My work as an illustrator has taken the form of corporate work, freelance commissions and teaching the subject. The current situations are disruptive but I am still able to solve visual problems for others as a service, while at the same time I am reminded that it is still my creativity and I have to also consume the culture I make for others. My work within the graduate program has made me increasingly sensitive to this. The previous distinction of work for others and work for myself is less and less meaningful or apparent.
1. Fish
The image of the fish to the right was made as an in-class demo for the digital illustration course that I teach. The program I used is called Alchemy, and is intended for digital sketching. It is freely available, and was part of a selection of resources I presented to help continuing work at home. Some students now aren’t able to access Photoshop nor other provided resources through campus, and I didn’t want to end the semester without giving them something tangible to take with them. I tried to model behavior to demonstrate resilience and introspection, and to normalize whatever anxieties they might be feeling. This particular fish was meant to be done in a light-hearted “Dr.Seuss” manner with primary colors, but ended up looked ragged and shell-shocked. It was made during an online session of class, with the students also working making their own things as studio time, pausing for questions or help with software or technique and also sporadic moments of levity and relief. These moments of coming together around art became mutually therapeutic, and itself an instruction.
2. Survivor
I also encouraged students in the sophomore illustration course on the importance to stay connected with creative community as they can, even while personally struggling with this. I tried to model this behavior by pointing them to my blogs and encouraging those already doing to so present this. As an early demonstration in the digital class, I made a small set of constructed faces (shown at right), starting from random ovals and making arbitrary choices about where the features go. The portraits eventually became more specific, but the point was to show how pixels can support pencil work and that not everything has to start on a screen. Then as students were working on their own in class, and with those faces looking back at me I wondered who they were, how might they get along, how might they survive a terrible shared fate?
This evoked references to ensemble casts, crews, unified purpose and so on. I standardized them into a uniform, implying a nominal common cause. It made me think of Star Trek and the noble ideals contained in that often problematic but just as often humanist work. I couldn’t find answers myself, so I generated situations and asked social media: who would survive?
After a week of voting on their fate (itself a charged activity), I ranked the responses from least to most and intended to illustrate the outcomes, depicting the doom of each character until the last who survives. There is some humor and absurdity to the situations, levity is indispensable
I decided to base each composition on a different Suprematist painting by Kasimir Malevich, starting with this one. I finished the first image (shown at right), began the second, and then realized how dismal the subject matter is; not hopeful, not useful, and in fact actively detrimental – I wanted them all to survive. Not only that, this was done in view of community (and as a teacher(!)), and I didn’t want to make an aesthetic of calamity that others would have to consume. All of this was discussed with my students and we tried to find insight together. It is important to give voice to how you are feeling, it is important to have it acknowledged by those that matter, but it is also important to do no harm. I have the rest of images planned, and may return to them when the dust settles. It’s all too brittle right now.
3. Ironclaw
Most recently another illustration opportunity presented itself. The tabletop roleplaying game Ironclaw have commissioned some promotional images from me, along with the possibility of more interior illustrations for an upcoming book that expands the game. The premise is quite fictional, and initially centered in vaguely medieval European imagery, though over the years they have branched out from that considerably. I have done lots of work for them previously. This most recent expansion is based around 17th century pirates, which immediately sets of many alarms. As pirates in popular culture overwhelmingly derive not from history, but very specifically N.C. Wyeth’s formative illustrations of Treasure Island (1911) and all the pulp literature afterwards.
In discussion with the publisher I expressed my concerns and curiosity about their goals and found that it was early enough in the project to still be negotiated. I’m not the only artist involved, and I was shown in-progress images from other illustrators that fulfill every expectation of cliche. I have developed enough rapport with the publisher to suggest other concepts that make more sense to me personally while still satisfying their needs. The resulting images are in-progress and are depictions of uprising, defiance of abusive authority, perseverance through joyful community, and family. I think there is still the undercurrent of dread that I cannot help but experience these days, but I am actively making use of such anxiety to “punch up” and make space for the good things too. I am not interested in contributing to more toxic culture of power fantasy, and this is an opportunity to try managing my own sensibilities in a way that still allows me to produce for others.
