Cheater

For several holiday seasons I was privileged to set up my booth next to an accomplished craftsman, known widely for his hand-carved wooden figurines, particularly his expressive Santas, elves and gnomes, any of which could have been jolly s’elf-portraits.

He had a hard time keeping up with demand, especially at Christmastime, so he spent the entire show carving as an entertainment to his customers, staying out of the way of his charming wife, who busied herself taking payments, bagging merchandise, and constantly rearranging their festive holiday display.

His habit was to use an assortment of short-bladed knives to shape each bare block of wood, paring away the chips and curls of shavings until the details of his impish figures began to emerge. At that point he would take up a small, hand-size electric crafters’ drill, the high-pitched buzzing kind, with multiple attachments, the sort of machine that reminded you that you had put off scheduling a dental appointment for longer than you should.

Whuzzzzzz, zuzzzzzzzzz, zi-zuzzzzzzzzz! The instrument droned, barely audible over the hum of nattering show-goers, and the endless loop of Christmas music that was being piped in from overhead.

Crowds gathered in the aisle to see the master at work. He chatted pleasantly with his onlookers, undistracted as he stroked the instrument over the wood, up and down in gentle curves, melting tangled hairlines, knurled fingers, baggy trousers and craggy bearded faces into existence.

Zzuzzzzzzzzz, zi-zuzzzzzzzzz….

An insightful man, he had a way of making things simple…

“There’s no magic to wood carving, You just cut away the pieces that don't belong there, until you find the fellow hiding inside. (I sort of borrowed that from Michaelangelo.)”

…without avoiding the realities of life:

“Every other man that comes in here tells me that he’s planning to take up carving, just as soon as he retires. Tough luck for that fellow, I say. He’ll be dead before he even learns how.”

Now and again someone would step forward to make a predictable point, indicating to the others present that this artist was cheating, abandoning the ways of the true craftsman by resorting to the use of modern labor-saving devices.

“I thought you did these by hand,” they would say, a note of triumph accenting the accusation, as though they alone had discovered a profound truth, and revealed it as a duty to their brethren.

“I carve these things exactly the way my grandfather did,” he was fond of saying, as he did a couple dozen times a day, while accusers and baffled onlookers shook their heads in polite disbelief.

He’d wait a moment or two for his words to sink in, knowing that someone would rise to the bait.

“They didn’t even have those teeny electric drills when your granddaddy was alive, did they?”

“Nope.”   Zzzzzzuzzzzz…

“Then how can you say you do it just like he did?”

Another calculated pause.  “My ancestors believed in employing the highest level of technology that was available to them to accomplish the task at hand,” he’d reply, never once looking up from his work. “ I’m doing the same thing.”

His logic satisfied most of his audience. A few die-hards continued to grimace, and grumble.

“Folks, I’m not trying to see how long it’ll take me to finish this piece. I’m here to create the highest quality product I can make for my customers. You don’t get prizes for making things hard on yourself.”

I think about him whenever I start on another complex, detailed, large-scale design… with a ballpoint pen.

At those times, a part of me wishes I had developed a knack for painting with a four-inch house brush.

Then I remember that I use the highest level of technology available to me to process and disseminate my artwork: a hi-resolution scanner and a printing press. 

I may be a cheater, but I’m not stupid.

Top Brass

My Sax drawing unfolded like a dream. I woke up one morning with the image floating just beyond my visual field, a saxophone writhing with fishes, little shellfish for the mouthpiece and valve covers, abalone for the bell, a hammerhead shark for the sinuous neck.

It was a beautiful idea, but it made no sense, no sense at all. What did fish have to do with jazz? I drew it anyway, fleshing out the instrument with the Gulf coast creatures I studied way back in college Zoology*.

Even though it wasn’t funny at the time, it made a great picture. The humor came later, in a cascade of titles and subtitles: Musical Scales, Harmony in the Key of Sea, Sax on the Beach. You can’t tuna fish. I couldn't have been more pleased. Beat the heck out of drawing a pile of hosiery, and calling it a soxophone.

Band mothers didn't find it amusing at all, however. Where’s the trombone? they asked. Where’s the clarinet? My daughter plays the clarinet. How am I supposed to buy this picture for my son the saxophone player, and nothing for my little girl? Huh? Where’s the trumpet?

