above rejected cupcake AI file as well! If you use it please kindly let me know, that’s all I ask because it will keep me motivated!

As per my 2012 goal I will continue my creative process – so I can become a freelance illustrator!