I completed an illustration project for Positive Promotions. I provided illustrations for a children’s workbook about Hispanic Heritage. It’s the sort of thing that might be used in an elementary school for Hispanic Heritage Month or a Spanish language class. This isn’t the final cover, but a mockup based on the draft layout with my illustrations inserted.
Next, I’ll post the line drawings for the interior pages.
Today I received a message in my email from my website’s comment form. Now, I do absolutely get cold contacts through this form that are absolutely legit and lead to perfectly good projects. Some of my favorite projects have come from cold contacts from that form. However, it’s the internet. Not everything on the internet is safe or true. Just for self-preservation, I’m always just a little suspicious of new inquiries that come to me this way.
The message I received today read:
Name: Joan
Joan
Email: joanfallk@gmail.com
Message:
Hello,
I am Joan. I got your contact details online. Can you work on an illustration project and get it ready before the due date? I have prepared the scenarios to be illustrated. I just need an illustrator or cartoonist to draw the images. . Please get back to me for more details. I prefer email and text correspondence for record purposes.
208-505-8842
Warm regards.
Now, this message isn’t glaringly wrong but just seems a little off to me.
She got my contact details online? Well, sure. She contacted me through my website’s contact form. That seems a little odd to mention.
Can I work on an illustration project and get it ready before the due date? An unspecified due date. Again, seems a little obvious. Of course, if I take a project, It’ll be done by the due date. I won’t take a project if I don’t believe I can meet the due date. It’s surprising she’d mention that because it’s just a part of the job.
Saying she’s prepared the scenarios to be illustrated is fine, but an awkward way to state it.
At this point I’m pretty sure this is a scam, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Maybe I’m overreacting. It could be legit. I figure I can spare a couple more minutes to respond just to verify one way or another. So, I said:
Hi Joan,
Karen B. Jones
Thank you for contacting me. Depending on the details on the illustration project, I can probably help.
Can you tell me more about your project?
Thank you,
Illustrator
She responded fairly quickly with:
Hello Karen,
Joan
Thank you for your interest in this project. The illustrations/images are to be used for a presentation in a Workshop coming up soon. The title of the workshop is FAMILY – THE NUCLEUS OF THE SOCIETY. We have broken it down into Phase 1 and Phase 2.This is Phase 1. The attendees are students between the ages of 17 and 25. I require your service to illustrate the under-listed scenarios. Please make it a horizontal (Landscape) presentation, Cartoon styled (2D images),full illustration ( head to toe), colored (CMYK) but a plain white background. The illustrations should fit on a standard letter size – (8.5 x 11″) and be delivered in PDF format. I want 1 year exclusive right to the images. Also, note that these illustrations will be handed out to the participants in printed form. I just want the illustrations to paint a vivid picture of the theme of the workshop. The delivery date for the images is January 27, 2024. This is the outline of the scenarios to illustrate:
* A Caucasian Family : Father, Mother and their 2 teenage children (any gender) all standing and clothed.
* A Black Family : Father, Mother and their 3 teenage children ( any gender) all standing and clothed.
* A group (not more than 5) of young and middle aged guys with the caption ‘Uncles’
* A group (not more than 5) of young and mid aged ladies with the caption ” Aunts”
* An elderly woman and an elderly man standing by side with a caption “Grandparents”
My budget for the job is $700 per piece( Total is $3500 for the first phase). Let me know if that’s fine. If it’s not please get back to me with the price quote and what would be your preferred mode of payment? I’m proposing a certified bank draft, a cashier’s check or bank certified check considering the amount involved. I look forward to reading from you soon.
Warm regards.
So, this client sounds rather corporate (AI generated?) compared to the typical legit client that contacts me through my contact form. Usually corporate-sounding clients come in through my art rep and the contact form brings in mostly self-publishing authors. So, right off I’m skeptical.
