You know, like in a computer. Pixels, vectors, Adobe products, Apple gear, WACOM tablet, LCD, external drives. Electromagnetic Hell.

So some students will find it odd that the first thing out of my mouth when I talk about method is, "Don't create your art in the computer."

This coming from the guy who makes his living with a computer. I didn't always make awesome digital illustration. In fact, it kind of sucked.

A little backstory.

The first time I sat down at a computer was at my dad's office at O'Hare airport (riiiight. try that nowadays, kids). It was a green-screen airline reservations system hooked up to a dot-matrix printer.  I was seven years old. My first thought was "This is just like Star Wars." My second thought was, "How can I make art with this thing?" My sister and I had all kinds of fun making rocket ship patterns with numbers and letters. Weee-hoo!

This image will self-destruct in 3...2...

Years later, when Windows 3.1 became the hottest thing since 10-lb. mobile phones, I started creating art in the computer again. It was terrible. Pixelated nightmares of birthday greetings and mutilated self-portraits.

When a friend loaned me a copy of CorelDraw, I created some equally bad art in the computer. The fact that I had a more sophisticated vector application did nothing to improve my digital work. Why?

It's because I strayed from the wildly fun and inspirational process of drawing and doodling and focused on just making it all up onscreen.

My digital work has improved considerably since I "went backwards" and started sketching again. When I work on a project now, my first step is to move away from the computer. Even though the final art is all digital, it always (always, always) starts out with a #2 pencil and plain ol' paper.

Copylicious was delicious

Here's an awesome real-world example of my method. It's not brain surgery, this method of mine. I didn't file a patent on the process. It just works.

Kelly Parkinson is a copywriter extraordinaire. If you visit her copylicious web site, you'll soon find yourself inventing excuses to work with her. She's just awesome, and she's also my ideal client. She's independent, knows her business, and enjoys talking about it. That made it incredibly easier to get a handle on how I could help her with some illustrations.

Kelly has a pretty cool product called the Web Site Jet Pack. The design of her site is simple and fun. She just needed a simple bird illustration. A birdie wearing a jet pack. When I hear something like that you can't pull me away. A bird wearing a jet pack. This is what gets me excited, what can I say?

Let's make some birdies!

After Kelly and I talked about her site, I went to Step 1: I put my computer to sleep and started doodling little birdies. I just had fun with it, let loose. No high art here, no polished Leonardo DaVinci renderings, just some messin' around.

Then I went away and had something to eat (that's Step 2 if you're keeping track). It's good to go away for a bit because I find I overfocus and lose sight of the big picture.

When I came back I narrowed down my doodles and made some more finished drawings. Below you can see a few examples. I do this every time.

Digital Illustration Unplugged: pencil and paper.

You'll also see the final drawing on the tracing paper (upper right, by the pencil point). That's the thing I scan in and use as a reference in the computer.

I'll get into that in more depth another time, I promise.

For now, the thing I want to stick in your mind is the idea that creating digital illustration does not always start in the computer. For me, it starts where all my better illustration starts, which is in the noggin and on paper.

Another interesting point is that I never sent Kelly my doodles and scraps. How much fun would that have been for her?

Ummm... what the hell is this? I thought this guy was good, I don't want this sketchy crap on my web site. What is this, like, half a bird? Oh my god... is it too late to get my money back?

It would be the equivalent of Kelly sending one of her clients a torn-up notebook page of shorthand and saying, "It will be kind of like this."

Disaster, right? So instead they just get awesome copy that works. Kelly gets a polished-up birdie in a jet pack. Everyone's happy.

So again, the lesson for today, Kids? Turn off the computer. Give that pencil a workout. You'll be very pleased with the results and you might just have a blast in the process. Isn't that why you do this anyway?

