From the Flat Files 9

And so, here it is, the last of this series for now.  It is an image for Stephen King's Dark Tower book, The Drawing Of the Three.  It's oil on primed illustration board, measures 9.5"x14" and was painted in Spring of 1998.  It is one of my favorite pieces I did in college.  I'm not sure that it would be accurate to call it my best, but it certainly is my favorite.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have serious problems with the piece, but it was in many ways a breakthrough and had elements built into it that I still shoot for today.  A graphic, simple composition.  A mix of the real and surreal.  A touch of beauty.  A touch of horror.  And maybe a little intelligent problem solving (when available).

Redone (as one of my professors suggested I do at the time), it could be a pretty sweet piece.  I'd probably incorporate the water into the composition more completely (after researching which side of the door it should actually be on), maybe articulate some details in the beach itself.  I'd probably lose the blood, as I don't think it's necessary.  Maybe make the door a little bigger.  Still, it's a fun piece and was one of only a handful of pieces from college that indicated that I might just end up doing some sort of fantasy work.

From the Flat Files 8

And now for something truly awful.  It's oil on primed illustration board and is approximately 18"x24" or so.  I believe it was done my senior year in college, though I'm uncertain of which semester.  Likely early second semester, making it '98.  I've said before that my portfolio out of college consisted mostly of book and editorial work.  This piece would be an example of the latter.

After I graduated, I began pounding the pavement in New York, trying to get in to see folks and interview.  There were cold calls, there was phone tag, there were drop-off days (designated days for dropping off your portfolio at publishing companies for the art directors to peruse).  It was a difficult slog.  One of the biggest problems I faced was that voicemail had really taken off at this point.  Long gone were the days of people actually answering their phones.  But, it was also before email became the norm.  Sure, we had email addresses, but getting a hold of an art director's email address was damn near impossible, and you could forget about sending attached images because the series of tubes that is the internet just couldn't take that kind of pressure.  So, you made your phone calls, you left messages, you waited, and hoped for the best.

One of the few art directors who still answered his phone was Steven Heller, then the art director of the New York Times Book Review.  He was notorious for giving green illustrators their first job, and so I gave him a shot.  As he answered his phone he was easy to contact, and was also pretty easy to see...provided you could be at the New York Times offices at the ungodly hour of 7 am.  For a kid just out of college, that was not the easiest thing in the world to do.  But I did it.

So, one morning during the summer of 1998, I found myself bleary-eyed amidst the fluorescent hum of the New York Times offices.  It was one of those places where you get out of the elevator to find yourself trapped in this room that only people with keys can get out of (unless you want to get back on the elevator).  Next to one of the doors was a phone, and I used it to call Steven's desk.  No answer.  So I waited a while and tried again.  Still no answer.  I was likely there for only ten minutes or so, but it still felt like an eternity.  I wanted to give up, and I decided that if I called one more time, and he didn't answer, I was going to chicken out and head home.  I called one last time, and he picked up.

He came to the door and let me in and led me directly into a conference room.  We never sat, which was bad for me as I was so nervous my legs were shaking.  Still, we exchanged quick pleasantries and got to business.  He flipped through the pages of my portfolio silently, looked at every piece, then went back to the beginning and began his critique.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting a critique.  I was there for work, and so I wasn't fully prepared for what he had to say.  I saw his lips moving, but could hardly hear his words over my heartbeat.  It was not at all what I expected.

Still, he wasn't harsh.  He wasn't mean.  He had some positive things to say.  And he used the piece above to make his main point.  "How good would this piece be, if you actually knew how to paint?" he asked.  "You've got a lot of good ideas in here, but they're completely undone by your inability to do them justice.  Learn to paint...then come back and see me."  He shook my hand, I thanked him, and I headed home.  It was clear that I had a lot of work to do.

It was only after the fact, that I'd heard that during an interview, Steven had encouraged a friend of mine to reconsider his future career as an illustrator.  I believe the line was, "I don't want to tell you to quit, but..." (or so I've heard it told).  I realized that not only had I gotten off easy, but got something valuable out of experience.  Sure, it was the same advice I'd been hearing for a year, but there was also encouragement in there.  If I put my nose to the grindstone, I might just find my work in the pages of the New York Times.

As fortune would have it, I never got to meet with Steven Heller again.  I wasn't making any income and blew through what little I had saved fairly quickly after college.  I was forced to get a temp job, which lead to a full-time job and I never again revisited editorial work with the ability to paint.  Eventually, as you know, I got into fantasy and sci-fi imagery and I never looked back.  Still, a part of me wonders what my editorial work might have become, and I wonder, too, if I would have made it that world.

From the Flat Files 7

No title.  Painted in the last semester of my senior year.  Oil on primed illustration board, measuring 9.25"x14.5".

This was the image on the very first postcard I ever sent out for self-promotion.  Now I look at it and cringe.  On the other hand, I'm encouraged.  This was done twelve years ago, now — almost thirteen — and represents the top of my game at the time.  This was just about the best I could do.

Amazing.

It is a good thing we grow.

