Ask not what your software can do for you...

'Ask not what your software can do for you... ask what you can do with your software'. These immortal lines were recently typed by John Shelly, an online artist acquaintance who lives in Japan, though he's an englishman. I think that line neatly sums up the entire issue of digital art and what and who it's good for.

I'm of the persuasion that digital software is great... but not an end in itself. I still think the lowly pencil rules. And I'm afraid I'm even largely in the camp of preferring the look of traditional mediums of paint and ink and pencils on the rough surface of watercolor paper and all the variations they can achieve. Something to do with the complexity of the surface or maybe it's just conditioning. I read a quote from Seymour Chwast to the effect of "the computer is a great place to process art, but a difficult place to create art". I know what he meant, I think. I still like my pencil on paper the best.

In any event, I'm lucky I can do either one... or both... and happily. The picture at the top is from 'One Smart Cookie'. Maybe, people might wonder... "HOW did he do that?". Clue: It's all painted on real watercolor paper. Trade secret! LOL!

InDesign has been one of my newest discoveries. I think they ought to call it 'Dummymaker'. What fun to piece together a book like this... saving scads of time and with unbeatable flexibility. Need a different page size? Takes 2 minutes to resize the book. Need a new font?... click, click, click. All done. I find the buffing is really where it's at with InDesign. By 'buffing' I mean the ability to fine tune each page to match the image. It's quite a different experience from just writing everything in one text document.

All the same things can be done with just photoshop alone, except one would lack the ability to print out multiple pages and scroll through a story with ease. Anyhow, I'm always playing around with new techniques... figuring out what new things I can do with my software.



Ah... yes, the spark plugs. With the Cookie's help I too have recently replaced the plugs, wires and distributor cap on the trusty volvo. It's always so empowering to fix something so it's like new again. All it takes is overcoming ignorance... and a few tools really.

And of course, without a car, one could not go on autumnal drives through the bucolic countryside... savoring the pleasures of the season. Cows, pumpkins, barns, rivers, wooded hills, bridges, cornfields... all the usual stuff.

Inspiration is Mysterious

"Cookie spent lots of time in the library. He read books about pirates, rocket ships, and dinosaurs. Detective stories were his favorites."

That's one of my favorite lines in 'One Smart Cookie'. I'm so glad it didn't get edited out since it doesn't really carry the plot too much, but there's just something about it. Maybe it's important because it shows Cookie getting lost in a book... filling his doggy head with knowledge about the the world around him. I guess I wanted to point out the riches that can be found in a library... and in this particular case it took the family pet to discover them.

Anyhow, it all started one morning when I read a title to an online post in a business forum. The post title was 'Good read, Dog'... and that was all it took. Something connected in my brain in a way I'd never have been able to predict, inspiring the story that shortly became 'One Smart Cookie'. Twenty minutes later most of it was all written out.

Most of my stories happen about like that. Just a single word or phrase that sets me off and it's almost like I'm jotting it down as fast as I can after that. But turning this story into a real book took much longer. I've got dozens and dozens of stories all written out... that's the easy part.



To wit... here's the chronology of 'One Smart Cookie' since it's odd beginnings:

1999: wrote original story inspired by the title to an internet post
1999: did a rough dummy and sent it out to three houses
2000: had a favorable response from one editor who suggested it needed more development and a different ending.
2001: rewrote ending and resubmitted... never heard back.
2001 - 2005: September 11th sort of brought everything to a total stop. I never did hear back from the first editor.
2005: I finally decided I'm never going to see this book in print if I don't just start sending it around again.
2005: reworked the dummy with InDesign... using same art but used a different and more sophisticated packaging. InDesign works wonders for dummies!
2005: sent out story to publisher A ... waited 5 months... not quite right for them.
2005: sent out story to publisher B... sold in 1 week!
2005: was given 6 months to do finish art. Worked through Christmas Holidays, which is about par for a freelance illustrator.
2006: delivered finish art.
2006: finally appears in print!

So... in this line of work, instant gratification it's NOT!

I don't know if I've done a blog post about InDesign, but I ought to. It's the greatest software ever for putting together a book dummy.

Every dog has his day...

Every dog has his day... even me! Now what should happen the other day but the UPS truck stops by and drops off a mysterious package.

And what's in this mysterious package? Mysterious and mysteriouser it gets as I open it up. First I was thinking its a bunch of corrections to a project I'm working on. But instead I see it's from Highlights for Children, but I wasn't expecting anything from them. And Lo & Behold... there's a fancy box inside, not just filled with paperwork... but in fact there's a silver plate with engraving on it! WHAT?!! Amazment and confusion take over as I try to figure out what it might be.

