I just returned this week from the annual Southwest Black Fine Arts Show that was held at the African American Museum in Dallas, Texas, April 13 – 15. It was my first time showing outside of the New York metropolitan area. Not only was the show a profitable one for me ,but I also won the best in show award and had one of my rain scenes bought by the museum for their private collection, so I’m feeling good.

Recently, while working on a commissioned rain scene painting with NYC’s Lincoln Center as the backdrop I found it necessary to constantly remind myself not to be a slave to the many reference photos I had taken of the center. Now I had heard this before and read it several times over the years but rarely needed to use it as most of my work is not dependent on reference material. However it is a very important piece of information to remember when working with photos. Don’t be a slave to the reference. You might want to tape it to your easel as a constant reminder. Not remembering this can alter your style ( photo realists not included ) and take the life out of your work if you’re not careful. In the case of buildings and portraits the structure of course still has to be correct, but you don’t need to dot every i and cross every t for the likeness to remain true, and in the case of landscapes, if you love the setting except for the placement of that tree or bush, move it or discard it. It’s your painting.

I have been a freelance illustrator for all but four years of a forty year career and from time to time I am asked to speak about it to different groups. Recently, when speaking to a group of intermediate students I was surprised by the look of amazement on the faces staring back at me when I explained the origin of the word freelance. Not only was this news to the students,but as the art teacher told me, he was learning something new also. So, here it is ,one more time. The term freelance dates back to medieval times when knights in shining armor ruled as the premiere fighting man in present day Europe. These trained horseback riding warriors of noble birth were a part of every standing army, but other than kings and queens few had money enough to support an army, much less a group of knights. Most wealthy landowners had to hire one or more as the need arose. Premiere among the weapons that a knight brought to battle was his lance. Freelance simply meant that the knights lance was free of any obligations to anyone and was available for hire. It meant then as today that he was self employed and ready to work.

I was recently asked by the art teacher at the school where my wife works part time if I would be willing to come in one morning and speak to several of his classes to let the students know that it’s actually possible to make a decent living as an artist. Yesterday was that day. It was a rainy morning and I was unable to find a parking space any closer than a block and a half away. I’m sure I was quite a sight under the black hood of my raincoat carrying forty pounds of material packed inside my most humungous portfolio which is also black. Inside were three framed paintings (10 pounds each) two more portfolios and my umbrella which I couldn’t use because the portfolio shoulder strap kept threatening to slide off my shoulder and without it I would have been dragging everything on the ground even with the hand grip I was holding located in the middle of the soft portfolio’s side panel. The first class went well even though I was a bit uneasy with the star treatment build up the teacher gave me. The students were 6th and 7th graders who listened intently to everything I said and handled the artwork I passed around the room with care as did all the students. Some of my talk was a little too adult for the students and had to be re-interpreted for them by the teacher before I caught on and adjusted the information to the audience. I spoke for thirty-five of the forty minutes and handled five minutes of questions. Easy enough I thought. The second class was a much smaller group of about ten eighth grade students who were joined by both  the principal and assistant principal. These students needed to learn about drawing storyboards for an upcoming application of some sort so I spent most of my time on that explaining terminology, camera angles,continuity and how to break the script up into pictures. Even the principals had some questions at the end of that session. All was still going smoothly. Then came the forth graders. When the art teacher  mentioned that my wife was “Miss Joy” as they call her, half the class erupted with comments, all favorable I might add, and the teacher had to quiet them down. During the next thirty-five minutes I was constantly interrupted with questions. Often intelligent ,sometimes just cute, these kids were really engaged and enthusiastic. At the end I was being bombarded with questions when one girl asked for my autograph. Though I told her I was nobody she insisted while thrusting paper and pencil at me. To stop her, I complied having no clue as to what I had just opened myself up for. In less than a minute I was totally surrounded by the entire class, all with paper and all kinds of writing utensils. I couldn’t even see kids anymore, just hands, papers, pens,pencils and markers. Somewhere in the background I could hear the teacher saying something loudly about the end of the period, the bell, and not giving out passes over the din of the crowd, and still the hands kept coming. The first few were happy with just my signature. but then came requests for me to add their names to it. Thankfully many of the boys weren’t interested and let me off the hook, but boy, those last few minutes were intense. I have never written so much so fast in my life. I’d forgotten how much energy kids have. The requests seemed endless and I simply couldn’t sign my name fast enough. I’m sure the last few girls were late for class as even younger children were already entering the room as they literally ran out the door. My morning at school ended at about 11:30AM. I got home, put away my materials, sank into my easy chair in front of the TV and wondered if I should turn it on or just take a nap. It was fun, but my God, how do teachers do it?

A number of years ago a young, recent art school graduate who had been making the rounds looking for work asked through a mutual acquaintance if I would mind critiquing his portfolio. Several days later when he arrived we sat down and I flipped through the twenty to twenty five illustrations in his portfolio at the same pace an art director would. That took less than a minute. I then gave him my overall impression which he seemed to have heard before. He then asked me to critique each piece one by one so that he could see how to improve his work. Reluctantly,having run afoul of artist egos before, I pointed out several changes that I would make until it became evident he was going to fight me on every one, so I went from specifics to generalities and stopped giving him reasons to fight. Much of his work was taken from  photos and it showed. When drawing people from photos you need to remember to use your own knowledge of the human form to fill in the gaps depending on the angle of the shot. The best piece in his book depicted a policeman talking to a group of kids on a city street. It was a side view of the policeman and his shoulder appeared to be coming right out of his neck because he forgot to show that there’s a shoulder blade in between the shoulder and the neck. This could have been fixed with only a minor adjustment. In the photograph it doesn’t appear that way because our minds fill in the blanks, but in a drawing or painting, whether traced or copied, we need to see all the ducks in a row or it just doesn’t look right. When he asked me how I knew his piece was taken from a photograph I simply said I can just tell without any explanation. I had tired of trying to help him, but I hope it’s helpful to you. Photographic distortions are okay, artistic ones though, need to be understood to be handled correctly.

