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The e-illustrator

by Dugald Stermer

by Dugald Stermer

Take away the modem and the internet, and the illustrator's computer becomes little more than a lavish airbrush, typewriter and filing system. But with those two, the combination has completely changed the art and business of the field, the latter far more than the former.

I'm much less interested, not to mention incompetent, to write about the use and misuse of the computer as an illustrating tool than I am to discuss the enormous effect it has had on all other areas of our lives as practitioners. From promotion to pricing, from competition to copyright violations, and from our traditional roles as visual interpreters and communicators to an increasing—and mostly disagreeable—job as marketers of our own off-theshelf inventory, e-mail and the internet have rendered our field nearly unrecognizable to the likes of the late Robert Weaver, much less the earlier N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell. The notion of having a portfolio of my work instantly available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, was so irresistible several years ago that I purchased a computer, scanner, CD-writer and printer. This was, as anyone who knows me can attest, a revolutionary act. That I didn't have a clue how to connect it up, plug it in or turn it on, much less do anything useful with it, weren't the real hurdles. I still needed to figure out what this thing was going to help me with that would be useful.

First, while the computer, once installed, would certainly allow me to view my own web site, I was entirely incapable of building it. I had to hire that out, and did. But in the process I did learn how to scan my work. Now, instead of the expensive and time-consuming process of having four-by-five transparencies made of every piece in order to maintain a reproduceable record, the file can be built and maintained quickly, cheaply and much more efficiently with a scanner, a computer, and some CD-ROMs or Zip disks. I may have been near the last on my block to realize this, but it was nonetheless a revelation, the first of many. Following shortly thereafter it occurred to me that if I could build a decent scan of a picture for my own files, why bother to send the original to the client, risking damage or loss in the round trip? For a time, insecurity prompted me to send both a disk and the original to clients, offering them the choice. Not surprising, they nearly always chose to shoot from the original. Many art directors and production managers still prefer to scan from original art, and feel that they are paying for the privilege—and most are. But some have come to welcome digital files. One such client, a magazine for which I have been producing a regular feature for several years, began printing from my scans for the last four or five issues, and I can't discern any qualitative difference. From my perspective, perhaps the ultimate distinction is that if I make the scan, I can adjust my own illustration to more closely approximate my vision of what it should look like. The production manager is stuck with having to try to match the original.

It quickly became apparent to me, once my web site was up, that this was sooner or later going to make the traditional illustrator's portfolio obsolete. In fact, I haven't put one together, much less pack it and ship it, since the site has been operational. Often, during the introductory phone call from a prospective client—art director or art buyer—she is browsing the site as we converse, fees and deadlines are discussed, all in minutes instead of days or weeks. What this foretells for the traditional roles played by reps will be, of course, worked out by them, individually or through groups like SPAR, the Society of Professional Artists' Representatives. But one thing is certain: What they now do, in general, is not worth anything like twenty-five percent of an illustrator's income, not in the digital age, and not to me.

Recently that which some of my less technologically challenged colleagues have long been predicting, alldigital transactions start-to-finish, has nearly come to pass. I have received e-mails that said approximately, "I saw some of your work on the i-spot (an on-line commercial website that rents space to illustrators. There are others, with more entering the field by the minute), linked to your web site and sent samples to the editor. We would like to e-mail you a manuscript and have you illustrate it for a magazine page," etc. With the details ironed out, again by modem, I read the piece, did the sketch, scanned it and e-mailed it to the client. Upon acceptance, I finished the job, scanned it and sent the file along with the invoice, again by e-mail. So far, I haven't been paid electronically, at least not by domestic clients, but that can't be far away.

It should be mentioned that one problem remains to be satisfactorily solved. Just because someone has their own website, like the clichéd tree falling in the forest, if no one knows how to get there, for all intents and purposes it doesn't exist. Even the i-spot has not come up with much more in the way of promotion than advertisements in the trades, more or less preaching to the choir. So far, the best I've done are snail-mailings, sending cards announcing my site's address to the usual suspects (who move around with the frequency of deadbeat dads). It is to be hoped that some of the more farsighted reps will figure out more inventive ways to get the word out, but I'm not counting on it. Solutions will likely come from among those who are now illustration students: mine, I hope, so I can steal their ideas. I've nodded sympathetically when friends bemoan the lack of human interaction this electronic process implies. But privately, I'm a little ashamed to find out just how much of a hermit's life I can slip into with ease. After all, if I want to chat with a client, nothing stands between me and the telephone except my own inertia. And it's been a very long time since I've lived in the same state as most of my clients, much less the same city, so face-to-face encounters are almost always out of the question. My guess is that most art directors and designers I work with don't encourage time-consuming conversations any more than I do. One of my very best friends, a wellknown editorial art director, has said flatly, "I won't work with any illustrator who doesn't have e-mail," and clearly he includes me in this fiat. My experience suggests that, rather than reducing correspondence, e-mail has increased it exponentially. I am in regular contact with vastly more people now than when we had to depend on writing letters, sending faxes, or dialing a phone. I cannot explain this phenomenon satisfactorily even to myself; I just know it's true.

One of the most useful and wondrous abilities of the internet, one that most of my students knew well before me, is research. Damn, such a wealth of pictorial and informational material rests in this box. Again, I feel like the last person on the planet to get it, but what a marvel, not to mention a marvelous time-saver, unless one is a browser, easily and thoroughly distracted, as I am.

So much for the good stuff.

