0:00

Hey Draftsmen listeners, Stan here and I've

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got some exciting news to share. You

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We've released our official Marvel course, Marvel's

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That's proko.com slash marvel.

1:00

Hey there Draftspeople. To

1:03

help fill the void and the lack of episodes

1:05

in your Draftsmen feed, we're rewinding

1:07

back to five Proko classic interviews

1:11

and one new one. You're listening

1:13

to this new mini-series where we

1:15

take a deep dive into the lives,

1:17

journeys, and minds of some of the most fascinating

1:20

artists and instructors from Fine

1:22

Art Masters to Comic Legends.

1:25

Today we have one of the best art instructors

1:27

of all time, Steve Houston. Steve

1:30

is a Fine Art Painter and author of the book

1:32

Figure Drawing for Artists. This

1:34

is an older interview, one of the first I've done.

1:37

Me and my production manager, Sean, back

1:40

in the day, we drove up to LA to meet

1:42

up with Steve and we couldn't afford

1:44

to rent a sound studio. So

1:47

we got the cheapest hotel room and

1:50

tried to make it presentable. This

1:52

one goes deep, lots of philosophical talk

1:54

and little gems for you to mine. I'm

1:57

sure you'll all get something profound out of it. Enjoy.

2:01

Stan Prokofenco Hey guys, so welcome

2:03

to Proko.

2:10

My

2:13

name is Stan Prokofenco. This

2:15

is the one and only Steve Houston, one

2:17

of my biggest idols. Somebody I really

2:20

look up to. I'm a fan of you. Oh,

2:22

thank you. Wow. You heard that

2:25

one. That's right. He's a really

2:27

good artist and even better

2:29

teacher, I think. Probably one of the best teachers

2:31

alive, in my opinion. He teaches workshops

2:34

on New Masters Academy and art mentors,

2:36

right? Yeah. Yeah. Why

2:39

don't you start with the beginning. All

2:41

right. When did you start? Was it February 1959?

2:44

No, that's what I was... Well, yeah.

2:47

I went to Art Center, moved from Alaska

2:49

to California to go to Art Center,

2:52

the art school in Pasadena and

2:54

went as an illustration major, which is

2:56

where all the craft was. The fine art was doing

2:59

all the New York stuff and illustration

3:01

was the place to learn how to draw and how to paint

3:03

and all that good stuff. So I went through that. I

3:05

illustrated for a number of years and...

3:08

Was that college? Yeah, Art

3:10

Center was a college. Right. Were

3:12

you drawing before that? No. Well,

3:15

I always drew but I draw comic. You

3:17

can see it in my paintings now. I drew a comic book

3:19

here as a kid but I didn't have any

3:21

training. I was up in Alaska. So you started as a

3:23

college? My one and only before Art Center,

3:25

my one and only art class was leatherworks

3:28

and I made a... Or I guess it was a copper.

3:30

I made a little copper bulldog belt buckle. That

3:33

was my whole education in

3:35

art up until Art Center. Wow. Okay.

3:39

So that was... It wasn't my new head.

3:41

People often think that you have to start as like a little

3:43

kid. No, I always drew. It was

3:45

the one thing I could do better than my two big brothers.

3:48

Okay. So you got my identity

3:50

out of drawing. I drew all the time but it was just out

3:52

of my head. Very hot being comic book characters.

3:56

I used to send my drawings into Marvel

3:58

and I was a Marvel guy or a Marvel... kid

4:00

and they'd send these nice letters back saying work

4:02

on your anatomy or whatever it was

4:04

but you know, no training and then what

4:07

I discovered Art Center so I went there and

4:09

then illustrated for a few years

4:11

and just it was a burnout profession.

4:14

I got known as being pretty quick so I

4:16

get these overnight or over

4:18

the weekend deadlines I'd stay up for two or

4:20

three days to crank out something that wasn't very good

4:22

and it just took

4:24

the fun out of it. So I went back, I'd always

4:27

taught a little bit. I went back and started teaching

4:29

at Art Center and then that way not only

4:31

were they paying me to practice, I

4:33

could sit in on all my favorite teachers,

4:36

a lot of them were the teachers I'd had in school.

4:38

I'd sit in their classes. Dan McCaw

4:40

was a huge favorite of mine. Richard Bunkle

4:43

is no longer with us. Dave McCarsky

4:45

was a big influence of Ernie Wilson, Harry

4:48

Carmian, these some of

4:50

them were still there, some not but anyway, that

4:52

way they were basically paying me to get a master's

4:55

program is the way I looked at it. I went

4:57

in, they told me to teach a

4:59

class and I would teach it the way I wanted

5:02

to learn. If I wanted to learn about color, I'd try

5:04

and get a head painting class maybe and teach me

5:06

on color theory and head painting. If I wanted to work

5:08

on hands, I'd give them extra work

5:11

and class on hands and then I basically had

5:13

a research team work on all

5:15

the problems I was trying to learn. To

5:17

me, it was nirvana. Stan L G I

5:24

was a year out of college doing

5:26

high school classes on Saturday. They had a

5:29

Saturday program at that point on it, so they still do.

5:32

And then I became on the I was one

5:34

of the substitute teachers when somebody got sick and

5:37

then Berne Hogarth, the old Tarzan comic

5:39

strip fame, he became a mentor

5:41

of mine for a while and he had a heart attack and

5:44

I took over his class. Then

5:46

Dan McCaw, another mentor of mine who's still out

5:48

there painting masterpieces, he retired

5:51

and recommended me for his head painting. So I had

5:53

a good solid figure drawing class, good

5:55

solid head painting class and

5:57

that's okay. We're gonna pause the history first.

6:00

like because I want to ask, right out of college, he started

6:02

teaching at the college and he took over

6:04

all these giant like teachers.

6:06

How are you doing it so good? Marshall L. And so, two or three, I

6:08

wasn't very good. They just needed more somebody.

6:11

It was two or three years later, you know,

6:13

so by the time I started taking those classes and

6:15

I was a B-Team teacher, how

6:18

I got as good as I could get in that

6:20

time is when I went to college,

6:23

I was really a C-plus student. I was

6:25

an average student. I never got one

6:27

piece in the student gallery. I

6:29

never got a scholarship and I would

6:32

have loved to get in a piece in the student gallery but I didn't

6:34

want a scholarship because I saw what

6:36

would happen is the students who got the scholarships,

6:39

they had to go every single semester so they

6:41

couldn't take a break and they would

6:43

then kind of try and game the system. They

6:45

know that that guy over there really

6:47

likes this kind of work and they give him that kind

6:50

of work. So, you figure out how to get a good grade because if

6:52

you're not getting B's and A's, you're

6:55

not going to keep that scholarship and what I wanted

6:57

to do is have the flexibility of

6:59

failing, being able to fail and also

7:02

targeting. So if I was getting an abstract

7:05

expressionist class or

7:08

contour drawing class, it wasn't

7:10

what I thought I wanted to be at that time. I

7:12

would blow it off basically and as long as I got

7:14

a C, I was good with that and

7:17

then I would bust my butt in the figure

7:19

drawing and in the painting and stuff and

7:21

actually I didn't even really paint. There wasn't much

7:23

in terms of painting as we think of those just

7:26

nice juicy alla prima paints. It

7:28

was more either fine art painting just

7:30

kind of playing with paint or rendering.

7:33

So, I worked very hard on the rendering skills, learning

7:35

to make something as real as it can be, reflections

7:38

and transparencies and surfaces and stuff.

7:40

Stan L With

7:42

a pencil. Or whatever, gouache pencil, that

7:44

kind of stuff. Grillic oil eventually. They

7:47

were called rendering classes. So, you do it as

7:49

tight as you could basically. Stan L Okay.

7:52

As realistic as possible. So, when did you introduce paint

7:55

and color? Much later, when I started to teach, I

7:57

started teaching drawing because I still

7:59

see myself was this. I'm a draftsman

8:02

that learned how to paint. I was more naturally

8:04

good at drawing. Painting was actually quite

8:06

hard for me. Rendering is a little different.

8:08

It's just if you're willing to put in 100 hours, you're

8:10

gonna make that apple look like an apple. So,

8:13

that was mileage in. But painting,

8:16

getting color, getting fresh strokes,

8:18

making that form turn while still

8:20

showing the process, not hiding that process

8:23

through blending techniques, that

8:25

was harder to make it look like a sargent

8:28

or a fetching or whatever. That

8:30

came much later and that takes good

8:33

color knowledge and I didn't really have that.

8:35

And so, I could render well, I could

8:38

draw well, I couldn't paint

8:40

well. So, what I did is when I started teaching

8:42

the drawing class, I sat in with Dan McCollum, ain't

8:44

he? And he'd give these great demos

8:47

and he'd talk and tell you hilarious jokes all the way

8:50

through. But then we'd take a break somewhere around lunch

8:52

and we'd go into the slide room. And

8:54

back then it was still slide. And he'd

8:57

click through and he'd show us Dean Cornwell's

8:59

and Sargent's and Chase's and

9:02

Soria was big with him. And he'd

9:04

talk about the color theory. Look at the

9:06

warm and the cool, the rich and the gray and the

9:08

light. Is that a driving instruction? Yeah. Well, for

9:10

this whole class, but I'd be sitting

9:12

in. I'd have done my Tuesdays

9:15

and Thursdays, I'd do my drawing

9:17

class and maybe on Wednesday he'd have a head

9:19

painting class. So, I'd go in and

9:21

usually have lunch with him and he'd just let me hang

9:23

out. And every teacher I asked, let me do that. And

9:26

I would go in on, you know, whatever

9:28

number of days. Sometimes I'd be working on my own stuff,

9:31

sometimes I wouldn't. But when I could, which is

9:33

quite often, I would go in and sit in and he'd

9:35

take his old class into the slide screening

9:38

room and we'd just go through slides. He'd

9:40

talk it through and then I'd watch him. I'd be

9:42

painting with the class too. But

9:45

I'd watch and listen to him and he'd sit

9:47

down and say, okay, now this is blues too rich.

9:49

You got to shift it this way. You got to do that

9:51

to make it harmonize. And I slowly

9:54

painstakingly figured out color. It

9:57

took a while. It took a few years. And

9:59

where I'd really took off for me

10:01

was when I started teaching head painting

10:04

because I was teaching color theory as well as drawing

10:06

principles basically and I finally figured

10:08

it out a couple years into teaching it but I was not.

10:10

How did you figure it out? Did you read books or because

10:13

I did all that but I also had a research

10:16

team. What does that mean? I had 10 or 15

10:19

students in there. Okay

10:21

guys, we're gonna work on warm cool,

10:24

how to get the warm lights and the cool shadows

10:26

to harmonize. Okay. So, I

10:28

do a pretty terrible demo because

10:30

you're the teacher they assume it's

10:32

good. So, you get that kind of, they cut you a break,

10:35

you know, because you got that authority. The therapist

10:37

says something must be too, is that kind of thing. So,

10:40

I do a fairly horrible demo and

10:43

then I go around and help these first or third

10:45

semester students muddle through and

10:47

every once in a while somebody by oftentimes

10:50

accident will get this gorgeous

10:52

warm cool. I'd go, so that's

10:54

how you mix that and then make a little no

10:56

and I'd steal from them. Okay and they

10:58

weren't actually going out researching things. No, to

11:01

be clear. Yeah, I thought

11:03

you like. I could have thought of that though. That would be

11:05

great though. You assign a research project and they have

11:07

to write an essay about color. Well, they do that, you know,

11:11

with their exercises, you know, when I give them assignments

11:13

and they'd go back home and they'd work on

11:16

whatever, right? Let's make sure the foreground

11:18

is a different value range of the background so it separates

11:21

and you're constantly banging into

11:23

your students. So, you knock it into your head,

11:25

these fundamental principles. What are the fundamental

11:28

ideas, not the flash, if you have a hundred

11:30

hours to make that apple look right, you're

11:33

going to stumble into it eventually. It's just a

11:35

matter of patience. But in a few

11:37

minutes when you have to edit out your time

11:40

or the number of strokes or

11:42

the colors, when you have to reduce it down to some

11:44

essential limited structure

11:47

or palette, how do you get that truth to

11:49

come through? There's certain fundamental things. So, that's

11:51

what started to click with me. You know, if

11:54

you give me enough time, I could

11:56

do a piece that a studio would buy

11:58

for a movie poster or a movie comp. or something.

