Guerilla Illustration

Greetings from Austin, TX. You just never know where I’ll end up at any given time. Neither do I, a month or two out!! This is a temporary holiday stay with family, then onwards.

Painting while living abroad has been…challenging. It’s all fine and good to be traipsing off across the world, but without being a professional and responsible illustrator, the train derails very quickly and the whole thing ends. Mostly, I’m happy with how I’ve fared.

All of my art directors live in different states. Apart from conventions, I don’t see them. 99% of my communication is via email. If I can turn out quality work, get it in on time, and can answer email, I may as well be in the next town over or Siberia for all they know on any functional basis. And that’s been how I’ve endeavored to work.

On my end, it’s another story entirely. Losing my formal studio space is something I’ve never quite gotten over. The past 2 years I’ve come to refer to my method of working as guerilla illustration. I’ve worked, with the barest materials possible, in corners of rooms, on kitchen tables, in bed in a spare bedroom at my parents’ house, in a bathroom (!), on two of my friends’ couches, in a cube at the offices of Sigil Games Online, in hotel rooms, and while sitting at my table at a convention or two. I have borrowed printers from two friends, Ben Thompson’s Wacom tablet and scanner, and have used the Kodak Photo Kiosk at a Target store to scan sketches and put them on cd when no scanner was available. I’ve been unstoppable, at the cost of a few more gray hairs than I had when I started. Working in such fashion is actually very stressful and often frustrating—working up the creative spark can be tricky enough without being hamstrung by being in an unfamiliar or hectic environment. But I figure if artists could work quite literally in the trenches during two World Wars, I’ve got nothing to complain about. And in the process I’ve honed my discipline, increased my ability to focus for long periods of time, and generally improved my workflow. Who would’ve thought?

Art supplies are extremely hard to come by in some cases. I really took for granted the availability of art supplies close at hand within the states. England faired a bit better in this regard but Spain and Italy...if you need anything more than the basic painting materials, you’re toast if you’re not in the big city. More than once Blick art materials came to my rescue, shipping large Hardbord panels, PVA glue, black acid-free masking tape, and more to me for relatively low shipping costs. That stuff is impossible to find in Europe. Hardbord also weighs a ton when you start piling up paintings.

I have used my mobile as a dial-up modem, tethered to my usb port in Italy. In England I had blessed DSL. In Spain, our little pueblo somehow managed to have a wi-fi cloud; but up in our part of the town the signal was impossible to get unless you had an external wireless antenna, a USB extension cable, and rigged the whole thing so the antenna was at the top of the chimney in a Tupperware to make it weatherproof, with the cord hanging all the way down and into the flat. Then you just pray the service is up and that Telephonyca can keep the lines up.

Guerilla illustration.

Since moving, I’ve taken to labeling each drawing or painting with the location where it was painted. It’s sort of fun for me to do, and if you happen to purchase any of these and wonder why the back of a painting reads “Pienza, Italy” or why a drawing says, “Austin, TX” as a couple certainly will, now you’ll know the how and why.