Hey there! I've made a weekly Newsletter that you can subscribe to here. I'll also be periodically uploading past entries to my website here. I hope you enjoy—feel free to respond with your own thoughts and questions, they may make it into future Q&As!
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
DOING
Book Illustration: As of this email, the AI overlords have yet to confiscate our novels in lieu of short-form content (though I’m sure the day will come). Can you believe it, people still read books? And I’ve taken a liking to illustrating them, perhaps as a civic duty in staving off the digital doomsday.
Here’s a book I recently illustrated for a local author named Caleb Sullivan. His story stands on the shoulders of all those who leveraged fantasy to speak into larger spiritual truths (think C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and the like).I had a ton of fun painting this piece. Below is the final cover as well as some of the concept art made for its development. Here’s the amazon link if you’d like to check it out!.jpg?1727626448)
READING
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis: Everyone knows about Narnia, but did you know Lewis wrote a sci-fi trilogy? They’re wonderfully weird and deeply inspiring to my own writing projects (more on these later). If you’ve enjoyed sci-fi but thought “Man, I wish this plot had spiritually esoteric undertones,” then look no further. I’ve dog-eared dozens of pages so far.
The story focuses on the main character, Ransom, being sent to Venus through miraculous means. He then experiences a planet in an Edenic state, complete with a prototypical Eve-figure that he must convince not to fail where our own Eve had.Lewis stretches my scope of reality to its breaking point, and leaves me in refreshed awe of God time and time again. I’d love to develop art around these stories…the world needs it brought to the big screen and beyond.
USING
Moo Printing: I’ve used Moo for years and love the quality of these cards. Far from a relic of the past, the rounded corners and ability to upload different back designs makes it feel like I’m printing my own trading cards, and people nearly treat them as such!I recently had an open-studio event and several people were excited to see these were free business cards and not mini-prints or bookmarks (though you could use them as such). Giving people a choice of their favorite design makes it a lot more fun, and I've made many great connections this way.
Q&A
Respond to this email with a question of your own! If you're curious about something, others are too. Let's grow together.
“I don’t know how to start my sketches. I have cool ideas, but they’re foggy in my imagination and I don’t know how to capture them on paper. Do you see the finished artwork in your head before you start? How do you begin your pieces?”
This is one of the more common questions I’ve received over the years, and understandably so. It’s easy to think of the seasoned artist as a sort of mystic, peering into the ether and drawing what the fates reveal. Maybe it’s that way for some, but if such forces exist, I’ve remained largely unacquainted (unless you count caffeine).Rather, my most favorite and successful pieces typically start with little more than an idea, if even that much. When I allow myself to sketch for its own sake (often out of boredom), I feel a crucial freedom to “fail.” Even when there are ulterior motives—namely, it being produced for a client—I find it necessary to hold the beginning stages with a loose, almost ambivalent, hand.
The real failure isn't in making a bad sketch, but in letting fear keep you from sketching at all.Still, I can feel the pressure of the blank page like anyone else. But just as an athlete might stretch before a workout, so too artists can loosen up before drawing. Here's one such "stretch" I've been implementing:Work with cheap materials. Seriously, draw on garbage if you need to. My most expensive sketchbooks are always the least filled because their perceived preciousness makes me tighten up. But I recently purchased a roll of cheap craft paper, and it’s a joy to work on. I don’t care if I ruin it, which helps me draw more intuitively. Plus, the larger scale requires me to physically step back and evaluate the work more accurately. You can always transfer to a more final surface later, but starting in this manner has been super refreshing for me.
That’s it for now. I’ve love to hear if these methods help you! Feel free to share your experience, questions, and anything you're working on in a reply to this email.
– Cameron