I love Science-Fiction, Fantasy, and even (some) Horror Art.  I really am a lifelong fan of artists such as Frank Frazetta, Neal Adams, J. Allen St. Johns, Berni Wrightson, Boris Vallejo, Manuel Sanjulian, Earl Norem, and numerous others.  Hell, I love drawing and painting a lot of the similar subjects (brawny he-men, ferocious monsters, beautiful women, etc) as many of my heroes do.  However, I hate the publishers and editors because they've really conspired to make getting into the Illustration business a closed shop.  Neither Hollywood, book publishers, or so-called "Artist Representatives" make it any better.  It's really more of a matter of actually knowing someone on the inside who can get an aspiring artist in as opposed to him/her actually having a strong portfolio.  Illustration annuals like SPRECTRUM and SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS will choose name illustrators and feature their work over some unknown with strong artwork because they're clannish and insular.  On top of all that, these annuals usually charge a fee ($25+) for each  individual piece of artwork you enter for inclusion in their annuals.  What happens when you're unknown is twofold:  Your work doesn't get picked and you wind up wasting good money because you aren't part of "the clique".  A big-name artist can enter something he/she did way back in grade school and it has a helluva much better chance of being selected for inclusion in the annual than your very best piece.  Another thing that pisses me off about so-called "Artists' Organizations" is that you pay a yearly fee to post a few pieces of art on their websites and not a goddamn thing happens.  I recently bought a book on the business of illustration by Steven Heller & Marshall Arisman and there was one thing that Arisman said that really stood out and slapped the rose-tinted glasses off my eyes:  Don't join artist organizations thinking they're going to do something for you.  You know what--IT"S TRUE!!!!  Established artists really don't give a fuck about striving artists trying to make it in the business of illustration/graphic art.  Needless to say, so-called "artist representatives" don't give a fuck, either.  You know that you are completely and totally screwed if you live far away from the Illustration hubs like New York & Los Angeles and can't spare the time and expense of dragging yourself and your portfolio  hundreds or even thousands of miles to see art directors and editors.  Don't waste time, money, and energy sending blind submissions to them because they'll join the hundreds of other unseen submissions from other hapless suckers in the "slush pile".  We all know what happens to slush, don't we?

 

You know what?  I simply decided to stop wasting time, money, and resources on organizations that can't do anything for me.  The only way to make it is to go your own way and create your own niche.  Be your own art director and create your own website and sell your work yourself.  Sell prints of your artwork at different comicbook and sci-fi/fantasy conventions.  Basically, you've got to create your own opportunities because you won't get anywhere waiting for someone to discover you and give you that "big break".  It could happen, but I'd bet two weeks pay that you'd have to really work your ass off with a vengeance.  I'm doing these things piecemeal, so it's a work in progress.  If you aspire to be an artist/illustrator, be sure you have a fast computer with plenty of RAM & hard-drive memory (2 GB RAM or better; 160 GB Hard-drive or more), Adobe & Corel Graphics Packages (Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Painter, etc), a printer/copier/scanner, and a digital camera. Get your hands on as many tutorials and become adept at using these applications and others so that you can build websites and send artwork samples via e-mail.  Last, have copies of your artwork backed up on discs & hard-drive AND be sure to get copyrights for all your original characters.  If you want to get anything done in this day & age, then you'd best do it yourself.