Title: Study of Daenerys Targaryen
Year: 2012
Medium: Digital
Size: 8.5″ x 11″
Notes: This is a study of Daenerys Targaryen I worked on from a still frame of the final scene of HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 1. In this scene rises from the funeral pier cradling three newly hatched dragons.  I chose this to study this shot in order to practice my digital painting skills – particularly rendering form and texture – and because I hadn’t yet painted a dragon.

I started with a lineart sketch with the scratchboard pen, then rendered the forms with dull conte, worn oil pastel, and a touch of digital airbursh with generous blending – all in Corel Painter.  Working in greyscale first helps me concentrate on getting the lighting and forms right before I introduce color.  I took some small liberties with the design and adjusted the lighting slightly in order to make Daenerys and her dragon read better.

Title: Self Portrait
Year: 2011
Medium: Digital
Size: 8.5″ x 14″
Notes: This piece was an exercise applying new techniques I recently learned for digital painting, in particular when applied to portraits.  I thought it would be wise to try this out on a portrait of myself before applying it to a family member, friend, or client.  In the end it was a wonderful opportunity to experiment with brushes I hadn’t used before and learn to create digital portraits more efficiently.  I was also surprised by much of what I’ve learned from traditional oil painting worked for the digital medium – it really goes to show how interconnected the disciplines of art are!

I’ve also included the draft sketch as a before-and-after glimpse at my process.  It also served as the first layer of the painting.  Big thanks to my friends and fellow classmates, especially Ideation: AAU’s Production Art Community, for their excellent feedback to help kick this up a notch!

1. A-level work can be published in industry; so if you are consistently getting A’s then should be out working instead of taking out loans for school. Most students get C’s at AAU, with a few stars getting the infrequent A-. So feel good about getting high C’s and low B’s, especially before midterm.  Grades are no more or less than feedback on your work.  No one will care what your GPA was in school, they will care about your portfolio.  However, aim for A-level work so that you will have a professional portfolio.
2. Related to No. 1: If you are offered a job while in school, take it! The goal is to get work, not necessarily to get your degree.  The timing might not be right when you graduate; in fact, it probably won’t because you’ll be competing with other graduates at the same time.  You can always return to school and finish your degree if you so wish, or even receive educational reimbursements from your employer if you want to continue studying while working.
3. Almost everyone in school is great at something and weak in other things. I’ve realize that compared to other beginning students I have more experience rendering texture and painting digitally; I also have an intuitive knack for picking colors. But while I can copy a figure given enough time, I have trouble imagining the human body in other positions or from different points of view, or capturing gestures quickly, or simplifying and stylizing it for animation, or foreshortening it.  Once I have that down, I won’t need to learn much about how to “wrap it” in shade or color.  If you’ve been admitted into an MFA program, you have something to offer and something to gain from school.
4. Attitude is critical.  Remember the tortoise and the hare parable, “slow and steady wins the race”.  There are a number of experienced students, but some of them are complacent and others are resistant to trying out new things. However, with an excellent attitude towards learning, you can rise head and shoulders above other students with time, dedication, and practice. That’s the same attitude needed to get work in industry and to be the very best at the tasks you’re assigned.  The artists with that attitude are the ones who are promoted, not the ones who are envious of senior artists on the team.
5. A lot of students resist learning certain techniques, styles, or subjects because they think they won’t use them later on. In my character design class  we’re learning to become “style chameleons” during the first half of the semester and “building our design vocabulary”. Many students want to stay in their comfort zones and draw in their own style, but that will kill the career of a new artist in industry.  Learning to draw in different styles is a survival skill. If hired by a company (say, Disney or Lucas Arts) you would have to draw in the style of the particular project you’re assigned. Everything you learn adds to you “Batman’s belt” – your set of tools available for every occasion.  Never stop learning.  Keep your tools sharp.  For more on this, read Dresden Codak’s article on Draftsmanship: Increasing Your Visual Vocabulary.
6. Is it better to generalize and be able to do many different things, or to specialize and rock at one thing?  In other words: “is it better to become a swiss army knife or a scalpel?”  The answer: ideally you should become a swiss army knife with a scalpel attached.  Be a rock star at one task and then be able to do many different tasks for a project as well.  That is the best way to get yourself established in the industry and to keep yourself employed.

