It's been an interesting few days. It's been an interesting few days indeed.
Monday.
Thanks to the efforts of my good buddy Rusty, I had an appointment with the good folks over at
Avenging Angels to have a look-see at my little black book. (Hey, I've got to do something to make illustration sound exciting, don't I?) It was slated for early afternoon, so even if I slept a little longer than I had been lately, I would have been able to make it there A-ok with no kind of troubles. Or so I thought. Remember kids, when you're new to a big city, the last thing you want to do, from a navigation standpoint, is write down the wrong address. Well, I didn't so much write down the wrong address as I did write down the wrong street. But it was an easy mistake to make! It's on 18th street, and I'm staying on 118th street, so really, how could I not? Thanks to a phone call to my lady and the fact that I brought it to their attention that they didn't have their address listed on their website (which they saw to rectify in a timely fashion) I was back on track in no time. I made it to the appointed floor at my destination after riding in the world's smallest and most rickety elevator and sat down for a nice (read: nerve-racking) chat with some nice (read: nice) folks. The reaction to my work seemed very positive. It was so positive that they actually wanted to wait for the third art director to arrive to talk with me. But, since it wasn't looking like he was coming back any time soon, we had gotten started without him. At any rate, they seemed interested and since they wanted the absent art director too view my work, how could I not help but offer to leave it for him to see and to come back the following day? I know! So that's what I did. I'd get a call on the following day and I'd come back in to talk. Easy-peasy.
I waited for twenty minutes for the elevator (I told you this elevator was trouble) then set off into the world to... I don't know, paint the town red. I called Brian and since his plans had fallen through for the day, he decided he wanted to come downtown to help me paint the town; though he was dead-set on orange over red. We met up and aimlessly wandered. We wandered into a few vintage shops, a comic book store, and then meandered over to the Empire State Building. (Have you ever noticed it shares initials with the Empire Strikes Back? I have.) After navigating the maze of alizarin velvet we find ourselves 86 stories in the air... just kind of hanging out. On the ride up I mused at how this elevator was faster than the other one I had been in that day. Does that seem right to you? We spend some time on what very well be the top of the world, take some pictures, and then come back down to earth. In all honesty I despise doing the "tourist" thing. Oh, of course I took some pictures, but people are insane at that altitude! Pushing to the edge of the railing, cramming in as tight as can be just to take pictures of a 900 foot drop. I love pictures, as I'm sure anyone who knows me knows, but there is something to be said for stopping and enjoying the moment. Spending time with what's going on and keeping it in the biological memory, rather than the digital one - where really, who's going to see it?
After our descent we poke into an eatery and I have the most expensive, most disappointing and unfulfilling milksjake I've ever had in my life. The fries weren't very good either. When we had eaten our fill and set out into the night, we called it a night and headed home. Such the town-painters we are.
Joy.
Tuesday.
Remember that phone call I was supposed to be getting this day? Yeah, never happened. I sat around all day like an adolescent girl watching my phone waiting for it to ring. For a while I thought my phone might be busted, so I started calling for drop offs again. It worked going out, and just as I started to suspect that it might not be accepting incoming calls (there was no logical reason to be thinking this, but then again I felt like an adolescent girl, I wasn't exactly in charge of m facilities) Adbase called me back, but I didn't answer. I wasn't in the mood for a sales pitch. And besides, my dreamy contact might call back and who'd want to be on the other line when that happened? Nobody. That's who. So I spent all day waiting by the phone for a call that never came.
Sadness.
Wednesday.
Today.
Today was exciting. Sometime last week, Brian somehow managed to get ahold of
Donato Giancola and arranged a studio visit. I of course, intended to tag along. We schlepped out to Brooklyn and once we found the right house we stormed the gates! Or tentetively rang his doorbell. One of the two, I'm still a mite fuzzy on the events of the day. For those of you who don't know and are too lazy to click the link, Donato is a fantasy/science fiction illustrator. He's been in
Spectrum loads of times and has won bunches of awards. He's illustrated a thing here or there for Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, and even into the Marvel universe with Iron Man. And I was staning in his living room looking at all of his wonderful stuff. Then it got better, we ascended into his studio and got to poke through his things. Oh, and watch him paint. That was cool too. But we asked a lot of pointed questions about how he got his start and all of the other trivial nuts and bolts kind of things that people like us want to know. And this is where it gets wierd. Apparently he thinks that painting is dead. At least from an illustration stand point. That only people that are established are able to keep with painting because it's too late from them to make the switch and not lose their brand identity, as it were. He also expressed the notion that doing portfolio drop-offs were dead too. That art directors just wanted to get PDFs of new talent's work. (An idea that I don't agree with 100%, but I'm defintely going to try this PDF thing now too.) The visit was eye-opening, informational, and inspirational, but I didn't leave with stars in my eyes or a stone in my gut. I just kind of left with a...
Huh?
I suppose it's just food for thought and should all be taken with a grain of salt. If nothing else it's more evidence that there is no one right way to do what it is I'm trying to do. I do know, however, that I'm going to come home and redo a lot of the paintings I've previously done. I've been toying with that idea for quite some time, but now... now I'm certain of it. Pull together some of my older work into a more cohesive body of work. Yeah... I think that'll be a swell idea.
Tomorrow.
Hopefully I'll get my book back from the Avenging Angels, and that's really all I have planned. They have the better of my two books, so hopefully I'll get to it soon. I have need for it on Friday. Oh yes. I have plans indeed.
Not famous yet. Maybe tomorrow.
I keep hearing that digital is the wave of the future. Actually, if you recall my meeting with Donato he went as far as to say that painting for illustration was dead. Well, I still don't agree with that but something compelled me to see where my digital chops were these days.
