Over on Twitter, @walrusmagazine asked readers to take photos of their new Summer Reading issue. Above, a few contributions (used with permission!).

One of the most thrilling things about the most recent TCAF was seeing the poster I designed tacked around Toronto, where for a few weeks it was part of peoples’ workplaces, commutes, and daily routines. While it’s always cool to see your work printed, it is even more exciting to see it in an even-larger context: the world!

When I teach, I’m often struck about how jaded students seem to be about Illustration, often by 3rd year. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism? A response to the classic “embittered illustration instructor” syndrome? Perhaps it’s a scapegoat: that if that student fails to find success as an illustrator, she “didn’t really want to be an illustrator anyway”. Perhaps it’s legitimate anxiety about the economic feasibility and the creative constraints of being a working, practicing illustrator. Whatever it is, the jadedness is very exasperating and strange to me. Lots of things that are worth doing require sacrifice, confidence, and a little healthy self-delusion. But to me, the payoff is so exciting: you’re not just a consumer of culture anymore, you’re a contributor. Illustration, at its best, injects a bit of beauty and insight into a visual landscape that is often so vapid, crass, and garish.

When I was living in Edmonton in 2004, I started seeing extremely lo-fi silkscreened band posters around town. I’d rip them down and hang them up in my apartment (now THAT is effective advertising!). The simple beauty and attention to detail was so sublime. It made life in the city a bit better every time I found a new poster quietly affixed to a telephone pole. It was a little thing, but life is kind of made up of a lot of little things, isn’t it? (I later found out they were made by Raymond Biesinger, who has since gone on to much illustration success himself.)

Illustration is powerful precisely because it is commercial. People interact with it in a way that is very distinct from other art forms and to me, that’s the upside, not the downside. Illustration is for the masses, but that doesn’t mean the masses deserve crap. Most people could probably describe to you their favourite comic or cartoon or album cover or picturebook from childhood, regardless of whether or not they are “creative”. The things people encounter in their daily lives are not inconsequential and they have an impact. Perhaps those jaded students can think back and remember the things that enticed them to pick up their paintbrushes and pencil-crayons in the first place.

A piece in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review It accompanies a review of “The Great Night”, by Chris Adrian: a retelling (of sorts) of Shakespeare’s “Midsummer’s Night Dream”. AD Nicholas Blechman.

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about consistency of “style”. Which, of course, I interpret to mean, “your work is inconsistent. I thought that was bad?” Har. Anyway, my personal thoughts on the matter:

- a consistent style is definitely beneficial when you’re just starting out as an illustrator. I would recommend a tight portfolio of about 12 quality images.

- there are other things that define and link your work than surface appearance.

- you’re not a machine and you’re allowed to evolve and change. Illustration is such a fad/trend driven industry; that what is popular today will likely be dated sometime down the road. I actually try to see experimentation and change as an investment in my own longevity. Maybe I’m naive, but that’s what I tell myself.

I sent my students to the National History Museum (or Bronx Zoo) to draw animals this week. I wish I had the resources to bring camels and baby tigers into the studio à la Disney, but alas. The results were varied but an interesting pattern emerged. Even though most kids were drawing from taxidermy animals, some were really able to make the drawings feel alive. As if they captured a moment in time, instead of simply drawing a stuffed animal.

To my mind, gesture is really paramount. If the gesture is wrong, the story is wrong, then what’s the point of making the drawing? It’s important to draw action, not just record the form, particularly if it’s a living thing, but the same can and does apply to even inanimate objects. In many cases of the best animal drawings I saw today, you could almost sense the animal’s next movement… a thrust forward, a lazy flick of a tail, or dash off into the bushes. As if even the past and future was captured in the single image.

This is where the idea of empathy in drawing comes from… I think many of us have had the experience of drawing an angry face, for example, then found we were scowling/furrowing our brow while we drew.

I’m not really talking about dynamic motion here. More like “potentiality”. Even solemn, quiet images have energy.