12:00

I could do pretty well given time. But

12:03

if I wanted to stylize and make it my

12:05

own, not just knock it out or belabor

12:08

it as a generic rendering which

12:10

is more or less what my illustration style was, it's

12:12

pretty generic looking, it was not distinctive.

12:15

How do I make it my voice? How

12:17

do I take those principles that I love

12:20

in Sargent and not look like a secondhand

12:22

Sargent? So, it's understanding

12:24

the structures he's working with, the simple

12:27

structures, the color theory. When

12:29

Sargent makes a stroke, most

12:32

of those strokes are going down the long axis of

12:34

the form. Well, why is that? Well, if we get

12:36

a long axis line, say

12:38

it's a highlight mark here, it's going to show

12:40

the corner where the top of the wrist and forearm

12:42

meets the side, where the front of the nose

12:45

meets the side of the nose. That corner

12:47

then catches that highlight or that close shadow

12:49

and so that's structural. But then I also

12:52

started to realize this gestural. Gestural

12:54

is how we get from this to that. How

12:57

do we move from here to there beautifully,

12:59

correctly, truthfully or dialystically

13:02

in your own style, your own voice? Well, that's

13:05

also when I do this, I can take you from the

13:07

brow ridge all the way to the tip of the nose. I

13:10

can take you from the elbow all the way maybe

13:12

to the middle joint index figure, say

13:14

with one line, it can be connective line.

13:17

Well, we could do that with color then. Why don't we take

13:19

that orange and we'll have it slowly

13:22

move into the blues and

13:24

then that gradation from orange to blue

13:26

then moves the eye from here

13:28

to there. So, how do we

13:30

move over that form and feel that solid

13:32

structure, that box logic? How

13:34

do we move between the forms and feel that

13:37

fluid graceful connectivity which

13:39

is really what artists are paid to do. We're

13:42

paid to show the rest of the world

13:44

how the world works on some level.

13:47

The world can be this beautiful harmonious

13:49

place like a sunset or

13:51

it can be this rough textured

13:54

holocaust like a Jerome Whitkin painting. It's

13:57

our job to be biased, to have

13:59

a point. of view and see things

14:01

through a lens and the only way you can do that

14:04

is reduce it, distill it down to its essence

14:07

and then build it back up with a

14:10

little bit of tweaking with prejudices

14:12

rather than making everything its

14:14

own color, I'm going to make everything bluish.

14:16

It's going to cue over blue and so I've cheated

14:18

the truth and pushed it toward the direction

14:21

for some purpose. Okay. So,

14:23

the way you show forms

14:26

in life, that's your style? Yeah,

14:28

the way you show anything, it can be the structure

14:30

of it, the form, how does that chiaroscuro,

14:33

how does that movement come out of the

14:35

canvas and we feel that, you know, the nose

14:37

coming out and the background going back, all

14:40

that kind of stuff but it could also be the design,

14:42

you know, how do we flow or how do we bounce

14:45

or how do we break from this to that? How

14:47

do things fade together? Maybe we'll use a lot

14:49

of soft and lost edges or how do they separate?

14:51

We'll use hard edges. It's every

14:53

visual component which is

14:55

shape, color, line,

14:58

angle, texture,

15:01

depth, flatness, realism,

15:03

abstraction, organic,

15:05

architectural. There's a million of all those visual

15:07

components are going to be

15:09

mini and few, big and small. Those

15:12

are all tools of the trade that you

15:14

can use to make a point. Okay.

15:17

Yeah, we'll definitely come back to style. Right

15:19

now, let's see, we'll go back to history,

15:22

kind of pause that college. Okay.

15:25

So, I illustrated for a number of years and

15:27

then I do, it was just a burnout,

15:29

you know, you're cranking these things out.

15:31

Where can we see these? You can't. No,

15:34

you probably can't. You can probably find a few

15:36

of them but I did blood brain, beta

15:39

and then VHS did just come out. So, it was

15:41

a big market for young artists to crank out these,

15:43

you know, these big illustrations, maybe a little

15:45

package from the video cassette basically.

15:48

And what they did is they went back and they grabbed

15:50

all the great but especially all the lousy

15:53

movies, all the TV shows. They repackaged

15:55

and put them out so you could watch them at home. So, all

15:58

that needed cover design. these

16:00

horror covers. I did Chainsaw

16:02

Massacre Part 2. I did

16:04

The Barbarian Brothers that were poor man's

16:07

aren't little shorts and they were twins. I was

16:09

like, oh, you get two for the price of one. I was like,

16:11

okay. Just bad stuff. It was

16:13

media because then I did a lot of comps. You

16:16

know, I did comps for the fantasy movies

16:18

that were coming out and that kind of stuff. I think it was figurative.

16:21

And why was it bad? The idea of the art was bad. The

16:25

art. Okay. So, what was lacking at that

16:27

point in your... Both the concept

16:29

and the artist. I was a hack basically. I was

16:32

cranking out stuff. I had a little bit of talent.

16:34

I put together a portfolio. I could draw the figure

16:36

well so I could do these bigger than life kind of characters

16:39

and I was just knocking them out for the deadlines.

16:42

And I was doing what they needed to have done. They'd

16:44

bring it in and they'd want changes

16:46

to it and they'd say, okay, turn it this way and

16:48

do this and put this here and they'd

16:52

make me put tanks when there was no tank in the

16:54

movie into it. And you know, all this kind of nonsense.

16:57

And you just knock it out and it was no fun

16:59

really. It was making pretty good money for a

17:01

while. But I was turning

17:03

out really bad art. When you're illustrating,

17:06

at least on the level I was illustrating, which

17:08

is middle class level, it was not the

17:10

heights of illustration like Golden

17:13

Age or Silver Age illustration by any means. I

17:15

was doing someone else's idea for

17:18

a mediocre product under

17:21

usually very tight deadlines. And

17:24

for an okay amount of money. But

17:27

all those things have an effect. If you're

17:29

gonna pay me more, I'll work harder. If you

17:31

give me more time, I'll work longer. You know,

17:34

if you quit changing it, it'll

17:36

be more cohesive. Or if

17:39

I'm not lazy, I'll put more time

17:41

into the composition. And I

17:43

was just putting it out there. Think

17:45

of playing golf. If you've got 20

17:48

minutes to go practice every single day,

17:51

would it be better to take those 20 minutes and

17:53

swing that club perfectly, say 15

17:56

times and really get that muscle

17:59

memory in there? there or would it be better

18:01

to get more mileage and do a hundred strokes

18:03

if it's going to do this with the club? You know,

18:05

what's going to make you a better golfer? Yeah,

18:08

so what you do, how you

18:10

practice is what you are. So, if

18:12

you're practicing doing crappy

18:14

drawings, you're going to be a lousy artist

18:16

eventually. If you're going to be a hack

18:19

novelist for the pulp slasher

18:21

genre and then in your spare time,

18:23

you're going to do the great American novel, you're

18:26

never going to do the great American novel because you've taught

18:28

yourself how to be a slasher

18:30

novelist. If you're going to be a linebacker

18:33

for the NFL, you can't someday switch and

18:35

become a ballet dancer. The muscles

18:37

have been trained in a completely different

18:39

direction and that's going to inform

18:42

the rest of your life. Okay. So,

18:44

you can't say at some point I'm going to do good

18:46

stuff, you're going to have trouble with

18:48

that. Right. Everybody

18:51

does that sometimes, everybody puts out something that's a stinker

18:53

just the way life is. But if you're not

18:55

generally trying your best and focusing

18:58

to get better, there's no stasis

19:00

in art or really in life. If

19:02

you're not going to try and get better, you're going to get

19:05

worse even if it's because you just

19:07

repeat your original inspirations. At 18,

19:10

I came up with this really beautiful

19:12

color scheme or composition. But

19:14

at 45, you're going to be a bad hack

19:17

copyist. People worry about someone

19:20

stealing their ideas but we steal our own ideas

19:22

and we do them more poorly later on

19:24

in life. So, we have to keep reinventing

19:27

ourselves, keep trying to push,

19:30

make it better, make that line better,

19:32

make that shape simpler. You

19:35

look at most of the great artists, even back

19:37

into the Renaissance, look like a Titian and

19:39

you'll see their styles evolve. Michelangelo

19:42

styles evolve because they

19:44

knew if you don't start pushing in

19:46

a new direction, you're going to just be hacking out

19:49

the same old stuff. Yeah. I

19:51

realized that at the time. Yeah, that's

19:53

why I decided to get out of it. So, what I did is I

19:55

started to teach more and more even

19:57

though it cost me money. I made more money illustrated.

20:00

But also, sometimes you'll have two or three

20:02

month drought as a freelance art. So it

20:04

was nice to have some steady income but it wasn't much

20:07

income. I was 30 bucks an hour

20:09

I made I think at the height of teaching

20:11

at Dard Center in the 80s. So

20:14

I went back and started teaching full time and

20:16

that took me a couple of years to get into

20:18

that. I always taught a little bit because I love teaching

20:20

and like I said, it's a way to practice

20:23

and for me, the classes doing a workshop

20:25

like I'm doing this week or doing

20:28

those semester classes and I used to do that's my

20:30

sketchbook or one of them anyway.

20:33

So I'm sitting down with that young student

20:35

showing her how to draw a head and redrawing

20:38

the cheekbones seeing how she drew a better nose

20:40

than I did and wondering why. All

20:42

that stuff is great.

20:45

So it helps but it's not going to mitigate

20:47

the fact that then you go home and stay up all night

20:50

and crank up blood brain too or

20:52

whatever it is, right? Not going to balance

20:55

the scorecard on that. But I

20:57

started teaching because I figured okay,

20:59

I can render pretty well, I can do other

21:01

people's ideas, I can draw well,

21:04

I can't paint. And then think about

21:07

when you paint, I'm separating rendering

21:09

when you tighten things down and you lose

21:12

the strokes, lose the process into that film

21:14

of realism. How do you make something

21:17

unfinished? Because that's what a stroke is if you

21:19

lay a stroke down and don't

21:22

lose it into the surrounding color

21:24

field, it's unfinished. How do you make

21:26

something unfinished finished? That's

21:29

a tough problem. So if you're going to be painterly or

21:32

stylistic in any way, how

21:34

are you going to make it feel like it's a complete idea?

21:37

That's a tricky deal. Yeah. Where's

21:39

the consistency in that if you're going to use

21:41

broken line, broken

21:43

soft edges, you know, limited

21:46

color, simplified form.

21:48

Why does it not look unfinished?

