Self-Portrait(s)

When it comes to my work, typically when a figure is involved, I use myself as a model. If I need to figure out how a hand would look in a certain position I will look at my own hand to try and figure this out. If I need to figure out how features look on a face at a certain perspective I might take a picture and sketch it to understand that point of view better. Normally these “self-portraits” are just for sketch purpose and never would see the light of day besides if I, or someone else happens to be flipping through my sketchbook.

In High School we had to do a handful of self-portraits in some of my art classes. I wasn’t particularly fond of doing self-portraits back then. I think It had something to do with the fact that I was in the infancy of trying to find the path I wanted to go down in art. I hadn’t really figured myself out yet and just didn’t feel comfortable doing self-portraits. I did them anyway though, like everyone else had to. It wasn’t until taking an art history course, where I was introduced to self-portraits by Renaissance artists, such as Rembrandt and Van Eyck, that I saw an interest in them myself. Granted that interest wasn’t fully sparked until art history classes at MIAD.

An artist that has peaked my interested since I found out about him is Albrecht Durer. It was Durer’s work that inspired me to take printmaking classes, and basically set me down the path I’m on currently. His self-portrait work is incredible, whether it’s charcoal drawings or paintings. The work is phenomenal.

This semester self-portraits have been nearly 100% of the work I have been producing. Much of the time I find myself questioning the idea of a portrait. What feature about us, besides our faces, can be depicted and considered to be a portrait. I have been playing around with the idea of depicting hands and calling that a self-portrait.

Literature

Reading has been one of my favorite things to do, since I got a firm grasp on it. Whether it be books, comics or magazine interviews/articles, if I’m not sketching or working on art there’s a 50/50 chance I’m reading something. I believe the reason reading plays such a heavy roll in my daily life is because of the fact that I didn’t pick it up as quickly as most children. In kindergarten, while other kids were picking up books and slowly but surely beginning to learn how to read I was struggling with the task before me. In first grade, I ended up being put in sort of one on one sessions with a separate teacher to help me get a hold of reading. It didn’t happen over night, but once I got a hang out it I always wanted to be reading something, maybe because I felt like I had so much to catch up on?

Regardless, ever since then reading has played a large roll in my life. I’m especially fond of writers that are extremely talented with being descriptive (i.e. Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, etc.) this allows their words and descriptions to be painted in my imagination and for me to clearly envision what they are showing. Sometimes, images from books will stay with me in my mind to a point where it begins to overlap in my artwork. I’ll begin sketching creatures that an author described in the pages of their novel, or a character from a comic book that I really enjoy. The character Batman has often found his way into a variety of my works, but typically my printmaking images.

I think the idea of Batman, this regular not super powered human who just happens to be extremely wealthy and able to buy all these gadgets, is what keeps him coming up in my mind. There’s a freshness there, seeing a “regular” guy going toe to toe with superheroes and super powered villains alike.

In my previous post, I mentioned an interview I had recently conducted with artist/illustrator Christopher Macdonald. Near the end of said interview when I was asking Chris for suggestions he was interested to see some of my work. All I had on me were two of my sketchbooks, each of which carried quit a few sketches of batman in them. Chris mad an interesting comment about how he really liked my drawings of Batman, because it felt like I was questioning this idea of what is a superhero and what makes a superhero, making the images less like fan art that you might find on a deviantART page and more like something to built off of for a piece of “fine-art”.

Interview

My field of interest is wide and varied. I’m an Integrated Fine Arts Studio major, whose initial intention was to come to the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) and major in illustration. All though I opted out of illustration as my major, it still has a strong influence on much of my work and artists working in the field hold a particular interest to me. At the same time I love much of the contemporary painting work that is being produced, in particular fine artists who work in painting but take interest from illustration like myself. Because of this, I had a tough time trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the Cultural Connections assignment.

I decided I would go out on a limb, and send emails to artists that I find interesting and that have influenced me asking them if they would allow me to interview them for this assignment. I emailed a wide variety of people, from fine artists; to freelance illustrators who do gallery work in their spare time and even a comic book artist that I find interesting. In all I probably emailed close to ten people and only received responses from two of those people. One was an artist based out of Hamburg, Germany who goes by Moki (http://www.mioke.de/main.htm). The other was an artist/illustrator that I only recently found out about, and also a MIAD Alum, Christopher Macdonald (http://chrismacstudio.com/). Both artists expressed interest in an interview to assist me with this project, and seeing as one I could actually meet up with and the other I would need to communicate through email, I decided to attempt to interview both.

