me with a query, please take a look at my FAQs.
Chances are you may well find the answer here and speed things up for you.
1. Can I use your images on my website?
My artwork is
copyrighted. This means that, no, you
do not have the right
to use it in any manner whatsoever, even if it's just on a personal website,
without my permission in advance.
Therefore, if you do wish to put an image on your site you are legally obliged
to ask me first. If it's a personal site which will in no way attract revenue
or advertise a product, then I may grant free usage, provided that you link
back to me and give full credit, and provided that I do not find your site's
content disagreeable or controversial.
If your site is in any way commercial, then I am still happy to grant usage,
but naturally I expect you to pay a small fee. This will depend
how prominent the image is, how famous the site is, how long the image will be up,
etc. Please
contact me with these details and we can discuss it.
Any usage of my work for which I did not grant permission, even if it's a
personal site, is an infringement of my copyright and is therefore against the
law.
2. How much to use an image of yours in a book or magazine?
3. Can I use your work in a poster, presentation, thesis etc?
While in the past I have been willing to allow this for free, the sheer number
of requests of this kind that I get has forced me to change my stance. Giving
away my art for free to academics just encourages more requests for free art,
more emails to answer, more high-definition files to prepare and send out. At
the end of the day I don't get a cent — not great when you are somebody trying
to make a living as a freelance illustrator.
I therefore require a small donation for the usage of my art by academics.
If you are still willing to use my work, please
contact me with your requirements
so that I may send the payment details, and any image files you may need. For
more about why I charge for my art, read FAQ #5. Thank you for your understanding.
4. Can I download wallpaper from your site?
I do not generally provide any large-format files freely for this purpose. If
you are willing to pay, please
contact me.
5. Why should I pay to use your artwork?
I am so often asked to allow free use of my artwork that it is obvious that some
people seem to think that this is how it should be. They assume
that art is something that one merely does for pleasure, as a pastime or hobby.
'So why should we pay?' they ask.
Let's take an example. A non-profit organisation contacts me to ask me to let
them use one of my images on a poster advertising, say, a scientific conference.
They are unwilling to pay, or unable to. In a situation such as this, I think to
myself, what then does this organisation actually pay for? Do they tell the
company printing their poster that, being a non-profit organisation, they have
no funds to pay them? Do they make a similar plead to the telephone company who
rents them their phone line? Or to the people supplying their gas and electricity?
No, that would be absurd. But it is perfectly acceptable for some such
organisations to ask a working artist, making a living from their art, to let them
have their art for free. The way I see it, I provide a service. I provide artwork
that will liven up a poster, attracting attention. Why my services should be
provided freely while other service-providers get paid is beyond me.
As a professional artist, I am troubled that providing free art devalues what we
do. When an artist does not charge a fee for her work, then it is often expected by
organisations that all artists should also provide work for free. So, to make a
statement and to avoid jeopardising the careers of my fellow artists, I charge a
fee. Artists have mortgages. They must buy fuel to heat their homes, food to feed
their families. Materials to make their art!
To conclude, while I am often willing to allow free usage of my work on, for example,
personal internet sites (with my permission in advance — see FAQ #1), there are
other circumstances when I will expect to be paid.
6. What do you need to know to be able to do space art?
You don't really need a great deal of astronomical knowledge. But having said that,
you will certainly need some basic knowledge if you are to succeed. And simple
mathematics will help, to enable you to work out how large a moon appears from its
planet, for example. Most professional space artists do have a good grounding in
astronomy simply because it interests them as a subject. But I do occasionally see
space art where it is clear that the artist has no real idea what s/he's doing, and
it's painful. Stick to the laws of physics and you'll do fine.
7. What advice can you give wannabe illustrators?
'Never give up, never surrender!' Seriously, though, it can be tough. And although
it's a cliché, it is also sadly quite often true that 'it's not what you know, but who'.
But don't be discouraged.
First off, join an artist or illustrator association. I am a Fellow of the International
Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), and they are great if you want to get
into space art. Then, you need to get to know your potential clients, learn which
magazines, publishers, whatnot, will actually want to publish your work. No sense sending
a beautifully rendered painting of a spiral galaxy to a magazine called, I don't know,
Horse and Countryside. Okay, extreme example, but you get the picture. Once you
know what sort of art you want to do and who will want to print it, get in touch with them.
You can find out how to contact them in publications such as Writers' and Artists'
Yearbook (in the UK, but no doubt other countries have similar tomes). Send your target
clients some samples of your work and then wait. And then wait a bit more. Then perhaps
send a chasing letter. And just keep at it. Eventually, if you have a degree of talent,
somebody will spot it and you'll get in print.
But don't stop there! It is a misconception
that once you have made it in print, it gets easier. Okay, perhaps it's not entirely false,
but it's not that simple. I am constantly sending out samples to people who already know me,
or I email them just to stay in touch. Otherwise they forget about me and they use
somebody else's art and I have to live on bread and water. Most of the samples I send out
to new potential clients just vanish into some black hole somewhere. It's tiring, but you
have to know how to network as well as how to draw. And you need patience.
8. I don't think computer-generated art is real art. Discuss.
First, the term 'computer-generated art' is about as accurate as a rusty watch with
two broken springs. The computer does not 'generate' my digital art any more than
my airbrush generates my acrylic paintings. The computer is merely a tool, like the
airbrush. I generate the art, not a box of electronic components.
True, some 3D programs can make very realistic-looking scenes with little input from
the user. But I
always work on the image afterwards in Photoshop. It is here that the image comes to
life as a work of art and where I am able to impart my style. Using a graphics tablet,
I draw on the screen just as I would (well, almost) on canvas with paint. I pick the
colours, I choose the right size 'brush' for the job, I make sure the lighting and
perspective is right and that the composition is solid - all just as with traditional
art. The computer has no say in what the final image looks like. It comes from my
imagination, and the computer merely helps me to translate my idea into an image.
