Interview with Fantasy Artist Ellen Million

Ellen, please tell us a little bit about yourself. What was your process in becoming an artist?

I live, and grew up, in Alaska - and that defines a lot about me. I'm independent and self-entertaining, and I am inspired by the beauty of the land around me. I have been drawing since I was very young, and have always been interested in creative arts like writing, music, drama and design. I've been carrying a sketchbook around with me since I was in middle school, constantly doodling and drawing and outlining stories.

My art style is mostly romantic and magical, with lots of natural and spiritual influence. I work in a range of medias, including graphite, oils, watercolors, digital and mixed media. Ink remains my first medium of choice.

I started my own art business when I was 17, and have expanded it to include more than a hundred other artists. In a sentence: I love to create. I have more projects than common sense.

When did you decide that you wanted to become an artist?

It wasn't so much a decision as a force of nature. Given five minutes with the back of an envelope and a ballpoint pen, I was either drafting the outline for a story, or doodling an illustration, or creating a civilization. It wasn't something I ever chose, quite the opposite! I chose a nice, safe degree in engineering at college. Art, however, had other ideas, and had settled itself quite irreversibly in my heart. Eventually, I just gave in, quit my day job, and let the muse have me. I've been ridiculously happy since then.

Have you had any particular training to do what you do?

I got a minor in art while I was in college, and I took every art elective I could in high school. Perhaps most importantly, I have years and years of practice. I've been posting archives at my webpage that show a cross-section of the work that I've slaved over for the past 15+ years. It's mostly laughably bad, but the practice itself is invaluable.

Who would you say has been the most influential person in your life, as

far as getting you involved in your art?

I can't point any specific fingers! There have been so many people who have been so supportive of me. Every person who validated my art by saying it was good, or offered a helpful critique has made an enormous difference in my confidence and discipline. There are dozens of artists I have drawn inspiration and learned from – Robin Wood, Michael Whelan and Arthur Rackman are just a few.

What led you in the direction of fantasy art?

This, I can solidly blame on my parents. I was five or six when they first read the Hobbit to me, and books and trips to the library were a pivot point in our lives. They instilled a love of reading and imagination that has never faded.

The other major turning point was the discovery of the illustrated color fairy tale books edited by Andrew Lang. I fell in love with the classical black and white pieces in those books, and the stories influenced me just as strongly.

You have an online business called Ellen Million Graphics, which seems to be a rather unique type of business. Could you please tell us a little bit about it and how other artists might become involved?

Currently, EMG has four major branches: The Storefront, Portrait Adoption, Print Services and EMG-Zine. The Storefront hosts works by over 100 artists on products that I make myself. I have top quality printers, a professional heat press, punches, laminators and a lot of crafty experience by now. The artists (and myself!) provide the designs, and I do all the sales, advertising, bookkeeping, printing, quality control, packaging, shipping and customer service. They get a fee every time something with their design sells. It works out well for everyone – most artists couldn't afford the setup costs to be able to make the things that I do, and most have no desire to do all the gritty back-end details that I take care of. I have very little overhead or upfront costs, because, except for a few yearly shows, I only make what I've already sold. As a whole, we're a much, much stronger group than we would be strung out on individual sites. Artists trust that another artist is in control of their work – I'm not going to squish their designs, or send out shoddy products! This area of EMG accepts new work and new artists about twice a year – it's still a bit of work for me to add new artists, and I just can't quite handle the workload of having submissions open all of the time. There are guidelines here: http://www.ellenmilliongraphics.com/fantasyart/artists.php.

The Print Services area is for artists who might not want to enter a contract, or don't have work that fits in the fantasy art theme of EMG, or maybe they just want products for themselves. These are the same high quality products that the storefront sells, just custom printed to order. I also do drop-shipping for artists – I'll ship directly to their customers. That way, they don't need to keep a lot of unnecessary inventory, or pay to ship something to them, and then to a customer. Print Services are just about always open for more clients, and I'm working on a new site that will allow artists to open their own little storefronts, independent of the EMG storefront, and manage sales of their products, which would then be drop-shipped by me. I'm crossing my fingers that this service will become available in June.

EMG-Zine is the newest of my projects! In January, I started a little e-zine, closely linked with EMG, to keep my artists up to date on what was happening around the site, as well as share information and articles on the business of art. We update monthly, and each issue is free, though archives are for paid subscribers only. We have a gallery of artwork for the theme of the month, reviews, and a collection of fiction – and we're always looking for new contributors! New non-fiction is paid in EMG credit, to any branch. I am greatly assisted in this endeavor by editors Megan Myers and Georgette Tan.

Portrait Adoption (more on that below!) is currently accepting new artists, but no new portraits are going up right now while our new site is being re-designed from the base up. Guidelines are here: http://portraitadoption.com/members/

What gave you the idea to start your business?