21:51

How can a sketch be worthy of

21:53

being framed? In other words, worthy

21:55

of going in the gallery. And

21:58

the trick to that is if it feels like

22:00

it's saying what it needs to say. In other

22:02

words, every stroke for the most part that you

22:04

put down or every mark in that artwork,

22:07

if it's speaking the truth about

22:09

what you're trying to say, this is a cheekbone

22:11

that turns, that flows down

22:13

into this structure, that comes forward

22:16

and steps back. If those truths

22:18

ring out despite the technique,

22:21

it'll feel finished. But if it's

22:23

a placeholder, if you do a

22:25

figure drawing and you just do a ball for

22:27

the head, that could be anybody's head

22:29

in almost any position. You got

22:32

some sense of where that position is probably.

22:34

You haven't nailed it down in space, in

22:36

position. It doesn't have the right character and it

22:38

doesn't have a unique character to the

22:41

model there. But ideally, if

22:43

you've got and Charles Hawthorne said a

22:46

little bit of hyperbole but makes for a good teaching

22:48

moment, every mark you make,

22:50

I know how you're feeling. If you were really

22:52

wanting to get out of that classroom and go

22:55

have lunch, that's going to come

22:57

through on some level that mark. It's going to be a

22:59

lazy impatient mark that's not speaking,

23:02

not doing the work it needs to do. But

23:04

if that tracks like an ant up

23:07

over, if you could actually feel when

23:09

you put that stroke on that cheekbone, the mound

23:12

is cheekbone. N.C. Wyeth said,

23:14

and this I think is true, he

23:16

said if I was doing a painting of a guy

23:19

reaping the fields with his size, he'd

23:22

make those up for the most part later in his career. He

23:25

said by the end of the day, man, my neck

23:27

and back was sore because

23:29

I was feeling that same tension. It's like method

23:31

acting. M.D. Yeah. N.C. The method actor actually

23:33

feels those emotions and sometimes suffers for

23:35

it after the film's over. And he

23:38

suffered for it because he dialed

23:40

into that tension. So finding

23:42

that is incredibly complex

23:45

and the artist generally, not

23:47

always but generally, most of the great art movements

23:49

and done this is going to distill down. It's

23:51

going to take a piece of the truth. It might just

23:53

be by framing it. I'm not going to put

23:56

all the rest of the room. We're just framed here but there's

23:58

a whole wide world we don't get to see in this. frame.

24:00

But also, what am I going to do

24:03

about that particular pedal? Am I going to

24:05

do every possible thing? Am I going to get out the

24:07

magnifying glass and do a miniature rendering of

24:09

it or am I going to just make it one stroke

24:12

or leave that one out completely?

24:15

You know, and so we're always editing down,

24:17

right? So the trick, one of the

24:20

tricks is when we edit, let's

24:22

do it out of a strength, out of a choice. Let's

24:24

say, shoot, if I had more time, I'd put more pedals

24:27

in there. If I had more times, each pedal

24:29

would be more rendered pedal. But

24:31

let's do something that speaks to

24:34

some poetic truth, some deeper truth

24:36

about it. Maybe it's just a zigzag

24:39

of yellow or a splatter

24:41

with a brush or something like that or it's taken

24:44

out completely or it's made bigger, it's moved

24:46

over, it's set back three feet. You

24:48

know, what are we going to do to change it or

24:50

edit it in such a way that

24:53

it supports our system of belief,

24:55

our agenda? You know, we're not journalists,

24:58

we're editorials and what are we really

25:00

trying to say about that? And the clearer you can be

25:02

on that in terms of the craft and am

25:04

I painting a front plane now? Well,

25:07

that front plane should have something to do with this front

25:09

plane and that front plane there. All those

25:11

front planes in flash are going to have some

25:13

relationship of color and value and such.

25:16

And because they're all on an organic figure,

25:18

they're going to have some relationship in terms of shape

25:21

too because they're all going to be somewhat

25:23

organic figurative shapes and

25:25

that'll be very different than something

25:28

that's clean lines and architectural.

25:30

So, are you saying those decisions

25:33

should be based on what your message

25:35

is instead of just the level of detail? Ideally.

25:38

Now, that might be very carefully thought out.

25:40

That tends to be the kind of guy I am

25:42

but most artists in history don't think it

25:45

out but they feel it. You know,

25:47

every time you work, your instincts

25:49

are telling you there's something wrong, it doesn't sit back

25:52

or it's wrong scale or whatever it is. You're making

25:54

those critical choices. Oftentimes

25:57

and for most artists, even advanced artists, most

26:00

of the time without the critical thinking.

26:03

But what I argue and what

26:05

I teach is that if you don't spend at least

26:07

some time in the beginning critically

26:09

thinking, then all you're doing

26:11

is you're a slave to the system. You

26:14

happen to get a teacher that you kind of liked

26:17

and you're a secondhand version of them. And

26:20

oftentimes, they can't quite tell you why it

26:22

works. They just know that the guy that they got it

26:24

from or the girl they got it from showed

26:27

them that it did work and it looked good and it felt good.

26:29

But why does it work? We can't figure

26:31

those things out. So, I'm always a Hawaii

26:33

guy. I want to know why something

26:36

works and then I can play games

26:39

with it and then say, well,

26:41

maybe I'll break that. I'll flatten

26:43

that space. Tangents

26:45

are bad. Maybe I'll use tangents for a specific

26:48

reason and you can play with those ideas.

26:50

So, you're saying the people that feel

26:53

it instead of thinking about it, they're

26:56

just instinctively copying somebody

26:58

else or... Oftentimes, yeah.

27:01

And there's good copy and I'll explain in a second,

27:03

there's bad copy because we all copy and

27:05

we all have to copy. And if you go to the most good

27:08

museums, you'll see great artists

27:10

have done copies of other great

27:12

artists. That's how you learn. But if

27:15

you're just a slave to that, if you've got

27:17

a atelier or a school or whatever,

27:19

they have a house style. Right. And

27:22

now, how many students going through that are going to be

27:24

able to transcend that style and make their own

27:26

style? They're going to be influenced

27:28

and probably heavily influenced by

27:31

that style and they'll probably never get past it because

27:33

they don't know what's

27:35

in that style. And oftentimes, a teacher isn't able

27:37

to tell them what is in that style that really makes

27:39

it work. They have a process

27:41

that they're teaching rather than a philosophy.

27:44

And for me, we're visual philosophers

27:46

and we can get into deep meaning of life

27:49

and man's inhumanity, you man kind of philosophy

27:52

or just the philosophy of

27:54

how form reacts

27:56

to our mind. How does your audience see

27:58

things? does their psychology

28:01

work? We're all related

28:03

as humans, we think in very much the same way.

28:06

How can we use that? Well, if I make

28:08

things dark, then that gets a little creepier.

28:11

If it's in a film, I have on and off lights

28:13

or cracking thunder and loud noise and

28:15

silence, that's scarier. You can

28:18

use those to story tell but you can also use them

28:20

on a deeper level to get to iconic

28:22

ideas, metaphorical ideas, deep

28:25

ideas. Rembrandt used gold

28:27

and light off camera from above.

28:29

That was religious light there. That

28:32

was God's enlightenment, was enlightening

28:34

the Christians,

28:36

the Calvinists that he was in his primary

28:39

painting. You're going to rot

28:41

in hell or you can be enlightened

28:43

by this glorious life. And so he painted pretty

28:45

ugly people with glorious

28:48

light on them because it wasn't the flesh

28:50

that was the truth for him, it was God's

28:53

loving light from above or how he was going

28:55

to frame it. So that's a powerful

28:58

metaphor. So, you're

29:00

saying those students are able to get past

29:02

the house style of the Atelier? Yeah,

29:05

yeah and how could they unless they're just

29:07

diligent and they're treasure hunters. And

29:09

that's what you have to kind of be that

29:11

is there's not going to be any place where

29:14

you can get everything. You're going to get pieces

29:16

and so you'll go to that school or that artist

29:19

or that book or that image bank

29:21

and then you go, oh, look at that guy. I love

29:23

the way that guy uses line. I

29:25

love the soft stomato edges

29:28

and this guy Rodin was an

29:30

impressionist. He lay

29:32

in the impression of a sock and they take a blowtorch

29:35

basically and melt it down. Maybe

29:37

how can I get that into paint and you treasure

29:39

hunt and you steal. Okay, that kind of

29:42

copying is great. Copying is great if

29:44

you're trying to learn that idea.

29:46

How do I get formal? How do I get

29:48

three-dimensional concepts on

29:51

a two-dimensional flat surface? How do I do that?

29:53

You need to copy, you need to steal

29:55

from people because those are nobody's ideas

29:57

they're everybody's ideas and you copy.

30:00

copy those and you learn from that and they'll have you put

30:02

up a cast or the ball

30:04

cone and cylinder and you'll copy those things. You'll

30:06

copy the lighting and all that kind of stuff. That's

30:09

all good stuff. But once you

30:11

get past that craft 101 stage

30:14

where things really take off is when you copy

30:16

not from one source or two sources

30:19

but four or five sources combined.

30:21

I'm going to take da Vinci's fumato

30:24

idea and Caravaggio's

30:27

value range and Christianity's

30:30

metaphor of light as salvation

30:33

and I'm going to take everyday people. I'm going to take gothic

30:36

not classical ideas. Da Vinci,

30:38

the Renaissance, Michelangelo, they use

30:40

the Greco-Roman aesthetic. They

30:43

use the Occolan and the Belvedere Torus,

30:45

all these glorious Greek god

30:47

sculptures. These man is God,

30:49

woman is goddess kind of thing and made

30:51

this ideal of beauty. Well,

30:54

Rembrandt was everybody who could as draftsmen

30:56

as those guys were. He's one of the great draftsmen in history

30:59

but he is the gothic tradition. The

31:01

time before the Renaissance where it was

31:04

again, flesh has corrupt. Flesh

31:06

is a bad thing. Sex is bad.

31:09

Nudity is bad. You cover that stuff up.

31:11

You put a grape leaf in front of the genitals,

31:13

that kind of stuff. You hide that kind

31:16

of stuff and he used that. It was

31:18

non-glorified. It was a reverse of that. You

31:20

had kind of buggy eyed characters. Everything

31:22

was kind of awkwardly round. You didn't

31:24

have the sensual hips. You had the big

31:27

full belly and hips which

31:29

was the birthing. If you're going to

31:32

deal with sexuality, it's to procreate,

31:34

it's to put more babies on

31:36

the planet, that kind of thing and he used that

31:39

and so he took from four or five sources

31:41

and did a mashup. Is it possible to

31:44

create a truly unique style or does

31:46

everybody really just combine? Yeah,

31:49

it is. So, you and I could create a truly

31:51

unique style right now and it would

31:53

be easy and all we

31:56

do is say I use this all the time so

31:58

it's not unique. I came up with this because it's not unique. ago and

32:00

if you guys want to steal it, you can't. Let's be

32:02

the first artist team that makes

32:05

a Jello skyscraper. Stan

32:07

L Green

32:29

fire. Those are big ideas but

32:32

most of us mere mortals aren't going to be able to do

32:34

that. But you might be able to add one

32:36

thing like Michelangelo, he

32:38

took Greek sculpture which is contrapposto.

32:41

If I shift my weight from both

32:43

feet to one foot, I get

32:46

what Rodin called the classic curve. That

32:48

informed Greek art and then

32:50

Roman art after it and everybody

32:53

up till Michelangelo. Then Michelangelo did the

32:55

one little thing and it was completely original

32:58

and he probably dropped his pencil and he went, oh, wait

33:01

a second. What if I take that classic

33:03

curve and now make it truly three-dimensional

33:06

and move that figure in and out of

33:08

the picture plane? Because this is three-dimensional

33:10

from every direction but it's still flat in

33:12

the picture plane. Who was the first guy

33:14

who separated the arms and the little figurines,

33:17

primitive figurines? And who is the guy who

33:19

shifted the weight from one foot to the other?