If that's not art, perhaps I should go about chopping up cows, urinating on religious
icons or assembling piles of bricks in posh art galleries.
9. What equipment do you use to make your images?
For the digital art, I work on a PC running Linux Mint. I have been a long-time user of
Windows - indeed most of my work was created within Windows - but in December 2021 I switched to Linux.
My main PC has 128 GB of DDR5 SDRAM, a few TB of disk space, another few TB of disk space in a network
drive for backups, an Intel Core i7 13700KF 16-core processor, and an NVIDIA RTX 4090 graphics card.
I have another PC (also Linux) which I use in tandem with my main machine for rendering animations.
This machine has an NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics card, 128 GB DDR4 RAM and an AMZ Ryzen 12-core processor.
Lastly I use a Wacom graphics pad, although I began with a mouse.
I don't really do traditional art anymore. But when I did, I preferred to use acrylics with
the occasional sprinkling of airbrush. I have only used oil paint once or twice,
but I lack the patience, and I was never a fan of watercolour. I used gouache a handful of times, and
I also love oil pastels.
10. What software do you use?
By far the most common piece of software for still images that I have used is
Photoshop.
However, having switched to Linux in December 2021, I now use find myself using
GIMP a lot.
Photoshop doesn't work well on Linux.
Sometimes I start from a blank canvas, but often I
start with a photo or a section from one, adding the rest by hand. Or sometimes I
start with an element stolen from a previous image. And still other times, I start with a 3D
program, such as
Blender or (when I was using Windows)
3DS Max. In a sense I use the 3D render
as a sketch. I then import the render into
Photoshop or
GIMP and make big changes to it. For
my animation work, I use
Blender exclusively (with
3DS Max previously), and
Photoshop and
GIMP for making maps and textures.
Lastly, formerly a user of
Adobe After Effects (which also doesn't work on Linux), I now use
DaVinci Resolve
for video editing. If you want to see examples of my animation work, some are on this site, but you can check out my
YouTube channel.
11. Do you sell prints of your art?
Yes, see
here.
I sell prints and other merchandise (such as phone covers and greetings cards) through a third-party website called
RedBubble.
You order the prints through them. They take your order and send the prints out directly to you. I am not
involved in the process, which frees up a lot of my time. I also sell originals. Please contact me for details.
12. Do you do other work aside from astronomical/space art?
Yes. I also like to dabble in paleoart (e.g. dinosaurs), a bit of science fiction, some horror, some surrealism,
and other odds and ends. Go to
MarkGarlick.com to check it out.
There are almost 3000 artworks and animations on MarkGarlick.com!
13. What are your thoughts on AI artwork?
In a nutshell, not good ones.
First off, the term 'AI artwork' is completely inaccurate. It isn't artwork, at all; and there is nothing 'intelligent'
in the creation of such imagery. This is machine leaning - nothing more. The word 'intelligence' implies that there is
some thinking behind the creation process, some impetus that stems from the machine itself, which could not be farther
from the truth. The creation of art requires intent
and emotion, an understanding of mood, lighting, composition - none of which this software possesses. The software simply
'remembers' what it has done before and builds upon these experiences to create an image under the direction of a person
who types in instructions. Neither the machine nor its software has any understanding of what is is being told to produce.
When the operator types 'man walking down the street', the computer - as if by magic - conjures up an image of just that.
It has some notion of what a man and a street look like in 2D, having 'learned' these terms earlier. But does it actually
understand what these things are in a 3D reality? Of course not. Why else would such software very often produce spurious
results, such as people with missing or too few fingers? The machine is merely following an algorithm, just like any other
computer program. In fact, the only thing accurate about the expression 'artificial intelligent artwork' is the word
'artificial'.
Even worse are those people who use such platforms (Dali, Midjourney, etc) to create imagery, and then declare themselves
artists! Please don't be under the illusion that this is in any way true. They may have some initial intent, but do they
take into account lighting? Composition? Mood? No. They just keep churning away until the software - not the operator -
spits something out that is less crap than what came before. And voila - art!
And yet despite this, use of this bilge has sky-rocketed. And artists such as myself are rightfully angry. In order to
'teach' this 'intelligent' software, it is fed millions upon millions of images taken from the Internet. In the vast, vast
majority of cases, the images that the software is trained on are copyrighted. Yet no permission for its use has ever been
sought, and certainly none has ever been given. This is plagiarism. Worse, many people who might ordinarily commission and
pay a true artist to create something for them are now jumping on the AI bandwagon as a way of getting cheap or free,
substandard imagery while saving some money. Actual working artists are being pushed aside. A company that I have worked with
for 15 years, and with whom I'd always had a good relationship, decided to ditch me in favour of some AI image for a press
release. That's a fifteen-year working relationship down the drain along with a decent chunk of my former income.
It's terrible for the environment too. Just like cryptocurrency, which uses enormous amounts of energy to create more
currency, these AI programs require stupendous resources to improve their learning.
When I was younger, I read that in the future, artificial intelligence would revolutionise the world, in a good way.
Robots would take care of the menial stuff that people hate doing - shopping, cooking, cleaning. The creative industry,
I read, would be largely unaffected. People will always be creative, writing, painting, making music, etc, and the machines
would be left to do that other stuff. How wrong I was. And I am very concerned.
14. What is your all-time favourite movie?
Has to be Blade Runner. No this isn't really an FAQ. Made you look though!