Inky Print

++-----------------On Beginnings---------------- My Mom used to say that I was born with a pencil in my hand. This is not true. I remember exactly when I picked up a pencil. It was the first grade. And noticed an older kid kid was drawing pictures in his Trapper-Keeper. They were wonderful pictures of ray-guns and space ships. I was so taken with them that one day I gave him my lunch money for two th I took home after school wanting to copy them and draw them too. But when I began to copy the ray-gun and space ship, I realized I could draw them better than the big kid could. I could draw them more detailed, more interesting. It was then, at that moment, I became an artist,... and never looked back. -------------On Being a Butterfly------------------ When I decided to quite my day job and paint full-time, I read that the art market did not care much for butterflies; artists who flit from medium to medium, subject to subject. Unfortunately, that is me. I love to use pencil or pen, or color wicks ( or markers). I love to paint In pastel or watercolor. Each speaks differently to me. I am less enthused about acrylics and oils. They are necessary for art though not as much fun. Of all the "real" (not digital) mediums the one I most like, and the one I found to be the most challenging to learn, is Sumi art, the art of ink painting. In technique it is probably more drawing than painting, yet the careful manipulation of the brush is so much more estheticly pleasing the dab-dab-dab product of Western brush technique. I still have rolls and rolls of news print where I practiced painting tiny brush stroke circles; much like learning to play the piano. --Considering the market. my practice rolls are probably worth as much as my real art, Or is that being too cynical? Much of my recent output is in digital media::::; Photoshop, Illustrator -- two very different graphics platforms from Adobe, and Sketchbook, a marvelous product designed for use on a tablet. I think we're just beginning to explore the range of digital art. It is as far in advance over oil painting as a Rembrandt is over some Neanderthal scratching on a cave wall. -----------------On Marketing -------------------- I had a great gig almost twenty years ago, I was a court artist (court cartoonist?) for a local newspaper, The Independent, I covered a celebrity murder trial here in Durham. For almost nine months I sat drawing every day in the courtroom.