33:22

You know, just simple ideas but those are

33:25

revolutionary but even those don't happen very

33:27

often. Who is the guy who thought of

33:30

taking a photograph and

33:32

then putting it right next to another photograph, another

33:35

photograph, another photograph, we got film. Brilliant.

33:38

Stan L Rodin

33:56

or Michelangelo or Picasso, won't

33:58

matter. You know, you can do a rock your more sculpture,

34:00

it won't matter, that idea will hold. That's

34:03

a fundamental truth. It's a fundamental

34:06

observation of how the world works

34:09

or maybe how the world should work, say

34:11

in horror or fantasy or science

34:14

fiction, that kind of stuff where you pause it what

34:16

could be. But that's how

34:18

the world works and now you can

34:20

costume that in any way you want. Stan

34:22

L Come

34:30

off the page and then that could

34:32

be done like a sergeant or it could be done

34:34

like a corbet or it could be

34:36

done like a shigal, you know,

34:38

and it can be closed any which way. Now,

34:41

the easier way to work if you can't come up

34:43

with that revolutionary way to change the

34:45

world is you just do the mashup. Hollywood does

34:47

it all the time. Big business does

34:49

it all the time, little entrepreneurs. What

34:51

if I put an

34:52

art course

34:54

on YouTube? You might think of that.

34:56

Yeah, you might think of

34:59

that. Yeah, maybe I'll put classes on YouTube

35:02

so the people who live in Bangladesh

35:06

can access it. Right. We live

35:08

in LA or I used to and even

35:10

in LA, the art center of the world really,

35:13

there's still a lot of classes

35:15

you wish were offered. There

35:17

was a lot of styles, a lot of

35:20

teachers you wish were teaching. You

35:22

can't get everything here. How are you going to get

35:24

it in Oklahoma City? How

35:26

are you going to get it in Tehran? Now,

35:29

with the internet, you can do that. If you went to my

35:31

workshop, you'd be paying for whatever it

35:33

is, 400 bucks for that.

35:35

Now, a lot of people in this world don't have 400 bucks

35:39

and a lot more don't think it's worth 400 bucks

35:42

but it might be worth whatever you're charging

35:44

online or if I can just

35:46

see a little five-minute snippet of that

35:48

for free, that might be enough

35:51

to wet my palette and might

35:53

be enough that I can get the rest of

35:55

myself. So, that's a revolution

35:57

there. So, anytime you can mask things, Hollywood

36:00

does it in their high concept. So,

36:03

what if we have a kid who goes

36:05

to boarding school, British boarding school, there's

36:08

a long line of literature in Britain

36:11

of kids going to boarding school and having whatever

36:13

dramatic story they have in the boarding school novels.

36:16

But what if we sent a kid not to boarding

36:18

school but to magic school? The

36:20

boarding school is a magic school. Those are

36:23

two boarding school magic, been

36:25

around forever, common ideas. Nobody

36:28

put them together. And even if seven

36:30

or eight or twenty did put them together, no one

36:32

would have put it together the way she did. What

36:35

if we have the hero of the story

36:37

or one of the key heroes of the story hate

36:39

the guy he's trying to save? That's the Snape

36:42

character. So, that's how you can create a character

36:44

in the story. That's how you can create an art style.

36:47

What are we... I'm confused though. Like, are you talking

36:49

about styles or ideas for

36:51

the message? Having a hard time...

36:54

Everything, okay. You can look at art movements,

36:56

you can look at styles. I don't separate

36:59

the message from it because whatever you

37:01

do, if we go outside after

37:03

the interview and look up in the sky and see a cloud,

37:06

your instinct will be to try and find

37:08

a picture in that. Oh, look, it looks kind of like

37:11

a duck. You'll impose meaning

37:13

on it. Or if you go out as a little kid at

37:15

night because your dad made you empty the garbage

37:17

and you go out and the wind's going, you hear

37:20

creaking trees. Who said that?

37:22

Somebody's talking here, somebody's growling at me. Or

37:25

why is the sky angry? There's this flash

37:27

of light and this cracking sound. We

37:29

are wired to make

37:31

things make sense. For example,

37:33

if I say, oh, look at that

37:36

and they're going to see that my finger points more

37:38

or less at you, you're that. If I

37:41

go over here, they'll try and find... I

37:44

go, look at that picture, they'll

37:46

go, oh, you're talking about me. We connect.

37:48

It's called closure in psychology where we

37:50

connect the dots. If I do a drawing,

37:52

I put a dot here and a dot

37:55

here and a dot here. Now, what have

37:57

I drawn? A triangle. Yeah, but

37:59

I just did the three. dots, you guys drew

38:01

the triangle. That's closure.

38:03

You connect the dots, literally. Right. Whatever

38:06

you do in art or whatever,

38:08

you know, if I go, yeah, sure,

38:10

you're gonna say now, why is he mad

38:12

at me? Or why is he, does he want

38:14

to leave? Kind of do. I'm

38:17

just, I'm just, you know, you'll start

38:19

attaching meaning to it and maybe I had a

38:22

kink in my neck and that's why I did that. But

38:24

you'll go, he's mad at me, what did I say? We

38:27

are wired to make sense of things and

38:30

so whatever you do as artists, that's why I say visual

38:32

philosopher, whatever you do as

38:34

an artist, it means something. Every mark

38:36

you make, that's

38:39

why I did that because usually

38:42

what we do is we have a process and

38:44

if we have more time, we refine the process

38:47

and if we have more time, we refine it farther, the

38:50

result gets better and better and better,

38:52

give or take a mistake here or there. That's

38:54

not the way to do art, I don't think because

38:57

then you're locked into a process which is someone

38:59

else's process and originally it

39:01

was a great inspiration when Fred

39:03

Fixler or whoever

39:06

it was who came up with the style, Fred Fixler

39:08

was out of the early illustrators, they were

39:10

out of Sargent. Sargent took Carlos

39:13

Duran, his teacher and said, well,

39:15

he's got a great system but he's not talented

39:17

enough to know what he's got, he can't paint

39:20

his ideas but the

39:22

implication was I was talented enough and he was

39:24

right that he could paint his ideas

39:26

and he had that system and that all

39:29

of American illustration comes

39:31

or most of it comes out of that

39:34

foundation of Sargent which he was

39:36

taking Velasquez and Manet in

39:38

effect putting it together. Carlos

39:41

Duran brought it from a different direction but that's kind

39:43

of where it ended up. So, all

39:46

those things whether it's the

39:48

style, the subject matter, the

39:50

choice of medium, they all mean something

39:53

and if you don't think they do, you're making

39:55

a mistake. Now, you don't have to

39:57

make them mean something up here, okay, I use blue,

39:59

blue Blue means, see, let me remember

40:02

my religious mythology, that means

40:04

sky heaven mystery above.

40:07

It doesn't have to be that and it probably shouldn't

40:09

be that. They're going to attach meaning

40:11

to it. Just like when you sit, every gesture

40:13

means something. So, what should the artist focus

40:16

on? You're saying that they don't have to separate

40:18

each of those things and deliberately decide

40:20

on it? Yeah, well... So, what

40:22

do you focus on? You've got... You basically

40:24

have two questions to answer as a young artist or

40:27

anytime but I mean, the two things you want to answer

40:29

is what do I see? When I look at

40:31

that couch or look at that nose

40:33

and three-quarter position or whatever it

40:36

is, what do I really see? If

40:38

you can understand what you really see, you can

40:40

get it down on the page of the canvas. That's

40:42

the craft, learning the craft and so there's going

40:44

to be certain processes you do use because

40:47

they start to answer those questions and hopefully,

40:49

there'll be a why behind those on

40:51

some level rather than just do

40:53

it this way because my mentor

40:56

told me and I know it works. There's

40:58

an old story that Tows Wise tell.

41:01

I forget whose family it was. It was actually friends

41:03

of ours told us this story and they're watching

41:05

this woman make her roast for

41:08

the group that was going to eat dinner that night and

41:10

she cut off both ends of the roast and put it in the pan

41:12

and it came out of the oven and it was delicious

41:15

and so they go, that was good. Now,

41:18

why did you cut off the two ends? How did that

41:20

make it better? And she goes, I don't know, mom,

41:22

why don't we cut off the two ends? Mom

41:25

goes, I used to cut off the two ends because our pan was too small.

41:28

So, they just did it because

41:31

they saw someone do it but they don't know why it

41:33

helped or if it helped even and that's

41:35

usually the kind of education we get. We

41:38

get a process that works pretty well and

41:40

a process just says, if you follow this

41:42

step from one to ten or one to three thousand,

41:45

more often than not, you'll get a better result. Right

41:48

and the more incremental that process

41:51

is, the safer it is. But

41:53

also notice, if I tell you how to move just this

41:55

far in the process as opposed to this far,

41:58

you're going to get a better result. take you more

42:00

time but it'll look more like

42:02

me because it's my process

42:05

and I probably look like that guy back, that

42:07

generation all the way back to the original inspiration.

42:11

So what we want to really do is

42:13

we want to say what do I see? Now, what are the

42:15

fundamentals that are out there

42:17

of perspective, of structure, you

42:20

know, shape design, of lighting,

42:22

color theory, you know, all

42:25

that kind of stuff, organic ideas

42:28

as opposed to architectural ideas. You know,

42:30

what is it that makes it different? Stan L We challenge our

42:32

teachers, everything they teach us about how

42:35

we... Marshall L Well, you steal from

42:37

them but don't just steal, even

42:39

if you get a great teacher, don't

42:42

just steal from them. Stan L So you question

42:44

why you're stealing every little piece? Marshall

42:46

L Well, it's a good idea to question because then they'll

42:48

explain why that works if

42:50

they can and if they can't,

42:53

you'll find another teacher or you'll start looking at

42:55

old masters and you'll say, okay,

42:57

well, Paul Klytus did that

42:59

and Michelangelo did that and Bernini

43:02

did that and on and on and on, you go now,

43:04

why is that? Why is it that every horror

43:08

film, just when you

43:10

think it's safe, that's when the monster jumps out.

43:12

Now, why would that be? If

43:14

you see that enough and think about enough, you go, well, oh,

43:17

I get it. The motive is to scare

43:19

the audience as much as possible in that moment.

43:21

So, if they're already kind of scared, then

43:24

getting really scared isn't that big a jump but

43:26

if they get kind of scared and then they go

43:29

back and they get scared again

43:31

and go back and get scared again,

43:34

go back, but just a little scared, you go, okay,

43:36

it's gonna be a little scared again and it's a false alarm.

43:38

You open the door, nothing. Open the door, it's

43:41

a cat. Opens the door, it's the light bulb

43:43

swinging or something and he opens the door

43:46

and nothing's there at all and the monster is behind

43:48

him. You scream like crazy.

