Questions — on crowns, materials, and art school.

bobbydaddy: Hi, this is Eldanis, here on tumblr and also on DA. Your most recent post reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, actually.

I’ve noticed that crowns show up often in your work, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to share your thoughts on them. On the crown symbol in general if you like, but specifically on your own choices in and motivations behind using it, and what meanings it has for you personally, as well as what you aim to communicate illustratively with it. I love it, and would love to understand it better.

Finally, yay for OCAD! I toured there years ago in highschool when I still lived in Ontario, and it’s been my mental ‘art school’ archetype, if that makes any sense at all, ever since. It’s really cool to be following someone who is studying there.

Good question! I’m not the best with words, especially when it comes to explaining or understanding visual motifs and particularly when they’re my own. I like to keep the meaning pretty open to interpretation, since it’s the nature of images to be open to multiple interpretations. Also, whenever I try to explain what something means to me in particular I can’t help but feel pretentious. So my apologies for what’s to come, any pretention is unintentional! But here goes:

I’ve always thought of the crown as a kind of visual representation for the potential of self, of the individual, not as you are but as what you are capable of being. Whether or not you are striving towards it, it’s always there. I doubt that ever gets communicated that far in the pieces, but I hope there’s still a sense that the crown is something to be sought after, not in terms of royalty or glory or anything like that, but simply as something of great value on a very personal level. There’s definitely more to it than that as well, I just can’t put it into words.

The main inspiration for the crowns came from the movie “Basquiat”, which followed the life of the underground painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s my favourite movie and had a very large impact on my thoughts about art, though in what way I can’t explain. There a few key scenes involving a crown, it was a very consistent motif in his work, and there’s this story near the very end of the film:

“There was this little prince with a magic crown. An evil warlock kidnapped him, locked him in a cell in a huge tower and took away his voice. There was a window made of bars. The prince would smash his head against the bars hoping that someone would hear the sound and find him. The crown made the most beautiful sound that anyone ever heard. You could hear the ringing for miles. It was so beautiful that people wanted to grab the air. They never found the prince. He never got out of the room. But the sound he made filled everything with beauty.” - from the script here

This story still gets to me, and the movie is definitely worth seeing. At the very least, you can’t miss out on seeing David Bowie playing Andy Warhol.

So that’s quite a long response, and I hope I managed to answer your question! And glad to hear from someone familiar with OCAD, I’ve only been there for a year but I’m heading into my third year now and with any luck it’ll only get better. 

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fly-away-owly: Oh I just love your artwork it’s amazing..so inspiring.What medium do you mostly work with?

Thank you! Most of the time I work with pencil and ink, they tend to be my favourites, but I am trying to practice more with painting, both traditionally and digitally.

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gracefaceplace: I’ve had a look at your website and i’m just in love with your work! Truly inspiring! I’m a first year illustration student at university, do you have any advice? 

Keep up the brilliant work :) ,

Grace Sandford

I’ve only just finished my second year so I’m still looking for advice myself. I came across this not long ago and think it has the best advice for any illustrator, particularly ones going through art school:

Super Obvious Secrets I Wish They’d Teach In Art School

As far as my own advice goes, to my best knowledge most first year programs are mainly foundations based: figure drawing, still life, colour theory etc. So focus on strengthening your drawing skills because they will always be the most important set of skills you’ll have as an illustrator and it will make your life so much easier and less stressful once you get into more conceptual illustration if you have a strong base in drawing. And don’t worry too much about style yet, that all happens eventually, but it’s easier to have a consistent style when you have some fundamental understanding of drawing.

Also, look at tons of art, of all styles and kinds, old and new. When you see a piece you like figure out what it is exactly that you like about it, what makes it click with you, what makes it work, and see if you can apply some of those techniques in your own work. Experiment!

See if you can start developing a process for your illustrations. Try to avoid just taking a piece of paper and laying down your final draft in one go. Start with thumbnails, experiment with different ideas and compositions (I was just looking at Sam Bosma’s sketchbook, and for one of his pieces he did over 30 thumbnails! That’s intense!) Thumbnails allow you to try a lot of different approaches to a piece and often help with figuring out visual problems like composition or flow. And if you start doing lots of them you get more accustomed to coming up with a number of ideas for a single concept, which is what both professors and art directors are usually looking for. From there it’s good to keep doing more drafts, but the process differs from artist to artist. I usually go from thumbnails to rough drafts to a finished line drawing and then to final (if it was in colour I would also do some colour studies before going to final). Ultimately, the more time you spend planning your piece out, the less problems you’ll run into when you’re working on that final draft. Find a process that works for you and schoolwork becomes quite a bit less stressful…or at the very least there’s less of those very late nights when everything’s due the next day and you suddenly realize you’ve made a terrible error and have to start all over again.

And remember, you only get as much out of art school as you put into it. No school can make you into a great illustrator, that all depends on the amount of work you’re willing to put into your work.

I hope some of that is at least a bit useful to you. Best of luck!