When's the Book? pt.2

Since the first time I brought up my someday coming book not much has changed, as I predicted. Yet that’s not entirely true, since I’m adding content to it every month. I mentioned that I already had a collection of images that would be in the book if produced today. These are broken down into 2 formats: horizontal art like card art and vertical art, usually larger.

So as I complete artwork I go through and pick—once again—the weakest link and toss it out in favor of better works. Some of the pieces I am already assuming will get discarded, so in a sense I don’t really want to publish them. But seeing the whole collection there in the meanwhile makes the whole thing seem actually possible.

So here are a couple of pieces tossed out since the last entry. I can hereby assure you that you will not be seeing the following artworks in my first book (and so, likely not in any subsequent collections either!):

“Way of the Lion” was an 11x14” Acrylic painting done for a Legend of the Five Rings role-playing game book cover. This one goes back to 1998 and was painted while I lived for a short stint in Fremont, CA. I did a bunch of interiors as well, which were done in charcoal—the last time I’ve done any charcoal work for publication. It’s actually the second attempt at the cover. I started out with a much larger painting that I subsequently abandoned because I just sort of didn’t like it. Hmm, if I can find the source materials it might make a nice blog entry of its own…. I abandoned the first cover after painting the background (rocks and sky also). I later cut the painting into two and turned it into two completely unrelated finished paintings!

”Old Hermit’s Gambit” was painted even earlier. 1997 I think, also Acrylic 8x12”. One of my earlier paintings of the sort done much larger than would be used in the end. There’s some decent painting here but it’s entirely too dark. This one was for the Shadowfist card game—a debacle I’d just as soon forget! Daedalus Entertainment went bankrupt and out of business and so stiffed me and a lot of artists on payment for this piece and just about every other one I did for them back at the time. I wish I could say it was an isolated incident but sadly there have been a few occasions where this has happened. I had the benefit of living with my folks and having some better and more consistently paying clients at the time. I don’t know what kind of situation you live in but in my world having a couple months work go completely unpaid is extremely painful. That sort of thing can put you on the street if you live on the line and yet it’s something that illustrators (particularly in this field) have to be constantly wary of. Be warned, all ye who enter here!

Had either of these pieces made the book I might’ve included the above information along with each, perhaps expanded but certainly better worded. Some people don’t like text in art books but I really love learning the background to various paintings. Every artwork has a story.

So until the next update, when I hope to have some different news, just know that each month my book doesn’t come out means the quality of the art that will be in it will be ever-greater.

5-Year Plan

Doing art for a living, and having been fortunate enough to have lengthy periods of no-time-to-blink work, doing a piece for myself is a rare luxury. It’s also a luxury I make the effort to realize as often as possible, even if it’s the occasional quick plein-air study I post around here. Pieces done for yourself have some very obvious benefits and one important downside.

The downside, of course, is you work without pay, or at least no guaranteed pay. Occasionally you can see that the image you’re doing might make a good print or the original might be saleable. Other times your personal muse might lead you to paint something with no purely commercial value. It might be a good reflection of your abilities, and may even make it into your portfolio but may not be the sort of thing the average person wants on his or her wall. Or, it may be more artsy still and have few practical uses outside of the fact that you enjoyed creating it. Or, it may be a completely different genre or style and so not marketable without special effort. I’ve done all of these kinds.

Due to scheduling, it usually happens that ideas will pop in my head for personal pieces right in the middle of a string of deadlines, when I can do nothing about them. Over the years it’s worked out that personal projects end up with an average gestation period of about 5 years. That that many years later I’m still interested in the ideas enough to paint them speaks volumes about how important such works are to me.

Yet, in the end, the idea often changes considerably. A few years is more than enough time to consider and re-consider an idea, and these changes are usually for the better.

Two examples: a popular early piece of mine, done in ’95 and called “Devilish Thoughts” was done for the centerfold of the Duelist magazine #9. I was essentially paid to paint what I wanted—a most unusual and wonderful opportunity. I was only two years into my career but it was a busy period and I hadn’t had much time to do work for myself already. So I reached back into my college sketchbook for a concept that I had come up with at about 7am while sitting in my parked car before class. At the time the character was just a shady looking character and he had, well, a lot more smaller horns. It was nothing more than a quick sketch, mind you, but it was even at that point about mood and lighting. That was probably about ’93 or so, so in that case the piece took a couple of years to be put down in paint.