43:51

So, what you do is you play way down that

43:53

visual component or that component of

43:55

what you're trying to say and then you kick it way

43:57

up and you have that big leap. to

44:00

step down the step or jump off the cliff,

44:03

that kind of idea. And so, you want

44:05

to understand why does it work? Why if I

44:07

put a dark value here

44:09

and a light value here, it feels like

44:12

its form and you can start understanding

44:15

that there must be some formula

44:17

in life that speaks to that

44:20

and artists are afraid of formulas because they think, well, that's

44:23

Steve, you're talking about all this kind of life

44:26

philosophy and stuff. If you formulas, aren't

44:28

you killing all that? No, we use formulas

44:30

all the time, that's science. That's how we can get rockets

44:33

to the moon. That's how we could have electricity,

44:35

E equals mc squared, all that

44:37

kind of stuff. Life work with

44:39

a predictable consistent

44:41

regularity. The sun set

44:44

last night, it'll probably set tonight. You

44:46

can be pretty sure of that. So, if

44:48

I make this dark and this light and

44:51

this dark and this light and this dark and this light

44:53

and this dark and this light, if I make all those

44:55

side planes the same or similar value

44:58

and all these front planes are different and

45:00

let's say lighter value, I'm going

45:02

to get this box logic that

45:04

will work with consistency and

45:06

I can stair step and structure out even the most

45:08

complicated thing fairly easily

45:10

and then once I've got that box logic,

45:13

what if I use rather than a just

45:15

a swath of dark and a swath

45:17

of light, what if I put a gradation between

45:19

it? Well, now that will round the edge. So, gradations

45:22

around the edge. It doesn't matter what

45:24

technique or what medium you use,

45:27

that's going to be a fundamental truth that you can depend

45:29

on. Now, that's what

45:32

do I see? What I say about

45:34

it is, now what am I going to do with it? How am

45:36

I going to make it what I want it to be? How

45:38

am I going to bring back that great Baroque

45:41

period I want everybody to enjoy like I enjoy?

45:43

I'm going to paint like a Baroque artist or how am I

45:45

going to come up with a brand new style or

45:48

more likely and more productively

45:51

probably? What if I want to paint

45:53

like a Baroque artist but

45:55

I don't want to look like I'm a knockoff of Rubens?

45:58

How do I make it fresh and new? Okay.

46:01

You know, and how can I play that up in

46:03

a way that's interesting and John

46:05

Curran, a modern painter did

46:07

more of those more Botticello but he

46:10

did this same thing. He took high Renaissance really

46:12

and used it in kind of an illustration

46:14

and a lot of early illustrators in the

46:17

80s, not early, early now but

46:19

did the same thing. They used these kind of Renaissance

46:21

styles, Canoco craft and all these

46:24

folks but they did it in fantasy

46:26

or they did it in Time magazine cover

46:28

so it was modern stuff or they'd use it

46:30

as a horse, you know, they make a social

46:33

commentary with it and they costumed

46:35

it in a different way. You know, they used acrylic

46:37

paint, made slicker simpler forms,

46:40

they used kind of candy colors

46:42

rather than the old sepia earth

46:44

tone colors. Yeah, and so

46:46

you change one component and

46:49

it's brand new and that's how you can create

46:51

a story, that's how you can create a business, that's how

46:53

you can create a style. By mashing

46:55

up one or two or five things. For me, it was taking

46:58

I wanted to figure but I didn't

47:00

want to do naked people on couches or

47:03

at the beach, everybody does that in California,

47:05

everybody does that all over the world. So what

47:08

if I did nudes but had

47:10

them action figures so I brought in movement

47:13

and I used to box so why don't I do what

47:15

I know best or not best,

47:17

I'm not a very good boxer but I know a little

47:20

bit about. You look like you heard about that.

47:22

I put a little bike truck at this point.

47:25

But so I'm going to take the

47:27

boxer and also everybody

47:29

in California, I was just trying to be different

47:32

and to begin with, everybody in California was doing

47:34

beautiful girls on the beach with glorious

47:37

romantic sunset, the candy

47:40

color palette of the California impressionist

47:42

and all that kind of stuff, loose juicy brush strokes,

47:45

flowy hair and the wind and all

47:47

that kind of atmospheric stuff. And

47:50

I didn't want to even if you can

47:52

be better than all those guys, why do you want to

47:54

be the same? So

47:56

I figured what can I do different? So I'm going to do kind

47:59

of. gnarly characters, ugly

48:01

characters who are not passive

48:03

but active and not at

48:06

peace with their environment, feeling the wind

48:08

and the sunshine on their shoulders but

48:10

I'm going to have them fighting in their environment and

48:12

continue, I'm going to make it a war. So

48:15

what can I do that's very, very different? That's not

48:17

a bad way to start rather

48:19

than doing the same thing. If I was a production

48:21

designer at Hollywood, I would not

48:24

be doing Blade Runner concept

48:26

art because everybody does Blade Runner concept.

48:28

The whole Photoshop program

48:31

is geared to Blade Runner stuff.

48:33

It controls the whole industry. So everything's a variation

48:36

on that original wonderful

48:38

inspiration that Geiger and Cobb

48:40

and these other guys put together.

48:43

So anyway, that's sort of the box and then I got

48:46

into art because I love comic

48:48

books. That's what I used to draw all the time

48:50

as a kid. I draw these comic book characters and

48:53

so what if they were big comic book panels

48:56

and then what if I took the energy of abstract

48:58

expressionists and looked at an artist named Franz

49:01

Kline, K-L-I-N-E

49:03

and brought, he'd use these big brush strokes of black

49:06

on white or white on black kinetic

49:08

strokes. What if that was these figures,

49:11

you know, you get that kind of energy in the zigzag of

49:13

the arm of the falling back of the body and that

49:16

kind of stuff. Do you look at your canvas as a comic

49:18

panel? Yeah, it's a big comic book panel

49:21

and I'll play with tangents and all

49:23

this kind of stuff. Like there's a certain haphazard

49:25

quality to comic books as they're knocking them out and stuff

49:28

and you'll get tangents or slight croppings.

49:30

Everything's kind of big. There's a lot

49:32

of dynamics. You're trying to get them to move

49:35

into the next panel, all that kind of

49:37

stuff. So I picked up on that as like Jack Kirby

49:39

was a big influence and I don't like the way

49:41

he draws but that was

49:43

the epitome of that superhero ethic.

49:46

My boxers are big superheroes basically

49:49

and bigger than life. So I brought in

49:51

comic books, a little bit of

49:53

my own history, boxing, the

49:56

Franz Kline abstract paintings, Rembrandt

49:58

light and a religious martyr

50:01

idea. Stan L He

50:29

had this kind of flat facade, the beautiful deep chiaroscuro

50:31

light like I'd like and then

50:42

he'd put a Chrysler building inside

50:44

or a ship or a train or a whale

50:47

and just do cutouts with the arches

50:49

so you could see into this foggy

50:51

environment with nothing in there and there'd be a floating

50:54

ship with cables on it and

50:56

then you take a usually from Moby Dick,

50:58

you go up into the frieze of the architecture and he'd

51:01

block out an Elvetica type, a

51:04

partial quote from Moby Dick or whatever.

51:07

Those things have nothing to do with each other. So

51:10

Moby Dick quotes, let's say

51:12

a train inside New

51:15

York architecture and romantic

51:17

light and only four color palette and

51:21

so what do you do when you look at those? Nobody

51:23

goes up there and says, what the hell does that mean? Those

51:25

have nothing to do with each other. Nobody goes,

51:28

now let me figure out what that means. Stan

51:30

L every

51:49

little thing. If you come in and give them every petal

51:52

on that bush, what's left for them to do? But

51:55

if at least you just do the three dots,

51:58

then they get the pleasure of connecting those thoughts

52:01

and what happens then when you leave

52:03

things open-ended like that, when you don't

52:05

tell a story but suggest

52:08

a concept or put together things

52:11

that shouldn't go together. Magic

52:13

and boarding schools, that's stupid,

52:16

that's not real, that's childish

52:18

but it's kind of cool. I wish there was.

52:20

Well, I think it's the execution

52:22

though. You could put it together. It's all of that.

52:25

Yeah, any of these. Yeah, that's always

52:27

the danger. You can always do it badly and

52:29

sometimes people do it badly and

52:32

then somebody else takes the idea and they see past

52:34

the style and they say that

52:36

was a great idea, it was just really bad. So

52:39

and you see that as there is just

52:41

for an impressionism, French impressionism,

52:44

for a lot of artists and a lot

52:46

of audience will say, let's lousy

52:48

drawing, non-graceful brush strokes.

52:51

Okay. So, boy, it's beautiful color.

52:53

So, what don't I steal the

52:56

color palettes and

52:58

the beautiful shifts of warm and cool

53:00

and rich and gray, limiting the value

53:03

range into that sunlight, sunset range

53:05

of values and they'll put that on a sergeant

53:08

as a sergeant did with these watercolors and I'll use

53:10

the skill set of a Velasquez, I'll

53:12

use the color palette of a Monet now

53:15

I've mashed up again, I've taken

53:17

the best. So, you can say

53:20

your life coach will say model

53:22

yourself after people that you admire.

53:25

Well, you might have an uncle who's a moldy

53:27

millionaire but he's a dirty rotten guy.

53:30

You don't have to model the dirty rotten guy part

53:33

but how did you become a millionaire? Right.

53:35

Maybe you saved these pennies, a char or

53:37

something. You can take that one idea. You

53:40

think that when somebody has a good idea but

53:42

it still doesn't work, is that mostly

53:44

because of not learning

53:46

the craft or something else? Well, usually

53:48

when you don't have a good idea, you're trying to tell a story

53:51

and you're saying okay, I want to make the world

53:54

a better place. You have an excellent motives.

53:56

So, I'm going to show dictators

53:59

picking... flowers for the little children

54:01

on the playground teeter-totter.

54:03

Okay. So, I'm gonna put Stalin there.

54:06

Actually, this could be a good idea. Now, I'm gonna have Stalin

54:08

on the teeter-totter with some little girl. Because

54:11

that's what the life he should have lived. And

54:14

when I paint this beautiful, I'm gonna use

54:16

a patour style of petition

54:19

in there. But that's a stupid idea.

54:21

Because you're trying to, I shouldn't say stupid

54:23

idea, but it's not gonna be very successful because

54:26

you're trying to force the audience

54:28

to feel something. The door is closed.

54:31

There's no room for us to bring our baggage

54:33

in. We're gonna come to your art for

54:35

what we need, not what you need. You

54:37

got what you needed by doing it. But

54:40

if you're gonna show it to me, respect me enough

54:42

to let me get something

54:44

out. Don't tell me the ending of the story.

54:46

You know,

54:47

I went to a movie once when

54:50

Star Trek II came out in the

54:52

80s or whatever it was. We walked into

54:54

the theater and these two kids

54:56

in the earlier showing popped up from the studio

54:59

that said Spock dies and

55:01

they ran out of the studio and ruined the film

55:03

for us. And that's what most artists do

55:05

with their paintings. Spock dies,

55:07

you told us the ending. Let us figure it out

55:09

or better yet, let us make our own ending.

55:12

So, if I have a show, somebody comes up to me

55:14

and they'll say, you know, that portrait

55:16

that you did is really sad. That

55:19

guy must have been suffering mightily.

55:21

And it might have been my dad that I

55:23

was giving it to him for his birthday and I wanted to feel

55:25

happy. I didn't intend that to be sad

55:28

but something I did in there triggered

55:31

their response. And I never say, oh,

55:33

no, no, no, that is not sad at all. I

55:35

go, you know, that's right. Because it was sad

55:38

to them and it is right because sad to them. When

55:40

somebody comes up to you and says your art

55:42

means something that you never intended and

55:45

that happens consistently, you're doing something right.

55:48

Now you know you're onto some because the door is

55:50

opened up and you're allowing them to come in within

55:52

your world, finding what they need

55:55

to make their world better. And that's

55:57

when it's art with a capital A and

55:59

not just craft, just

56:02

piecing together or something or a process. Nothing

56:04

wrong with that, just having fun, you know,

56:07

entertaining. Stan L Right.