Aside from free resources like Escape from Illustration Island, and catch-as-can advice from communities like conceptart.org, it can be difficult to gain the insight a professional artist needs when beginning her career.  Schools don’t usually teach the business side of freelancing or working for a company, managing one’s time, or how to protect one’s work, let alone how to develop one’s own style and keep it fresh.  But the focus that the Academy of Art University has on becoming not only a skilled artist, but a professional industry-ready artist, is a major reason why I joined its program.

Bill Maughan, the head of the Graduate Illustration School at AAU, was generous with his time and attention – staying twice as long as he was scheduled to answer our questions - at Graduate Orientation.  Bill (I feel a little irreverent using his first name, but that’s the convention at school), Bill has been illustrating long before I was born; to say that he knows what he’s talking about is a grand understatement.  He is a modern master of Illustration and Fine Art:

A professional illustrator and fine artist, Mr. Maughan received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Illustration from the Art Center College of Design. He has provided numerous illustrations for such companies as DreamWorks, Woman’s Day, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, CBS, Universal Studios, Wells Fargo Bank, Chevrolet, GMC, Franklin Library, New American Library, Avon Books, Pinnacle Books, Signet Books, Tor Books, Doubleday, Harcourt Brace, Knopf, Oxford University Press, Danbury Mint, Fenwick and others. Since the early ’80s Mr. Maughan’s work, both originals and prints, has been represented by major galleries and publishers, domestically and internationally. His works of art are included in private, commercial and museum collections. Mr. Maughan’s book, The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head, was published in 2004 by Watson/Guptill.

When he’s not teaching Academy students the fundamentals — realism-based drawing, design concepts, value, form, color and composition — he paints in his studio in the mountains of Utah.

Many aspiring professionals want to ask what those who have established themselves wish they’d known before they started.  The following are key points from his lecture and Q and A with us:

• Get an agent. Having someone else to wrangle commissions, contracts, and handle all things legal for you will free you up to do your art.
• Keep your style flexible. It can quickly become dated if you stagnate.
• But don’t copy someone else who is alive! Not only can you get in trouble, but others will think your work belongs to the older (more established) artist.
• If you can’t develop your own style, copy someone who is dead. It’s also perfectly fair to copy a master’s color pallet and create new content with it.  This is a great way to learn color theory.
• The best way to develop your style and keep it fresh is to keep learning. Learn to use new mediums, about new trends, explore different subjects, etc.
• Illustrating commercially is like giving birth. It’s painful, but afterwards you forget the pain and love every one of your projects like your own children. Bill prefers to switch between illustration projects and his fine art painting, the subjects of which are his own choice.
• Retain copyrights to your work.
• This way, if you sell a copy of your art to, say, Wells Fargo (like he did) for one type of use, you can be paid again when they want to use it in a different way.
• It’s hard to prevent theft in this age of the Internet, and people must pay to use your work, but having an agent to handle when your art is stolen will preserve your time.

I hope Bill’s advice, distilled into these key points, will be as useful to you as it is to me.

If you are an established artist, what kind are you and what do you wish you’d known when you started out?  If you are just starting out, what do you want to know in order to prepare yourself for industry or freelance work?  If you aren’t an artist, what are you curious about when it comes to the business of being an artist?

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011: New Graduate Student Orientation

Orientation was a required event for all of the new graduate students. We were there to meet the president and vice president of the Academy of Art University, our admissions representatives, and heads of our respective schools. I’ve quickly learned that AAU is very focused on creating professionals ready to enter the industry by graduation. And an event like this was a perfect opportunity to network and meet any and all of the new graduate students in one place.  I approached it like a trade conference.

At Reed College, I quickly realized that the most interesting kids in school went there and places like it. I could spend hours talking excitedly (or ‘geeking out’ if you prefer) with any student there. At AAU, I have the impression that the most creative and driven aspiring artists go there. Same dedication, same ambition, same intrinsic motivation to learn and grow. Just my kind of people, but with a different focus.

