Believe it or not, but I've been using photoshop since 2002 and today is the first time that I've ever used it in full screen mode. I feel dumb. Also the hand tool is your friend. The curse of the self educated... Actaully I did take a photoshop class in 2001 or 2002... It just goes to show you how useless school is IMO. I use very little that I learned in that class. I was taught to use the dodge tool to shade, but that went against the painting knowledge that I had so I cut that right out. ( Painting knowledge, what painting knowledge I hear some of you saying..) Whatever... I honestly forgot what bullshit that we were taught to highlight with... But this is what happens when a graphic designer is teachingillustrators to use photoshop.

Now with so much stuff on the net, I honestly wouldn't waste my time with going for a four year art degree. I'd take some hardcore lessons at an atelier and proceed to crush all the kids who wasted tons of loot on a four degree. Unless I respect a teachers work I'm going to take everything with a grain of salt.

Having said that the Photoshop teacher was actually really, really cool. Its just that he wasn't equiped to teach PS from an illustrator/painters point of view.

So I've been reading this blog about comics called comics, comics. And while its somewhat well thought out some of the criticisms that they post seem like Comic Journal wanna be bullshit. Of course a lot of you reading this will have no idea what the Comic Journal is, which is brought up in this post called The Bridge is Over ( and maybe only 3 of you will get that reference).

So the post on Dave Stevens posthumous autobiographical, career spanning artbook, just really pushed my buttons. Hard. Like the Comic Journal used to back in the day. And now I'm reading some of the comments that people have left. God all I have to say is that those people that are hating need to be ashamed of themselves. ARRRRGGGHHH. The only person that is dishing some haterade that has perhaps even the authority to voice an opinion is Eddie Campbell.

Basically what it boils down to is the fact that Dan Nadel is saying that Dave Stevens was a no talent hack. And I just think that that is some typical wanna be elitist bullshit.

One sentence fragment that really pissed me off was this one: and, for nerd-dom, the all-important illusion of technical proficiency (here defined as a late 19th century notion that conveniently ignores 20th century art history). You know just for writing that bullshit alone, I've lost any sort of faith in the man's critical faculties. I'm sure this is a person that thinks Julian Schnabel is a great artist. Besides if you are doing representational sort of art, the major art movements of the 20th century aren't going to be that helpful. Besides we all know ( or should know) that the "art world" is basically a huge con. Its just speculation really. Rich people conning each other.

Also this baffles me : There is no mystery in his drawings—they look forced and labored over, with none of the grace of his contemporary, Jaime Hernandez, for example. Dude I'm pretty sure that Jaime was a friend of his. I saw them sitting next to each other at the 1999 San Diego Comic Con. And his work DOES NOT look forced and labored over. And what the fuck does that mean anyway? Those are pretty meaningless words.

Basically a lot of the post is elitist bullshit and I'm sick of it. It just smacks of people trying to show how much smarter they are than the other comic nerds. Yeah, go drool over another crappy looking comic and feel smug about yourself.

As an "artist"* I'm really in the business of marketing.

* I hate calling myself an artist. I think it sounds pretentious. But its easier than calling myself a dude who draws.

This is how to use reference photos! Simon Bisley did this great portrait of a band that some of you will know. Although you can tell that he copied a photo it still looks like his stuff. Now I don't think that most guys could get away with this but he pulls it off. Check it out! ( I will cut other peoples art... )

When when I was a little kid I thought that a lot of those pen and ink illustrations from the late 60's and 70's sucked. Hard. So why is it that for the last few years I've been seeing a lot of new artists doing that style. I mean yuck. There is a reason that the style died out. But maybe its just me and everyone else likes that shit? Honestly I think that I understand why that style got a foothold back in the day. See, art colleges stopped teaching representational art because it was believed to be old hat and abstract art was the thing that was making money at the time. Part of the reason for that was that magazines had largely switched over to using photographs instead of illustrations. The Illustration market died for the most part after 1950. But the artworld was still selling, so why should anyone bother to learn how to draw when you could drip paint on a canvas and then make rich people a) feel like they are cultured b) make them richer by trading your work for a higher price than what you got for it in the first place.

