ARe wE craZy enOUgh Yet?

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artist as brand, artwork, childrens books, digital media, digital painting, illustration, levinland, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio

Getting work as an illustrator is an art in itself. I read this article today “Majority of illustrators don’t earn enough to live from, new survey shows” http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/creative-business/majority-of-illustrators-dont-earn-enough-live-from-new-survey-shows/

I realized this fact for myself back in the early 80’s when I made the switch to being an art director, all the while creating art for my job and my own pleasure. This went on for 2 decades until I left my job as Senior Creative Director and art department head at Warner Bros Syndicated TV. I banked enough money to pursue my goal of being an illustrator. However it still is not an easy task. I continue to struggle with this daily. Along the way I bought, renovated and sold homes in Los Angeles which ultimately led to becoming a real estate agent…albeit a creative one which now supports my artistic endeavors and frees me up to explore art and illustration deeply.

What I’ve come to terms with is there are very few illustrators who can support themselves on art alone, and there’s nothing bad about that. In fact it may even help them become more rounded as a business person and more social.

 

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1950's, 1960's, artist as brand, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, Norman Rockwell

Sometimes you come across information that stops you in your tracks. Such it is with this story about Mac Conner. He is one of the pillars of the modern world of illustration and deserves to be recognized. Here’s some video and a story from Newsworks.

McCauley “Mac” Conner worked as an illustrator during Madison Avenue’s 1950’s heyday, drawing pictures for both advertising and book covers from to romance and crime fiction.

If you’re familiar with HBO’s depiction of the world of advertising ‘Mad Men,’ then you know the era and culture Conner worked in. “Mac Conner was an original mad man in the sense that he worked in advertising and also in illustrations for magazine fiction,” said Mary Holahan, curator of illustration for the Delaware Art Museum.

But don’t call Mac Conner a commercial artist though. “I never liked the word commercial art, I was an illustrator.”

He always drew for a commercial, realist point of view. “My point of view was the way I lived, I never went in for crazy hats and stuff.”

Norman Rockwell was a big influence on his work. “Inspired by his sense of humor and plus his painting of course, he was a great painter.”

Like Rockwell, Mac even landed his work on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. But his work goes far and beyond that milestone.

The exhibit on display in Wilmington covers not just his advertising work, but also his fiction work. The work itself has an almost photographic quality to it. My favorite works were the crime noir illustrations. From the colors to the composition of the pieces these works really jumped out at me.

In fact, color was one of Mac’s trademarks. “Colors are probably the things that attract people the most. It’s very dramatic, it was an important part of his design sense,” Holahan said.

Even more than the color for me was some of the things depicted in the illustrations, gunshots, blood trickling out of a wound, smoking. Yes smoking! Remember the days of flipping through a magazine and seeing people smoking? It was everywhere, billboards and television commercials, even TV shows. It was almost jarring to see the smoking in Mac’s work as I hadn’t seen it in that context since I was a boy.

If you are of a certain age you will definitely get that sense of nostalgia from Mac’s work, but they don’t seem dated. “When we look at them now, we recognize they are from another period, but the color and the composition and all the design elements comprise works of art that speak to us today,” Holahan said.

Wilmington, Delaware is of course the home of illustration through the work of Howard Pyle and his school atteneded by famous students like Frank Schoonover and N.C. Wyeth as well as others. That’s a big reason why the museum feels it is important to host an exhibit like this. “There are compelling reasons for people to value this work because its beautiful but also because its part of a historic tradition,” Holahan said.

This exhibit also afforded me the pleasure of getting to talk to Mac about his work and life. “Certainly its the first experience that I’ve had with an artist of this age whose looking back at work that he did such a long time ago,” Mary said.

For Mac, it’s a joy to see his work front and center for a new generation to view, “Its good to know its still around, it’s good for the ego of course.”

“I look around and see what you’ve accomplished over the years. I can’t even draw a line now, I can’t even draw a line and I look at this stuff and I say how the hell did that guy do it.”

I don’t know how Mac made this body of wonderful and beautiful work, I’m just glad he did, and that I got to experience it with him, if only for a little while.

Are These Sands Crabs, Insects or Creatures From Outer Space: Does It Matter?

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beach, crabs, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, levinland, sand crabs

This painting is from a children’s book without a home yet. It’s called Emma and Digger. It started out as a sand crab adventure story, yet I fear that since Emma and Digger don’t exactly look like sand crabs that perhaps they should just be little beach creatures and call it a day. I’ve gotten feedback that these are insects or sand crabs don’t look like that.