I wonder how I'll see my current work in another twelve years.

From the Flat Files 6

"Heart Of Darkness."  Joseph Conrad's book is something I've repeatedly visited over my high school and college years.  In high school, I did a triptych of 24"x36" oil paintings that garnered me an award or two.  If I manage to get back to my high school (where the paintings hang to this day), I will be sure to take a decent picture.  For now, you'll be stuck with this piece which I did during my senior year in college.  Sometime in fall of 1997.  It's in oil on primed illustration board and measures 9.5"x16".  It was done in a few nights.

About this time, I really started to fall in love with a secondary color palette.  To this day, I have a soft spot for orange, green, and violet.  A lot of my love for the color scheme was based on the success I felt I had with this piece and one other (which has since been damaged pretty severely).  I did several more, but found out the hard way that a secondary palette isn't always appropriate for every piece.

If I recall, this was the only piece that was even remotely usable for my portfolio after college that wasn't produced in my last semester or after graduation.  Even so, it wasn't always in my portfolio, which changed greatly depending on who I was showing my work to.  That being said, I didn't get any jobs with the body of work that I'd produced in school or shortly thereafter.  Part of it may have been poor self-promotion, but I really believe that it was mostly because the work wasn't ready.

From the Flat Files 4

Here's pen and ink on bristol paper that measures 7"x12" or so.  Pretty straightforward.  No high concept.  Just Radio City Music Hall's Christmas display, and some of the worst typography I've ever done in my life.

There is a great debate as to when I actually did this piece.  If anyone who knew me back then can fill in the blanks, feel free to do so below, but I believe it may have been sometime during the first semester of my senior year, which would make it a vintage drawing from '97.  But it could have been from as early as the first semester of my junior year.

There's no real story behind it.  I just thought it was topical given that it's Christmas Eve.

From the Flat Files 3

Day three in my attempts to embarrass myself.  How am I doing so far?

For the life of me I cannot think of the assignment.  It's a weird little piece, to be sure.  It was done either at the end of my junior year or the beginning of my senior year at Pratt, which would be 1997.  It measures 11"x14" and is on illustration board.

This piece was the at the beginning of the wave of work that I did when I finally had decided on oil paint as my chosen medium.  I'd done a bunch of work in high school in oils and enjoyed the medium quite a bit.  Then, I went off to college and during my freshman year continued to paint in oils.  However, in my sophomore year, I had a class called "Methods and Media," and my professors for the course were Rebecca Guay and George Pratt (in consecutive semesters).  In this class I was exposed to different techniques using various media.  We worked in acrylics, oils, collage, watercolor, and then mixed many of these media in various techniques.  For some reason, I latched onto the mixed media technique that I used to do the pieces in previous days' entries, and it's the technique I used on the vast majority of projects I did until a point in the second semester of my junior year.

As I recall it, I was assigned a self-portrait by Dave Passalacqua and as a change of pace I chose to do it in oil.  When it was finished, my friend, Jeremy, took a look at the piece and asked, "why don't you do all you're work in oil?  I mean...your work in oil always looks...well it's better."  (Jeremy has always had a way of getting to the point).  I took a long look at the body of work I'd done in mixed media, then looked at the few oil painted projects I'd done, as well as the oil figure paintings I'd done in my painting classes and realized that he was right.

So, I switched to oils.  Permanently.  The really strange thing, though, is that my oil illustrations were really thinly painted to begin with.  A lot of the drawing still showed through.  This is something I had not done before.  I mean, look at it — this one is really unpolished, and this piece and other work I produced like it constantly garnered comments like, "this is a cool piece, it's just a shame you don't know how to paint." 

If I could have, I would have argued with them.  But they were right.  Still, I never gave up.  I'm still illustrating and I'm still using oils, and I think my work is better for it.

From the Flat Files 2

So, another piece from the flat files.  This one was done during my sophomore year at Pratt which spanned 1995-'96.  One of the big stories of the time was the government shutdown.  I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I did this piece for class with that story in mind.  It's 12"x16" and is mixed media (mostly acrylic and colored pencil).  I'm not saying it's brilliant, but I was pretty happy with it at the time.

After my sophomore year, this piece found itself in my parents' basement (along with all my other work), where it suffered from the damp air.  Consequently, it stuck to the back of another piece and was damaged beyond repair.  Physical repair, anyway.  Photoshop to the rescue!

While I'm at it, here's another one I did that's completely unlike what I do today:

The assignment was to do an advertising piece.  I chose Volkswagen.  This decision was made because I had the idea of incorporating a logo into a crop circle before I had decided on a product.  I needed a product with a graphic, circular logo, and Volkswagen came to mind.  This is obviously putting the cart before the horse and is not actually solving the problem.  In fact, it's kind of cheating.  But, I got away with it and decided to share the piece, anyway.  This one is also mixed media (mostly acrylic, ink and colored pencil) on illustration board, and is 14"x16".