[Top image: “High Fascism”, NYTimes Op-Ed, AD Alexandra Zsigmond)

I have always been thankful that I did my Foundation year in a Fine Arts environment. (I went to Queen’s University.) To have spent time around fine artists has shaped the way I think about images, make images, and my understanding of Illustration.

One of the exercises made quite an impression on me was one that involved charcoal powder and reductive drawing. Lay down a ground of charcoal powder down (you can make your own powder by rubbing charcoal onto sandpaper) and pick out the light with erasers… kneaded/sharpened with an xacto, etc. This relinquishing of control can be frustrating until you learn to accept the media on its own terms. Because the elements are typically very foreign, it lends itself to a sense of play, which is entirely the point.

I did the aforementioned exercise with my students today. They came up with some entirely unexpected and delightful results; some looked like silkscreen prints, some looked like etchings, some looked like constellations in the sky. Still so many of them seemed skeptical. As if by virtue of NOT spending countless hours slaving away on a picture somehow invalidated the whole thing!

I haven’t been posting too much sketchbook stuff in here lately. It’s because I’ve been working like a crazyperson trying to finish up some big book illustration projects that hopefully I’ll be able to share soon.

I gave a talk at Parsons last week. There was a theme that kept on coming up (maybe it’s just on my mind): Faith. Not the religious kind, but rather how a life in the Arts demands quite a bit of it. Following a life in the Arts is a leap of Faith ALWAYS. No matter if you tackle the freelance life when you first get out of school, or are transitioning from a day job or whatever. There are no guarantees that your work will connect with anyone, or that you’ll make a living from it. Or, for someone in my position, a little more established, that you’ll be doing this in 40 years’ time. (It’s for this reason that I have infinite respect for those illustrators have been doing this for a lifetime, REGARDLESS of whether I personally like their work or not.)

You can only task yourself with creating good, honest work, because that’s one of the few aspects of all of this one can actually control. In fact, “creating good, honest work” is the meat of it. The life-long labor that is difficult and sometimes not fun, but a mysterious compulsion. The rest of it is a semi-delusional Faith in the Universe that it things will work out; that you’ll be able to feed yourself, shower regularly, take a vacation, not feel the need to stick your head in an oven.

WHOA.

Step 2: post exasperated decrees on Twitter! (And get @Drawn to RT you.)

Let me speak a little bit about the background behind this pseudo-proclamation.

Last weekend i was hanging out with Mike Kerr and Renata Liwska. Mike is a former teacher of mine at ACAD and Renata (who also happens to be his wife) was in town collecting a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for her children’s book The Quiet Book. Renata’s work is gorgeous, soft, inviting, and has a classic feeling to it. Renata grew up in Poland (a place with its own history of amazing illustration and design). The books she read as a child and her own memories of the place serve as inspiration for her current work. Those influences tinge her work with nostalgia… not “retro” at all, but an emotional connection to memory.

Also last week, I was discussing with my drawing students at SVA the importance of being culturally aware and how it behooves the creative person to LOOK OUT into the world. Beyond your own brain, your classmates, your peers, your teachers, even your heroes. Because as an illustrator, I’ll just assume you one day hope to contribute to the culture and the world. The notion of artists toiling away in isolation is somewhat of a myth. I’m not talking about Community here (I’ll be honest, sometimes I think Community is overrated). I’m talking about isolation in the sense that sometimes I feel students feel like they should magically improve if they simply try hard enough, spend enough time on a piece, or do something enough times. It isn’t enough. Usually.

Art has been created since the dawn of civilization, so I think there’s a good back catalogue of Masters for you to look at, and learn from. People have been pondering the same artistic problems, visual and conceptual, as you are. For thousands of years.

Besides. Aren’t you enrolled in Art School because you LOVE looking at Art?

Looking at the Internet kind of doesn’t count anymore, in my book.

OK, it counts a little bit. It counts because you can see what is relevant in the industry, what is successful, what people are doing. I was being a little provocative in that last statement (I am addicted to provocative statements now because they land you on Top Tweets).