If you’re working on your own projects I’m sure this has happened to you. You get excited about the work and suddenly after the fact you realize you’ve done something that doesn’t make sense…or does it?

I think sometimes people cannot let go of what their perceptions are to see the bigger picture. Here it’s about losing family and friends and creating your own life and completing the cycle. Not about whether Emma and Digger are sand crabs, insects or from outer space. Thoughts??

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architecture, artist as brand, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio, zaha hadid

For those of you who don’t know Zaha’s work here is a reprint from Arch Daily. What is especially relevant to us as artists is how she started building her ideas in architectural masterpieces. The process is one of discovery which is relevant any form of artwork. What we do at the highest level is not paint-by-numbers, it is exploring the possibilities from all angles…literally and figuratively. I’ve found that the most I explore my tools and my ideas the stronger they become. I encourage you to do the same. Read about Zaha and strive to be great!

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid, DBE, RA (Arabic: زها حديد‎‎ Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-born British architect. She was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. She received the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

+11

A year after her untimely passing, we take a look back on one of the hallmarks of Zaha Hadid’s career as an architect: her sketches. In October we wrote about how her paintings influenced her architecture. Now, we examine her most emblematic sketches and the part they played in the initial formal exploration of her design process.

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Terminus Multimodal Hoenheim Nord1 2001. Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

 

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Phaeno Science Centre 2005. Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

 

Drawings, whether done by hand or digitally, are the result of a personal, intimate process of thinking through a project and setting a path for the general development of the design. Possessing different characteristics and intensities, each sketch is a reflection of the author’s thoughts–acting as both a kind of signature and the theoretical seed of a larger process. Some architects use sketches to define details and create their design from that starting point, some use the drawing itself to determine the form of a project, and other architects draw the context in order to imagine the specific location of their project.

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Rosenthal Center for Contempoary Art 2003 . Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

 

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Rosenthal Center for Contempoary Art 2003 . Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

 

Zaha’s exceptional, unique sketches don’t have much to do with concrete visions of what a project will eventually be. On the contrary, her drawings are profoundly influenced by her admiration for artistic abstraction. The beauty lies in the formal liberty that Hadid mines as she approaches what will eventually become her buildings. The drawings depict formal exercises, spatial conceptualizations, compositions, construction systems, structures, or contextual relationships (among other things). They are an invitation to use the liberty gifted to us by the act of drawing.

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Phaeno Science Centre 2005. Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

 

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This Week In The Arts: The Archives

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artist as brand, illustrators journal, levinland, social media, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio

As we go through our “archive spring cleaning we wanted to highlight some of our more interesting interviews. The PodCast will be a regular feature on our site moving forward with interviews and views that will entertain and enlighten.


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Give Up? No Way!!

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artwork, illustrators journal, levinland, Maya Angelou, Obama, perseverance, Sisyphus, Thomas Carlyle

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun

1. steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

   “his perseverance with the technique illustrates his single-mindedness”

   synonyms:

   persistence, tenacity, determination, staying power, indefatigability, steadfastness, purposefulness;

   The word for the day is Perseverance. Who said this would be easy? It’s not. I’ve talked to enough successful illustrators and artists to know they too have their trials and tribulations.

   What they do have that you may not is the will to continue despite all odds. They know that success, however you see it, is obtained by contsnace and vigil work habits. No matter what the outcome. If you have a goal and you focus and work towards that goal you will get there.

   Here are some great quotes from successful people who know what it’s like to persevere

   Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

   Thomas Carlyle

   You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

   Maya Angelou

   Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

   Calvin Coolidge

   Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

   Jacob A. Riis

   It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

   Albert Einstein

   I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

   Og Mandino

   Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

   Barack Obama

   When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

   Harriet Beecher Stowe

My Phone Call With A Giant!

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artist as brand, digital media, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrators journal, Kinuko Y Craft, levinland, Mark Stamaty, Molly Crabtree, social media

Illustration by Kinuko Y. Craft for an article in Playboy Magazine, December of 1981 or 1982 “Liberty and Justice”

There are very few times in life you get a chance to talk with a giant in your field of endeavor. The other night I got to do just that, I spoke with Kinuko Y. Craft, master illustrator and one of the few females to regularly get published in Playboy magazine during it’s heyday. Her work has also appeared in and on the cover of many magazines and in numerous picture books. Awards for her work are too numerous to name however it bears mentioning that she was voted in the NY Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2008. And this quote by famed writer Ray Bradbury sums it up “Kinuko Craft is a Renaissance woman. By this I mean not that she paints like the Renaissance painters, but that she is an artist for all seasons, for all kinds of subjects, and in all kinds of styles. If you will survey her works, you will find little duplication in form, color or texture. She fits herself to her subject with charming ease and yet leaves herself free to remain herself. There is an air about all of her illustrations of one who is a true connoisseur of art, wide-ranging through all the countries of the world. One cannot help but think how delightful it would be to walk into gallery of her kaleidoscopic talents.”

