Don Berry Chapter 14: Living With a Global Economic Crisis The economic downturn hit my art service in September, 2008. I had just finished illustrating "The World of Caroline", a collection of poems by Ron Leonard, but had no other projects lined up for the first time since beginning my internet-based book illustration service. Although news reports were bleak, I was not overly concerned. I'd been through dry spells before, I had the recommended six months of living expenses in reserve, and actually welcomed a break from the steady flow of intense work. After all, I had done about 30 storybooks in the past five and a half years. It was a good time to catch up on domestic chores. I also inherited two cats that month when friends Kerry and Jeremy Green decided to move to Hawaii where her parents live. Kerry tearfully asked if I'd take Kuah and Polla because she couldn't bear to turn them over to the Humane Society--they are ten years old and she felt they wouldn't be adopted and would likely be euthanized--and circumstances did not allow taking them to Hawaii. Kerry Green on cat delivery day
I agreed. In mid-September Kerry brought the cats, along with a litter box and supply of food. Kuah, the siamese, is an outdoor cat, and Polla, a mostly white guy, is an indoor cat. Three days after he arrived, Kuah wandered off and never returned. (Kerry was very upset when she called several weeks later to check on them.) Polla gradually adapted to his new home, however, and has become a fixture in my daily life. I turned my attention to household projects and to my duties as the family member on-call to help my mother. She decided to move from Payson, Arizona to a senior apartment community in Tucson in the fall of 2004. Since I'm the only other family in town now, tending to her needs became my job. That duty intensified in April, 2008, after she fell, injured a shoulder, and moved from independent living to an assisted care facility. The business drought continued into October, so I started writing this expanded bio to occupy the time I'd normally spend on a book illustration project. It kept me busy into January, 2009. Although just a sketch of my life, it at least places most of the significant people, artwork, and events into a coherent narrative. It also has been a therapeutic exercise--a way to clarify and resolve the past so that I can move forward with much less psychic baggage. Training with Adobe Illustrator software With the bio done and business still absent, I decided to use the free time to train myself to become more proficient with vector illustration using Adobe Illustrator. For the reader who is unfamiliar with graphics software this may seem mysterious, but vector-based art is created through mathematical programs that allow the image to be scaled to any dimension without losing fidelity. By contrast, pixel-based images, like digital photos, scanned images, or artwork created with paint programs such as Corel Painter and Adobe PhotoShop, will lose their sharpness as individual pixels become visible when the image is enlarged beyond a certain point. Edges will appear jagged, and tones and color areas will appear blocky. The trade-off is that working with vectors can be very tedious, time consuming, and unintuitive. Amazing results are possible with practice, but the process does not allow the artist to paint and draw as naturally and expressively as they can with the realistic virtual brushes and other art tools available in Corel Painter and PhotoShop. Vector art is more appropriate for logos, technical illustration, advertising art, etc. Since I had been specializing in book illustration using paint programs, I had not developed much skill with vector-based art. Now, thanks to a global economic crisis, I had time to learn more. My logo is now a vector graphic.
Free Art I also began assigning art and illustration projects to myself so that I could stay productive and keep skill levels up until business resumed. The idea arose to post the new work on my website and offer poster-size, high resolution files for free downloading so that anyone could print and enjoy them if they wished. As of this writing (8June09) I've completed seven dinosaur astrology posters for my Berrytoons site, and four posters for my Free Art web page. The plan is to eventually post a complete set of 12 astrology posters, and add experiments with vector art, photography, digital paintings and other creative pieces to the Free Art page as they are completed. This imaginary scene was created completely with vectors. It took many hours over several weeks to complete and taught me a great deal about the vector process. A poster-size JPG file of the image is available for free download at my Free Art page.
As I play this way, more possibilities arise, and I find myself becoming more and more absorbed in self-generated work. Although storybook assignments have been challenging, fun, and a source of income, I do not miss doing them. It's such a treat to have the time to develop personal ideas this way. The free download offer removes any pressure to please a client...I can do whatever appeals to me without concern about money. I have, however, provided an easy way for people to pay a voluntary 99¢ download fee to help support this effort if they wish. The voluntary payment approach is modeled on free downloads like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. They are quality internet browser and email products that anyone can use whether they make a small payment or not. To me, this exemplifies the spirit of the internet as an unrestricted source of information and resources available to anyone.
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