The web has rendered our copyright laws meaningless at worst, and unenforceable at best. It has also made possible an enormous glut of imagery instantly available worldwide at insanely low fees, making a mockery of the already misleading and demeaning term "stock art." These abuses have led to several truly dismal trends, undeniably changing the field forever and, at least so far, for the worst. And neither of these paradigm shifts (the first and last time I'll employ this trendy term, but it fits) would have been logistically possible without the internet.

First, the web invites outright theft of images. So what if the resolution is not the best. In many places throughout the world, the available paper and printing is none too good either.

Further, much of the theft has to do with moving the stolen pictures to other sites on the internet anyway, basically dot for dot. None of us has the time, will or resources to try to track down these illegal acts, and the thieves know it. Further, unless we take the considerable time and trouble to register each of our pictures with the U.S. Copyright Office, even if we did track down an offender all we can do at best is get a cease-and-desist order, which he may or may not choose to obey.

Forget damages or fees; that's not going to happen. Secondly, corporate publishers got wise to the possibilities inherent in the internet long before we did. No surprise there. They, or their lawyers, just rewrote their contracts with illustrators and photographers to include electronic transferal (read: the web), as well as "all known media and that yet to be invented," or some such all-encompassing phrase, for no additional fee. When I have discussed such phrases in contracts with, say, The Washington Post, it was explained that they use the internet as their traditional morgue, that it has only replaced microfilm for storage and research. Fair enough, as far as that goes, but it also automatically adds an infinite number of readers to their potential circulation, and makes abuses far easier to accomplish; just click and copy.

Many other publications now attempt to retain all primary and secondary rights forever, using the web as their shop from which to sell used pictures worldwide.

So far, the undisputed leader in this greedy race to grab up all the possible rights for future income is undoubtedly Condé Nast, publisher of such imageheavy publications as The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, House & Garden and Architectural Digest, among many others. Their current contract, once signed, gives the company all rights to all of the signer's pictures ever published by any of their magazines, forever and in all media. Consider that for a minute: This amounts to no less than a retroactive work-for-hire contract, without any of the benefits such an agreement normally confers. Can you imagine the meeting where the corporate attorneys introduced that particular notion to the board of directors? Some V.P. must have cautioned, "They'll never go for it." And the shysters' answer was probably, "Sure they will. They'll grumble, but they have no choice. It's either that or they get no work from us, ever." Unfortunately, so far they're right about a number of us. Either through oversight or because they need the work, many illustrators go along. The problem is, once signed, that contract means that everything the signer does for any of their magazines, or ever did, or will do, is theirs, not his, forever.

An equally pernicious effect the internet has had on the whole field of image making—photography as well as illustration—has been the proliferation of huge on-line stock houses like Corbis, Getty Art and S.I.S. (Stock Illustration Source). Without getting into the small print of any of these corporations' contracts, they can sell any of the images in their catalog for any price to any client for any use, take as much as half to two-thirds of the fee for themselves, and remit the remainder to the artistÖ that is, for any of the images they don't already own outright. The details change from company to company— some have literally no bottom on their fee schedule —but the results are pretty much the same. The maker of the image is, if anything, a minor player in the deal, and apparently an annoying one at that. Recently an executive of one of these companies said for attribution, "We could make a lot more money if we didn't have to pay artists," and he meant it seriously. Well, duh.

Of course, it's not only a matter of money, although many of us illustrators think it unseemly to talk about the subject lest we compromise our art with Mammon. We also have a sense of ourselves as communicators, however quaint that sounds today, and not just decorators. Our best work has been done in response to specific needs, not just to fill space for lazy, greedy, penurious, or inefficient publications and their art directors. It is a stretch, not to mention disheartening, to think of ourselves as purveyors of interchangeable inventory.

My friend and esteemed colleague, Brad Holland, has often pointed out, "In America, we can purchase something good, or fast, or cheap; we might get two of the three, but not all three at once. That is, not until now." After all, with the purchase of limited rights to an existing piece, the buyer gets it immediately and risk-free. There are no annoying sketches on which to secure client approvals, maybe requiring discussions about ideas and imagery—the normal back-and-forth of traditional art direction. The art is presumed to be of high quality, in part validated by its provenance. It seems that logic would suggest that such a simplified, speedy and trouble-free transaction would cost the buyer more, not less. But leave it to us illustrators to instead accept less than half for re-use rights, compared to what we would, on average, receive for an assignment. We swallow, seemingly without reflection, the argument that, "After all, you already did the piece," as if we were being paid by the hour, and not essentially renting our copyright ("Why should I pay full rent for the apartment? The place is built, and besides, it has been previously lived in."). No wonder Condé Nast, Getty Art, Corbis, a number of reps, designers, art directors and others in related fields often treat us as commercially inept. Frequently we've justified their low opinion of us as businesspeople: "They're artists, and you know how they are."

On the other hand, many of us have run relatively successful small businesses, sometimes for decades, with no support staff, quite by ourselves. This is no small feat in the United States, where small businesses fail four to one in the first six months. It seems obvious to me that now, finally, we all would be well-advised to educate ourselves, organize, and address some of these web-related issues as a group or several groups. Otherwise, we might just find ourselves working in a kind of world-wide, work-for-hire, generic image-making industry, where the idea of specific commissions to interpret ideas and emotions in an imaginative and personal way is but a fond though hazy memory. Some of us have begun to get it together, as with The Illustrators' Partnership, the Graphic Artists Guild, the almost annual Illustrators' Conference in Santa Fe, and within the i-spot's lively chat room. And often it all seems like trying to herd a swarm of fractious and suspicious bees. We illustrators are not noted for our ability to play well with others, but maybe it's time to learn some new skills.