The other night I was walking my dogs to the park and my phone rang. I picked it up and this girlish voice with a slight accent starts talking, introducing herself as Kinuko Craft. I was dumbfounded. We started our conversation and she told me she’d be happy to give me an interview for the upcoming issue of the Illustrators Journal. We spoke for about 10 minutes while my dogs did their business occasionally staring at me wondering why I wasn’t paying attention to them. How could I explain the joy I was having connecting with one of the illustration goddesses I admired. After a few minutes I told Kinuko I’d love to call her back and that my dogs were getting restless so I should pay attention to them. She laughed and told me how much she loved her dog and she understood.

Later that night I called her back and we had a delightful conversation for an hour and a half. The contents of that talk will appear in the next Journal coming out in April, so please come back and visit us, because we’re gonna start rockin n’ rollin’ with all sorts of great interviews and articles.

 

Next up…Political cartoonist Mark Stamaty whose work has appeared in too many magazines and publications to count especially his cover art for the Village Voice. We are also expecting original work done for us by Millenial superstar artist Molly Crabtree!

Nothing Is New: So Steal If You Want?

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abstract art, artist as brand, drawing, levinland, nude sketch, nudes, sketching

Inspired or Copying?

 

This is a question I’ve been asking myself since I started creating artwork. Sure it’s ok to use Leonardo or Daumier as an inspiration and use the same setup or lighting as one of their paintings. They are in the public domain and not many are familiar with all famous artists work. But what of contemporary artists copying or being inspired by others. I believe if you change the setting elements and the figures depicted are different enough even in the same pose you should be safe. But, and this is  BIG BUT… If you’re too close to the pose and character depiction you could be seen as copying or infringing on another artist’s copyright.

Ok so that being said, I’ve designed hundred’s of film posters in my career and a few concepts and layouts have been copied albeit it with different stars and elements. None were ever challenged for their legitimacy. 

Picasso said “good artists copy, great artists steal”. Many artists make a superlative living by simply “tweaking” other  artists’ works. That’s what Picasso means – by “copying”.

However, a great artist will drink in all that other  artists have done and  do. They will absorb  it, and learn from it and  use it to stimulate their own creativity. They will “steal it”,which means that just like a robber, they will take possession of it, even though  they know it is not theirs.   And then they will transform it, through the creative alchemy of their  creative process, into something fresh and new, something that belongs to them.

Hints of the original owner, of the source may remain – after  all, nothing in art is completely new  –  but it will be clear  that this is a  unique work, standing on its own.

I say fly close to the sun like “Icarus” if you must,…

but be careful your wings may melt.

 

 

 

 

 

Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe Takes No Prisoners!

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British cartoonist, Donald Trump, Gerald Scarfe, illustration, illustrator, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, marijuana, satire

There’s really nothing I can say about Gerald that can match his work. It speaks for itself. He’s prolific, original and unafraid to show his visual opinions. His recent prints of Donald Trump are brilliant and without any apologies. He tells like it is and as he’s been doing for decades.

 

About Gerald Scarfe

Gerald Scarfe was born in London. After a brief period at the Royal College of Art in London, he established himself as a satirical cartoonist, working for Punch magazine and Private Eye during the early sixties, and in 1967 he began a long association with the Sunday Times as their political cartoonist, also carrying out reportage assignments in Vietnam, the Middle East, India and Northern Ireland.

TV & Film Work

Gerald’s film work includes Walt Disney’s Hercules, and he designed and directed the animation sequences for the film of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as well as the live concerts. He recently collaborated with Roger Waters once again, for the new live tour of The Wall. On television Gerald created the opening title sequences for the classic comedy series, Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.

He has written, directed and appeared in many live action and documentary films for the BBC and Channel 4 and has published a number of books of his work.

Political Cartoons

Gerald Scarfe has now been political cartoonist for the London Sunday Times for 44 years, and has also worked for The New Yorker magazine for 21 years. His work regularly appears in many periodicals in the UK and worldwide.

