(Click on the Image to Make it Larger!)
My first cartooning teacher, J.P. Crangle used to tell me to always put the date on my drawings. This way, he said, you could go back and look at your old artwork and appreciate how awful it is. Okay, he may not have said it that way, he was a pretty positive guy. He probably said you should date your work so you can go back and see how much you've improved over time. So, I guess this piece above is almost two years old now (according to the date that now gets automatically put on the drawing once it gets scanned) and I can see how awful it really is only now. I remember at the time liking the coloring job of this piece, especially the left hand side with the guy holding the remote control. Now when I look at it, I only see everything that I would like to change, meaning pretty much everything. Mind you, I will not be doing that. Not out of laziness, although that certainly plays a part, but to let this piece stand as a testament of what I was doing at the time. As J.P. would say, it is the kind of art you were doing at the time, and it acts as a place marker in the progression of style and talent. I am sure that I will look back to what I am doing now in two years and say the exact same thing; namely that what I am doing now is terrible (even though I think that it is relatively good now). This is the life of anyone who is creative. As you grow and move along in life, your vision changes. The important stuff of today is yesterday's throwaway idea. This is the main reason I would never want to get a tattoo. I guess it would be the same sort of thing, a place marker on the road of life; but I have scars for that. When I was first considering getting a tattoo, I was probably a teenager, and I did think that my artwork at the time was pretty darn good. Good enough, anyway, to think that it was worth pursuing as a lifelong pursuit. So, I thought it would be a great idea to get one of my own drawings tattooed onto my body somewhere (I always pictured it on my backbone near the base of my neckbone). I am so glad that I never drew the "perfect" drawing that I would take down to the local tattoo artist. I look back to what my style was, what I was interested in, and my overall general attitude toward the world and I am so happy I never went through with it. I would have to constantly make excuses for this weird looking mushroom on my back with the face who looks like he may or may not be tripping after ingesting part of himself. That, or I just would have gotten a big "Steal Your Face" emblem. Either way, it would have been regrettable. Not that I have anything against tattoos (or the Grateful Dead, for that matter). I think a lot of them are extremely well done and fascinating to look at. So, with that regret in mind, I would like to put one of my more recent "Mind on Loup" drawings side by side with this one just to show you the progress, but I also like keeping the timeline continuous, and in the right order. This way, you as the viewer can see first hand, the transformation of style, color, and overall feel of each piece. In fact, you could do it now! We started doing these drawings back in 2009, so you could scroll back two years and see just how bad the original "Mind on Loup" drawings really are! Oh wait, let's stay positive.
My first cartooning teacher, J.P. Crangle used to tell me to always put the date on my drawings. This way, he said, you could go back and look at your old artwork and appreciate how awful it is. Okay, he may not have said it that way, he was a pretty positive guy. He probably said you should date your work so you can go back and see how much you've improved over time. So, I guess this piece above is almost two years old now (according to the date that now gets automatically put on the drawing once it gets scanned) and I can see how awful it really is only now. I remember at the time liking the coloring job of this piece, especially the left hand side with the guy holding the remote control. Now when I look at it, I only see everything that I would like to change, meaning pretty much everything. Mind you, I will not be doing that. Not out of laziness, although that certainly plays a part, but to let this piece stand as a testament of what I was doing at the time. As J.P. would say, it is the kind of art you were doing at the time, and it acts as a place marker in the progression of style and talent. I am sure that I will look back to what I am doing now in two years and say the exact same thing; namely that what I am doing now is terrible (even though I think that it is relatively good now). This is the life of anyone who is creative. As you grow and move along in life, your vision changes. The important stuff of today is yesterday's throwaway idea. This is the main reason I would never want to get a tattoo. I guess it would be the same sort of thing, a place marker on the road of life; but I have scars for that. When I was first considering getting a tattoo, I was probably a teenager, and I did think that my artwork at the time was pretty darn good. Good enough, anyway, to think that it was worth pursuing as a lifelong pursuit. So, I thought it would be a great idea to get one of my own drawings tattooed onto my body somewhere (I always pictured it on my backbone near the base of my neckbone). I am so glad that I never drew the "perfect" drawing that I would take down to the local tattoo artist. I look back to what my style was, what I was interested in, and my overall general attitude toward the world and I am so happy I never went through with it. I would have to constantly make excuses for this weird looking mushroom on my back with the face who looks like he may or may not be tripping after ingesting part of himself. That, or I just would have gotten a big "Steal Your Face" emblem. Either way, it would have been regrettable. Not that I have anything against tattoos (or the Grateful Dead, for that matter). I think a lot of them are extremely well done and fascinating to look at. So, with that regret in mind, I would like to put one of my more recent "Mind on Loup" drawings side by side with this one just to show you the progress, but I also like keeping the timeline continuous, and in the right order. This way, you as the viewer can see first hand, the transformation of style, color, and overall feel of each piece. In fact, you could do it now! We started doing these drawings back in 2009, so you could scroll back two years and see just how bad the original "Mind on Loup" drawings really are! Oh wait, let's stay positive.
No comments:
Post a Comment