However, she wants head-to-toe cartoon figures drawn isolated on white. Lately I have been posting art samples of just such images. Maybe that’s why she contacted me. It’s certainly something I could do. So that’s a point in her favor. Maybe she’s for real.
She already knows exactly how much she wants to pay without feeling me out at all on how much I’d want to charge. To be fair, I do have clients come to me with a set budget, but they’re generally publisher clients coming in through my art rep. Also, without getting into my pricing structure, this is suspiciously high for what she’s asking for.
Her target audience are people aged 17-25. She wants cartoon art from a children’s illustrator for an audience of young adults? That doesn’t seem to fit. Now, I will happily illustrate for all ages, but cartoons showing simple happy families just don’t seem to match the audience.
However, nothing for sure. Any of those details might be absolutely fine.
To me, the big red flag is that she’s really quick to suggest a certified bank draft, a cashier’s check, or bank certified check. This indicates it’s probably a fake check scam. More on that here. Usually, I use Paypal when accepting payments from clients that cold contact me through the internet. It’s safer for both parties that way.
She also hasn’t told me anything at all about who she is or who her organization is, or even very much about the purpose of this family values themed workshop.
So, I decided to bait her one last time. I considered just telling her to contact my art rep, but I don’t really want to make Janet deal with her. That seems mean. So, instead I asked her:
What organization do you represent? Is this a church workshop?
Karen B. Jones
Thank you,
Her response was:
Hello Karen,
Joan Falken
I am an independent academic consultant. I work part-time as a researcher and I also teach music on the side. That is how I earn my living. From time to time I organize seminars and workshops to educate the younger generation on chosen subject matter and hire professionals to give speeches at these seminars. This is absolutely free at no cost whatsoever to the participants of the workshop. I approach well-meaning individuals, organizations and large corporations for sponsorship of these programs and present proposals to them. As a giveback initiative, most sponsors want to be part of it. I do not source clients from any online platform. I organize, get a sponsor and meet deadlines. Below is my contact information:
Joan Falken
1210 E McKinley St
Boise, ID 83712
208-505-8842
The illustrations will be used in a slide lecture and the sole aim of the workshop is to enlighten the younger generations on the importance of the family as the single most crucial foundation of every society. To teach them family values and impact them with adequate knowledge about family and the role of the family in the society.
We cannot over-emphasize the need to teach the younger generation the importance of the protection of the family, themselves and appropriate social interaction.
Warm regards.
Hey, lookey there! We’ve got an Academic Event Organizer! Ding-ding-ding! That cinches it.
Definitely a scam.
(More on the Academic Event Organizer scam here.)
Did you notice her email was joanfalk@gmail.com but she finally signed her full name there at the end as Joan Falken, not Falk. I’m not sure if that means anything, but given the rest, I don’t like it.
Oh, and I looked up her address on google. Now, this isn’t definitive, but in today’s world, google can pretty much always find an address, if it’s a real address. In this case, it found a crossroads, but none of the buildings around it have that house number. So, I’m pretty sure the address doesn’t exist.
Did you notice she’s supposedly a freelancer, but didn’t link to a website for her freelance business? She’s also not on linkedIn.
And then the whole emphasis on traditional family values for young adults bothers me. I don’t want to get too political on this blog, but the phrase is so often a dog whistle. Even if it’s not a scam, I don’t want to do a project for a seminar that’s going to turn out to be some sort of anti-LGBTQ, purity culture event.
So, yeah. You all be warned. Stay safe.
This is the last one! 150 characters, isolated on white, created for a large project for Learning A-Z.
Here’s Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States (1809-1865). He was president during the US Civil War and was assassinated on April 15, 1865. He is best known for abolishing slavery in the US. More about him here.
Here’s former US President Barack Obama in a tan suit. I drew this as part of a larger project for Learning A-Z.