It's always tough to point at one single event that put me on my path. I drew, a lot, and became interested in small press and fanzines while I was still in school. These publications were always looking for border art and little fillers to go with stories and news. So, I drew lots of borders! I also had penpals – and this is back when penpals were via snail mail with real letters on real paper. I was way too cheap to buy printed stationery, but I was sure willing to get a few copies out of the library copy machine at school to make myself xeroxed stationery from the borders I'd drawn. My penpals ate it up, and inflated my ego to the point where, when one of them said casually, 'you should sell this stuff!' it didn't seem all that crazy.

So, I xeroxed up a one-page flyer with five designs on it and mailed it to all my penpals.

From there, it was a snowball downhill, gathering new products, new customers, new designs, even new artists. I put it online, and I upgraded equipment so I could print things myself. In little fits and starts, it grew out of a little hobby-on-the-side-for-fun and turned into... well, EMG.

I notice that one of the areas that your business specializes is

Portrait Adoption. Could you please explain what that is?

Portrait Adoption grew out of increasing frustration with commissions. Commissions – doing artwork to a description for a single client - are a great way for an artist to make money, but oh man, can they be a hassle. On the other hand, I loved to draw portraits. I had sketchbooks full of portraits, and nothing to do with them! They don't sell well as prints, they don't make great products... but wouldn't they make someone a nice character portrait? If only I could connect those poor, unloved portraits with the people that were looking for them!

Portrait Adoption is a home for those portraits. Any kind of character – fantasy, science fiction, modern, horror – can be submitted. Provided they meet our basic quality guidelines (nothing *too* rough or unskilled, nothing poorly scanned, PG-13 rating), they get watermarked and put on-line with a price that the artist decides. When some lucky client browses through and finds the perfect character for their needs, they can adopt it. There are two kinds of adoption – web and standard. Standard adoption comes with a print, a certificate signed by the artist stating that no other prints will ever be made, and an unwatermarked image for the client to post exclusively at their webpage or use as an avatar. Web adoption skips the print and certificate, for a slightly lower cost. The artist doesn't have to do anything except keep certificates on file at Portrait Adoption and submit the print files – EMG does the printing and all customer interaction.

With about 500 portraits on-line now, chances are good a customer will find something like their character, but in case they don't, there are two additional options:

Many artists allow customization. They are willing to change an eye color or hair color or add details to make a character more like a client had in mind. There's usually an extra charge for this – that's up to the artist!

There's also a submitted description service. If a client doesn't want to commission a specific artist to do something from scratch, they can throw the description to the wolves – er, artists. The description gets posted for everyone in Portrait Adoption to work on, if they want to. Artists sign up, complete portraits, and let the client pick one or more of the finished pieces. The client has no obligation to buy, but agrees to allow un-purchased art to be available through general adoption.

Where do you see yourself going with your art and your business? What

are your future goals?

I have some fun projects coming up in the very near future!

One of the things I have in the works is an on-demand Tarot service, EMGTarot.com. Much like EMG or Portrait Adoption, artists would submit artwork to the service. A client will be able to login, and build themselves a custom deck of Tarot cards, choosing a back design, a border design, and every image for every card individually. Each deck will be one-of-a-kind, and customers can buy one card, two cards, a whole suit, a whole deck, or however many they want. They can save their decks to their accounts, and build on them at their leisure. New artwork will be added continuously.

I'm also producing several books this year! I am putting together collections of artwork by Ursula Vernon and Maria van Bruggen, hopefully for release by September 1 of this year. I am bringing Keepers of the Forest into print as well, and I've got two more coloring books in a Gothic theme to be released this summer.

I haven't abandoned my own projects, though – I am working on a novel about a shapeshifting bear and an artist in Alaska, I have the storyboards started for a webcomic and graphic novel of my snow-unicorn creatures. I have a list of art pieces I want to do that will keep me busy for years.

Long-term, I would like to continue to expand EMG, to the point where it can hire someone to do most of the busywork so that I can do more of my own art and writing! I would also love to host an artists camp someday. I live on 36 acres of birch forest, and wish to build several yurts so that people can come for a 2 or 3 week stay, learn how to make products and produce prints, attend art and marketing classes and enjoy Alaska in a more rural, artist-friendly manner than they'd get taking a standard tour.

Taking over the world fits in there somewhere, too, I think.

Do you have any parting words of advice for all those "starving" artists

out there?

Love what you do, and do it with love. It's not an easy field – in fact, it's a darn hard field, and it's chock full of nay-sayers and cheapskates. But remember that what you are doing is something real and lasting. Artwork, in all of its forms, is the connection of our souls to our world – as real and tangible as our bodies, and it takes discipline and inspiration in equal measure to achieve it. Don't ever lose sight of the beauty of what you do, or lose the sense of your own value.

Thank you Ellen for your insightful and encouraging words. I hope this doesn't sound too cliché but "you're one in a million." Best of luck to you in all of your artistic pursuits!

To view more of Ellen Million's beautiful artwork, please visit her website: http://www.ellenmilliongraphics.com. If you would like to send her an email, her address is: Ellen Million Graphics emillion@ellenmilliongraphics.com.

All works are copyright. Permission to use these images in any way must be obtained from the artist.