On boundaries and revisions

This post was written entirely by me. The English translation was generated by AI.

Yulia was about four, and we were sitting in a café with friends.

Yulia wanted something unclear and was whining a little, and I patiently answered all her whining along the lines of, “Yes, darling, whatever you want” — ice cream, cake, the moon from the sky, I’ll get it all for you (get it… get it… echoed somewhere).

A friend, watching this, said, “Now I understand why Tanka is a successful freelancer.”

And at that moment — oh, an unexpected plot twist! — Yulia slid down onto the floor in SUCH a meltdown as the world had never seen before. The windows in the restaurant were trembling, the customers pressed themselves into their chairs and tried to merge with the upholstery, perhaps the reindeer on the snowy island of Kvaløya (this was in Tromsø) pricked up their ears in surprise. We were seriously afraid the police might arrive.

Because children need boundaries.

Successful freelancer Tanka did not exactly not know this, but it is easier without boundaries, isn’t it? Easier to be a mother who agrees to everything and is always ready to fulfil any whim, just please leave me alone.

It is difficult now to establish what Yulia wanted back then, but clearly not ice cream and not cake and not the moon; all of those were only pretexts.

Maika was born fifteen years after Yulia, and she does not get very many boundaries either, but still slightly more.

Also, over those fifteen years, my Unlimited free revisions turned into 2 free revision rounds included.

Endless revisions transformed into two revisions per order.

Because artists need boundaries too.

The peak of my pre-boundary art was Lucky Duck, seventy-eight revision rounds or something? One of them illustrates this post.

BUT HOW DO YOU SURVIVE THAT?! Well, you simply switch on autopilot: “open the email, silently make the correction in the file, attach it, write Here you are!, send.”

The main thing is not to switch on your brain, because together with your brain your emotions switch on too. You will start running across the ceiling and tearing your hair out, and who needs that?

You just work like AI before AI actually appears.

After the duck, by the way, there was also Later Alligator, Holy Cow, Top Dog and their other friends, also with dozens of revisions, and the client and I actually parted as friends and are still friends on Facebook.

At some point I started charging her by the hour, but that turned out not to be especially profitable, because the revisions were usually tiny, and most of the time was spent opening the enormous file in Photoshop.

But of course you can forget about all that creativity, inspiration, what else is on that list. Just forget it.

With every next revision initiated by the client, the drawing does not necessarily become worse, but it definitely becomes less mine.

I dream that one day I will grow to such a level that I will be able to dictate my own terms completely, and the little pictures will be snatched up without any revisions at all. Even now, by the way, I offer new clients that I will illustrate a book for price X, with two revisions included, or for price 0.5X, with no free revisions.

And usually everyone wants the full-price option, because illustration is not always, and almost never, about pictures, just as a hair salon is not only about a beautiful hairstyle. It is about communication, care, self-expression.

And that is what people come to an illustrator for too: care and joint creativity. Do you know who almost never asks me for revisions?

Traditional publishers. Well, sometimes they ask me to move some hedgehog so the text fits better, but that is all. Because they have a stream of those hedgehogs — what difference does it make to them whether this one has a dreamy smile or a slightly smug one?

But an independent author may have been dreaming about that hedgehog for ten years already, so how can you leave it without attention?

Actually, unlimited revisions were even dear to me in a way. It felt as though my job was not to draw hedgehogs, but to make dreams come true. It is a pity that I got so tired, and now I have to make dreams come true in two rounds at no extra cost. Fine, three. All right, let it be four. That is it, here comes the fifth, and after that I will DEFINITELY send a new invoice!