Gerald Scarfe was made a CBE in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours. He has also received Honorary Degrees from the University of Dundee and University of Kent, is an Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee and an Honorary Fellow of the London Institute.  He has been a member of the Royal Designers for Industry since 1989. Gerald Scarfe regularly gives illustrated talks about his life and work in the UK and around the world.

Millenials Like Their Comics, Graphic Novels and Gaming

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comic books, digital painting, Donald Trump, graphic novel, illustration, innovation, levinland, millenials, superman

Now that I have your attention I’ll admit that this photo I took has nothing to do with whether Millenials are hooked on Comics or Graphic Novels.  However, it is in line with what captures their eyes and appeals to their “hit me with your best shot” sensibility.

The explosion of imagery in our society in the last 25 years via internet and mass media has made it difficult to capture the interest of anyone without assaulting their senses. Colorful, disturbing and fantastical art or photography is king.

Perhaps it’s always been this way and only now with access to seemingly everything from around the world at lightening speed we are seeing things that were only available to those who scoured libraries, museums or newsstands.

This is the world Millenials have grown up in. This is normal. Is it any different for Boomers who grew up hooked on TV, who see the role as if it’s a TV series unfolding before there eyes. Perhaps this is the reason Donald Trump is so appealing. He’s reality star who has cast himself in the biggest reality series now on TV, The Presidential Election!

So, is Millenial fascination with with popular culture pastimes a problem or merely part of the progression of our society? As an artist I think anyone who spends part of their time reading comics, graphic novels or playing X-Box is healthy as long as their time is balanced out between this activity and the rest of life. If they’re sitting in front of a computer screen dressed in pajamas all day and eating Cheetos™ by the handful then perhaps they have a problem.

Below is an article that gives insight into Millenial behavior when it comes to popular culture…

Saul DeGrew (Mother Jones) surveys the various complaints people have about the Millennial generation. Here’s one:

Another part of the Millennial complaint brigade is complaining about how they are still into videogames, comic books, and other activities from their childhood….I admit that I find this aspect of the Millennials staying Kids debate to be a bit troublesome but that is probably my own snobbery and cultural elitism coming in more than anything else. I don’t quite understand how explosion and bang wow movies are still big among a good chunk of the over-30 set.

Forget videogames: that’s a huge industry that spans all generations these days. Their popularity says nothing about arrested adulthood. But I was curious: just how many Millennials are still reading comic books? Not just “interested” in comics or willing to see the latest X-Men movie. DeGrew may not like “bang wow” movies, but they’ve been a pretty standard part of Hollywood’s product mix forever, and the current fad for superhero bang wow movies doesn’t say much of anything about Millennial culture in particular.

So: how many actual readers of comic books are there among Millennials? I don’t know, but here’s a guess:

1. Diamond Comic Distributors sold about 84 million comics in 2013. Diamond is damn near a monopoly, but it’s not a total monopoly, and that number is only for the top 300 titles anyway. So let’s round up to 100 million.
2. That’s about 8 million per month. Some comic fans buy two or three titles a month, others buy 20 or 30. A horseback guess suggests that the average fan buys 5-10 per month.
3. That’s maybe 1.5 million regular fans, give or take. If we figure that two-thirds are Millennials, that’s a million readers.
4. The total size of the Millennial generation is 70 million. But let’s be generous and assume that no one cares if teenagers and college kids are still reading comics. Counting only those over 22, the adult Millennial population is about 48 million.
5. So that means about 2 percent of adult Millennials are regular comic book readers. (If you just browse through your roomie’s stash sporadically without actually buying comics, you don’t count.)

I dunno. I’d say that 2 percent really isn’t much. Sure, superheroes pervade popular culture in a way they haven’t before, though they’ve always been popular. Adults watched Superman on TV in the 50s, Batman on TV in 60s, and Superman again on the big screen in the 80s. But the rise of superhero movies in the 90s and aughts has as much to do with the evolution of special effects as with superheroes themselves. Older productions couldn’t help but look cheesy. Modern movies actually make superheroes look believable. Science fiction movies have benefited in the same way.

In any case, superheroes may be a cultural phenomenon of the moment—just ask anyone who tries to brave the San Diego Comic-Con these days—but even if you accept the argument that reading comics is ipso facto a marker of delayed adulthood¹, the actual number of Millennials who do this is pretty small. So chill out on the comics, Millennial haters.