....more of my life as an artist
In a Middle School art class, I learned to see things
in a unique way. Mainly as a survival mechanism for that stupid
homework assignment the teacher gave out first every year: to draw
a pair of shoes. I hate shoes!!! I took my mom's gaudiest high-heeled
sandals and hung them up by their straps from a string. (They were
still boring.)
Then there was the cherubim. It's some kind of
seedpod (Sycamore?) that looks like a bunch of bird beaks sticking out all
over. My friends and I didn't know what it was called, but we'd been
reading Madeleine L'Engle books, and dubbed it a cherubim.
The in-class assignment was to draw three views. I
drew it with the stem sticking out the side. I drew it with the stem
sticking out obliquely towards the viewer. By now, I was bored, and
looking at drawing all those bird beaks AGAIN, with no stem in sight to relieve
the monotony. Then it hit me! I should draw a close-up view,
of a couple of beaks zoomed in, with lots of detail! In one fell swoop,
I unlocked the secret of looking at things differently, and discovered
composition (heretofore unknown in the middle-school method of drawing everything
plop in the middle of your paper).
A seemingly small matter, but it was at this point that
my fate as a Artist was sealed.
I spent four years at the Maryland Institute, College
of Art (MICA), trying to learn the manual
and technical skills to craft my visions into images. Unfortunately,
this was mostly unsuccessful. I began as an Illustration major, but
it quickly became clear that all those students already had the technical
skills to craft images, in pencil, pen & ink, air brush, pastel, linoleum
print, wood cut, scratchboard, gouache, oil, acrylic, watercolour, and just
about every other medium in existence. They spent most of their classes
honing other skills, like creating art to spec, making more effective statements
and compositions, using colour psychology to sell things, etc. I was
hopelessly outclassed.
So I became a bastardized Fine Arts Major, taking drawing
and painting classes to learn to use pencil and brush, as well as taking
any Illustration class I could possibly stuff into my Fine Art credits.
Well, the Illustration teachers loved my unique ideas and layouts,
though my execution (especially in colour) sucked; and the Fine Art faculty...
pretty much hated my not 'fine' enough work that smacked too much of (::gasp!::)
illustration.
Not that I ever listened to them. :)
The main problem I faced was with teachers who seemed
to think it was harder to actually THINK of something to paint than to actually
paint it. Or that I could learn to paint by just doing it, whereas
getting ideas was a skill that had to be taught. Frankly, I can't imagine
how they became Artists in the first place, if they didn't have ideas of
things to paint in the first place. (Though to suggest that these teachers
can't teach how to paint because they don't actually know how, and
they just spend their time mucking about with colours in an uninformed mess
would be unrealistic, unfair, and downright childish. Of course, they
called my work puerile heavy metal schlock first. :P ;) )
For me, Art follows Vision, never the other way around. (Until computer
graphics.... read on.)
I learned exactly three things in Painting I: how
to stretch a canvas; to mix flesh tones with bright colours, not earth
tones; and to use a soft-haired brush to make soft edges. I learned
exactly zero things in Painting II.
The only redeeming classes I had were Illusionism in
Drawing (illu) and Illustrating Personal Ideas (ipi). Both, surprise!
Illustration classes (I took them for Drawing credits). The teacher
of both -- Susan
Waters-Eller -- truly looks at each individual work and what it's
purpose in life is, and can comment helpfully on it -- whether it is an abstract
mishmash or a cover illo for TIME magazine. (Or, apparently, 'puerile
heavy metal schlock.')
Illu -- a class on how to make fantastical scenes seem
more realistic. If only my whole curriculum could be like this!
By the time I graduated, I was taking Independent Everything.
Senior Independent, Independent Drawing, Independent Printmaking, and
Independent Study (with Susan as my mentor). Which is good, considering
I didn't listen to any of my teachers, anyway! Not when they dismissed
my work as useless illustration without even a second thought, and suggested
I do stuff like theirs. (Oh, and if you guys are reading this... I
happen to LIKE Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal Illustration, so I took it as
a very high compliment!! Hah!)
And poor Doug Baldwin, the Ceramics teacher...! He's a
cool, laid-back guy. And I would sit there, doing my things very
diligently, working hard.... But he really didn't like any of them.
So he would come over and go, "Well, why don't you think about making
this more extreme? Like make 500 and paint them day-glo yellow. Or
make one that is 5 feet tall?" "Okay," I would say, and he'd go off
happy. I would think about what he said... for about two seconds, then
go 'naaah!' and continue right on with what I was doing. But I really
did think about it, Doug!! Honest! :)
By Graduation (which I spent working in my studio, and
not suffering THAT mess), I had given up on painting, because I STILL had
not learned how to freekin' paint! I could do some loose watercolour
semi-abstract things, but that was about it. Photorealistic
Frazetta/Vallejo style illustration painting was out. I decided I was
relegated to Black and White illustration.
But then I spent a day at my cousin's house. While
he went to work, I spent several hours playing with his CorelDraw 2. I
learned to make a circle. Ooh. I learned to make a white-blue
fountain fill to shade it like a sphere. Ooh.
By the time my cousin got home, I had drawn continents
(the clip art ones didn't mold the way I wanted them to), molded them to
my sphere, with a green fountain fill matching the shading of the blue, plus
brown outlines; the word WORLD enveloped to the circle, and the word ONE
in a flaming red-orange-yellow linear fountain fill behind it. I was
trying out backgrounds for it. With some assist from my cousin, we
put together a mirrored cloud bitmap picture behind it. It was more
cool than anything he could do with the program in so short a time.
So I got CorelDraw 2 for myself, and was on my way!
Ever since, I've been slowly building up my graphics tools to bigger
and better things. Window's Paintbrush... Paint Shop; VistaPro 3D....
KPT Bryce; an AceCAD non-pressure sensitive tablet... a Wacom ArtPad II;
Simply 3D.... Ray Dream Designer;a full-colour hand scanner...(er, well,
haven't gotten a flatbed yet!)
Colour! I can do stuff in colour! I can paint and
undo stuff with one click! (You can't imagine how many times I went
for the upper margin of a drawing, looking for Edit:Undo.) I can adjust
colours that turn out wrong, adjust the brightness contrast (always had problems
seeing in extreme values of black and white), work on layers I can rearrange
or discard, use special effects (filters! I'm a filter junkie!), save
at various points in case I REALLY screw up....
And I can experiment! My Fine Arts teachers would
faint! I can do... abstract art! I finally understand
how you can make abstract art without first seeing abstract goo in your mind.
Actually, I still don't understand how you can mush paint around and
expect it to come out like something, but digitally.... okay.
Still, I struggle onward towards my goal of being able to faithfully record the visions of my mind. Sometimes, I have come close. When I looked at the final image of "'Watch Your Step, Cat!'", and "Sunrise Warrior," I was impressed. I felt: yes, this is it. I have attained my goal; I have the power to create my visions. But this does not last long. Raistlin's hand isn't as realistic as --say-- in a Larry Elmore painting. The centaur warrior's body doesn't have the true 3D feeling I'd like it to. I still can't paint photo-realistically. So I go on to the next work, striving to match external reality to internal vision.
And still, my mind produces visions. Visions of beauty or terror, of such awe that they make me think -- that's COOL! I gotta make it into a picture!