This is why I believe that if you are an artist that doesn't make money or at least a decent living with your work you should destroy it when you die. I'm sure Van Gogh is turning in his grave right now. This dude made no money off of his hard work and now its selling for tons of money that he can't use.

When ever I see crappy artists get over it really makes me feel disgusted. But the upside is that the standards are improving. So that the average artist is much better than the average artist 20 years ago. This is what keeps me on my toes. I don't think that self promoters/swho call themselves artists will ever disappear though since promotion is a more important skill that draftsmanship. After all how can people enjoy your work if they don't know it exist?

I've always felt that it was more important to do good work than to be prolific or meet deadlines at all cost. After all five years from now all anyone is gonna is THE WORK. Not how much time you spent on it. So saying that " I had a deadline" carries no weight. Telling people that you did something super fast doesn't matter. If the work sucks, the work sucks.

Mark Waid makes the point much better than I can. Here. This is the best part IMO.

This was, frankly, kind of a dangerously stupid thing to tell an impressionable young editor working in the periodical business…but (a) Dick’s gift for candor was one of the qualities that made him the best and most valuable mentor I ever had, and (b) he was right. And he’s just gotten more right in the intervening two decades. I cannot name names without embarrassing them, but I can just off the top of my head think of at least a dozen freelancers who hit every deadline ever asked of them, even if that deadline was changed on them without fair warning… who were pleasant to work with and always professional even if their editor was a jerk…and who always did exactly what their editors asked them to do, even if it was obvious to a blind man that the quality of the finished work was lessened, because they were trained to believe that their first priority was to serve their editor and do so in a timely manner.

All of those people have been unemployed for years.

I saw this help wanted ad this morning :

I'm looking for an illustrator to provide a cityscape illustration that is similar but different to the attached jpeg. I will need to see a detailed sketch first, once approved, then I will need to see a vector file.

I can pay $40 for this job.

Please show me some sample work of yours.


I wanted to choke this person. Detailed sketch first my ass. How about my ass...so you can kiss it.

Almost any piece of art can be nit-picked to death. I find that this makes me take most critiques with a grain of salt. Both those given to me and ones that I see others give. In some ways its pretty frustrating, because there really is no absolute right or wrong way to do things in art. That is not to say that some critiques aren't helpful, its just to say that your piece of art can be successful even if it isn't "perfect".

And then there are pieces and artists that suck so bad it boggles my mind as to how ANYONE can take them seriously. Stuff that looks so amateurish, deriative and crude ... and yet people find enjoyment in this stuff. So obviously it succeeds on some level. I find a lot of this crap on Deviant Art which is really strange because you find a lot of amazing top notch stuff there too. And a lot of deriative yet competent work as well.

Well at least I can honestly say that I still feel myself improving and seeing areas that I need to improve. Which is always a good thing, because if you feel that your stuff is perfect then you stop growing.

And on the other hand its hard for me to really see where my art fits in in the scheme of things. I know that I'm no Alex Ross but I do think my stuff is as good as a lot of stuff you see published. But on the other hand no one has offered to publish my stuff (yet )so can I really say that? Idon't know I'm just going by how I see things. And while I'd like to believe that I'm pretty objective, how objective can an artist be about his own work?

So that popular image of President Obama or rather the artist who made is being charged with copyright enfringement because the image of Obama is copied from a photo. Read all about it! I have mixed feelings about this, see artists use photo reference all of the time. I mena if someone tells you to draw Jimi Hendrix what the fuck are you supposed to do? You have to see what the man looks like right? On the other hand I hate it when I see a picture of someone famous and I know the source material. It always makes the artist look lame... This is one reason I generally try to figure out what a person looks like from a bunch of difference sources rather than just copy a well known picture.

But what do you think? 

EDIT: I know I forgot to link to the article in question...already fixed!