I’m not the type to briefly exchange names and cards with as many people as I can in the time allotted. That may work for some people, and I’ll grant, it generates a lot of contacts. But I’m more comfortable with meeting 3-4 people at an event like this, talking in depth for about 20 minutes each if I can (or in a group if they know each other), and try to form lasting connections with them. These could be my collaborators or colleagues in the future, perhaps near-future if we combine forces in school.  Hopefully we’d be ambitious enough to publish our own books or found our own companies.  Such things have happened in AAU and schools like it.

I don’t know why people get nervous about meeting each other at an event like this. Ok, well, maybe I do because I used to be painfully shy too. I had a very negative inner monologue right up until I was settled at Reed. And maybe it does echo into my consciousness from time to time, particularly when I’m out of my element. But in reality, people want to meet each other. They are silently screaming, ‘Talk to me, please! I don’t know anyone!’ I know because that’s what I’ve thought. So I just dive in. Ask questions. Be like a reporter and interview people. People love to talk about themselves, so I give them the excuse, and my card. I love listening to them, especially when I find we’re obsessed about the same things.

After the meet & greet, I went with two new friends up to the welcome lecture. The highlight there was the spring show reel of the work that previous Masters in Fine Art (MFA) students have created. Some of their work was quite impressive.  The video ended with the promise that we would create art like that. Many of us swore we would create art at that caliber. Yet some of us feared, deep inside, that there had been a mistake. We feared we weren’t qualified and didn’t have the talent.

Fear is perfectly healthy at the beginning of a long transformation such as this. It prevents one from being arrogant, complacent, and closed to new ideas. After-all, to understand is to stand under a concept for a while. But that fear isn’t completely warranted. Yes, there are schools out there that just want funding and will take (and pass) anyone.  I’ve heard the horror stories.  A school like this one, however, has a good reputation for working its students hard, challenge them, and pushing them out of their comfort zones. And a school like AAU reviews admission application portfolios for a reason – to find the potential in them.

Next we split into our respective schools. Those like me in the Illustration School convened with Bill Maughan, the Director of Graduate Illustration. I was a little tongue-tied meeting him, and this is why:

A professional illustrator and fine artist, Mr. Maughan received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Illustration from the Art Center College of Design. He has provided numerous illustrations for such companies as DreamWorks, Woman’s Day, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, CBS, Universal Studios, Wells Fargo Bank, Chevrolet, GMC, Franklin Library, New American Library, Avon Books, Pinnacle Books, Signet Books, Tor Books, Doubleday, Harcourt Brace, Knopf, Oxford University Press, Danbury Mint, Fenwick and others. Since the early ’80s Mr. Maughan’s work, both originals and prints, has been represented by major galleries and publishers, domestically and internationally. His works of art are included in private, commercial and museum collections. Mr. Maughan’s book, The Artist’s Complete Guide to Drawing the Head, was published in 2004 by Watson/Guptill.

When he’s not teaching Academy students the fundamentals — realism-based drawing, design concepts, value, form, color and composition — he paints in his studio in the mountains of Utah.

Bill (I feel a little irreverent using his first name, but that’s the convention at school), Bill has been illustrating long before I was born; to say that he knows what he’s talking about is a grand understatement.

Bill Maughan took the time to advise us at the beginning of our careers with AAU and after.   He also reviewed what the midpoint reviews and final theses will entail for each focus (or track).  Mine is the Concept Art track with a focus on games.

Midpoint review will involve a few of our best examples from each of the classes we’ll be taking (or new pieces in the subjects those classes covered, they don’t need to have been presented in class – I might be better at head drawing long after finishing that class for example). This is also when I’ll pitch my final thesis project in a written proposal.

The Final thesis for Concept Art will involve a entire ‘pitch’ for a film or game. Thumbnails, three character designs (only one can be human), a turnaround, a painted background environment, and the layout design of a room from several angles.

Yeah, kinda frightening! But this is also the master who saw our portfolios and essays in our applications and believes we have potential.

