Back in January of this year, I was involved in a multimedia presentation at a now defunct bookstore called The Raconteur. Alex, the owner of the store wrote a creepy story that was inspired by one of my collages. He then asked me to illustrate the story and asked my husband to write and perform some music to go with it.. Alex read the story, while Bruce played his music and I projected my artwork on a screen.
After the performance, Alex introduced me to his friend Chris Gash, another local illustrator. Chris asked to see my original drawings for the story and he and I immediately started talking shop. I realized it had been a very, very long time since I talked art directors and technique with another illustrator and it felt great.
About a month later, Chris and I went to see the Editorial/Book show at the Society of Illustrators, that venerable club with the red door on 63rd St. that my favorite teacher at Parsons, Jim Spanfeller called “an old men’s club”. True to his word, there were more men than women in the show but more interesting to me was that probably 90% of the work had some digital aspect to it.
I’ve always been a traditional illustrator who worked on paper, liked to touch her materials and get her hands dirty. The digital world to me was like the tortoise in the race. Slow and steady and eventually overcoming the hare who rested on the grass, rapidograph in hand, never imagining the tortoise would win. Maybe it was more like the mouse and the ostrich….
I told Chris about my lack of digital experience and my desire to find a way to stay in my lifelong chosen career. He offered to be my mentor of sorts.
First up was setting up a blog.
So here we go….new work, works in progress, hopefully a fresh start. Thanks, Chris.
Janice…I love your work! very creative.
Keep posting
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I think it’s important to become part of the digital age. It’s a useful tool that can enhance one’s artwork and make the whole creative process more efficient, not to mention that it is necessary these days to know how to manage digital files. However, that being said,there is still a lot of merit to the “hands on” method and many who still practice it. In fact, I have noticed that there seems to be a reemerging awareness of it in recent years. Scott Bakal and Edel Rodriquez to name a couple (take a look a Drawger.com sometime) both who ,I’m sure, also have plenty of expertise working digitally.
Working with one’s hands is satisfying. It’s good for the soul and frankly, I would rather have a hand done work of art on my wall than a digital print.
Congrats on your blog, Janice! Welcome to the digital age and have fun! It’s just another creative tool!
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Great post, Janice, keep ’em coming (and thank you for the kind mention, happy to help). With regard to the above comment, Edel did the piece in the Editorial Show that you guessed was bubble wrap, and he is a brilliant artist. Talk with you soon!
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