Always sensitive to the wants, needs and suggestions of my clientele, I set to work on making the funniest darn trumpet you ever saw.

This would be a natural. Heck, I had Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and a history of trumpeting that predated the Exodus. Cornus to cornets, bugles to flugelhorns. There was just no way to miss with this one.

I sat down and tried to synthesize all that history into one instrument, with a funny theme. Do it right this time, I told myself. Start from the beginning. Have a reason for throwing this bunch of things together.

Maybe I could do the whole thing as a memorial to Satchmo. That would be great! There must be a dozen ways to smoosh Armstrong’s classic smile into some part of the instrument, even though  my initial results weren’t encouraging. Scat? Hello, Dolly? Great words, but they just didn't bring enough specific pictures to mind to build a horn. Same thing with Miles, and Gabriel. Same with the history of the instrument.

Weeks, then months went by, and still no trumpet picture. Not even a really good idea for a trumpet picture. The band moms were not getting any happier.

Okay, start again. What does the trumpet represent? Brass. Sounding brass. That will work. Make a list of brass things: Brass knuckles, brass buttons. Do the research. Try different connotations of the word, other than just the alloyed metal. Okay, use the alloy, too: Copper and Zinc. Use the old golf club, a brassie, from a hundred years ago. Add a colonel’s hat for the Top Brass. Hey – there’s the title: Top Brass!

Now the ball was rolling. It wasn’t particularly funny, this brass idea, but the picture grew without any fuss or major hiccups, and it turned out well enough. A consistent theme, and it was nice to look at. A brass spittoon for the embouchure – that’s funny, right? The band moms should be pleased.

In fact, they were. The prints were well received, and continue to sell well to trumpet players (and trumpeters’ mothers) everywhere. I was pleased with my work. After a year of struggling with concepts, Top Brass came through for me.

And things would have been fine, if not for the offhand comment of one of those trumpeter’s dads.

“Wow, that’s pretty clever. It’s all made of brass,” he said. “How come you didn't make it out of shoes? Then it would be a Shoe Horn.”

I could have killed the guy on the spot.

Dang it! Shoe horn! Shoe horn! Why didn't I think of that? It’s so obvious, it hurts! After all that rumination and brain sweat, the simplest pun eluded me completely. (And how great would that have been, paired with the Sox-ophone!) Oh, the things we miss when we’re not paying attention.

But when life hands you lemons, there’s usually a bag of sugar somewhere close by – so I turned the idea inside-out, and drew another picture: A shoe made of horns. 

The band moms like it, too.

* The original Saxophone - Musical Scales drawing now hangs in the Dan C. Holliman Biological Specimen Room at Birmingham-Southern College.

A Long, Drawn-Out ConPHession

After a dozen-plus years of covering it up, I have a confession to make.

One of my pictures wasn’t finished when I sent it to the printer.

And I sold the prints, anyway.

How could this have happened? Do you even look at your own pictures before you send them away to be copied? What kind of Bozo would make such a colossal mistake?

It could be that I was distracted by the intense detail of the drawing. It is not uncommon for me even now to get lost in the complexity of a design. All those teeny little black and white lines tend to run together after a while. Maybe I was really busy that week, getting ready for an art show or something. (And what work of art is ever really finished, anyway?)

But frankly, I blame my wife.

One day back before the turn of the century, as my Darling Dearest and I were engaging in our usual friendly banter, tossing healthy bits of encouragement, advice, and the occasional dense object back and forth at one another from our respective sides of the art studio, I offered the helpful observation that it was taking her an awfully long time to finish a particular illustration that had been occupying valuable space on her easel.

She responded lovingly that my comment bore more than a passing resemblance to certain pots calling kettles black, or perhaps toads calling frogs ugly, given that the Parrot drawing I was working on was itself taking its own sweet time crossing the finish line.

If memory serves, she even went so far as to bet dollars to donuts (or some equivalent consideration) that her Ark would be finished long before my Parrot took flight from my drawing board.

I was game. We set a weekend deadline, some three or four days hence, and the race was on. In a flurry of competitive energy sprinkled with endearments and epithets, we both managed to finish on time.

Or at least she did. Her painting was actually completed. My drawing wasn’t.

