Quality is not free.

NEW Draw is Life monthly column!

What is this column? I’m going to do that classic “answer by saying what it’s not” thing. First, it’s not going to be the definitive answer on anything. It’s not going to be “the way”, I’m not going to preach from on high on how things should be done. 

I draw for a living and in an age when folks are trying to crack the code to making art, but I want to share the human experience behind the images you all see.  This business is wonderful and  treacherous, I’ll share stories here about how I get by.  

If that’s instructive, then cool. But none of this is gospel. 

My name is Mike Hawthorne, and welcome to Draw is Life

Quality is not free- 

The truth behind time investment in comic art and how much it costs the artist.

I’d heard this phrase, “Quality is free” a while back on a podcast or something. I had thought it was Marketing Guru and blogger Seth Godin who said it, but when I started researching this column I found out it was a guy named Phil Crosby. Our buddy Phil, businessman and author, who specialized in whatever “management theory” is, coined the phrase when he wrote a book of the same name. Phil was writing about the “quality crisis” US manufacturers were facing when having to compete against the Japanese and their superior quality goods. 

Phil may have been right then, but in my job that idea does not pass go.  

Hey, I’m Mike Hawthorne. I draw comics, sometimes write them too, but mostly I draw them. 

When I began my career I carried with me a weird sense of the job. I’d been in art school and laborious paintings were common, but you had to finish when the class critique was scheduled no matter what. Then, after graduating, I got design and illustration gigs were deadlines were king. I had it in my head that “quality” really meant meeting deadlines.

So when I started getting comic book gigs I focused on that. Sure, I wanted the books to look good, but if I didn’t hit a deadline, regardless of how insane it was, then I was failing.

I did that for years, managing to continue getting work and relying on speed above all else. I realized that makes me sound a little like a hack but I did work I genuinely believed in, even if couldn’t totally be proud of the work. I always felt like I was leaving so much undone. As I rushed to meet deadlines more and more mistakes would slip through the cracks and make it to the printed page. I hated myself for letting it happen.

Then, the gig offers slowed down and the ones I did get offered had lower and lower rates. 

This made no sense to me at the time. I was hitting deadlines, being dependable, and still slowly watched the well dry up. 

I also felt more and more dried up myself. I was burnt out and considered getting out of comics all together. Things got bad. I recall being at a low-point, deciding I was done with drawing. I reacted physically to that decision, it made me feel like I’d caught the flu. It was weird, I genuinely felt sick. A loved one I trust pointed out the timing of this “flu” and I realized I’d made a stupid decision. 

So I decided I needed to change how I did things. 

Quality is not free. 

Drawing comics is like being a contractor who builds porches. You build a porch, make it as well built as you can and hope the neighbors will see the porch and ask you to build theirs when they need one. 

Thing is you gotta make the porch pretty, which takes time. Sure, you can cut corners and save time where you can, but in the end if it shows, then people will either not call you or offer you a cut-rate to build it. 

As a builder, you also took the time to learn a craft and you want to be proud of your work.

You have to favor quality over speed or you won’t feel that pride. 

Comics pays illustrators a flat rate for a page. There is a lot of variance in rates, but it’s a flat fee. There is some inequality in that fluctuating rate, and it can be difficult to make a living if it’s too low, but that’s another article and I want to stick to my point here. 

If you can draw a page in a day, you can draw a monthly comic, but if you can draw two pages a day you can double your money. 3 pages, triple your money. You get the point. 

However, the speed will eventually show on the page. Sure, you may have a style that allows for that kind of speed, but that’s not the point here. The point is that we, as artists, all care about the quality of our work and if you speed things up there is a point at which you are making artistic decisions that are now about completion and not your artistic vision. 

What I’d like you readers to know is when a comic artist spends more time on a page to make it beautiful, that artist is paying for that in lost earnings. A comic artist literally has to decide to make less money to spend more time on the art. 

What kind of person does that? Well, I guess the kind that gets the “flu” if they decide to stop. The kind that understands we need to make a living, but that we love this work and the quality matters.

Quality matters, but its not free.  

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Read the first Draw is Life column -

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A new episode of my live drawing podcast Life Studied with my friend, artist and model Mairin-taj Caya is dropping this Thursday over on our Patreons.

We drop the show a week early for our supporting Patrons. In fact my partner in crime on this show, artist and model Mairin-taj Caya has her own Patreon you should check out.

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Oh, and we’re down to the last 10 days of The Drawing Cheat Codes 2 campaign!

Don’t miss out, wee’ll be adding stretch goals this week!

Your boy,

Mike

PuppyScript!, AKA “PS” - These two cuties decided to share a stick during a recent walk :-)