I had an interview with Chris at Bella Café on the corner of Milwaukee and Chicago streets on Tuesday November 9^th. We met up around 6:00 pm, I came with a list of pre-thought out questions to get things started, but also went with the flow and attempted to treat the experience more like a regular conversation. The questions ranged from being about his work, the differences of making work for school and as a job/for your career, if he had a preferred medium, if he thought there was a difference between fine art and illustration, etc. Although my reasoning for asking Chris if he would be interested in allowing me to interview him was based on what I had seen of his work on his website and his show he had back in spring at Hot Pop (a series of paintings reinterpreting Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came), I found we had much in common. He was an ISA major who also had an interest in illustration; we both are interested in the artist James Jean, Comics and anime among other things.

Sketchbook questions with bullet point answers:
How has your work changed since beginning your “career”?

• good to be out on his own, and not have a bunch of people to answer to.
• MIAD taught him to love working/making work.

What would you say the biggest difference is between school and working?

• simpler process, because you don’t have as many resources.
• tend to work smaller.
• focus more on specific projects, because you have more time.
• you can pick and choose on what you want to focus on.

What are some of your artistic influences?

• growing up; video games, anime (due to its difference from western narratives)
• Gustav Klimt
• Vienna Secession
• modern day illustrators (James Jean, Tomer Hanuka, etc.)
• blogs and Internet sites
• fashion
• Alan Moore

Preferred medium?

• mechanical pencil (drawing, he considers it to be his “main language”)
• ink
• photoshop/illustrator

Do you think there is a difference between illustration and fine art? If so what would you say it is?

• Currently, no, but depends on how you define illustration. (intent)
• Sterling Hundley, “Fine art asks a question, and illustration solves a problem.”

How does writing come into play in your work?

• resume, cover letter, CV
• reading has become ore important (reinterpreting “old” literature), however, not a whole lot of writing.

Do you have a preferred method of working?

• drawing in sketchbook, usually with a collage of different media.
• typical process: drawing ---> scan ---> digital

How often does something from your sketchbook jump into a larger piece?

• “not often enough.”
• about half of the work in sketchbooks will never see the light of day ever again.

Do you try and keep a separation between illustration work and gallery work, or do you look a them as the same?

• no, he takes from both to get new ideas and concepts.

Do you gather a lot of ideas/influence from writing/reading/literature?

• yes and no. (reading newspapers and magazines, not a lot of fiction.)
• gets hung up on reading.
• difficult works become like an obsession and must be read. (old literature, so in these instances, yes.)

Favorite source of inspiration?

• the Internet.
• film/movies.
• “geek” culture
• Victorian writers.

Any suggestions?

• I shouldn’t stop making work.
• start getting stuff out there.
• find artists and contact them.
• make friends with people who are better than me.
• keep drawing. (especially from observation)
• short comics.

Perhaps the most influential and wonderful part about the interview was at the end, I wasn’t sure exactly how to end the interview so I asked him if he had any suggestions for me to make it and get out there. Of course to properly answer that he needed to know where it was I was looking to go, so I told him I was interested in working illustration, potentially even in comics while making “fine-art” and doing work for galleries at the same time. He suggested a handful of things, from start getting my work out there, to contacting artists that I have an interest in, to keep drawing, especially from observation, make short comics, etc. Perhaps the suggestion I found to be most interesting though was, “Make friends with people who are better than you, not just in drawing but in anything.”

Everything from his suggestions, to his answers to my questions, to us just talking and finding things in common as people and artists was really motivating. It really made me want to start working right away on the things he suggested, especially taking more of an interest in drawing from observation.

The next day, November 10^th, I sent an email to Moki with roughly the same questions, but tweaked a smidge to better fit her and her work. A few hours later I received a response from her letting me know she was sick and that she would try and get to answering the questions as soon as possible. I have not yet received a response back, but am hopeful that she won’t forget.

This experience overall, from attempting to contact artists, to formulating questions and communicating with people I find to be creating interesting work was eye opening. It really got me to think more about the career aspect of everything while still thinking about the work and the conceptual side. What stuck with me the most, was one of the first answers to a question I asked Chris, and also his first suggestion to me, “When you graduate, don’t stop making work.”