Not long after doing it I figured it’d be fun to do a companion and opposite piece to it. This piece was to eventually become “Angelic Songs” and it was conceived with that title at that time. I bounced ideas around in my head for years but never put a single thumbnail down for it. A few years later I decided I liked the idea of spoken words being painted on the piece, as appears in some medieval annunciation pictures and the like. No idea what it'd say or anything else, and still no paper evidence that the image existed in my head. It wasn’t until early 2004 that I finally sat down one day and forced myself to spill onto paper some of the images that had been sitting in my mind, waiting their turn. I then forced myself to paint it—to the same size as the earlier piece—again, without pay at the time. It’s made a successful print, was accepted for a Spectrum annual, the original sold, and in the end was well worth the effort.

Figured this was as good a time as any to show this pic I snapped of the painting in-progress.

I’ve got a small collection of sketches and even color studies for pieces I may never get to or may lose interest in eventually as newer ideas take the spotlight. It’d be wonderful to be able to do a few of these per year if they were as successful as Angelic Songs has proved to be (it’s now being published as part of a product called Angel Quest later this year). I’ve started, recently, making more efforts to at least record thumbnails of various images, pieces that have been floating in my head for quite some time. images that in some cases I know I won’t attempt painting for a few years still. The painting currently on the board is one such piece, conceived about 2-3 years ago and finally seeing its turn. If it turns out alright you’ll be seeing a step-by-step in the next few weeks.

father's day

i don’t know if there’s a genetic component to creativity, or whether it’s nurture only. certainly families with one or both of the parents being prominent artists often turn out one or more artist child, but that could be due to constant exposure while growing up. on the other hand in my case there did seem to be something more going on.

my older brother and i drew as long as i can remember. did seeing him draw spur on my own activities, or were they independent? it’s hard to say when you’re that young. but we did like showing each other our drawings, or selling them to each other for a nickel in home-made comics. my enterprising brother would often match the price increases that marvel or dc would instigate at the time (20¢, 25¢, 35¢, 50¢…), and by the time we finished the price of his comics had inflated quite a bit! of course i was not without an enterprising spirit myself, and often raised my rates in response. my younger brother dabbled in drawing, cartooning and other creative endeavors on and off over the years as well.

if there is a genetic component, it definitely came through my dad’s side. he wasn’t surprised to see that we liked to draw because he and some of his brothers all used to draw quite a lot too. one brother in particular was particularly good, apparently—my dad would often talk about a great drawing his brother had done once of a tiger or eagle or something. but it’s not like my dad would draw for fun or anything—if he hadn’t told us this bit of family history we’d never have known it.

once when we were kids we went to san francisco and had a couple of those sidewalk cartoons done of us. the next week, i was in the temporary habit of drawing profile cartoons / portraits of my family members. i’m sure i still have them somewhere. to be funny (these were cartoons after all), i would draw the head and then attach feet straight to the necks like they were walking. hey, i was 9 or 10. after doing my dad’s at the kitchen table one afternoon he offered to do mine. it was quite a revelation to see my dad draw! he probably hadn’t drawn anything since who knows when. so he drew my portrait over a few minutes, in profile, and signed and dated it. i’m pretty sure i still have that one, too—if i was home i’d scan it. the drawing had very hesitant lines but i was (and still am) amazed at how reasonably well he drew, managing to avoid many mistakes amateurs do in drawing profile portraits and that i certainly had made in mine just minutes before. he even gave me ample cranium behind the ears; because the space from the ears to the back of the head is unimportant “empty space” in the minds of many, it is often neglected and so the anatomy suffers and is prematurely truncated. it makes you wonder what he or his better brother might’ve been like had they cared to pursue (or had an environment that would foster) their art. i never saw him draw again, which is equally funny. it was like suddenly seeing yoda fight in episode 2, and then afterwards he calmly replaced his lightsaber and went about being normal yoda…which would’ve been doubly funny had he never fought again in episode iii.

also during elementary school i would copy lots of comic book art--often, from my favorite comic, which was rom: spaceknight—a little known series of 75 issues that for one reason or another totally enthralled me.

i copied this cover in pencil as a kid. if marvel ever relaunched rom, i’d kill to work on it.

i would draw rom all the time. in any case, often i would do two drawings in one evening. not sure which i liked more, i would leave them out on the counter with a sign that asked, “dad, which one do you like better?” my dad would get up really early for work, and while having coffee and a donut he’d look them over and write which one was his choice. i’d then wake up for school and see his choice, maybe debate the answer in my head, but would proceed a few days later in doing two more so he could give his approval to one of them. the better ones, often the winners of these battles decided by dad, i would pin to my bedroom wall in a sort of hall-of-fame of my best efforts, most of them sanctioned by my dad.