56:29

But there's nothing you have to do and

56:31

as soon as you realize that, it opens things up.

56:34

Then the problem we realists have is

56:37

that we're realists, that we think

56:40

we tell too much but also we think

56:42

that when we paint a nose, it's a nose. It's

56:45

not a nose, it's our idea about

56:47

a nose. Now why does that idea

56:50

have to be so limited? I'm not

56:52

a huge fan of Picasso but look

56:54

at Picasso noses, look at Modigliani

56:56

noses, look at Moore, Henry Moore noses.

56:59

You know, look at the guy, the abstract,

57:02

the contemporary artist because they'll tell us how

57:04

to think differently at least and

57:06

we may never want to go anywhere near that

57:09

stylistically. We said before,

57:11

well, what if you do it bad? Well now you've got

57:13

a wonderful idea waiting for somebody who can do it

57:15

better. If JK

57:18

Rowling screwed up little boy

57:20

at magic school, maybe

57:22

JD Salinger, if he's still alive but

57:24

he'll take his, maybe he'll do it better. That's

57:27

a great idea. Yeah. So,

57:30

I guess most people that go to Ateliers

57:32

and you know, the realist schools probably

57:35

have this problem where they have a fear

57:37

of drawing something wrong. Right,

57:40

right. The way is in reality. So, what would

57:42

you recommend the people? Right, well, it's

57:44

a valid fear because they're if you

57:46

throw thing, if you take that nose and do this,

57:48

it is wrong in terms of the

57:50

portrait or if you make the nose go

57:53

into the face or then out of the face. All

57:55

those things are wrong realistically

57:58

and there has to be a very good reason

57:59

to make

57:59

them wrong in that sense. So, if you intentionally

58:02

did it for a purpose. Yeah. So, if there's a

58:04

purpose to it, then it's great and what

58:06

that is, it just is that's all context

58:08

and that's where talent and taste

58:11

come in. How do I do that

58:13

great idea or how do I do something

58:15

that's not a great idea but

58:17

do it in a great way? Sometimes they're just mediocre

58:20

ideas like Sargent paintings,

58:22

those are mediocre ideas but they're done in

58:24

great ways. All he's doing is

58:27

the captains of industry, he's just

58:29

making them royalty which is what Van

58:31

Dyke paintings were. He's painting royalty

58:33

back then. Well, now the new royalty

58:35

at that time and still is the people

58:38

who make money as entrepreneurs

58:41

or inherit money and sustain that money.

58:44

And so, he's painting these people as gods.

58:46

When he painted a little old lady, she wasn't a little old lady,

58:48

she was here a goddess of the universe.

58:51

You know, she was seven feet tall and

58:54

with this beautiful long neck, deep

58:56

intelligent eyes, huge hands

58:58

that had strength and grace and power

59:00

and elegance to them and fashionable

59:03

draft and a rich environment. That

59:05

was a mythology as much as Rapist

59:08

Sabine or any of that stuff.

59:11

Some artists like myself even have a fear

59:13

of just intentionally drawing things wrong.

59:16

It's just like... So, we need an couch for

59:18

that I think. What do you

59:20

mean? We definitely lay you down and do long therapy. Oh.

59:24

No, I don't. Yeah, well,

59:26

yeah but I mean, everybody's gonna

59:28

have a different... This is a continuum. I

59:30

mean, what's wrong to Picasso is

59:33

way down the line in terms

59:35

of the continuum of what's right and wrong to us

59:37

realists. So, you have

59:39

to decide what's right to you but all you have

59:42

to do and that doesn't mean it's

59:44

easy but it's simple is

59:46

does it ring true to what you're trying to

59:48

do? Okay. Okay, so like

59:51

Klimt broke people's necks, he'd lay this

59:53

head over on the shoulder and

59:55

it looked incredible but it wasn't real. Right.

59:58

But what you're doing is not real. either. What

1:00:01

Hans Holbein does isn't real either.

1:00:03

It's what Raphael did wasn't real.

1:00:06

What Rodin did wasn't real.

1:00:08

Carpeaux wasn't real. None of those are real.

1:00:10

They're stylized, idealized, abstracted

1:00:14

and they're poetic. They have a deeper

1:00:17

current to them. So, if I

1:00:19

took a portrait of a couple

1:00:21

and put them right together with

1:00:24

each other or if I moved them to far

1:00:26

outside corners, that all of a

1:00:28

sudden would have a very different feel. Maybe

1:00:30

they don't get along so well. Yeah,

1:00:32

that's what, I forget his name, he's California,

1:00:35

David Hockney and he would take these

1:00:38

fairly flat graphics style

1:00:41

of painting and he'd have them in

1:00:43

mid-century modern California

1:00:45

living room and he could see through the glass of the pool

1:00:47

outside or something like that and he put them here

1:00:50

separated and that spoke to

1:00:53

isolation in the city. So, that's

1:00:55

what I get out of it. Yeah,

1:00:57

just by doing that. It's

1:00:59

still realistic. You could have done that in any

1:01:01

realistic style. It could have been a fetch in

1:01:03

or you know, pick your favorite

1:01:06

realist or painter and plug it in. It wouldn't

1:01:08

have mattered, a weapon or something. But

1:01:11

as soon as you do that, doing did very

1:01:13

much the same thing, a American tonalist and

1:01:16

all of a sudden, you'd have these lonely figures.

1:01:18

It was a product of the fact he didn't have a lot of money

1:01:21

to set things up. He'd have one simple

1:01:23

prop and there he'd have a little vanity desk

1:01:25

or piano or a simple chair

1:01:27

with a painting on the wall

1:01:29

and it'd be one woman in a dress like this in the

1:01:31

flooring dress and she looked as lonely as

1:01:33

she could be. You know, it was just isolated from

1:01:35

the whole world. You know, sometimes we

1:01:38

accidentally come up with it and that's

1:01:40

a fairly trite concept. It's

1:01:42

real easy to make it cliche especially at

1:01:44

this point but those are lovely

1:01:46

little paintings. You know, and so,

1:01:49

anything can be done well or bad and can

1:01:51

elevate or degrade and

1:01:53

that's where talent comes in. You know,

1:01:56

do you have the aesthetic

1:01:58

sense and do you have a sense of

1:02:00

human nature of how

1:02:02

people around you act and react

1:02:05

and how you react that you can pick

1:02:07

up on that. You know, what if I make really

1:02:10

beautiful people hitting each other

1:02:12

in the face and trying to hurt each other? That's

1:02:15

pretty conflicted, pretty messed

1:02:17

up how would I think about it. And

1:02:20

I've had people come up say I really like your paintings

1:02:22

but it bothers me that I like them because

1:02:24

they're beautiful light, they're

1:02:27

not beautiful figures but they're beautiful light

1:02:29

or whatever they like about it but

1:02:31

I hate boxing, I think it's violent, you

1:02:33

know, I think it's exploitive

1:02:37

and I did that on purpose because

1:02:39

by making something beautiful

1:02:42

that you should be considered ugly

1:02:45

and pretty brutal and

1:02:47

maybe even banned, now

1:02:49

that's drama. What if I have a hero

1:02:52

who hates the little boy he's supposed to

1:02:54

save? That's drama, that's good

1:02:56

drama. Novelists and

1:02:59

filmmakers want that kind of conflict.

1:03:02

What if I have a guy who's a brilliant

1:03:05

but nerdy chemistry teacher, you have

1:03:08

cancer and he's got to become a drug

1:03:10

dealer to suppose a family. I was just thinking of

1:03:12

that because there's that conflict or you're

1:03:15

rooting for him and then all of a sudden. Yeah

1:03:17

and the producer that pitched

1:03:20

that show is what if Mr.

1:03:22

Chipps, the famous teacher of school

1:03:25

became Scarface? Now

1:03:27

that's an interesting idea. What

1:03:30

if this guy who's a model citizen

1:03:32

becomes the worst of our society but

1:03:35

for all the right reasons, I just want to leave

1:03:38

something for my family and pay for my cancer

1:03:40

treatment. That's good stuff.

1:03:42

So when you can bring things together, that's oil and water.

1:03:45

If I can bring magic and boarding schools,

1:03:48

if I can bring an alien invasion,

1:03:50

big game hunting, that's

1:03:52

the Predator series. That

1:03:55

makes it that yeah, that's a

1:03:57

tool for being creative. Okay.

1:04:00

There are ways to be creative. You can be a craftsman.

1:04:02

You can follow the process of your teacher because

1:04:04

it's a lovely process and it's darn fun to

1:04:06

do and you get good results.

1:04:09

You get a B plus most every time. Nothing

1:04:11

wrong with that. Keeping the old truth

1:04:13

alive. You

1:04:16

can be completely original and make a Jell-O

1:04:18

skyscraper, okay? But

1:04:21

the problem with making the Jell-O skyscraper

1:04:24

or being totally original, usually let's

1:04:26

say 96.8% of that's garbage.

1:04:29

Pupu kaka, as we

1:04:31

say in the business. The problem is

1:04:34

with craft is 98.6% of that isn't

1:04:37

very good either. It was done way better

1:04:40

before and sometimes it's

1:04:42

just darn horrible. You

1:04:44

know, it's all out of whack and stuff. So,

1:04:46

most of the time, you're not going to be able to take

1:04:49

it to these transcendent heights and

1:04:51

you'll have to work quite a while even to get to

1:04:53

a mediocre height. It

1:04:56

takes you 10 years to learn how to be

1:04:58

an okay drawer. Often times.

1:05:00

Yeah, so the third one is... And I still can't. I'm

1:05:03

not an okay aggressor. But the

1:05:05

third way is the oil and water,

1:05:07

right? You take two things

1:05:09

that are usually common knowledge

1:05:12

and put them together. Beautiful design

1:05:14

and computers that are easy to use. It

1:05:16

could be five things together. Comic books,

1:05:19

boxing, abstract expressionism,

1:05:22

religious art. Okay.

1:05:25

And that way, you're making the old thing new and

1:05:27

you're contemporizing it. So, to

1:05:29

you, like what is the purpose

1:05:31

of creating art? Is it enough

1:05:34

to just create beautiful pictures or

1:05:36

do we have to have a message or record

1:05:39

them on time? There's nothing in this

1:05:41

world you have to do. Okay. And

1:05:43

in some ways, nothing you should do. I mean,

1:05:46

if you're gonna try and make a message, you're probably

1:05:48

gonna close the door and

1:05:51

the people you speak to won't be the people you really

1:05:53

wanna speak to because it'll be oversimplified,

1:05:55

it'll be patronizing. So, probably.

1:05:58

You don't wanna do it. But there's all

1:06:00

sorts of exceptions to that. I mean,

1:06:02

look at Goya's war etchings,

1:06:06

look at Katie Kovett's wood blocks.

1:06:08

They're proselytizing about the horrors

1:06:11

of regimes and war and all that kind

1:06:13

of stuff. Sometimes it works beautifully. But

1:06:15

most of us, it comes off as cliche.

1:06:18

Though even that far back, it was slower

1:06:20

times. Now things move so quickly, we

1:06:23

get bored. Yeah, I got to be texting

1:06:25

my friend and watching

1:06:28

TV and listening

1:06:30

in my headphone to a Steve Houston lecture

1:06:33

or a Stan lecture or something like that while

1:06:35

I'm rendering. Right, usually we multitask

1:06:38

because we get bored quick. We got to be

1:06:40

doing video games where somebody dies every

1:06:42

three seconds. We got to watch movies

1:06:45

where it's fast cut, fast cut, fast cut. They

1:06:47

can't have a three-minute take. That wouldn't bore

1:06:49

the audience to death. They'll switch the channel

1:06:52

on the TV. And so there's all

1:06:54

those kind of restrictions and problems.