The piece was painted during my junior year which spanned from 1996-'97 and was done for Dave Passalacqua, a legend at Pratt.  He and I didn't always get along very well, and he actually gave me a lot of antiquated advice that wasn't relevant to today's market, but I still have to say he taught me quite a bit and inspired many stories that my friends and I still tell to this day.  Sadly, he passed away in '04, but he's one of those guys that I'll never forget.  His voice, which I can still hear in my head, won't let me.

From the Flat Files

These are my flat files.  Flat files are excellent at crushing fingers.  In fact, I think that they excel at doing that that anything else.  A distant second to crushing fingers, flat files are also good at storing art.  While unpacking, I came across a bunch of stuff and decided I'd go ahead and share some of it each day until the end of the year.  So, here goes...

This first piece is a self-portrait I did in August of 1996.  It is mixed media on illustration board and measures 9.25" x 12".  It was done in about two hours (which I think is pretty obvious).  It also comes with a story and a very important lesson.

I was 19, and was just about to begin my junior year at Pratt Institute and had a few spare hours to do something amid my various responsibilities as a new Resident Adviser in Leo J. Pantas Hall.  The dorm's freshman occupants had not yet moved in, so it was serene.  The halls were empty and the only sounds were the birds singing on the branches of the tree just outside my fourth floor window.  I felt inspired, so I grabbed a spare piece of board and painted this.

As I said, it was a pretty quick piece.  At the time, I worked in a sort of mixed media technique that relied heavily on acrylic paint and this piece is no different.  It's done in a far less methodical way than I usually worked, but contained many of the same ingredients: a pen and ink drawing with water soluble dye washes followed by some acrylic paint.  It was quick and dirty, and there was liberal use of a hair dryer.  I finished it, signed it, and set it aside.

Once classes had started, I took it to a professor of mine, George Pratt.  I was pretty happy with how it had turned out and was pretty hopeful that he would be, too.  I arrived at George's class early to find him playing chess with Richard Clark, a friend of his.  George took a look at the painting and immediately critiqued it.  Though I don't recall all he had to say about the piece, I think I can now guess at a lot of the things he pointed out.  He was his usual, constructive but brutally honest self and was nothing, if not thorough.  I took his criticisms in, thought about them, and thanked him for taking the time to look at my "piece of crap" painting.

George immediately jumped on me.  Why, he asked, was I being so hard on my work?  Why would I refer to this painting as a "piece of crap?"

Because it is, I replied.

While I don't remember his words exactly before this point, I remember his next ones verbatim.  "Man," he said, "don't ever refer to your work like that.  Ever.  If you keep calling your work crap, then eventually you'll believe it's crap.  And once that happens then crap is all it'll ever be."

There are a variety of reasons why I have kept certain pieces over the years, while allowing others to be lost, destroyed, given away, or thrown out.  This piece I keep because of George's words.  Words that have gotten me through some tough times.  This piece is a constant reminder to never give up on myself, and to believe in what I do — two things without which I would be nowhere.

What A Downer

Another piece I did back in college.  I'm thinking it was either my sophomore or junior year, but I'm not sure.  So, that translates to sometime between 1995 and '97.  It's acrylic.  It's also loose.  Well, a lot looser than I paint nowadays.  I don't remember the assignment, so I'm afraid there's not much to go on.

I got nothing on this one.

One of the few things I can tell you about my college work overall, which is also true of this piece, is that it was large.  The vast majority of my professional work is somewhere between 9 inches by 12 inches and 16 inches by 20 inches.  My college work tended to be at least 18 x 24, often going as large as 2 x 3 feet.

So, what about this piece in particular?  Well, like a lot of my college work, it's got some real problems.  The value structure bothers me (it goes dark awful fast in shadows), and the dark creases between the fingers is distracting.  The lighting is inconsistent between the hand/head and the rest of the body.  There's no real flow, nor composition to speak of.  It's just a guy with a thumbs-down for a head.

Even so, there's something about the piece I like.  Perhaps it's the color.  Perhaps the mood.  Perhaps it's the confidence in the paint handling.  I honestly don't know.  One thing is for sure, though: it gives you a pretty good idea of what I was like in college!

Patterns In Prison

I'm working on a bunch of articles with a bit more substance, but in the meantime, here's something I did in college.

This is a piece I did in my Sophomore year at Pratt Institute.  That would have been 1996 or 1997.  The professor would have been either Rudy Gutierrez or Don Albright, though I think it was Don.  The assignment was to illustrate a story about inmates who had started making clothing in prison.  I don't remember if the clothing was haute couture or not, but I certainly addressed it as though it wasn't.  In case you're wondering the piece depicts sewing patterns hanging out in a dingy cell.

This was done during an almost two year phase during which I abandoned oils almost completely and used mixed media.  This piece started with Dr. Ph. Martin's Water Soluble Inks on top of a pencil drawing.  I then did a layer of pen and ink, followed by some acrylic paint, capped off with a bit of colored pencil.  Between each layer of the various media, a coating of acrylic matte medium was applied, followed by a coating of Krylon Crystal Clear acrylic spray.

I think I went a little overboard with the toothbrush spatter.