Goodbye, Tim

It's sad enough when an art legend dies, sadder still when two go in under a year. Though Keith Parkinson's passing is still fresh in mind (a small retrospective of his paintings will be on display at this year's Gen*Con Indianapolis), we've lost another luminary:

Tim Hildebrandt passed away June 11.

Hugely influential with his brother Greg and known collectively as the Brothers Hildebrandt, their work became practically synonymous with The Lord of the Rings after their groundbreaking work in the genre. From there through all manner of fantasy publications their work became practically synonymous with the industry. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting him, books featuring both their works made up a decent chunk of my library. His wonderful sense of lighting and color echo the works of N.C. Wyeth, and have often been a source of inspiration for me when I've been stuck on how to handle some tricky outdoor lighting or color. When in doubt, check how the Hildebrandts handled it. They turned the color up to 11, as they say, and by doing so you could easily learn what you needed to do.

Many artists, all inspired by his work, have lost another guide on the art-path, one who held up a very bright light so everyone else could see. It gets me to thinking about what other great artists, so influential when I was growing up, are in their sunset years. Most of them are still producing work and some are better than ever. It makes me really want to appreciate the opportunities when I meet some of these art-heroes of mine, and to doubly appreciate their new and later works.

There's a famous Rockwell cartoon which quite appropriately shows the life of an artist. Each panel depicts a stage in the life of the artist: starting with him as a baby making marks already, it proceeds through life, including the relevant panel that shows him putting on the final strokes as he steps into his coffin. That's the life of the artist, and that's how I expect (and hope) my own life will end; with an unfinished piece on the easel--one last dream trying to escape at the end. It's sobering to consider that there is one painting I will one day start that I will never see finished.

disintegration

i hadn’t heard it in quite awhile, but last night while doing some thumbnails i popped in the cure’s “disintegration” album. last year i bought a sweet set of sony dj-headphones: big fat leaky headphones with great range. i bought them in china so i’m sure they probably aren’t even sony, but they still sound great. so i decided to get reacquainted with the album on the new ‘phones.

i had a big ol' poster of the full album cover art in my bedroom. wish i'd kept it, i could earn a mint on ebay, probably. their album art took a decidedly downward turn from here.

disintegration was released in early 1989. i was 14 still and in my sophomore year of high school. i had just finished my first attempt at painting, ever, in acrylics. while i remember it as being sort of the soundtrack to all of highschool, in reality it played a very prominent role for about a year (a year of highschool does feel like a lifetime, though). it’s still one of my favorite albums, even if it doesn’t see play all that much as other bands and albums have crowded my playlist.

so i’m sitting there listening to the overpowering rumble of “plainsong” the album’s opening track, at high volume (the only way to hear that track, really) when i almost fell out of my chair….disintegration is 17 years old. 17…years…old. i remember the day i bought the album, on cassette. i was newly into the cure, really, and mainly familiar with their singles collection, “staring at the sea” i wasn’t overly familiar with their newer stuff and certainly not a lot of their darker stuff. i went for a walk to the corner store with it in my walkman. i remember hearing plainsong for the first time and after growing up on 80’s pop i recall just not getting it. it didn’t make musical sense to me. it didn’t take long for it to click, however, and the rest is history.

but really, 17 years? indeed. it was one of those moments when you realize what year it is again, and how old you really are. it’s hard to feel old when you’re only 31, but i definitely felt like i’d crossed a generational chasm. i mean, kids that were born on that fateful day in may when i bought the album are now juniors and seniors in high school. wow, just…wow.

i still didn’t really get the meaning of this gap. so i tried to imagine being 14 again, in 1989, and what i felt and thought about music done 17 years before—music that came out in 1972. before i was born, no less! in 1972, david bowie’s ziggy stardust, and the eagle’s debut album were released…. now, considering that late 70’s music already sounded dated to me at the time, (not to mention how the eagles already sounded!) i can only imagine what disintegration would sound like, today, to a 14 or 17 year old growing up with kaiser chiefs.

i’ve lived in a musical continuum from then through now, still keeping in touch with new music as best i can, so when i listened to it it didn’t seem dated or whatever, although it could use a remastering. but i’m sure that if you took out the 90’s from your musical knowledge and compared it to stuff being done today it’d be quite a departure.

the concert for that tour was amazing. another band i came to greatly like but who were short-lived, shelleyan orphan, opened. plainsong was the first song of the set and i recall it rumbling in my chest, back before the shoreline amphitheater started regulating sound levels. my wife was out there in the audience too, but we weren’t to formally meet for another couple of weeks yet.