So while, even as I write, my stomach is twisted in knots at what is ahead, I have faith that the school knows what it’s doing and would have turned me down if I couldn’t succeed. I just have to apply myself and work very, very hard.

When I was an undergraduate at Reed College I studied the history and literature of renaissance and mediaeval Europe on the side while earning my BA in Psychology.  I realized then how the mediaeval system of turning an apprentice into a master is a near perfect analogy for the transformation of any layman into a specialist through our modern educational system.

Brief Historical Context

In the mediaeval, renaissance, and enlightenment eras (before industrialization) skill-based and intellectual professions were acquired by apprenticeship.  A master took on apprentices and would teach them the craft and provide room and board in exchange for their labor.  Sometimes families paid the master for their children’s apprenticeship if there was enough demand for it.

Sometimes children of nobility, gentry, or the very upper-middle class would receive tutoring or attend grammar school in language, history, arts, and the like not to become masters themselves but to become well-rounded — also in exchange for pay.  William Shakespeare serves as an example of an English Renaissance middle-class education — he is believed to have attended King Edward IV Grammar School until he was 14 years old.  Whereas the ideal for a gentleman’s education in Italy was described by Baldassare Castiglioni, who wrote at length about the importance of being competent in several areas in his Book of the Courtier by the age of 27.  I came to understand that this is where our modern ideal of a well-rounded education in high school and undergraduate school came from.

If a boy was younger son of a very well-to-do father and didn’t stand to inherit, he might attend university and focus on one profession like medicine, religion, or law and become a “doctor”.  This is where PhDs (medical doctors and doctors of philosophy) came from.  Only the very wealthy could afford the time to learn a trade as specialized as medicine or law or instruct at a university.

Yet for most of the middle class education was very specifically focused on teaching crafts and services to be used in employment and in association with guilds.  Once an apprentice proved himself with his skill-craft, he graduated to journeyman.  Journeymen often worked for their master but collected wages, lived separately, and began their own families; or they traveled to establish their own shop (as the term “journey man” implies).  Only when the journeyman was accepted by a guild and took on apprentices was he considered a master in his own right.

Mediaeval Roles:

Apprentice: 1. One bound by legal agreement to work for another for a specific amount of time in return for instruction in a trade, art, or business. 2. One who is learning a trade or occupation, especially as a member of a labor union. 3. A beginner; a learner. The Free Dictionary

Journeyman: 1. One who has fully served an apprenticeship in a trade or craft and is a qualified worker in another’s employ. 2. An experienced and competent but undistinguished worker. The Free Dictionary

Master: 5. An employer. 9. A male teacher, schoolmaster, or tutor. 10. One who holds a master’s degree. 11. a. An artist or performer of great and exemplary skill. 12. A worker qualified to teach apprentices and carry on the craft independently. The Free Dictionary

Modern Roles in the Sciences:

Well-educated youth = undergraduate
Apprentice = employed undergraduate in the field of his major
Journeyman = MS (Master of Science) degree obtained, or unfunded/untenured/associate professor/”not established” PhD
Master = “established”/funded/tenured PhD/writer of grants

The process of becoming an expert in a modern field is more complicated and variable between professions.  In the sciences, this process was illustrated by Matt Might below:

Matt Might aptly represents the layers of education towards gaining a PhD (doctorate in philosophy).  Notice the pink circle surrounding the green one and juts out a little to the side?  That’s the Bachelor’s degree.  An undergraduate, like I was, studies a wide variety of topics but majors in one particular area.  Today’s range and degree of undergraduate education is different from mediaeval tutoring only in that it has a specialization at all.  The master’s degree (dark pink) is built upon this slight specialization with further focus.  Finally the PhD (red), which with his unique discovery, punctures through the known threshold of knowledge — thus making him an expert in his field among experts.  Each of the outer layers builds upon the last, more general knowledge.  Right up until that last dent through the frontier of discovery, every layer is gained through schooling and mentorship with increasing autonomy and focus.