1:06:58

Even getting a set of students in

1:07:00

a school that has the attention span

1:07:02

to want to render for many hours on

1:07:04

one piece, yeah, that's even

1:07:06

a problem. Getting them to focus

1:07:09

on their craft consistently because there's a football.

1:07:11

I mean, I can watch 12 hours of football on

1:07:13

Sunday. Why would I want to be drawing? Or

1:07:15

if I'm drawing, I'm drawing while I'm watching 12 hours of

1:07:17

football. So it's really easy

1:07:20

to get distracted. We live in fairly

1:07:22

pampered times. Not everybody certainly.

1:07:25

But even our poor people aren't

1:07:28

as poor as they used to be. You

1:07:30

know, some places they are. But

1:07:32

I mean, we have leisure and we have conveniences.

1:07:35

We have Sundays off at least. We don't have to work 12

1:07:38

hours a day. At least some of us don't. All

1:07:41

those things create opportunities. There's

1:07:43

nothing you have to do. Trust

1:07:45

your instincts and your instincts will

1:07:47

get better with it. Trust your imagination

1:07:50

and your imagination will get better with their muscles.

1:07:53

So work them. And at first, you're going to make bad

1:07:55

choices in terms of great art probably.

1:07:58

And maybe you end up... never doing great art

1:08:01

but you sure have fun doing it and

1:08:03

that small group of friends and family absolutely

1:08:05

love it and grandma

1:08:08

or whoever or your boss absolutely

1:08:11

adores that little portrait you did or that

1:08:13

big portrait you did of him or her. So,

1:08:16

you can manage your expectations

1:08:19

and you can be patient with yourself. You

1:08:22

know, so oftentimes we get really

1:08:24

hard on ourselves as artists because we're

1:08:26

creative and we know what it should be

1:08:28

maybe and it's not coming out that

1:08:31

way and then we give up. It's

1:08:33

just too painful. There is,

1:08:35

I forget the writer but he says like

1:08:37

Norman Mailer, some 20th century

1:08:39

famous writer and he said with every book

1:08:42

I write a little piece of me dies.

1:08:45

That was how painful his creative process

1:08:47

is. That was how hard he was on himself and

1:08:50

think of all the great artists who killed themselves.

1:08:52

You know, the him in ways and then goes

1:08:55

and all this kind of stuff. The torture and creative

1:08:57

mind is a cliche even, you

1:08:59

know, because we beat ourselves up.

1:09:02

So, being patient, giving

1:09:04

yourself time to get there and being

1:09:07

comforted with the idea that you're not as bad

1:09:09

as you think you are and

1:09:11

you'll probably never do a masterpiece

1:09:13

but that's okay. You put out the best you can.

1:09:15

You know, I was waiting, waiting, waiting to put

1:09:18

out work at galleries and finally Dan Bekasa

1:09:20

said you're never gonna do a masterpiece. So,

1:09:23

I wait. Just do the best you can and

1:09:25

my view now is if I'm not embarrassed

1:09:28

by my work three or four years later,

1:09:30

there's something wrong. I

1:09:32

should be better, right? So, but

1:09:35

if you wait to be the best, you'll never

1:09:37

get there. You'll never put out one painting. I mean,

1:09:39

you can frame these things in whatever ways,

1:09:41

use whatever words makes sense to you but

1:09:44

what you're trying to do is do something

1:09:47

that brings true to you. Is

1:09:49

there something you tell students that have

1:09:52

a hard time figuring out what brings true to them

1:09:54

or what they should do? Yeah, you

1:09:56

know, I mean, there's again, there's nothing you have

1:09:58

to do. So, you know, you can do like

1:10:00

I love since I grew up with

1:10:02

comic books, I love all the comic

1:10:05

book movies come out. None of those are masterpiece,

1:10:07

some are pretty good but none of them are great film

1:10:09

by any means. Most of them are fairly bad films

1:10:12

but they're sure fun, they're entertaining. There's

1:10:14

nothing wrong with that. Just doing a

1:10:17

beautiful sunset or a beautiful

1:10:19

figure on a couch, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact,

1:10:21

there's a lot that's right with that. So

1:10:23

it doesn't have to change the world and

1:10:26

the fact is I can almost

1:10:28

guarantee you whatever you do won't change the

1:10:30

world but it might change a little

1:10:33

piece, might change one person and

1:10:35

that person might go out of the

1:10:37

gallery or from the folio

1:10:40

feeling a little different or just being

1:10:42

grateful that they had a break from their troubles.

1:10:46

So you manage your expectations

1:10:48

and you decide what your

1:10:50

definition of an artist is, what

1:10:53

do you really want to be and when

1:10:55

it rings true, what is that truth? Because

1:10:58

I mean, we have a lot of truths in this world

1:11:00

now, there's no one truth. There's

1:11:02

all sorts of religious truths, some scientific

1:11:04

truths, atheistic, all

1:11:07

this kind of stuff, political truths, you know. And

1:11:09

so you're probably going to be working within a

1:11:11

small group, a tribe that agree

1:11:13

with you but the fact is the difference

1:11:16

even if you're a completely different tribe than me

1:11:18

and it looks to me like you are, we're both

1:11:21

human beings and so we have a

1:11:23

lot in common and if I find something

1:11:26

interesting and challenging

1:11:29

and beautiful or whatever adjective I want

1:11:31

to attach onto it, there's going to be a lot of people

1:11:34

who feel the same way about it and

1:11:36

yet also, so I'm going to depend on the fact that

1:11:39

I'm not so much different than that other, that

1:11:41

tribe, you know, this is the way we go through life,

1:11:43

disconnected. Whoever I

1:11:46

am, I'm not in this old body, I'm

1:11:48

this incredibly handsome individual,

1:11:51

this is something still

1:11:53

growing and so we're locked inside

1:11:56

us and separated, even

1:11:59

when I touch something. I'm not really connecting

1:12:01

to it, not in any deep

1:12:03

way. I'm always separated from it. So,

1:12:06

we're always different in that level and yeah, we

1:12:08

are connected in some ways. We can connect

1:12:10

in a deep way, especially through our arts.

1:12:13

You know, art does and religion does the same thing,

1:12:15

philosophy does the same thing. It connects

1:12:17

in a deep deep way, it breaks past the

1:12:20

veil as the metaphor for that oftentimes.

1:12:22

When you get this fortunate connection of colors

1:12:24

and shapes or this fortunate connection

1:12:27

of prayer to an idea, sometimes

1:12:29

that veil opens up and you get a direct

1:12:32

connection. You get this rush

1:12:34

of energy through your body, sometimes

1:12:37

it's coffee but sometimes it really

1:12:40

gets you. You get that connection and so the

1:12:42

artist depends on two things, that were

1:12:44

not so different. So, if we find something

1:12:46

truthful, beautiful, pick your

1:12:48

adjective, other people will too. Maybe

1:12:51

a lot, maybe a little. We can't control them but some

1:12:53

will. And yet, we are

1:12:55

distinct. There's never been another you

1:12:57

in the whole history of the human race. There's

1:13:00

been a lot of people

1:13:02

come through the doors. We've got 7

1:13:04

billion or whatever it is now and yet,

1:13:06

there's never been a person exactly like Stan

1:13:09

ever and so you have a unique perspective

1:13:12

on the world that nobody else has

1:13:14

ever had and that's an opportunity

1:13:16

then to bring something new. Nobody

1:13:20

thought to put those two or those five

1:13:22

ideas together the way you did it or to

1:13:24

do that same old idea at

1:13:26

a level that's never been seen. You know,

1:13:28

why can't I do something as a realist

1:13:30

that's better than Sargent or better

1:13:33

than Rembrandt? You know, there's that possibility

1:13:35

too. It's less likely but

1:13:37

it's still a possibility but it's quite

1:13:39

likely that you could take a little bit from

1:13:42

Sargent, a little bit from Rembrandt, a little bit from Picasso

1:13:44

and David Ockney, come up with something

1:13:46

that's very interesting. It's done all the time.

1:13:49

You know, any good business idea, any

1:13:51

good movie idea, any good story

1:13:54

is that and any art style

1:13:56

is that. Cool. I'm going to do video

1:13:58

art instead of painted art. That was a new idea

1:14:01

that was not too long ago. As we focus

1:14:03

so much on craft, it

1:14:05

is such a treasure hunt and usually

1:14:08

those treasures are really buried deep and

1:14:11

it takes a lot of energy and diligence

1:14:14

just to cobble together a figure drawing

1:14:16

education or a color theory education.

1:14:20

So, I'm exhausted just doing that whereas the time

1:14:22

to then say something important

1:14:24

about it. It's similar to learning

1:14:26

punctuation and grammar. You know,

1:14:29

that's great if you know where to put the semi-colons

1:14:32

but if you don't have something to say in

1:14:34

that story, you don't have characters

1:14:36

that you've lived with or

1:14:39

characters you've lived as to

1:14:41

put down the page, what's the point of writing?

1:14:43

But it's pretty clearly pointless that

1:14:46

if I become the best punctuarian,

1:14:49

I'll make up a word in terms of writing

1:14:51

skills and I have nothing to talk about,

1:14:54

no insight to bring, then

1:14:56

who's going to read my story and why

1:14:58

should I even write a story? I'm just

1:15:00

going to put down random words. And

1:15:02

so, oftentimes as realists,

1:15:05

our craft then includes how

1:15:08

to make a nose come off the page and how to put

1:15:10

it in the right place in the right proportion and

1:15:12

how to color it right and all those

1:15:14

kind of mechanical things. Fortunately,

1:15:18

for us, it can just be that one-off image.

1:15:21

You can't just do one word as a writer,

1:15:23

you got to run the story, whatever it is.

1:15:25

As the artist, that can be aesthetically

1:15:27

beautiful but ideally,

1:15:30

we would then have some great idea

1:15:33

to talk about, some great fundamental

1:15:36

truth and say loneliness or

1:15:38

salvation or man's

1:15:40

inhumanity to man or whatever it is

1:15:43

or the thrill of competition

1:15:46

or you know, it could be anything. But we have something

1:15:48

to say about that and bring it out.

1:15:51

Buddy, if I'm going to lead you by the nose and say, now,

1:15:53

this is what you will have to feel with my paintings,

1:15:56

I'm going to paint this beautiful, in

1:15:58

fact, she's really hot because that's what I'm going to do. what we

1:16:00

really usually do when we're mailers and

1:16:02

she's draped on the couch with this gauzy

1:16:05

nightgown that's pretty... That's

1:16:07

the great in it. Yeah, is it hot in here? It's

1:16:10

got to be there. And then

1:16:12

I've got Moonlight coming through the open curtains

1:16:15

and there's a guy in a black cape

1:16:17

with a skull and a scythe hovering

1:16:19

over her and she's pale

1:16:22

skinned which I thought was a great

1:16:24

touch and it's death

1:16:26

coming for the hot babe metaphor.

1:16:29

He gave us everything. What are we going to do?

1:16:32

We go, yeah, she's a hot babe but

1:16:34

if you'll just turn up the air conditioner, I'll be fine.

