Albert Jones Memorial 3.0

Another cardboard construction–this was made for a Saturday morning “drive-in movie” activity for church. Most of our time was spent keeping older kids from sweet-talking Meggie into trading rides with them.

This is also a good example of the viewer interaction I try to incorporate into my work. At times I will render only part of a background or just “indicate” it via simple line work. I do that so the viewer will be able to complete the image in their mind.

I found that my enthusiasm waned for things like Star Trek, Star Wars and Traveller as more background information was added. It was more fun for me to fill in the blanks myself.

Sketchbook Drawings

After my fire-and-brimstone sketchbook post the other day I thought I would post most sketchbook drawings here on the blog. I don’t have dates for all of these–I know that they are all Clarksville work though.

Fae Trooper: Uniform design for a shared universe my son Conrad and I have worked on.

Brule: Another one for Conrad; I think he was going through a King Kull phase

Batgirl: While I applaud DC’s daring for their recent 52 relaunch, I was less than thrilled with the way storylines in so many books were just chopped off with the literary equivalent to a rusty machete.

Slinky Girls: Lori and I have a deal. I can draw what I want in my sketchbook, but she gets to edit it….which means it stays PG-13. I am fine with that – leaving things to your imagination .

I also want to point out  that while it is true some of these outfits look like they were made in a belt factory, none of these women are weak in any way. All the drawings were done on 5 1/2″ X 8″ sheets of paper using pencil, gel pen, design markers and a bit of paint. (The trooper was a little larger). The two slinky girls were done on a toned paper with white paper affixed at the appropriate points with spray adhesive. None of the drawings took me longer than an hour to complete.

Orcavalry

My signature piece during the late 1980s. Airbrush, acrylic and colored pencil on hot-press watercolor board. I don’t have the dimensions handy but I am thinking it’s about 24″H X 20″V.

Looking at this painting conjures up some very conflicting memories. I did it in the late summer of 1986: I was suffering through the initial onset flare of ankylosing spondylitis which brought with it chronic severe back pain interspersed with spasms in my chest and an elevated sedimentation level in my blood that had the doctors considering rheumatic fever at first. We were living in Orem, Utah so it was very hot – but I did have a second story studio over the garage which provided me with a nice cross breeze. I was listening to John LeCarre novels on books-on-tape and I was extremely homesick. I had been able to fly north for my sister Robin’s graduation the previous spring but the visit just wasn’t long enough for my taste

So, I look at this and think of homesick spies with back-aches sweating in 90 degree weather with 0% humidity….

What I Look Like Right Now!

This is as current as it gets–Pop-Pop Moondog (me) and the Monkey Boy (my grandson Jayden). A little rounder, a little grayer. A bit more scarred both inside and out…but I am still here.

Thank You, Albert Jones (the Inventor of Cardboard!)

My children refuse to call me an artist. They tell me that I am a “maker” instead – which I can understand because the trappings of the art world have never meant as much to me as the down-and-dirty “making” part–hence things like large cardboard vehicles.

This was made just a little bit earlier than the Batmobile I showed the other day. History nerds that we are you will note that this is a specific tank–the M3 Grant with a gun in the turret and a larger one on the right side of the hull.

When it was built in the fall of 1991 there was room for me and both boys inside. By the following spring they had grown so much that it had become a single-seater.

Creative Curmudgeon Commentary 3: No Golden Tickets.

 I’ve been teaching since 1988 and during that time I have seen an unfortunate trend growing – the idea of the “golden ticket”. Other than being a major plot point in the sadly misunderstood Arnold Schwarzenegger 1993 action flick ‘The Last Action Hero” a “Golden Ticket” is something – a tool or qualification that will inexplicably grant you incredible success by merely being in your possession. Aladdin’s Lamp. Green Lantern’s ring. An airbrush. A Waccum tablet.

 Or a degree.

 It’s sad because students pass through my classes now with absolutely no desire to actually learn anything. They seem to be there solely to pass the class with as little work and as high a grade as possible in order to check off a box on the way to a degree which they assume automatically qualifies and entitles them to an extremely well-paying job. I can understand being pragmatic about school but I still think it’s sad – they miss so much during school and crash so hard when their entry-level job does not come with a corner office and a six figure salary.

