inspiration

Owning Your Influences

Fighting the playlist mentality

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay titled Proudly Autodidactic. I pretty much wrote it so I could write this one. I felt that I needed to explain where I was coming from before diving into this topic, which has been on my mind for a while.

This may be your perception of me by the time we get to the end of this essay.

In fairness, this may have an Old Man Yells at Cloud vibe to it for some of you. I hope not, but the risk is there.

So anyway, topic has been on my mind for a while, blah, blah, blah…

For the last four years, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching young artists in my capacity as a professor at Illinois State University’s Creative Technologies program. Because emulation has been a big part of my own artistic growth, I lean heavily into it in my classes, too. Of course, this is nothing new. Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, and countless others learned the fundamentals of their craft by taking apart the work of the geniuses who came before them in order to understand how the work, well…works.

Artwork by the ever-amazing Steve Rude. I first encountered his sketchbooks in the 80s and have avidly consumed them when he releases a new one. Watching his process is an insight into how his work has developed and grown over the years.

For me, it was learning about Steve Rude’s process, and how he studiously copied work into his sketchbook. Anything that impressed him as an artist, he wanted to figure out what made it tick. This kind of copying, of course, is different than what we all did as kids, where the objective was just to reproduce what we saw. The idea behind master studies is to understand what we see, and to apply that understanding to our own work.

The classes I teach are 75-minutes, not the longer 2-hour 50-minute studio sessions. With that in mind, and the other stuff we have to cover over the course of a 15-week semester, it’s not realistic to devote the necessary time to master studies. But we do talk about examining work that inspires us and reverse-engineering it in our own work through emulation.

Last spring, I noticed a phenomenon I’d never experienced in all my years of talking with artists. I sat with a student who showed me a jpg of work they admired, and I asked them about the artist. They didn’t know the artist’s name. The most information they had was that the artist was “someone I follow on Instagram. Let me see if I can find them.”

A quick search of the term “comic art” yields thousands of pieces of art. How can an artist keep track of it? Even when you’re following artists you like, the churn can be intimidating—and that’s not even considering the algorithmically-suggested crap that pollutes even the most fastidiously-curated timeline.

After 10 minutes of fruitless searching, scrolling through some of the 1,000+ artists they follow on Instagram, they shrugged and told me they couldn’t find the artist.

Seriously, it’s no exaggeration to say I was gobsmacked by this. There’s an artist who’s work you like enough to download one of their images and study, so as to incorporate some of that magic in your own work, but you don’t know their name? For someone like me—who has way too damn many art books as it is, and gets more and more every year, and jots down the name of every interesting artist they come across online or in conversation with other artists—this is unfathomable.

The convenience of a platform like Instagram, where artists’ work flashes across your timeline and the algorithm inserts new ones you may like (or artists and influencers who have paid to have their work inserted onto your timeline) is readily apparent. But the shift of young artists going from being active collectors of visual knowledge to passive consumers of a curated “playlist” is troubling to me.

I realize that just because it’s different from how I learned and assimilated influences, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But after reading Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow’s Chokepoint Capitalism, and seeing how much of our culture is dictated by a few massive tech companies, it gives me pause.

Similarly, I had a different student who told me how much they loved comics, and how much they wanted to make comics. When I asked them about their favorite comics, instead of hearing comic titles and creators, I got a list of characters. And movies. And TV shows.

They did have some familiarity with the characters as they appeared in comics. Not by actually reading comics, but by watching YouTube recaps of the comics.

There’s nothing wrong with these recap sites, but if you want to make comics—whether you’re a writer, penciller, inker, colorist, letterer, or editor—there’s not substitute for actually reading comics. And studying them. Lots of them. Over and over.

I can’t imagine an aspiring film director limiting themself to watching movie/recaps and then feeling that they can direct a film. Or a writer that only reads Wikipedia recaps of novels. Or a musician that picks up an instrument and avoids listening to complete songs.

In both of these instances, these students are ceding their creative autonomy to revenue-generating algorithms. And that’s not great for the creative process.

So if you’re a young creative who’s reading this, I apologize if my thinking comes off as antiquated to you. But please consider rejecting the playlist mentality and embrace your nature as an artistic hunter-gatherer, seeking out cool work that inspires you.

Proudly Autodidactic

For the longest time, I was self-conscious about being a self-taught artist. Now, after going back to school, and completing my undergrad and graduate degrees, I realize that my autodidacticism is what I’m most proud of.

Let me explain.

Vito Acconci, doing a different performance art piece, thankfully.

My first go-round with Higher Ed ended with an Associate’s Degree and a general distaste for contemporary gallery art. I vividly remember my 20th Century art history class, where the professor, Marlene, devoted half a class period to gushing about Vito Acconci, the 1970s performance artist who positioned himself under the gallery floor and masturbated into a microphone for eight hours a day. I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I realize this makes me an ignorant philistine to some fine art folks, and I’m okay with that.