Not that I knew it at the time. Caught up in the intensity of the race, I overlooked the fact that there was a glaring hole in my picture until after it was sent away and scanned. And proofed. And delivered back from the printer. In fact, it wasn’t until I sat down to sign and number the full limited edition of 500 prints that I noticed one item on the Parrot composite was… missing. In one little spot I could see the faint grey outlines of my original pencil sketch – a small coin that I had missed entirely with the ballpoint pen.

So in addition to autographing and sequentially numbering each of the printed Parrot reproductions, I had to finish every single one of them, drawing in that little portion of the design, a pirate’s doubloon, that I had overlooked before. All 500 copies.

Of course I didn’t tell Zoo. (Didn't have to. Not much gets past that girl. She’s still laughing at me, more than a decade later.)

Fortunately, most of the evidence is gone by now. Now that nearly all of the Parrot prints have flown the coop, I’m finally able to ’fess up to my fellow Parrotheads, and all the other phun people who purchased a phaulty picture.

It’s embarrassing, of course, having to come clean this way, in a public forum, though it is some small consolation to finally shrug the heavy burden of guilt from my weary shoulders after all these years. The missus says it will do me good, but only after I finish clearing the table, and do the dishes. And fold the laundry.

Also on the plus side, every one of the limited edition prints is, in a small way, a unique piece of artwork. Every one is an original drawing. So if you were one of the four-hundred-and-ninety-plus people who paid cash money for a Parrot, you got a little bit extra for your patronage.

That’s something.

We have since had the image reprinted in a smaller, open edition. For this series, all I have to do is sign my name. No numbers – and no extra drawing to do. Before we sent it to the printer this time, the picture was completely finished.

I checked.

About 500 times.

Stewart's Train a BIG Draw for Kids in Chicagoland

Ballpoint artist Don Stewart draws composite images, which he describes simply as “Big pictures made out of little pictures.”

Now one of his pictures is really big.

The DuPage Children's Museum in Naperville, IL has enlarged one of Stewart’s drawings to more than ten feet across, filling an entire section of the wall in the museum’s new interactive display titled TRAINS – All Aboard Art!

Kids of all ages will now have no trouble seeing everything hidden in Stewart’s drawing of an old steam locomotive, built entirely of antiques from a bygone era.

Coupled with an on-board train camera, train tracks to assemble, train books and art projects, the new installation will “keep young hands and minds busy as children discover the wonder of train transportation,” according to the museum’s web site.

(Photo courtesy of DuPage Museum)

“Families are really enjoying the art and the activity,” says Marcia MacRae, Interdisciplinary Arts Specialist at the DuPage Museum. 

In 2007, McRae included another of Stewart’s drawings, a motorcycle made of “Fast Food”, in a museum display on nutrition.

Nobody Listens to Artists

It only took a week of being a full-time artist to learn one of the abiding truths inherent in this business: Nobody listens to artists.

Truly, the quickest way to get a door slammed in my face was to say something like,

“Hello, I’m an artist, and I’d like you to look at a few of my…” SLAM!

Nothing could shut down a business conversation faster than uttering the A-word in the first person. Ad executives, gallery owners, architects, store managers, business administrators, charity directors, teachers – all dismissed me routinely, usually before I had the chance to show them any of my artwork.

“Leave a card and we’ll call you if we need you.” Operative word: Leave.

Friends and relatives often responded similarly, with a modicum of disappointment and a quick sendoff, occasionally leavened with a polite, sympathetic smile thrown in to make me feel better, and visible relief at my (hopefully) hasty departure.

This was a big change from how I was used to being treated, a completely unexpected consequence of my decision to step out of the hospital and into the art studio.

                                                  Quack

Sure, I understood that ‘art’ was, generally speaking, a hobby, for most people a diversion rather than a calling. For me though, my career change was just that, and nothing less than that – a move from one profession to the next. I had the talent and the drive to succeed as an illustrator and a designer, and I had the work to prove it. Besides, with degrees in biology and medicine, I had the background to handle drawing assignments on subjects ranging from wildlife to healthcare to robotic technology. Why was it so hard getting anyone to pay attention?

As a doctor, I was accustomed to being taken seriously - often a little too seriously for my liking. That’s one reason I wanted to explore the arts, to get away from the regimented solemnity and enforced humorlessness of the hospital.

The trouble was that

 artists aren't professionals.