In my case, I had a well-rounded education in history and literature, language, the hard sciences, a touch of philosophy and the arts, a dash of physical education, and my major in Psychology (what some call a “soft science”) by the time I’d gained my BA (Bachelor of Arts).  I felt like one of those fortunate few who were educated by many different tutors and fashioned into a well-rounded student.  Of course, I also had to make a living, so I had a focus and needed to find a master to give me work in a lab.  Much like an apprentice, I obtained employment and exchanged my labor to be in the same “shop” as a master (“established” PhD) and her journeymen to acquire skills and the good recommendation of my superiors.

I picked up on the vibe that the apprentices like me would someday go on to graduate school, gain our PhDs, and make our mark on the world.  However, we were warned that many many of those with PhDs but are not “established” remain there (like journeymen never accepted into the guild, always serving a master) never to obtain the funding necessary to set up their own labs and get tenure or grants and have to assist with the studies created by those who do get the funding.  Once published (starting with our dissertations), we would have to keep publishing until (and beyond) the point when we would be “established” as masters in our own rights.  That’s why they say “publish or perish” in academia.

Modern Roles in the Arts

Now, I’m focusing my expertise on illustration, and the analogy is somewhat different when applied to this field.  While the sciences require certain skills, they are institutions based on knowledge.  They are more like the old medieval universities of law, medicine, and religion which required a great deal of schooling as well as mentorship dolloped on for good measure.  If one chooses to practice medicine, therapy, or psychiatry (a combination of the two) this requires yet more skill and thus more mentorship and a longer period as a “journeyman”.

However the arts, while requiring certain knowledge, are institutions based on skill and the emphasis is more on mentorship.  A student is first schooled in the masters before developing his own style and specialization.

Well-educated youth = undergraduate
Apprentice = MFA student prior to midpoint review and internships (roughly three semesters)* or a student of one or more masters.
Journeyman = MFA student prior to graduation* and/or prior employment or building a client base.  Outside of the educational system, apprentice and journeymen are separated only by skill level and regard by the artistic community.
Master = MFA graduate* and/or with employment or client base and a mentor in the artistic community

*In the artistic field, an MFA isn’t a pre-requisite for employment and mastery (as an MS or PhD is in the sciences) and several experts are very successful without modern degrees.  However, many argue that going through art school to gain a degree is a faster way to develop the skills and portfolio necessary to obtain mastery, work, a personal style, and “establishment” in the field.  A Master’s degree can also be a pre-requisite for teaching, which is one of the main ways to mentor other and be paid to do so (and achieve “master” status).

For the Purposes of This Journal

The analogy isn’t perfect.  The stages of apprentice, journeyman, and master don’t map perfectly to the modern stages of expertise.  Being an MFA student doesn’t make me a mediaeval apprentice nor a journeyman exactly, and I won’t necessarily be a master by the time I have my…well, Masters in Fine Arts degree.

So instead, I will draw the line between apprentice and journeyman midway in my career as an MFA student.  Right now, I’m a married adult with my own residence, and yet I don’t have quite the skill to work under the experts yet.  I am placing myself in something like an apprenticeship under the masters until the School of Illustration at AAU decides at my midpoint review that I have the skills necessary to carry out my own project.  Then I’ll regard myself as something like a journeyman.  Not “established” or able to work entirely on my own, but with greater skill and autonomy than an apprentice.  When I graduate I’ll be like a journeyman on the road applying to enter a guild, open my shop, and become a mentor.  Once I’ve  joined a guild like The Society of Illustrators as a full member, receive steady commissions and/or employment, and either teach or offer advice at conceptart.org and other communities, then I’ll consider myself a master.

I’ll be logging my journey here and offering an insider’s view of the process.  Thank you for reading.  If you have any thoughts on this analogy, or your experiences in school or developing your expertise, please feel welcome to comment here.

Q: So what are you offering today?
A:

• Original Characters and creatures
• Landscapes and cityscapes both real from photo reference and imagined
• Fanart
• Pets
• Book Covers
• Nudity you wouldn’t mind your mom seeing
• Your relatives and friends (not nude)

I work mainly in digital realistic and painterly styles, but upon request I can work in either comic book or animation styles.

Q: What’s that?
A: Full color head & shoulders of any character OR real life people if you have a good quality reference of front/side/3quarter.

Q: What do I need to provide?
A: Several good images of the character, plus a description of their personality, OR one good image of the real person and descriptions of their personality. If the subject is a real person, you’ll need the rights to the photo too (if you took the photo yourself, or have permission from the photographer).

Q: Then what happens?
A: I scurry away and sketch up an outline. I’ll show it to you and you can make your comments and I’ll tweak it. Once you’re happy with that, I’ll color and detail it in my painted style. I can’t accept revisions after it’s done, since portraits are quick and cheap. Unless, of course, it’s my own fault for getting something wrong that was clearly shown in the reference.

Q: What can I do with the image?
A: Print it, hang it up, stick it on your fridge, anything you like…just don’t make money off it or use it to create new artwork. If you post it online, I would also ask for credit when and where possible.

Q: What will you do with the image?
A: I’ll add it to my portfolio and use it for promoting my work.

Q: What else should I know?
A: I retain ownership of the final artwork and reserve the right to display it on my website, portfolios, and submit it to magazines or artbooks. It will however never be sold, used for profit, or licenced to another without your approval. You may use the image for non-profit purposes only unless agreed otherwise. Full licence agreement is available on request.

Q: I am totally cool with all that. How much?
A: Portraits……$50 US
Waist Up…….$70-$80 (Depending on costume and pose complexity)
Full body……$90-$100 (Depending on costume and pose complexity)
Scenes………$160+ (Depends on background detail, number of characters, size)$40 via Paypal.

If you want two characters in an image, double the price and subtract $10. For scenes, it’s generally $50 per extra character (eg. a three character scene would be $260).

Portraits, full bodies, and waist-ups come with simple backgrounds (ie colour gradients, textures, blurry detail) only. Adding a full background counts as a scene.

Q. Ok great, how do I hire you for a commission? 

Contact Me first describing what you would like for your commission.  Please provide a detailed description of the character (pose, appearance, costume, personality) and any visual references or inspiration. For commissions of real-life people, provide either one photo (I will reference it directly, guarantees likeness) or many quality photos from multiple angles (I will use them to figure out face shapes, results in unique image but may not be perfect likeness).  I can then price your commission and you can return here to purchase it.

Commissions are first come, first served. Most artworks are completed within two weeks

I accept payments through Paypal only. 50% of payment is due upon approval of sketch (except for portraits, full payment is due upon approval of the sketch). Remainder must be paid before full-resolution 300dpi image is provided. Due to the fluctuating exchange rate all values are in US dollars.

To purchase your commission:

Website Updates Include:

• Updated portfolio with most recent work & higher quality images.  This included photographing my charcoal drawing series under better lighting conditions than before and resizing them.
• Updated Categories for easier navigation.  Categories relate to Concept Art, unless otherwise specified (ie: Personal & Educational Projects).  This is the blue drop-down menu at the upper-right corner of the header.  Portfolio is all-inclusive, whereas the categories below are divided by subject.
• Updated About page.
• Created new pages: What is Concept Art? and Why Concept Art? The later was the essay I submitted to the Academy of Art University for acceptance into the MFA: Illustration program.
• Updated Widgets – removed distracting elements of website and included more social network options through which to share art and blog entries.
• Prints Now Available for Purchase – with the aid of my site manager, selected prints are now available for order at Imagekind.  If you would like to purchase a piece that is not available for print, contact me, and I will make it available if possible.
• Announced that I am available for commissions.

Future Updates:

• As I work through my studio courses, beginning this January 31st, 2010, I’ll be adding and replacing artwork as I create them to reflect the most current level of my skill.  These will probably be posted in chunks between major assignments or semesters.  Commissions may also be included in my portfolio.
• I may make my .pdf portfolio available for download.  Currently it’s available upon request.
• I may make my new CV available for download.  Currently it’s available upon request.
• I plan to document the process of earning my MFA in illustration, as well as post tutorials along the way, here in my blog.

Any particular requests for site updates?  What would you like to see here?  What would make the site more useful to you, easier to navigate, or get in touch with me?  Thanks for reading!