I just wanted to learn how to draw and paint better, man. Still do.

At the same time, comic artists—through published interviews—were directing me to the artists I ended up studying. While I was in High School, Barry Windsor-Smith introduced me to Dante Gabriel Rosetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, Mike Kaluta opened me up to Art Deco, and Bernie Wrightson showed me Franklin Booth. During my community college days, while Marlene was fixating on Vito, George Perez shared Alphonse Mucha, Steve Rude trumpeted Andrew Loomis, Harry Anderson, and Haddon Sundblom, and Dave Stevens hipped me to the likes of George Petty and Gil Elvgren.

And the exploration of those artists revealed an even larger artistic lineage. Talking to artist friends, peers, and colleagues opened up even more new worlds, from JC Leyendecker to Joseph Clement Coll, from Robert Fawcett to Dean Cornwell, from Frank Schoonover to Robert Maguire, from Albert Dorne to James Montgomery Flagg. And on and on…Drew Struzan, Thomas Blackshear, Roy Krenkle, J. Allen St. John, NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle, James Bama, Tom Lovell, Robert McGinnis…and hundreds more.

Those disparate voices inform how I look at art. I’m not unique in this, but that particular blend is distinct from the oeuvres covered in the standard art history classes. Those same classes beat the same drum, too, that narrative art dominated visual arts for centuries, but the Impressionists and Post-impressionists—and everyone who came after—found that approach boring and abandoned narrative art in the pursuit of pure form and the pursuit of “art for art’s sake.” The implication being that narrative art somehow disappeared.

Which it didn’t.

There’s a wonderful anecdote from Leonard Starr, which goes like this:
The artist Andy Warhol explained to Albert Dorne, “Art must transcend mere drawing.” “Pardon me, Andy,” Dorne interrupted, “but there’s nothing all that fucking mere about drawing.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to incorporate messaging and subtext into the work. But there’s such a focus on it in art schools, that young artists dive into the messaging before they’re even able to draw very well. That’s a shame, because badly-drawn work turns me off before I have the chance to contemplate the meaning behind your work.

So thank you to all the great artists and illustrators who came before, lighting the path and educating me. And thanks to my friends, colleagues, peers, and mentors—illustrators, cartoonists, and fine artists—who have shared their passion and enthusiasm, broadening my artistic worldview along the way. However slow my growth has been, I’m in your debt and continue to move forward, proudly autodidactic.

And thanks to Marlene, who made “fine art” so unpalatable to me that I was forced to seek education on my own. Without you, I’d have probably pursued a path I didn’t have the chops to pursue and would have given up in frustration.

Extra! Extra!

I’ve recently finished writing Afterwords to two trade paperback collections of my creator-owned work. Both of these essays covered the history of the project—including stops-and-starts, previous iterations, and even missteps.

While writing these, I asked myself why it’s so important to me to document all this stuff. Is it an exercise in self-indulgence? Is it that I’m actually pretentious and feel that the minutia of what I do needs to be shared with everyone? Or is it something else?

I realized that, as with many aspects of my creative approach, it comes down to Rush.

I’ve written before about how the Canadian rock trio has influenced me as a creative, and I’ll probably do so again in the future.

The first page of Neil Peart’s liner notes from the 1985 tour book for Rush’s *Power Windows*. My hefty 12×18 scanner managed to get most of this 12×12 book in frame.

My love of documentation for a project can be traced directly to the tour books that Rush produced during my formative years. Created as 12” x 12” 32-page glossy books, the tour books kicked off with an essay by drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, offering insights into the writing and recording process. Equipment lists by all three band members (Peart, bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson) followed. The books were capped off by a series of concert photos.

Another page from the *Power Windows* tour book, Geddy Lee’s equipment list. Over time, these equipment lists still contained info about the equipment used, but also developed into short essays highlighting the band members’ quirks and sense of humor.

The tour book cover design replicated the corresponding album cover art, and, at the same size as the 12” vinyl albums they discussed, these volumes shared space with each record in my collection. They were, in a sense, an Afterword for each album.

When seeing other bands in concert, I was disappointed to learn that this kind of tour book was an anomaly.

I’ve carried this love of insight into the creative process with me for over thirty years. In fact, one of the motivators behind me buying a laserdisc player (back in the day) was the additional audio track where directors, cast, and screenwriters discussed the behind-the-scenes process of the movie. When those commentary tracks became standard with the advent of DVDs and Blu-rays, I was in heaven!

Art books that detail an artist’s process are among my favorites, too. Step-by-step in-progress images, photo reference used, thumbnail sketches, alternate versions, color studies, value studies…any and all of it is exciting to explore. And the more of it, the better!

And that brings me around to comics.