You might remember that there was a brief, silly controversy about President Obama wearing this tan suit because on a slow news day some people thought it did not look presidential. Originally, this illustration had him in a black suit, but the client was concerned that the project had too many historic figures in dark suits already. They wanted a little more variety, which was somewhat challenging since men’s formalwear is not really particularly varied. But then I remembered the silliness about the tan suit and I thought this would be the perfect solution. More about President Obama can be found here.
This is the second time I’ve drawn Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) the famed civil rights activist. This is one of several significant historical figures drawn for a larger project for Learning A-Z.
He was a Baptist minister and a civil rights activist who was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He was known for his emphasis on using non-violent protest and civil disobedience to challenge the racist and discretionary laws of his time. More information can be found here.
Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) was an American abolitionist best known for her association with the Underground Railroad, the secret network of safehouses run by abolitionist activists to help slaves escape to free states, territories, and British North America (now Canada). Originally named Araminta Ross, she was born into slavery. After she escaped in 1849, she personally led an estimated 70 others to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she was a nurse, scout, and spy for the Union army. Later she was an activist for women’s suffrage and established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly. More information about her life can be found here.
This illustration was created for Learning A-Z as part of a larger project. I used black and white photographs as references, but the quality of the surviving images were not ideal.
Have you ever noticed that in the earliest black and white photos, the subjects always had very serious, sometimes even unpleasant, expressions on their faces? This is because early film wasn’t very light sensitive and required the subjects to stay perfectly still for a fairly long time. Sometimes for several minutes. Sometimes in bright sunlight. It’s difficult to hold a smile that long, so they usually didn’t. The reference photos I had of Tubman all left me with the impression that she was perpetually annoyed. But, since that’s probably the fault of the photographic technology rather than a true reflection of reality, I toned it down quite a bit. Still, I didn’t want to go too far and make her smiley instead. I settled for something fairly neutral.
Here’s our first president, George Washington. There were no photo references, of course, but there are quite a few paintings available that I was able to use as references. Again, this is an image created on commission for Learning A-Z.
Our next historical figure (or celebrity, depending on how you categorize him) is Jackie Robinson. He was the first black baseball player in Major League Baseball. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers and earned many accolades throughout his baseball career. Although he’s most famous for breaking the color line in MLB, he had a long history of activism throughout his life. More information on him can be found here.
I did my best to match the historical details of the uniform as well as to get the likeness reasonably accurate.
Continuing with our subset of illustrations of historical figures for Learning A-Z, this one is an illustration of Maria Tallchief, one of America’s first prima ballerinas and an Indigenous American. She was best known for her performance dancing the lead in “The Firebird” in 1949. More information about her can be found here.
The client wanted her pictured in something similar to her costume in “The Firebird”. But they didn’t want her in exactly that costume for copyright reasons. So, this costume is intentionally simpler than the iconic costume, but in the same color. Because all the images in this project were a standard height (the art itself, not the characters) I did have a bit of a problem with those feathers. They really should have been standing straight up, but that would have caused some problems if I had. Either I’d have had to make this one image taller than the standard size, which would throw off the layout, or I’d have to make this one character in a smaller scale than the rest of the characters, or I could make shorter feathers. When given these choices, the client decided to let the feathers hang sideways like this.
We’re done with professions. Now we’re moving onto historical figures. First up is Frida Khalo.
She was a famous in influential Mexican folk artist. More information on her can be found here.
When I draw figures who need to look like specific, real-life people, I use lots of references. I need the references to make sure that the likenesses at least resemble the real person, but I also have to be very careful not to outright copy any of the references because it’s important to respect everyone’s copyrights. It can be a little tricky when you’re trying to make them look recognizably like them, but not exactly like that particular reference photo or painting of them.
I had references for her face, hair, a tutorial on how she did the thing where she braided her scarf into her hair, and several photos of her in various outfits. The outfit she’s wearing here is not anything she was ever pictured in and probably never actually wore, but it has elements of outfits from reference photos. Color references were particularly useful, since so many of her photos were black and white. In all, the process is a bit like a collage.
Karen B. Jones - Illustrator 