Turns out it's a brushed steel plate with my name engraved on it as 'Illustrator of the Month' for my Squealy Scholar artwork that I recently did (and posted about in the last post)! Imagine that! Me... a prizewinner! LOL! I have to say, my first reaction to all this was mostly embarrassment and it all made me want to run and hide.

But now I'm thinking it was actually nice to get some kind of silly little plaque so I can at least say I won something during the course of my long and prize-free career. Anyhow... no further congratulations required.

My book 'One Smart Cookie' was officially released yesterday. Go Cookie! I had a party all by myself. I think being one of the distant shut in creative vendors in the publishing industry is almost like being invisible lots of times. I don't think wanting to be recognized out of the invisibility is about ego at all. It's just about being recognized in terms of no longer being invisible. I mean if you're trying to make a living selling art and ideas, it's helpful to be able to have a little visibility... just so you can punch your timecard at least.

I keep planning to do some posts about Cookie... but I keep putting it off. I was thrilled to discover www.jacketflap.com the other day. What a great resource for having most all of the publishing world all in one site! Now maybe more than 6 people will stop by my blog.



I finally broke through and wrote out a great little story this morning that had been a simmering for a year or more in bits. I think writing works like that for me. All the parts are there, unconnected mostly... but it requires some alignment of the stars to coalesce it all into a written form. Anyhow, it was a delight and fun and who knows, maybe it'll go somewhere. Of course stories are hard to judge. When they're brand new, they seem spectacular... and contrarily, after you've polished them for a year you can't hardly tell anymore if they're really great or just rubbish.

If I could only get the pictures done as fast as the words.

Cartwheeling down the back steps...

Finally it's rained again in Seattle! I know how ironic that must sound to anyone who probably thinks of this town as the rain capital of the world. In fact it rains as much in New York as Seattle... it's just here it takes all winter long and in the summer we often never get a drop.

This has been the driest summer on record here, with just 1/4" rain between April and the middle of September. In other words it only rained once all summer. The lawns turn brown and crunchy and no one bothers to water them. Even some of the old maple trees on my street looked like they were drying up and dying.

I find my brain cannot connect two consecutive thoughts when it's over 80 degrees in the dog days of late summer. Summer was great but thank gosh it's raining again. Rain = Life for me.

I've recently proven out a theory I had that all an illustrator needs to continue working are eyes to see with and just the drawing arm from the elbow down on one's drawing hand.

I've been recovering from a backwards cartwheel down the kitchen steps and landing on the concrete walkway. And no, it wasn't a fall off the ladder pictured in last month's blog, in case you're guessing. Amazingly I didn't break my neck and even more amazingly I could still manage to do illustration, since my right arm still worked. That's all we really need to keep working, after all... eyes to see with and just from the elbow down on our drawing hand.

My body throbbed with pain for about a week. I could only hobble up and down steps one at a time. But I could still draw. But now I'm almost all better. I read that Dylan Thomas always needed to have something wrong with him... a broken foot, a cane to walk with, anything so that he had limits.



This month's illustrations are from a magazine piece I did for Highlights.

I recently found out through on an online friend that these little spots had been turned into an online animated poem with music. People seem to enjoy what Highlights did with it... they must have clipped out the main piggy character and added in the missing bits of the background, and then used a program to add the motion and music and voiceover.

www.highlightskids.com/Stories/AudioStories/Sept06_squealyScholar.asp

If that link doesn't work, you can just Google the term 'Squealy Scholar' and that brings up a link.

The Cookie Has Landed!

Yes... it's that time again... time to add to the blog.

I have a suspicion I've made blogging too hard, or maybe I just don't have quite the knack for chatting away about the simple things.
Be that as it may, I've been lazy to boot. AND I've been painting the house (as seen in the photo)... and need to paint even more of the house before summer is over. Very satisfying thing, painting boards out of doors from the clarifying heights of a ladder. Just don't look down! That's the secret to working at heights.



Same thing with freelancing... 'don't look down'. By that I mean don't stop and think too much since it's usually best to just get on with it.

Thank gosh for second coats of paint! The beauty of the second coat of matching paint is that one needn't agonize over all the edging... which really can drive a person crazy when you're bending over into a pretzel twist at a height of 25 feet and leaning over backwards trying to make a perfect edge of grey against white paint. No need to be perfect with the second coat... just an approximation will do.