 I worked my way through undergraduate work before there were Pell grants and it took me twelve semesters to earn a Bachelors of Arts (BA) degree in April of 1979. Not many people on either side of my family had earned college degrees, but I felt bad because it was getting a BA instead of a BFA – a bachelor of fine arts that was a bit more specialized and a notch up in status. Unfortunately there were a number of my fellow students and faculty members that made sure I knew the difference. I mean really, really really made sure that there was no question in my mind that a simple BA was just barely above “wash-out”  

 There wasn’t much I could have done differently:

• I was attending schools located 3000 miles away from my home and support system.
• I attended three different schools,
• I made a drastic change in my major (pre-law to art) and then changed my area of emphasis within my major.
• I was extensively involved with ROTC
• I took a two year break right half-way through and also went to school part time for three other semesters as well.  
• I was married for the last two years of school
• My summers were not available for internships – I worked as a roustabout in an oil field.

 My insecurities were eased a year later when I was working at The U.S. Army Aviation Digest. The officer in charge at TSC (Training Support Command) had seen my work, liked it and invited me down for an afternoon to look around his facility.  This was long before computers or PowerPoints so instructors used slides to accompany lectures – and the slides were produced by a stable full of civilian illustrators at TSC.

  Please excuse the horrible pun but the visit was an illuminating experience for me.  I looked through the building I noticed that there was a common decorating motif in all the artists’ cubicles. Hanging on the walls would be:

• Sketches and reference material for their current projects
• An outside “signature piece” –something done outside of work that the artist felt represented their talents better than the little pot-boiler lecture slides they were doing for TSC
• The artist’s framed diploma.

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. While close to 100% of the framed diplomas were for BFA degrees, 75% of the artists working in those cubicles were “not-very-good” artists. I won’t say bad – because there were a couple of nicely rendered spots in some of the slide illustrations that people were working on that day, but most of the work there was several levels below what I had been led to expect out of someone holding a BFA degree.

It was my first lesson about golden tickets…

…but you know the door often swings both ways. In our last episode of CCC I talked about not chasing clients and how there are some people who will lead you on for years…and as I inferred this has happened to me. In my case the person in question also suggested that I go back to school and take some figure-drawing lessons. Why the nerve! I was a successful freelance illustrator with an appropriate level of awards and recognition for the stage I was at. I judged the comment to be another one of those Manhattan thumb-to-nose gestures given to”flyover people” and moved on with my career without that client.

…but a decade later the issue came up again, though the second time it was me talking to me.  As I was closing in on 50 I had to admit that my figure drawing needed improving.   I had plenty of tricks to help me get by: I used projectors, I’d ask Lori to “edit” all my faces…I even went so far as to downplay the detail and finish on hardware pieces so those areas wouldn’t overpower my figures – but the fact remained that I wanted to be one of those guys who could sit down and just knock something great out my sketchbook in fifteen minutes

So I sent myself back to school. No, I didn’t take classes, but I set up a figure drawing program to build my skills. For almost ten years I studied, maintained a special reference binder, and drew. Not just lower-case “la-dee-dah” drawing – I DREW!  In addition to any other project I had going on at the time I worked in my sketchbook at least twice a week – sometimes three times – and in the end it paid off as you can see below.

So, again – there are no “golden tickets” in this business. I may joke and tell people that “illustration is all a bunch of cheap tricks – and they all work” but even with the cheap tricks you have to push yourself. On his death bed Michelangelo Buonarroti kept saying “I have so much yet to learn” and he was in his late 80s when he cleaned his brushes for the last time. You have to rid yourself of the idea that there will be a time when you can just “punch a ticket” or coast –

….and if that is too hard to do then I would recommend AFLAC and their great training program.

1964: Joy – Part One

I missed the whole vampire thing in popular culture – at first,  I’d see students come through my classes that were as obsessed with the “children of the night” motif as former students had been with centaurs ten years earlier and as was the case with the centaurs, I gave the subject short shrift. Even though I work quite a bit in the fantasy and science fiction genre I am adamant that students learn the basics before tackling more complicated projects.

However, the TV series ANGEL blind-sided me. I was hooked from the first with the complex character interactions, the believable way the show dealt with “grown-up stuff” like atonement, addiction, dysfunctional family issues…even the in-jokes and humor. I wasn’t the only geezer the show appealed to either; one of the reasons it was canceled rather precipitously at the end of five years was precisely because geezers were tuning in.  ‘Angel’ scored well with the Nielsen ratings but it skewed “old” to my demographic . The network wanted was something to pull in teens and young adults so away it went.

The nature of vampirism is explained a little differently in ANGEL. Instead of the individual turning “eevvviiillll” (said in a spooky voice) when turned into a vampire, in this series when you are turned a demon from another dimension comes and takes up residence inside your body. They have access to all your knowledge and memories – but they aren’t “you” any more. Your soul is gone. It makes it all both less and more scary at the same time for me.