After years of academic and clinical training, I knew how to conduct myself professionally, to communicate clearly and concisely in a face-to-face interview. I did my homework, too, staying up late planning schedules and strategies, following leads, putting together a balanced mix of appointments and cold calls. I arrived for meetings in plenty of time to review my presentation, and my appearance: Combed hair, shined shoes, business suit, tie with matching pocket square, fashionable overcoat.*

Heck, I even carried an expensive leather (leather!) artist’s portfolio chock full of my work, neatly arranged in an understandable, logical progression from graphic design to illustration to my own brand of composite drawings. I showed up with a positive attitude, a firm handshake, and a winning smile.

“Oh. You’re the artist. Leave a card.” Such reactions were as baffling as they were consistent.

Lacking experience to the contrary, I assumed people in one line of work respected the ability of others to perform well in their chosen professions, at least until they had demonstrated otherwise. The trouble, I came to understand, was that artists aren't professionals.

Artists are a lot of things. We’re thoughtful, innovative, hard working, and usually we’re an awful lot of fun. We’re free spirits, too: Quirky. Eccentric. Weird. In the world of business, that makes us strange, and suspect. And since our work schedules seldom fit the usual nine-to-five routine, we’re often considered unreliable and irresponsible, or worse, lazy, living off the sweat of others who aren’t afraid to put in a full 40-hour work week.

But we’re not professional. Professionals are people with real jobs. Professionals work for someone else, every day, for a thing called a regular paycheck. We free-lance artists work for ourselves, at whatever assignments we can get, for whatever pay we can negotiate. And once we’ve successfully completed a project, we’re… what’s the word? Oh, yeah… unemployed.

The working world seems to frown on this business model. Projects come through or they don’t, feast or famine, with frequent interruptions in cash flow. For beginning artists especially, these uncertainties make it difficult to secure adequate housing and studio space, or to make regular payments on car notes or insurance premiums (assuming loans or insurance coverage are even available). Even artists with long track records, substantial client lists and above average business sense are vulnerable to dry spells that can unravel years of financial success.

So, art is not a real profession, it seems, unless you happen to be a real professional artist. We all know a number of these. They’re household names. The ones whose work we recognize. As a rule, they died a long time ago.

Then there are the few successful artists who live and work outside of the stereotype. We know their names, too. We recognize their work. We might even recognize them if we saw them on TV, or hanging out at a restaurant downtown. We understand that they get paid a lot of money for their art, and we wish that we had bought one of their pieces years ago when it was affordable, before they became well known - before the world recognized them as professionals.

That’s the second enduring 

truth of the art business: 

As soon as someone other than you 

likes your work, and is willing to tell 

someone else about it, you’ve arrived.

But how do you know when you, as an artist, have crossed that line? How do you tell when you’ve made it?

That’s just it. You don’t. Someone else tells for you.

That’s the second enduring truth of the art business: As soon as someone other than you likes your work, and is willing to tell someone else about it, you’ve arrived.

You can't be that person. Your squeak won't grease your own wheels.

“Hi, I’m an artist, and my work is awesome!” will get you nowhere.

Fortunately, though, that ‘right person’ can be just about anyone else:

“Hey, have you seen this dude’s work? It’s awesome!”

That kind of recommendation will get you recognition, and sales, and contracts to make more of your art. If you are fortunate enough (and persistent enough) to string together a number of recommendations like this, you just might stay in business long enough to build a career in art.

Our business plan at DS Art is built entirely around these two truths. We want our clients and customers to be happy with our work, and our work ethic. We understand that every piece of artwork that leaves our studio is an ambassador for our future success, and that every customer we earn becomes a potential cheerleader for (or against) our creative ability, our professionalism, and our future .

Just don't take our word for it.

*In hindsight, this could have been part of the problem. I can recall but one episode in those early days when I received a bona fide art commission, entirely on my own. The client was in a bind, facing a tight deadline. He needed to speak with someone right away, and would meet with me only if I could get to his office within the hour. That office was more than 50 miles away, which left me no time to shower, shave, or even change clothes. I jumped in the car and drove to the meeting ‘as-is’. The client took one look at my scruffy weekend beard, dirty sneakers, worn jeans, and rumpled jacket, and instantly awarded me the job. Apparently he needed an artist, rather than a professional.