But there is a distinctive thing that is happening in Illustration, and it’s because Illustration is becoming very self-referential. Many students will cite a DeviantArt blogger as their favourite artist. Whole portfolios are based on mashing together two popular illustrators’ “styles”. Illustration is becoming a “style” unto itself, with no connection to context. Everyone’s creating work that’s influenced by Paul Rand or Alphonse Mucha or Edward Gorey… 250 times removed. It’s like looking at a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.

It’s a little boring.

But that’s OK. In a way, this is a great time for Illustration. It’s popular and a lot of people are doing it. A lot of Illustration is bad, and it’s visible because everything is visible online. I mention all of this because I hope to push my students to create authentic, unique work that is their own– not a pastiche of whoever happens to be topping the Tumblr charts at the moment. Something that speaks to lived experience, experimentation, hard work, and curiosity.

P.S. Yes! I am @dirtbagg. Follow me if you like, but not everything I tweet is pithy or relevant to Illustration!

Two musicians for the New Yorker this week. Super tight deadline on this one… a call Sunday afternoon when I was at the Brooklyn Book Fest, final due the next day. AD Jordan Awan.

It can be difficult to create a dynamic scene within a square, as was necessary here. I usually take the approach of creating strong directional pulls with diagonal lines. It’s a little easier said than done. Dynamic composition, as I see it, is creating something a little off-balance (the opposite of stable and classical) that yet still feels pleasing. The Rule of Thirds and the Golden Ratio explain a bit of this, but I’m not really a fan of distilling such things into mathematics. I’m more in the “Use your Instincts” camp.

Like a wolf.

Or a hippy.

Hello,

Here’s a picture of old-timey Catwoman I did at the request of the Doug Wright Awards.  When Brad MacKay, Chester Brown, and Seth ask you to do something, YOU DO IT. It will be auctioned off to benefit the Awards next month. I will mention it again closer to the date. The Doug Wright Awards have been so supportive of my career, so it’s the least I can do.

My D&Q Petit-Livre Indoor Voice, has NOT been released yet, as is proclaimed on Amazon. I will let you know when it is.

I had my final meeting with my SVA MFA Thesis Student, Anat Even Or, today. You can see her final project in the “Comics” section of her website. But really, someone should put it out as a book. Viewing it online doesn’t do it justice.

Such a melancholy and exciting time for students, this time of year. Especially seniors. Us teachers wish you only the best as we kick you out of the nest. If you’ve worked hard and made the most of yourself and your time, you’re ready. I saw two former students on the same day last week and I was unnaturally happy for the rest of the day. I really do grow attached to them!

Hopefully, wherever you are, there are cherry blossoms.

(Click to Enlarge.)

A common foible of learning to work in ink is accepting the fact that ink is not pencil. Most of us learn how to draw (“properly”) with pencils, so it’s the implement that we are most comfortable. Ink is obviously much less forgiving.

I held individual meetings with my 2nd year Cartooning students today and recommended to all of them to keep an Ink Only sketchbook over the summer. No pencil or preparatory drawings allowed. Experimenting with the media in a very pure form will help you learn what is and what is not possible. It’s a matter of adaptation and working with the media’s strengths. Very zen.

(I actually stole this idea from Sam, who kept an Ink Only sketchbook in the summer between 3rd and 4th year. He improved dramatically. )

This drawing is from a similar sketchbook I’m keeping now, experimenting with washes and painting.

Radio Silence.

Sorry! I’ve been in Florida again. I’m addicted!

Anyway, this isn’t really anything comprehensive… just a few excerpts from a handout on Animal Anatomy I’m putting together for my class tomorrow. I get asked to draw quite a few animals, so unlike some other things we’ve gone over in class (perspective!), I actually feel somewhat qualified to speak on the subject.

There is no formula to trick to drawing animals, or anything else for that matter. Only through observation (ideally from life), and practice will give you a fundamental understanding of structure and form. This might be a bit of a bummer to hear as a student, but I believe it’s the truth and applies to all drawing.