One theme ANGEL came back to time and again was the nature of true joy. That caught my attention because  I am at the point of my life where I wonder if there is such a thing. I get very jaded at lectures or sermons about the contrast between the types of life-styles that bring you transient happiness vs. long-term joy and how it is better to wait for joy. The only long-term emotion I have had in my life has been clinical depression – not because I have been “bad” or lack a positive mental attitude – but because my brain doesn’t make enough of the right kind of chemicals. In the same way a starving man dreams of a steak, I fantasize about what true joy must be like.

Angel is a vampire with a soul – he was cursed with getting his soul back after murdering a band of gypsies so punishment he would live forever realizing what truly horrible things he had done as  ‘Angelus” (the name he went by as a 100% bad-guy vampire). Right off that made me sit up because as I have written before in this blog I have a freakishly sharp memory which means I keenly remember any and all unkind things I have ever done to anyone else. I can understand the exquisite hell Angel lives with.

Most of the time. There are a couple of times when Angel’s soul leaves his body and the totality of Angelus takes over completely – and it ain’t pretty. The first time it happened was when he was with Buffy (yes the Vampire Slayer). During one “interlude” Angel was so overcome with his love for Buffy that he experienced a moment of “pure joy” – which caused his soul to be released to go back to heaven. Angel becomes Angelus for the rest of the season and he is just viciously wicked and cruel. The series almost lost me at that point in fact.

But once again I sat up. A true moment of joy. I thought about it hard, wondering if I had ever had a moment of unqualified true joy – that didn’t blow up in my face afterwards. I have had lots of happiness in my life but it has always been very transitory. I love sitting with my grandson Jayden on my lap while I read – but when he has to go it isn’t long before that mental dump-truck  of distress  starts backing over my brain. If I could ascertain the existence of a moment of true joy in my life, then there was the possibility of more, so I started combing through old letters, journals and artwork – and just sat and thought a lot.

I found three.

1. Discovering comics coincided with discovering that I was different from my friends in terms of artistic talent. Artistic talent usually doesn’t manifest itself until age 11and I was right on schedule.  When I discovered Batman, the Composite Superman and the Crime Syndicate from Earth 3 in the summer of 1964 my first reaction was to try “to make more” though at first it was because there was precious little in the way of licensed items available to buy.  Toys weren’t the huge industry they are now, living in Anchorage, Alaska meant that we were at the end of a very long logistical pipeline – and as we were still recovering from the Good Friday Earthquake (second worst recorded quake at 9.2 on the Richter scale) three months earlier most cargo space coming in from Outside was devoted to more practical items.

Undeterred I went to work. Using every trick I could think of I drew my own adventures.  I used carbon paper (too messy), I used the window as a light table to trace ( too indistinct) so finally I broke down and just drew Batman…and it wasn’t half bad.

Toys were a little harder. I had a set of “Ring-Hand Soldiers” – plastic army men that were molded without helmets, weapons, packs or belts. They sold with accessories that would snap into the hands, which were molded closed in a ring-shaped grip. This arrangement left their uniforms with limited detail allowing me to paint superhero costumes on them.

…which was great until I got to Batman. How was I going to get those ears on his cowl? I thought about just painting the hood without the ears – and I even though about just not having a Batman – but it just broke my heart to leave my favorite out of the set.

I don’t know what exactly happened next but I did notice that the enamel model paint that I was using made my fingers sticky when it would drip. Then I looked over at the sheet of paper I was using for a drop-cloth and the light-bulb went on. I snipped out a small strip of paper with two bat-ears space out along the top, then painted it with blue enamel. Next I took my working figure and painted blue enamel around his head, then took the strip of paper and wrapped it around the head (paint side in) and adjusted the fit until the ear’s lined up. I painted the outside of the ears, then added another coat of blue when I worked up the Batman uniform on the whole figure…when the two coats of blue paint on the ears dried it was as durable as the rest of the figure. I’d made my Batman.

I still remember that moment, sitting back  in the sun coming through the door of our living room in the house on the corner of McRae Road and Barbara Drive in deepest, darkest Spenard. I had my Batman figure, but that wasn’t the real thrill in much the same way that the sunlight wasn’t what was making the warmth and light I was enclosed in.  I closed my eyes and for a minute I had that true moment of joy (and the launch of my creative career) when I realized that I could make any toy  – anything I wanted.