I’ve always been a mediocre collector, at best. Bagging and boarding comics was never my favorite part of the hobby. I latched onto trade paperback (and later, hardcover) collections early on. My favorites were—you guessed it—the ones that provided additional information on how these stories were created.

I never tire of this. Learning more about how art I love is created is endlessly fascinating to me. It certainly carries over to the books I’m making these days. I think about what I would like—as a fan—in the work of creatives I love, and try to make something that matches my expectations.

Neil Peart 1952–2020

I’d always planned to write about why the band Rush is so important to me. With the passing of Neil Peart, this is as good a time as any—and probably past due.

A lifetime ago, I took up an instrument—bass—and played in a bunch of bands. As a musician…let’s just say that I make a pretty good comic book creator and leave it at that.

But it was during those teenage years that I discovered the music of Rush. In addition to the virtuoso musicianship, there was something in the lyrics that hit home. I know many people reference the sci-fi and fantasy stuff, but beyond that, the lyrics reflected a love of language in the way words bounce off one another, teaming with unexpected contrast and alliteration. It really clicked with me. It still does.

The band never stayed in one place, creatively. One would think that after the massive success of 1980’s Moving Pictures, they could have lingered in that same sonic space. And who could blame them? Countless other bands have done so, carving out a particular audio territory in an effort to relive, recapture, or revitalize a past glory.

But that wasn’t Rush. Their music was a reflection of what they were listening to, exploring, and being inspired by. As a young creative, that perspective became a guiding light for me, and it holds true to this day.

Something else that resonated with me was all of the behind the music stuff—not salacious tabloid fodder, but stories of individuals intent on improving their craft, of producing their art their way, and maintaining friendships while creating art together for four decades.

In 1994, after recording for 20 years and topping numerous “Best Drummer” polls during that span, Neil Peart sought out a new drum teacher. With jazz drummer Freddie Gruber, “[I] completely rebuilt my drumming from the ground up. I feel like I’ve started over as a beginner.” After spending 2 years with Gruber, Peart again sought out instruction in 2007, teaming with another jazz drummer, Peter Erskine. Of that education, Peart shared the following exchange:

“I said, ‘Hey, as far as I’m concerned, I’m a butcher, and you’re a surgeon.’

“Peter laughed and spread his hands dismissively, ‘You’re not a butcher.’

“I raised a hand up high, palm out, and smiled, ‘Hey—I’m a good butcher; I’d just like to get a little more surgery into it!’”

Humility and humor in pursuit of perfecting one’s craft. Isn’t that how we’d all like to proceed?

Much is made of an Ayn Rand connection, and it’s largely blown out of proportion. Rush aren’t a bunch of hardcore Objectivists, Fascists, or Right-Wingers. The truth behind it is much simpler.

The Ayn Rand stuff came during a period when Mercury, their record label, was on the verge of dropping the band…in fact, they ordered the band to produce a more commercial album—something more in the vein of their first album, or similar to the band Bad Company.

As Geddy Lee said, “Caress Of Steel had bombed. The gigs were half-empty. We named it the ‘Down The Tubes Tour’. We joked about Neil going back into the farm equipment business, and Alex and I going back to painting movie theatres. When we started on 2112. We thought this would probably be the last record we make. So we were like: fuck you, Mercury. If we’re going to go out, we’ll go out doing our crazy shit, not failing at what you want us to be.”

That record proved to be the turning point for the band.

Lee continues, “Ayn Rand had a very controversial image as an anti-socialist and extreme right-wing capitalist, but that was a side of her work that was not of interest to us.”

A pertinent quote from the Fountainhead sums up what the band took from Rand, “The question isn’t who’s going to let me, the question is who’s going to stop me.”

I’m sure that resonated with the band as young creatives, and it’s been one of my mantras ever since I heard it. (I respect Ayn Rand in this context: an artist doing what they’re motivated to do—not in reaction to critics. Her social thoughts? Not so much. Your mileage may vary.)

The same three guys, creating together for four decades. When Peart’s 19-year old daughter died in a car accident, followed by his wife succumbing to cancer within the year, the band went on an extended hiatus. There was never any thought of continuing as Rush without Peart.

When asked if Rush was a democracy, guitarist Alex Lifeson responded, “It always has been. And it wasn’t just a majority that ruled, it had to be unanimous in any decision. So if two guys wanted to do something and one didn’t, then you talked about it, you worked out the pros and cons, and at the end of it, if there was still that one that didn’t want to do it, it didn’t get done. It wasn’t worth having the bitterness over some seemingly meaningless decision.”

That sort of unity informs the way I work. I make my comics, usually in collaboration with friends. That bond and sense of kinship means the world to me.

So for that, and probably thousands of other parts of my creative mindset that this trio has contributed to, thank you. And thank you, Neil, for all you shared.

I’ll close with a a snippet from the Acknowledgements from the Athena Voltaire Compendium (below).