avocare

. This is a painting I did for The Prince of Egypt (1997). Acrylic on Crescent 100 illustration board.

Every artistic choice represents a struggle over the significance of information: How much information needs to be included in the picture and what should be left out ?  How large should an element be in relation to other elements?   What colors give it the proper emphasis? How much detail should it have, before detail starts to become counterproductive? These choices about information establish the artist's priorities; they are at the heart of what makes art great and important.  They affect not just the content but the timing of art's revelations-- the strategic places where art pauses as it lifts its petticoats. But in our era of information technology, "information" has been radically redefined, and consequently so has the artist's struggle to manage information with taste and style. The ability to evaluate -- "assign value to"-- information may be the central identity crisis for art in our time.  Technology enables us to autom...

Here's my Comic-Con demo at the LAAFA/Blue Canvas booth: It's a great time to connect with old and new friends. Pictured left to right are: John Nevarez , Cecil Kim , Justin Yun , myself and Armand Baltazar

Once again, this year's ComicCon brought together the world's most diverse array of pictures of large breasted barbarian women wearing skimpy chain mail halter tops and brandishing broad swords.  A sampling of the large banners behind the tables in ComicCon's exhibition hall Because artists at ComicCon come from all over the world, attendees can view a cross section of approaches and philosophies: sometimes the warrior holds the sword in her left hand, sometimes she holds it in her right hand.  One groundbreaking artist was rumored to have depicted a woman holding the sword with both hands. The long rows of banners created an army to rival the army of emperor Qin Shi Huang.  The similarity of these images occasionally made it difficult to navigate the hall.  If you were instructed to "turn left at the eight foot banner of the half naked warrior girl," you might quickly find yourself in an endless loop.  Many of the artists responsible for these images showed con...

Here's a special event I have coming up on July 28 for art students interested in going into animation and entertainment art: Saturday, July 28, 2-7pm at MakeSpace Arts 2797 E. Foothill Blvd. Ste 100, Pasadena, CA 91107. To enroll contact Motivarti.org Here's a 12 minute video introduction for the workshop which includes a talk on the subject for those of you who can't make it.

James Williamson for the Saturday Evening Post (1949) There is a gap, at least 12 tugboats wide, between what an artist can imagine and what that artist can actually put on paper. It does no good for working artists to imagine a picture they lack the technical skill to implement. Famed illustrator Seymour Chwast confessed that he avoids pictures “that require craftsmanship and a drawing ability I do not have.” Elwood Smith maintains that his inability to draw the images he envisions forces him to be more creative: “if I can’t draw it, I struggle to come up with a different idea that’s invariably more original." Lots of artists today seem limited by their skills to a depressingly short menu of alternatives.  Many pictures are reduced to elementary line drawings with basic compositions (or even worse-- Photoshopped montages).  In graphic novels or syndicated comic strips-- art forms that once attracted skillful draftsmen--   a simplistic approach has become common...

I have a couple of demos I'll be doing at Comic-con, stop by and say hi! Charcoal portrait demo Saturday July 14, 2-3:30pm at the LAAFA booth, #5567   Concept art demo Saturday July 14, 4:30-5:15pm at the Schoolism booth# 2042. Here's a step by step for those of you who can't be there: