Monochromatic Outlook

Here’s some­thing I don’t think gets men­tioned enough in the dis­cus­sion of spec­u­la­tive (spec) work. Artists like to say «you get what you pay for» and talk down about the qual­i­ty of the work you get if you get it for free, but it’s not true. It’s actu­al­ly real­ly easy to find peo­ple with tal­ent who are des­per­ate enough to work for free. The dif­fer­ence is not so much about the illus­tra­tor’s artis­tic tal­ent (though I agree that peo­ple that … Read the rest

I’ve got­ten behind sched­ule on the «Pens and Inks» series, so tonight after spend­ing a few hours putting down ink I went back to my sched­ule and refig­ured the due dates. I’m keep­ing the same final date, just reduc­ing the num­ber of days I have to fin­ish each of the draw­ings in the series to give them an even pace start­ing now. There’s no point in stick­ing to an unre­al­is­tic sched­ule. The new sched­ule may not be real­is­tic either, but … Read the rest

Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Inno­va­tion puts for­ward the notion that peo­ple love a good sto­ry and that many cel­e­brat­ed inno­va­tors have told sto­ries that over­sim­pli­fy or even ignore the truth that inno­va­tion requires a lot of work. Peo­ple love the sto­ry of a cre­ator observ­ing an odd con­flu­ence of events which caus­es an epiphany, which there­after leads to an inven­tion no one had thought of previously.

These sto­ries elim­i­nate the uncom­fort­able idea that a cre­ator or inven­tor is some­how … Read the rest

An instal­la­tion of Kevin Burkhal­ter’s Jour­nal Com­ic from the end of last year pro­vides an inter­est­ing twist on the idea that con­stant prac­tice is more impor­tant than any oth­er aspect of cre­ative work:

http://kevinsjournalcomic.com/comic12‑4 – 2008.html

There are a lot of ways to express this which encom­pass a vari­ety of iter­a­tions and corol­lar­ies. Mal­colm Glad­well’s 10,000 hours to mas­tery, Kevin Burkhal­ter’s rais­ing of the low­er bar, and my old art skool instruc­tor who said, «Every­one’s … Read the rest

I’m lis­ten­ing to The Art & Sto­ry pod­cast, Episode 004 «The Big Style». Mark Rudolph and Jerzy Drozd are reach­ing back into their ear­ly com­ic influ­ences. Com­ic artists are absolute­ly the first illus­tra­tors that inspired me to copy them and do what they do. It’s got­ten me think­ing about who my ear­ly influ­ences were — and when I say «ear­ly» I mean cer­tain­ly before art skool. I’m look­ing back rough­ly at ages twelve to sev­en­teen. This is who I … Read the rest

Last night I stayed in the stu­dio until after mid­night when I real­ized I was parked in a street­clean­ing zone and was risk­ing a $35 ticket.

I worked on a few drafts of the back­ground of this Rotring Art­Pen and Vis­con­ti ink bot­tle and did­n’t come upon a solu­tion, so I went in to the bot­tle to do the first lay­er of hatch­ing. That’s as far as I got before remem­ber­ing I was parked on the Mon­day side of … Read the rest

I was­n’t able to spend much time in the stu­dio today, but I’m forc­ing myself to keep adding to this, even if it’s a small por­tion at a time and the draw­ing real­ly isn’t yet tak­ing shape in my head. I can’t afford to sit around wait­ing for the muse to throw a brick at my head; the name of this game is just to keep mov­ing forward.

I have a lot to do over the next few months, so … Read the rest

I don’t know where this is head­ing. I’m run­ning right up against the lim­its of my ren­der­ing vocab­u­lary here and I feel like I’m fum­bling around in the dark. I’m find­ing myself wish­ing I was work­ing larg­er so that I’d have more room. At this scale I don’t have much room to use tex­ture with­out mud­dy­ing it up and mak­ing it too dark. That leads me to rely on out­line, and that way there be monsters.

I’m not sure how … Read the rest