Conjurer

Not a lot of ambiguity in this one. I got the idea a few days ago at close to one in the morning and started sketching even though I don't do late nights much anymore. The idea hit me hard, I liked the image and went right for it figuring I'd better not take a chance and lose the muse by assuming it would be around in the morning.

I suppose that mindset can be applied to life.

This is pretty much what I saw in my head while watching an episode of Legend of The Seeker, a fantasy tv series on the CW.

I wanted to try a different approach to coloring and inking. I chose to ink only the outline and build up the details with digital paint. Which, by the way, is still painting regardless of what the nostalgic snobs have to say about Photoshop. I paint with pixels and it has just as much merit as oils or acrylics or watercolors.

The tools don't matter so long as you create, fuck the elitists. They're usually the same ones who manage to churn out one painting every six months from their "personal pain".

And by the way, for you non art types, most of the fine artists I've met in my travels are as full of shit as you imagine them to be once they get going about the soul of their work and what they were trying to say.

People who tell you they're deep...are anything but, just like guys that tell you how tough they are wind up being the biggest pussies you ever met. Real knows real on sight and no explanation is necessary.

The next 20-30-something artist that catches an attitude with you because you "didn't get" what they were trying to say in their piece probably had nothing to say and just slapped a bunch of expensive oils on a canvas with the mindset that o layman would dare question the art before them for fear of looking foolish. It's An Emperor's New Clothes kind of thing with some fine artists. You're looking at a canvas of bullshit and know it deep down but society has you believing "poor anatomy" and "poor color use" automatically means "abstract and profound".

Strip away the Hollywood / Soho bullshit people. If you like what you see, that's it. If it invokes an emotional response then its art. If it needs cue cards then its horse shit wrapped in a gold bow.

Some motherfuckers out there just can't draw but want to seem deep and talented and blessed so they get drunk, or stoned, or coked up and hit a canvas with the supplies their parents gave them the money for.

I used to work in a gallery in Soho and saw some of the biggest pieces of shit sold for thousands of dollars because the cue card taped to the wall made the wine drinkers feel wise.

It's no sour grapes, it's just real. Most art experts are anything but. Do-ers do, others teach or sell.

I do.