Category Archives: Illustration

Ira Glass on the Motivation to Create

July 31, 2008 By in Happiness, Illustration, Inspiration Leave a comment

Ira Glass, host of This American Life on NPR, points out that most creative people start out trying to produce amazing things in a medium they love. They also start out with a high taste level. Their initial product does not live up to that high taste level, they know it’s not good. Most people never get past the point of producing things that don’t live up to their own judgement. How do you keep going until what you produce is actually good enough to please even you?

You can watch the whole series of Ira Glass on storytelling here.

Great video that will help you through difficult times.

Process of Cartooning

August 4, 2007 By in Cartooning, Illustration 3 Comments

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Outside of writing a “How To” book or piecing something together from interviews, it’s hard to get artists to describe their process for working. Cartoonist Ted Slampyak wrote a blog entry that lays out how he works.

I am always amazed that cartoonists can continually meet deadlines, so it’s interesting to see how that happens in one case. Most interesting to me is that he does the word balloons first. I’m guessing that means the art in this serves the dialog instead of the other way around.

Robert Wilson On Deciding What To Do Next

July 19, 2007 By in Illustration, Theater 2 Comments

I watched the documentary Absolute Wilson last night. It follows the creative life of Robert Wilson the avant-garde stage director and writer. It ends with him talking about what to do next and I thought it was interesting enough to pass along:

Sometimes you say to yourself, what should I do next? And people advise you or you decide yourself what to do next. And quite often, you try to think of what is the right thing to do. But, quite often, you should think what is the wrong thing to do. And then do that.

Process of Design: Do You Have A Final Vision Before You Begin?

April 19, 2007 By in Art, Books, Illustration, Inspiration Leave a comment

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Many Stuff, a graphic design and art blog, asked a group of designers the same two questions:

When you work, do you think in terms of forms or in terms of a creation process? Do you have a clear vision of your final image or does it come only from an upstream creation process?

They answers are interesting, varied and worth reading. They have been published, along with examples of each designers work, in a large (70M) PDF file called About the Process. So, t takes a while to download and some of the answers are in French.

Here is a sample answer:

All I create is just reflexion of me and my feelings. My work is to come up to the mirror and make a copy of the picture I see! Nothing more! – Stanislav Chepurnov

link via PingMag

Download the PDF file here

Draw Ball Community Art/Graffiti

March 9, 2007 By in Illustration Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2017-08-06 at 10.15.47 AMIt’s a giant virtual ball of art! This site is an attempt at communal art, but it also has the appeal of that wall where all the stoners hang out and draw doodles. You can draw what you want, but know that someone can draw over it.

New users start out with a limited amount of ink. If you create something that the site administrators deem to be of value they’ll preserve it for a while, then add it to the hall of fame and you will win unlimited ink.

There have been several large scale projects undertaken by groups to control the ball. In 2006, a large Korean flag was clearly visible and then slowly was changed into a Pepsi logo by competing artists. Read more about the history here.

It’s worth taking a look at this communal project even if you can’t draw at all. Check out the hall of fame for some really interesting pieces.

Drawball