No, I’m not giving away any two-way mirrors, but I am giving up the secret of how to tell when you’re looking into one. I recently came across this information in a magazine I was reading and thought it was worth passing on to you. According to the article whenever you touch a mirror with your finger, or fingernail for the ladies, and look at the reflection from the side you will notice that there is a small open space between your finger and it’s reverse image in the mirror. However, when you try this with a two-way mirror there is no space between the two, so the opposing images appear to be touching each other. Naturally I immediately told all the women in my family about it as all of them seem to spend an inordinate amount of time dressing and undressing in front of clothing store mirrors. I also mentioned it to several of my male friends who really didn’t seem to give a damn if anyone was watching or not. One friend even promised to moon every mirror he didn’t know from that moment on and listen for reactions. Since I read that article I’ve touched a lot of mirrors and haven’t found a two-way mirror yet. The only ones I know of are inside police interrogation rooms and as a minority there’s no way I’m going into a police station and asking if I can touch that mirror. So, in summation, especially for the ladies, the next time you meet a mirror you don’t know give it a touch and give it a look. You never know what you might see.

This is so simple that most instructors don’t bother to teach it figuring you already learned how to do it way back in kindergarten when you learned to connect the dots. That’s all there is to it. It’s just connecting the dots, but it does take some practice. Personally, I don’t like straight lines and try to avoid them whenever humanly possible. Usually they lack the personality of most freehand lines but ,of course , particularly when sketching, there are times when nothing else will do and you don’t have a ruler or the time to use it if you do. What you need is a starting point, an ending dot, a single stroke ( a continuous drawing motion ) and concentration on that ending dot because that’s where your pen/pencil is going. Now, I’m not suggesting you need to become one with the dot, but you do need to concentrate on it to get there. First you decide where you want to start and finish your line, placing a pencil dot at the finishing point. The trick now is to place your pen/pencil at the starting point on your paper and looking now only at that finishing dot you draw your line in one quick motion. How fast and in which direction you go depends on your own comfort level. The longer the line the more concentration  is needed but the process is the same. From this point on it’s just a matter of practice getting your eye/hand coordination working together. And if for some reason you are never able to connect the dots, you’ll probably notice that your misses are consistently alike. Should this be the case simply add a new dot to aim for on the paper in the spot most likely to allow you to hit the end spot with your next miss. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.

A number of people have asked what articles/books I’m getting the information from that I’ve been putting in my blogs. I must tell you that most of the information didn’t come from books but from other artists I have known and worked with over the years who helped me grow as an artist. In the mid-seventies while in my early 30′s and freelancing full time in advertising ( drawing TV commercials ) I got the chance to meet my idol in the business who subsequently asked if I would be interested in sharing studio space with him and three other freelancers in their NYC studio. To them I was just a kid as some were more than 25 years my senior. Over the next seven years I gleaned as much information as I could from these artists, much of which I’ve never came across in my own reading even to this day. It’s that information that I try to pass on to you. Whenever something helpful comes to mind these days I try to remember to write it down so that I can blog about it along with any other information I come across that I think you should know. Sometimes it’s the intangibles that make the art work the way you invisioned it.

Did you know that brand new tires have a shelf life of six years? That’s right, six years, after that they really shouldn’t be sold as new and should be returned to the factory and replaced. It turns out that all of Europe knows this but here in the good old USA the tire manufacturer’s lobbying efforts has seen to it that we don’t get this information even though Ford Motor Company has been trying to get the six year expiration date printed on tires. TV reporter John Stossel did a piece on it that I’m sure you can google for more information. In it he visits stores and finds old new tires at every stop. These new tires run the risk of losing their treads during operation after they sit for more than six years. Need I say more? However you can guard against buying new old tires once you understand the code on the side of that new tire you’re buying. The last set of numbers on the sidewall of a tire is the date of manufacture which gives you the week and year the tire was made. So if the last numbers are 414 it means the tire was made in the fourth week of 1994. If the number is 4202 it means it was manufactured in the forty second week of 2002, and so on. Sears was one of the chains he visited and found many of these tires. At one shop ( though I don’t remember if it was a Sears) he found a new tire that was twelve years old. I normally try to keep my thoughts and musings to art subjects, but this news needs to be passed on, so buyer beware. Dead people don’t buy art.

Young people are always moving even when they’re standing still because they are constantly shifting their weight from one foot to the other and their hands are rarely down at their sides. They are always fidgeting with something or when empty they’re in front pockets,back pockets,on belts, hips, folded across their chest or all of the above within the blink of an eye. They also love to lean on things like friends, walls, trees, cars, you name it. So, in drawing convincing young people standing always put the weight on one foot. When drawing older people the opposite is true. Our sense of balance is not as sure as it once was and we’ve long since gotten over youth’s nervousness so we don’t fidget much. As a result when drawing older people standing always plant both feet firmly on the ground and with some distance between each foot for optimum balance. It doesn’t matter whether they’re standing tall or stooped the balancing act is the same. We still lean on things, but now it’s things that steady us like canes, walkers, railings and friends . Even with these aids we still tend to keep  that same stance. It’s now okay to show at least one hand if not both down at our sides where they belong. Getting on in years and having this knowledge I always try to maintain that youthful weight on one leg stance but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I start keeling over. We’ll see how long that takes.