a single man

A Single Man
I saw this movie Friday...it was GREAT. Really great. I always appreciate a movie where there's more to enjoy than just the acting/writing/story...this is one that's just a total joy to see. What would you call that...cinematography? I usually call it the movie's "aesthetic"...It's something that's true of many of my favorite movies, like Lost in Translation, and The Royal Tenenbaums.
This isn't really my usual style. I'm not sure how I feel about this...I mean, I could make one billion of these, and I think it's a pretty popular sort of style, but it doesn't feel very unique, and I'm certainly not pulling it off as well as a lot of great illustrators with a similar style. I need to give this more thought and do more experimenting.
Also, I've been working mostly on Illustrator recently, but I did this one totally in Photoshop. That means giving up a lot of things I've been doing in Illustrator with texture, but it means a whole host of other great things, like getting to keep pencil-y-ness without pulling out all of my hair. Always a good thing, right?

Update

Ok! Here are the things I've been doing lately to promote myself, directly or indirectly.

1. Joined illustration mundo. You can view my little page-y here.
2. Started linking to my portfolio site whenever I comment on other people's blog posts.
3. Sent out my first query letters. (Then, became super depressed when I realized that in a letter to a magazine I totally want to work with, I included a horrific mistake in the letter. LAME.)
4. Sent out my first few emails to magazines.
5. Submitted my info to 15+ different agents. Then, learned about rejection from most of their responses. (Probably best to learn that feeling sooner rather than later, right?)
6. Ordered/received postcards and new business cards from moo. They're gorgeous. Some of them have been addressed, and are ready to go once I buy postcard stamps. Some of the postcards will just get dropped into new query letters once I verify addresses/names tomorrow.
7. Designed half of the response postcards that will get stamped, addressed, and put into query letters so editors can send them back, letting me know if they're interested. (I still have to design the front of the postcards.)
8. Scoped out some projects that will let me practice design/illustration work for free. I have an idea in mind for the Haiti Poster Project...screenprinting! Whoo!
9. Read an extra thousand advice/FAQ pages on various illustration-related blogs. Then got depressed over chances of success. Then came back slightly, remembering that success is linked to how hard I work...right?
10. Created 2 complete pages from the book I'm working on with my friend Lizzie, who wrote all the text and is giving me lots of help illustrating it. We even got a really positive response from an illustration agent! So hopefully over the next month or two, we can put together a dummy book etc etc etc...
11. Printed out a ton of copies of pdf's of my work, for sending to various magazines/publishers, depending on what they specialize in. I have an Education sheet, a Childrens sheet, and a general Editorial sheet.
12. Printed out a nice full sheet of each image I've made, and put it in a portfolio.

I'm also doing lots of indirect work, creating a huge document with all sorts of contact info, mostly gleaned from the Artist and Designer Handbook, but somewhat from some of my own research as well. Still to do:
1. Generate a list of blogs to write to about my work.
2. Make those calls to magazines to verify contact info.
3. Work on Haiti Poster.
4. BE MORE PRODUCTIVE. I haven't created anything in what feels like aaages. I need to make more new images and improve my portfolio.