On Trial Illustrations

Every author, of course, doesn’t want to give their book into the hands of just anybody, but wants, on the contrary, the Best and Most Suitable Illustrator.

They dig through hundreds of portfolios, stop at ten of the nicest-looking and not-the-most-expensive ones and…

and start bombarding authors’ groups with questions like “is this AI?”

Interestingly, whatever they show, there will always be comments saying “obviously AI, where are your eyes?!”

It’s impossible for a poor illustrator to sneeze these days, and probably for an author too, without someone informing them that they sneezed artificially, but actually I don’t want to write about that at all, sorry, got carried away.

Separately, since I got carried away anyway, I’ll add that this very “got carried away” on the one hand attributes me as a living human being, and on the other hand makes me lose visibility for GEO/AEO/AI search optimization, meaning I am basically burying myself alive (still alive, that is).

So, the topic of our lesson today is Trial Illustrations.

It would seem like a very logical step — if you need one illustrator and you’ve found ten suitable ones, why not make all of them draw your beloved, long-suffered character and see which one turns out the nicest?

Trial illustrations can be paid or unpaid.

If you commission an unpaid one (ouch!), I can see three reasons for an artist to agree:

They are very hungry and grabbing at any chance (pay them immediately!)
They are very young — in the usual sense or professionally, doesn’t matter. Most likely, if you choose them, they will be learning how to illustrate books on your book, which is not necessarily bad at all and may even be really great, but just keep it in mind.
You have an unbelievably cool project and the artist really, really wants it. Either you’ve written not a book but a diamond that sucks you into an ocean of inspiration (WOW!), or you’re not planning to pay anyone for trial drawings, but you’ll pay so much for the main project that it’s worth making an effort (sounds a bit doubtful).

I, honestly, haven’t drawn unpaid trial illustrations for a long time. It seems risky to me to enter into financial relationships with people who are already very keen to save money at the getting-to-know-each-other stage.

Besides, I’ve discovered that commissioned drawings get drawn much more cheerfully when they’re paid for, and when they aren’t, I try to draw them as quickly as possible (even quicker than usual) and get on with something paid or personal as quickly as possible. And this is neither, and neither, and with age my organism seems to understand less and less why we are doing this at all.

So the drawings come out very superficial.

It’s roughly the same story, by the way, with free trial lessons, only it gets even more complicated because many more people will come to a free lesson than to a paid one (why wouldn’t they?), and in reality the children’s impression of it will be very different from a much more intimate regular lesson, where the teacher has much more time for each child.

So I want to emphasize that the lesson I’m giving on Thursday, September 3, is not a trial one 🙂 It is a completely separate class, in no way connected to the autumn non-drawing course, I just came up with it a long time ago and only found the time for it now.

A completely different problem arises with paid trial illustrations.

Here everything is fair — the client pays, the artist starts working, and from the artist’s point of view everything is perfectly fine — even if you don’t get the main commission, the money for the trial is already right there, and if you make 20–30 paid trial drawings a month, you don’t actually need to illustrate any big books at all, you’re doing fine as it is.

Paid drawings, and actually any trial drawings at all, aren’t really necessary for the client.

A programmer friend of mine once said that of course he wrote his best code for technical interviews.

Yes, my best drawings are trial ones too.

You sit there, trying your hardest, tongue sticking out — please pick me!

And then they pick you here, and they pick you there, and would you look at that, now you have three projects on your hands at the same time, and still three children, and right now somebody wants to go potty, somebody has lost their sneakers, and somebody is asking in this sort of detached way what’s for lunch, and you want to draw something for your clients as quickly as possible just to show them that you haven’t been run over by a tram, that you’re still here and still working, if only so you can believe it yourself.

(By the way, I’ve been writing this text all day, started at 14:15 after picking the little one up from daycare two hours early because she was crying, and now it’s almost 19:00 and I’m still here.)

And also, a new project is always interesting!

And also, one little drawing on your to-do list is always more tempting than “finish illustrating the Encyclopedia All the Beetles of the World,” so you sit down to do it with much more enthusiasm.

So, paid trial illustrations turn out very beautiful indeed! Anyone would be happy to hire an artist like that.

Only they don’t show you at all whether the artist can maintain a consistent style throughout an entire book, unless you commissioned five paid trial drawings, and they won’t tell you anything about their ability to meet deadlines or their communication skills.

Or rather, they’ll tell you a little, but nothing beyond what any decent portfolio, reviews and correspondence can tell you for free.

So yes, wanting a trial drawing seems like a very logical decision.

And I haven’t even started yet on trial illustrations whose actual drawing is delegated to AI.trial