Jenni (my wife) can do amazing things with yeast and flour. Here's where I suddenly become a non-expert and kind of an idiot. I'm happy to be a baking idiot because the stuff she bakes is so freaking awesome that I would pretend to be a baking idiot even if I weren't. She makes our bread every week. Yep. Two crusty, golden loaves of goodness for sandwiches, toast, and just stuffing huge hunks in our mouths when she's not looking. She recently perfected her California Sourdough. Sigh.

Baking her bread is an art. There are three million little steps she goes through by hand. It's a craft.

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away we had a bread machine. The bread was... okay. Kind of a weird rectylinder-shaped loaf. Not bad. The thing that made it palatable was that Jenni still used her own dough and just used the machine for kneading (carpal tunnel issues). However, I was fascinated (okay, turned off) by the inherent concept of a bread machine.

If you used this machine in the way it was intended, you simply had to combine their box of mix and some water in the machine and press the appropriate buttons at the right time (some even have one-button functionality).

Or, you could drive to Safeway and pick up some Wonder Bread. I still have personal issues with either option. Where's the love, the craft? Bread baking should be like my Great Grandma Mary used to do. I don't think I ever saw that woman without flour in her hair or on her clothes. It was messy, yeasty, loud (slap!), and uneven in shape. Beautiful.

I guess that's why I'm still writing about it twenty-five  years later.

Coffee

Coffee. Mmm.. coffee. We make ours in a French press at home. We grind the beans before brewing every pot. We are total coffee snobs (I blame Europe). I don't care. We love our oily beans, our fresh coffee.

When I'm out of the house my first preference is the local coffee shop, but I'm not opposed to stopping at Starbucks. I won't pretend that doesn't represent a conflict in my values (Kiva), but I have other value issues which must be remedied first. Priorities.

One thing that will likely hasten my boycott of Starbucks is the buttons. While Howard Schultz claimed to have a vision of bringing Italian espresso bars to America, he seems to have created the McDonaldLand® version. Just ten short years ago, the Manhattan Starbucks I frequented made their espresso "by hand" in a real machine. The baristas would talk to me and they knew my name. Now it's just push-button technology and "I HAVE A VENTI SOY LATTE FOR... DAVID?"

It's a bread machine.

In contrast, the baristas at Concordia Coffeehouse in NE Portland take a little longer to get me my soy latte (like, 30 seconds). But man, what a thing of beauty. It's an art and I enjoy watching them perform. We talk. I feel pity for the Starbucks "baristas" who don't get (choose) to do that every day. Maybe there's a special way they press the buttons. I don't know.

Computer Art

Well. If you've followed me this far, you can see what I'm driving at.

You can create art in the computer by using the pre-set shape tools, gradient effects, blur filters, and use every gadget dans le maison. You can press buttons all day long and you may come out with a good illustration.

Did you put some art in there?

For a long time, a lot of art directors and agents stayed away from buying "computer art." It looked too perfect, too slick. You could tell it was computer art. People still like seeing those little imperfections that make an illustration feel... real.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with digital illustration. If there were, I would be out of business.

The thing is, if you're going to create art using the computer, you've got to allow for the happy accidents, the serendipitous flyaway brush stroke, the uneven rectangle here and there. Let it be messy. Be asymmetrical. Slap that vector line on the counter with a loud SLAP!

If you use traditional tools (paint, pastel, cut-out paper), you know how messy you can get. Feels good, right?

The computer is just a another tool. You can learn every feature and effect in the Adobe CS4 Design Suite, but that simply makes you a Technical Expert. What makes you an artist is the ability to communicate emotion, action, subtle wit, or simply a comfy feeling. It doesn't matter if you use a pencil or pixels, but if you choose pixels, please don't become a button-pusher. Anyone can push a button and learn some features by using a manual. Yes, anyone.

When Jenni takes her bread out of the oven, she beams. She holds it up a steaming, golden loaf and everyone says, "Oooooooohhhh!"

That's art. That's what art does.

So use the computer to make your art. Don't forget to be a little messy.