Hooray for Cookie! Yes, the first copies of 'One Smart Cookie', written & illustrated by moi have arrived. So I had my own little party to celebrate and took these photos. Can't wait to see if anyone takes notice... which of course is the dilemma of just about every artist and author I suppose. I think it ought to be a great little book for schools. It's got some fun classroom scenes and deals with the essence of books and schools... that is to say reading.

Anyhow, it's fun having dozens of copies of the Cookie around. I'm quite pleased with how it came out, considering the deadline for finish art and all. It's fun to see the printed book right alongside the original pencil sketches on my desk. It was really odd to come across a pencil sketch for one of the characters that I had drawn on vellum and to then put that right over the finished printed book and see how they matched! Just like magic.

More about the Cookie later.

Trip to the Seaside

Nothing like a trip out to the seaside. One of my favorite spots in Puget Sound is Fort Casey at Ebey's Landing up on Whidbey. Great views and a great beach.

Don't forget to pack that Julien oil painting easel for the landscapes!

Strawberries & Landscapes

Not been blogging lately... life's been too complicated. And I've started another blog Lost in the Paint, for just my paintings on canvas.

Meanwhile, it's June-uary here in the Pacific Northwest. That's when it looks like March out the window only it's actually warm outside. Just takes a slight mental leap to overcome the gloom and tell yourself it must be summer because the roses are in bloom. Strawberries too... but I suppose there's strawberries everywhere more or less.

True summer begins here July 5th... since July 4th is notorious for raining all day.

Had a great time working up a new technique using paint and photoshop. This illustration is done using that technique... and the bear's doing what I'm busy doing... eating berries. it's that time of year.

This technique is just a minor progression and refinement of my earlier ventures into that zone. Quicker and more control of details... what's not to like?

Mmmmmm..... authentic farm fresh strawberries, sold in a little seasonal farm stand nearby. Although Washington state is famous for it's cherries, I much prefer the strawberries.

Art is funny that way....

Freelancing & Art... now there's a potent combination of subjectivity.

I think life as a freelancer... selling art and ideas, leaves many more shady grey areas in the balance of rationality than some other professions might.

Just dealing with the artwork itself can seem like temporary insanity. It's because it's all so subjective.

For instance it's quite common for an artist to finish a piece of art and think it's totally perfect... only to realize 2 weeks later that they wish they had painted it a bit differently. Luckily, it can also work the other way... and you decide a painting is really much better than you first thought.

It's very perplexing when subjectivity shifts from week to week.

I read a story from an artist friend who hated how a painting was going, so she tossed it on the floor and stomped on it. Three days later she picked it back up and decided it was one of her favorite paintings ever. It turned out to be her favorite painting in the entire book.

Then there's the classic artist joke: There once was an artist who was staying as a guest at the house of an old friend. One of the artist's paintings, done 30 years before was hanging over the mantle. In the middle of the night, noises were heard downstairs. The host fearfully crept down the stairs to investigate.

There in the living-room was the artist... up on a stepladder, lantern and paintbrush in hand, putting the last correcting touches to his painting from 30 years ago!

Tell me that's not half crazy... but I KNOW exactly where that story is coming from.

Anyhow, so that's just the Art part. Next comes the Freelancing part, which is equally subjective and unpredictable.

That's where you have anywhere from 0 to 5 clients all calling and setting different overlapping deadlines. All totally unpredictable as the freelancer tries to juggle time and the projects they're working on. That can drive you nuts too. And it's sometimes hard to tell which is worse... having 5 clients or not having any.

In any event, the little painting above is from one of my unpublished stories. It's about a Painter who gets lots of advice about just how he ought to be painting.

A wonderfully printed book...

I just got my copies of a book I did for Usborne, 'The Dragon Painter' and I'm very pleased with the print quality. In fact I'd go so far to say that it's most likely the best packaged and printed book I've ever done the artwork for.

It means so much to an artist to have their work presented the way they painted it... as often that's not the case.

But I have to say, on this book the printing is just perfect... it has sewn bindings and they did a wonderful job of everything... even the endpapers. And a real first, there's even a little satin red ribbon bookmark that comes with the book.

I was very pleased to see how my digital/real media techniques seemed to print up very nicely too. Believe me, it's not every book that leaves the artist so pleased with the printed copy.

It was a fun story, a folk tale, about a painter who paints dragons that come to life.
I had a great time doing the research for all the chinese decor. I found the Emperor in a book about an ancient chinese gardens. I had to make sure I changed the pattern of the designs on the clothing, since I have no way of knowing what they might actually mean or say in ancient chinese!

I previously uploaded some of the artwork from this book back in January.

Miles & Piles of Ideas

Ideas... what would we do without them?

Probably we'd be a lot happier... only dumb and happy. Sort of like my cat I imagine, an enviable state of being for sure. Nap time 22 hours a day with breaks for breakfast and dinner.

However, one of the drawbacks of being an artist or writer is that you're always hatching ideas. Most of them just vanish and get replaced by the next idea. But sometimes they're ideas you just have to write down.

The back of the grocery list is one place I've often resorted to, when struck by an idea out shopping. The backs of brouchures... any kind of paper. Then when I get home I toss those ideas into my idea pile... where they collect dust as I busy myself making a living drawing pictures to demanding deadlines.

Every now and then I pick some sketches out... and maybe work them into a book or project.



Anyhow, above is a photo of my idea pile. It's fun to blow the dust off the top and leaf through the dozens of story leads and drawing inspirations in there. I keep these piles like treasures... I know there's at least half a dozen stories in there and it's always good for new directions and inspirations.

Champagne & Tulips

Here are some of my paintings on canvas. Appropriate to the season. Done in acrylics... based on digital photos and usually painted in just a few hours time. I only use those cheap bristle chinese brushes from the hardware store. They leave great brushstrokes... very expressive. I just can't seem to get the hang of filberts. It's so refreshing to just paint a canvas without worrying about a complicated narrative story to be told.

I decided that for me, painting on canvas without any objective other than to paint is kind of like sipping champagne with the Artwork. Contrarily, doing illustration on deadline to a set of art specs, solving complicated narrative problems on tracing paper is more like doing the taxes for the Artwork. It might be more profitable... but it's just not as much fun!

Hey... I think that's pretty funny!

When Picasso painted a canvas, he didn't first have to submit sketches for approval. Picasso didn't have to rely on a printer to see the final output of his paintings. Picasso didn't need someone else to validate his art.

Lucky for Picasso, he just painted...

Sometimes it almost seems like we need publishers to supply our affirmation that we are really valid artists. If they don't affirm our talents, then it seems like we've failed. But it only seems that way... in fact it's not that way at all.


But hey, Van Gogh had the same problem. I just watched a great DVD... 'Vincent' with John Hurt doing the narration. Great movie about making art... but I realized I have a lot in common with Van Gogh when it comes to discussing art. Seems like there's lots of striving, angst and inner turmoil involved in making art... even when you're just drawing cartoons!

I think Van Gogh was the Posterboy for all artists to come. Imagine the irony of dying of poverty essentially... and now his paintings fetch the highest prices of any in the art world. I suppose making living by any form of art isn't for the feint hearted.

Regardless, it seems everyone wants to be an artist. I like those Lotto commercials where they show the millionaire Lotto winners out on the beach, painting a landscape. Luckily you don't have to wait to win the Lotto for that! But I do think everyone could benefit by being a painter... or doing something creative. Lucky for us artists we can sometimes do it for a living.

Suddenly It All Makes Sense

I've been out of commission for a week, with a dreaded 'Error 13' message on my Mac. Believe me... you don't want to EVER see that dreaded 'Error 13' message. It really made me realize how CRUCIAL the computer is anymore. The computer started out as sort of a convenience... but now it's CRITICAL. It's like I'm out of business when the machine goes down.

Ten years ago I didn't even know what any of these things were... E-mail, PDFs, jpegs, Photoshop, scanners, the wacom, inkjet printers, Google!, InDesign, GoLive... websites, blogs. But now I wouldn't want to think about working without them.

Live by the computer, die by the computer... that must be the rule.



Meanwhile the freelancing drama continues on... intriguing, infuriating, impossible, wonderful, miserable, hopeful, exciting. I don't imagine anyone ever gets a handle on it altogether. The saving grace I think is that one never knows what's going to happen tomorrow.

Yet, I remember the day it all became clear to me... an insightful realization as to why freelancing is different from so many other callings.

As a freelancer, there's just one person... us, to be held accountable without any excuses. Just imagine how much easier would our lives as freelancers be if we too could deliver lines like:

"Oh, the head of the Pencil Department is away at conference, he'll have the pencil sketches when he gets back"
"The head of the Finish Art Department needs another 6 weeks. Someone down in paint screwed up ordering the new paints."
"The Director of Revisions is away on vacation. I can't do those requested changes till the end of the month... sorry!"
"The Deadline Director is only in every other Thursday... so I won't be able to get back to you on that deadline date for at least 2 weeks"

Suddenly it all makes sense...