Interviewing

I'm about to go to some interview/testing/ops thing the Reveille, which is LSU's Daily Newspaper. They've been flooding me with emails, telling me that they haven't had a good cartoonist in years and that they're beyond stoked to see some of my work.

Hm. Cartoonist. Cartoonist for the newspaper? Why, that equates to political cartoonage. Something I'm not sure I feel comfortable with. I just feel like it'll be so easy to offend someone if I decide to do the political cartooning.

But, hey, it's a job. And I need money. And Walt Disney began his life as an artist being a political cartoonist for his local newspaper. So I keep telling myself that every time I feel like I'm not quite equipped for the job. I mean, I can draw. I know I can do a black and white pencil and ink sketch and have it ready to print quickly.....I'm just lacking in the ideas department.

Or wait, maybe it's not even that. I'm sure I'd have ideas, I'm just petrified of pissing someone off.

I really need to get over this "I can't have one person anywhere on the planet dislike me" thing. It's impossible to please everyone, and the sooner I actually learn that and apply it to my life, well, that's when you'll start seeing my political cartoons in the newspaper.

Rejection

I can feel my eyes tingling. My heart is beating kind of fast, and my palms are sticky and gross with sweat.

I just submitted a design on shirtfight.com that I've been working on for, oh.....12 hours? I think that's how much time I spent on it, give or take 2 hours.

I was (sort of) proud of it when I submitted it 20 minutes ago, and now, five minutes after my first comment, I feel like I could cry.

This guy told me it was hard to tell what was going on and that it looked rushed.... :(

....How am I ever going to admit that I actually spent aLOT of time on that freaking design? I don't think I can. I'm so embarassed. I don't even feel like an artist anymore. In my classroom at LSU, we tweak things and play with things and go back and forth and tinker with shit for WEEKS before we have to turn in a final project. And THEN, when the only approval we need is that of our classmates (friends) and teachers (overly nice).....well, I feel like a designer in the classrooms at LSU.

I feel like an artist. Like I have some sort of talent. And I think it's because I get encouragement.

There is none of that on the internet. Everything is so scrutinized and dispensable that hardly anyone gets the recognition they deserve.

Not that I'm saying I think I deserve more praise than I already don't get, because I don't think I've even come close to deserving or earning it.

But I just......feel so stupid for ever bothering with these contests. And I know these are my slightly hurt feelings talking. Sigh.....I should stop wasting time on them. I wasted all of today making that design, and within five minutes, it's over.

The guy who commented on my design is like a big wig on that site. People will agree with him just because of who he is, and therefore my design is damned to the lonely pits of mediocre art hell.

I feel sick. Like I might vomit.

The Artdella blog

So I think I'm going to start another blog called "Artdella." I need to have some sort of almost portfolio of my work up on the internet, because, well, everyone else seems to have at least one. If I actually (miraculously) ever win one of these tshirt contests, I mean......someone (or everyone) is going to be like "wtf who is this girl we need to see a portfolio NOW NOW SNAP SNAP."

Because that's how it is on the internet. Everyone needs proof that you're who you say you are, and they need it quick.

There's this website called teefury that I've been wanting to sell a shirt on, but it's not like a vote thing....you have to send an email with a file of your design to this intimidatingly great designer named Jimiyo, and they decide the fate of your shirt. They look through your blog and your designs and they decide if your shirt is appropriate for their site or not. And once you have a shirt up on there......phew. That's major kudos. More people will be visiting your page than you thought possible.

I feel like I'm learning alot through this tshirt thing I'm trying. I mean, I'm learning how to handle rejection......I've been rejected, what, 20+ times already? Mostly I just wanna give up, but owell. There is something bad that I do, though. I'll design something, and in my head I'm like "Oh, this is good. This just might get me somewhere." And then I get like no votes and not even any comments...... THAT has happened like 5 times thus far.

I'm getting a tougher skin, though. Thank goodness. It's actually helping me cope with my color photography class's horrendously brutal crits. I swear, those fuckers are out for blood.

Ahh well, I'm gonna go back home to Chalmette and.....keep designing. Later. :)

T-shirts. Uggh.

So I've been doing these contests for a while. These t-shirt contests. I was initially intrigued with this whirlwind of crap when I read that there are actual cash prizes for winning such a contest. I thought to myself "hey, I'm good. I can do this. I'll just whip up a design in an hour and get a thousand bucks. Everyone LOOOVVEESSS me."

Ha. Right.

I've never felt so small and untalented in my life. I push these designs I make for hours and even days. I've literally put at least 10 hours into each design. And I get online to submit my shit, and I see these other blogs full of posts like "oh man, after 4 hours of working on this, I just couldn't justify spending any more time on it."

.....and the work is beautiful.

So I usually either give up and don't submit at all, OR I submit, get embarassed, and then yank it off before anyone noticed it.

Pitiful. And I call myself an artist??