The Vintage Man
This Ben Jones page touched a nerve (it's from 'Space Ballz', in Paper Rad's Paper Rad, BJ & da Dogs). I'm going to try and adopt this as my mantra:The difference between a good artist and a great one is: the novice will often lay down his tool or brush, then pick up an invisible club on the mind's table and helplessly smash the easels and jade. Whereas the Vintage Man no longer hurts himself or anyone and keeps sculpting light.I tend to experience my work as a struggle - with myself, with pen and paper, with my lousy drawing ability, with everything. I think it had reached the stage where I'd been unwittingly fetishising that struggle, treating it as a sign that my work is 'serious, mature, meaningful' - i.e. real art.
So I really like the idea that such struggle is actually a sign of immaturity, and that the great artist steps aside from the fight and "no longer hurts himself or anyone."
After all, I just want to make comics. Why should that be painful?
posted by Dylan Horrocks at
10:30 AM
4 Comments:
But its painful, man. :)
I mean, I suffer like a dog and for what I see, lots of us do.
I haven´t really met a gracious soul who cand do it smiling. I think some of what you said in the other post explain it a little: cars, perspective... we´re always struggling with something we just plainly don´t know how to draw. But that´s somthing of the mediums´insanity: we´re trying to recreate the world. How ambicious is that?
I came across this post (and your whole blog; how nice to see!) via K Thor Jensen's blog. Lately it's been hard just to get myself to sit at the drawing table (usually because I am more comfortable here, in front of the monitor). Perhaps I need to quell my internal conflicts and start sculpting light. If that's even do-able.
Odyr: yeah, it is painful. But the thing is I had been embracing - even fetishising - that pain; congratulating myself for it, as a sign that I was a 'serious artist'. And maybe it is. But a lot of my notions about art are changing at the moment, and this, I guess, is one of them. The pain was actually preventing me doing anything at all, and to hell with that. I really would like to enjoy what I'm doing - have some fun. As James Kochalka says, 'art and play are the same thing!'
And in my own work, I increasingly feel that I'm not trying to recreate the world; instead I'm creating a whole new world. Which is kind of liberating, 'cause - y'know - maybe cars look a little different in my world... ;-)
Well, on that you´re right on the mark. Its another world. Its like when you´re trying to do something out of a photo, isn´t? You try and try and looks like shit until you can actually manage to forget the photo and just draw the damn thing. And then, voilà: there it is, something that´s yours.
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