Art and some other stuff

The Art Game is hard and most of the cliches that relate to it are true. Most people in your life won't give a flaming crap about what you do unless you're making a nice chunk of cash from it. Sad but true. So the most obvious thing about being an artist is you do it because you love it. Write draw, act, sing, paint, sculpt, direct...whatever. You do it because you can't imagine doing anything else. You do it because it satisfies you in a way nothing else can.

Sometimes the money is there and when it is it's amazing and you feel incredible for making money off of what you love even if half the time its creating some crazy thing for a client that never touches your heart. You dive in because it represents you once it hits the world either by web or magazine or what have you. It feels good for a bit then its gone.

With real art, not to sound to pretentious, its The Doing more than The Having. Most (but not all) of my work holds my interest for a couple weeks or so before it just gets stored online somewhere. The high of creating really can't be explained. The closest you might be able to come is child birth, but even that's pushing it because unlike children or people you meet, with art you get from it exactly what you put into it.

The next poster image, the next character design, the next comic issue idea, the next short story...that's what drives me. I'm as curious to see how my work will turn out as the next person. Inspiration can hit you anywhere...at home, on the street, in the toilet. Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night and I stagger to my desk and scribble something that I'll hopefully be able to decipher in the morning.

And all of this can be artsy fartsy to some but its real. For way too many years I was trying to show everyone around me how much of an artist I was and how good I could be until one day I just stopped and realized I was creating for the wrong reasons. In my 20's I was trying to find the Hidden Meaning in everything, but not everything out there is deep or meaningful.

To quote Dudley Moore in Arthur; "Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets."

You go to art high school, art college, then you graduate and really start learning. The school is just to get a foundation for research. College didn't teach me about art so much as it taught me how to research new techniques and the like. Art is from life, pain, travel, friendships, media, music. Real art anyway. It has to mean something to the artist or it won't mean anything to the viewer.

School teaches you hot to go on Auto Pilot and crank something out for someone that may mean very little to you but you want to get it done to the best of your ability. Trust me people, artists don't get a kick out of sketching you or your kids or your pitbull. We do it because it will hopefully bring some joy to your life, but no one ever thinks they look the way we draw them.

NEWSFLASH, your nose is that big, your chins are that many, and yes, your eyes are that far apart.

Learn to love what you are and the drawing will work for you.

There's not much out there, art wise, that I haven't done. I'm still dying to do a metal band's cover and work on a video game, and get my comics out there, but I stay hopeful and always looking for the right gig.

So here we are in 2008, that C student of a president; Bush has effectively driven the country into the ground and surprise, surporise, no one is really looking for original art right now. Can't say as I blame them. Money is booty tight and no one's feeling very adventurous. Times like these are when one of the most important tools in the artist's repotoir; the ability to cope, kicks in.

Being a freelancer means living by your wits and the tride and true mantra; Feast of Famine, rings in your ear like a fire alarm. Most 9 to 5ers spaz at the thought of losing their job. It's all most people know. Work, weekends you go out to eat and drink, maybe a movie or a show, vacation on some giant boat once a year or maybe hit Florida or Mexico, then right back to the routine in some dead end gig.

Crazy as it is right now, with money so tight, I still feel more alive than most of the people I know. I'm going through the grieving process after losing my sister and life is extremely difficult, but even my pain makes me feel alive. Tears burn and my stomach gets knotted and sometimes its all I can do just to get out of bed but once I fight through the sadness and the world comes back into focus, I feel, I do, I am. For a little while at least.

I lost my art for a few months. Lost my passion, lost my hope, but its crawling back into me little by little. In the long run its the only thing that will help me get through this, hence starting this blog.

The new art wil have pain etched in it. Sometimes you'll see it and sometimes not. But right now its my lifeline. My sister loved what I do, what I create, and was my biggest supporter.

So in her name I fight until I can do it for myself again.