1:16:37

But you don't get anything else, you don't live with it, you don't take

1:16:39

that home and you go, yeah,

1:16:43

she was not only hot babe, she was

1:16:45

also a really hot

1:16:48

babe. That's all I can get out of that. So

1:16:51

we need to do something that's iconic,

1:16:54

that's metaphorical, something

1:16:57

that stands for other than itself. That's

1:16:59

what a metaphor is. God

1:17:01

is a rock, that's a metaphor. Now

1:17:03

that's a lot. God is not

1:17:06

a rock. If there's a God, he's certainly not a rock.

1:17:09

But since I can't understand very well

1:17:11

the concept of God and I know

1:17:13

quite well the character of a rock,

1:17:16

I can get some insight maybe, some emotional

1:17:19

truth out of that metaphor. That's what

1:17:21

metaphorists do. Yeah, he is a

1:17:23

rock because when I pray to him,

1:17:25

I feel like I'm standing on firm

1:17:27

ground, I feel like it's going to always

1:17:29

be there. And I'll start

1:17:31

as contributing to God, these rock-like

1:17:34

qualities and I'll get some connection.

1:17:37

So that's what we're really looking for as artists

1:17:39

is to create a metaphor. The

1:17:42

other fact is sometimes life can be

1:17:44

magical. We can sign up for a magical

1:17:46

school but sometimes life is

1:17:49

magical. We have magic moments. Sometimes

1:17:52

it is wondrous and there's a certain emotional

1:17:54

truth there, it's not scientific truth but

1:17:57

we're flooded with scientific truths. talking

1:18:00

to our audience through scientific truths. We

1:18:03

can go home and drink ourselves to sleep after

1:18:05

those wonderful scientific truths, you

1:18:07

know, because we're so miserable in our lives. It's not what people

1:18:09

need. But the art, you

1:18:12

know, going to a movie, the right movie

1:18:14

can change your life. You know, reading

1:18:16

the right novel can change your life or

1:18:18

at least give you comfort to feel like that you're

1:18:20

not alone in your life, that

1:18:23

other people have gone through that. That

1:18:25

film on transgender or depression

1:18:28

or whatever or chemicals in

1:18:30

the soil. Maybe that's why Aunt Sally

1:18:32

is sick because she lives by the chemical plant.

1:18:35

You know, even that kind of stuff, the drama

1:18:37

of those characters going through that, you

1:18:40

can connect to that and pull from it. So,

1:18:43

that's the power of art. It works on these deep,

1:18:45

deep levels. I mean,

1:18:48

think of the Sistine Chapel where

1:18:50

you walk in, you can't read, you've

1:18:52

only listened to these stories through your clergy. You

1:18:55

walk into that chapel for the first time and

1:18:57

you see the face of God. That's

1:19:00

pretty powerful. What

1:19:02

can match that in a life

1:19:05

that's pretty mundane and

1:19:07

often is pretty horrific? Yeah. And

1:19:10

yet, you've touched as this peasant,

1:19:12

you know, half starved, you can't read

1:19:15

and has no hope for a better job. You've

1:19:17

touched God in some way. What

1:19:20

was your training schedule like? Well,

1:19:23

in school, what I did, I touched

1:19:25

on a little bit before is I

1:19:27

made sure that I prioritized the classes.

1:19:30

You're gonna get, let's say, five classes or four

1:19:32

classes or three classes, whatever it is. They're

1:19:34

not all gonna be equally valuable to you.

1:19:37

Okay. So, do you choose the one you're interested in?

1:19:39

Because you might be skipping out on something that's really

1:19:42

important. Well, that's always the danger

1:19:44

in life is when you make choices, when you lease

1:19:46

something out, there's a danger. But

1:19:50

maybe I really want to be an abstract painter.

1:19:52

So, I'm gonna blow off that realist figurative

1:19:54

class that I had first semester. By third semester,

1:19:57

I realized I want to be a realist figurative painter.

1:19:59

Okay. Now I got to go back and take that elective.

1:20:02

What I did was I took with whatever electives

1:20:05

they give you, you take what you have to take and

1:20:07

that taste testing, that buffet of early

1:20:09

college or early education, important.

1:20:12

Like an atelier doesn't really have that. They'll

1:20:14

teach the one process through a couple mediums

1:20:17

usually and then you're out the door

1:20:19

with a great skill set in that process

1:20:21

oftentimes. But you don't have

1:20:24

communication classes, you don't have design

1:20:27

classes, you don't have a sense of the contemporary

1:20:29

art audience you're working with, you're really

1:20:31

doing paintings for a three or four hundred year

1:20:33

old audience oftentimes. There's

1:20:36

always going to be gaps and holes. So

1:20:38

it's nice in the beginning if you can take a buffet

1:20:40

and say well, take a

1:20:42

few of these and as I found later on,

1:20:45

I never wanted to be an abstract painter but

1:20:47

I am an abstract painter. My figures,

1:20:50

these are all abstract shapes. You

1:20:53

take this out of context or you crop

1:20:56

it in, why can't that be a six

1:20:58

by six foot abstract painting? Yeah. Wouldn't

1:21:01

that apply to anybody? Yes, it would

1:21:03

and it should but most realists don't think

1:21:06

that way. They say that doesn't

1:21:08

look real enough and the only truth

1:21:11

is the realism of it. And

1:21:13

even that's okay but it's nice

1:21:15

to know there's other truths and you may say I got my

1:21:18

plate full already just doing things realistic.

1:21:21

I'm doing photo realistic work, I love doing

1:21:23

it and so that's enough for me

1:21:25

but oftentimes people if you say

1:21:27

what about this? They'll go oh yeah

1:21:30

and they'll realize that's why I was fighting

1:21:32

doing those tight renderings because I'm

1:21:35

really a looser painter. It's a looser

1:21:37

truth I'm after or

1:21:39

kinetic truth or whatever it is. So

1:21:41

pick your choices, kind of have a game plan. I always

1:21:44

try and think two years out, five years out,

1:21:46

ten years out and then a lifetime.

1:21:49

When I'm 84, I was gonna say

1:21:51

on my death bed but in Florida retired

1:21:53

with a martini or something, I

1:21:55

wanna be able to look back and say yeah,

1:21:58

I wrote a good story for myself. I

1:22:00

did okay. I don't regret that I didn't

1:22:02

try and be an artist, that I didn't try and

1:22:05

get as good as I can get or whatever

1:22:07

or I didn't spend more time with my family or whatever.

1:22:09

You know, I did it well. I never wanted

1:22:11

regrets and so I tried to

1:22:14

plan for that. But doing that, there's

1:22:16

a level of maturity involved. That means

1:22:18

you can't watch 12 hours of football.

1:22:21

You can't go to all the parties or

1:22:24

maybe even most of the parties. You have

1:22:26

to give things up and so that's a tough

1:22:28

one too and I've always thought that

1:22:30

college comes too early. We

1:22:32

spend 12 years going through kiddie school,

1:22:35

taking stuff from the adults that we had

1:22:37

to take to be good citizens and

1:22:39

for the most part cramming for them and forgetting

1:22:42

them. Can you really remember the capels,

1:22:44

all 50 states? You know,

1:22:46

you just cram through that stuff and then you forget 99%

1:22:49

of it. And then

1:22:51

what they do is the last year

1:22:53

and a half or so, you start taking tests and

1:22:56

exams for college placement. You

1:22:58

start sending out letters, planning

1:23:00

for scholarships and then you jump right

1:23:02

into a package at Harvard

1:23:04

or at Washington State or at this

1:23:07

junior college and you run through that

1:23:09

for three and a half years or maybe it's 12 and

1:23:11

a half years depending on what you're doing and

1:23:13

then you spit out and you're expected to be

1:23:15

an adult and spend the rest of your life

1:23:18

doing that major which was American

1:23:21

literature or business degree

1:23:23

or whatever it was when you're really still

1:23:25

a child. You know, in terms

1:23:27

of knowing what you want and what you

1:23:29

need to do. To me, it's better

1:23:31

to get out of children's

1:23:34

school, 12th grade and then travel

1:23:36

for a couple of years or work for a couple of years

1:23:38

or mix it up, work for a year and then go get

1:23:41

a year or real pass in Europe or

1:23:44

you know, get an inexpensive car and drive

1:23:46

across the country that you live in. Okay.

1:23:49

And experience it and start

1:23:51

to say I was at that political demonstration,

1:23:54

I don't like the way the system works. The

1:23:56

more I looked at the system and think well, actually it's working

1:23:58

pretty good and needs to do some hundred... are that system

1:24:00

or I think there's already plenty of bureaucrats,

1:24:03

I'm going to be an artist. But what

1:24:05

does that mean? But people jump into

1:24:07

it too immature really.

1:24:10

We're not living in New Guinea 300 years

1:24:13

ago where at 13 you were a man

1:24:15

and you went through a man's right and

1:24:18

oftentimes your body was scarred to show

1:24:20

that you were now a man and

1:24:22

not a child. And so, you went through an actual

1:24:24

ritual and things were pretty simple. You

1:24:27

didn't have much you had to do. Here to

1:24:29

be a good man

1:24:31

or a good woman who can take

1:24:33

care of their partner and their responsibilities

1:24:36

and not take from the world but

1:24:38

to give back to the world or help uplift

1:24:40

the world or even challenge the world,

1:24:43

that takes some maturity. And oftentimes

1:24:46

our education system targets

1:24:48

things early and then they say okay, learn

1:24:50

to draw, okay, learn to paint, learn

1:24:53

to render, learn to color, learn to design and you

1:24:55

don't know how to put those things together. There's

1:24:57

nobody showed you it was you

1:25:00

took 40 minutes of history then 40 minutes

1:25:02

of math and it's all cut

1:25:04

apart. And so, you have to be in

1:25:06

a position that you're mature enough that

1:25:09

you know what you want even if it's

1:25:11

wrong, even if you think you should be an

1:25:14

abstract artist and later you change your mind to be a

1:25:16

realist or vice versa, make

1:25:18

a choice and then what's the best plan

1:25:21

of action because the college isn't going

1:25:23

to give it to you probably. What's

1:25:25

the best plan of action to get there? What

1:25:27

do I need? Drawing? Do I need anatomy?

1:25:30

What do I need? Do I need laws of light

1:25:32

to understand how to render it? Is there

1:25:34

anything that you would do differently in

1:25:37

the way you trained or in the decisions you made?

1:25:40

No, because all those you know,

1:25:42

when you look at your life, you know,

1:25:45

I'm 58 when you've got you know, 20, 30,

1:25:48

40 years behind, it looks like it was

1:25:50

meant to be and everything that was a mistake

1:25:52

is also an opportunity. So,

1:25:55

I illustrated and ended up hating

1:25:57

it but I got an incredible amount

1:25:59

of mileage. And I found

1:26:01

out what I didn't like and I

1:26:03

took a skill set that had some problems.

1:26:05

I was a hack as I said but also I was a

1:26:07

pretty good hack because I could render, you know,

1:26:10

I could picture make and stuff like that. It

1:26:12

gave me some skills and I worked on things that

1:26:14

I wouldn't have worked on. So, it was a good stepping

1:26:16

stone and then I went into teaching

1:26:18

and every time

1:26:19

in life you're at those kind

1:26:21

of crossroads moments, you're gonna find

1:26:23

lessons of what to do

1:26:26

and lessons for what not to do. I

1:26:28

looked at a lot of the teachers and saw they were burned

1:26:31

out. You know, now how am I gonna go

1:26:33

through with this love I have

1:26:35

for art and not burn out on it? They

1:26:37

taught me what not to be as artists as

1:26:39

well as teaching me color theory

1:26:42

and whatever else. So, yeah, I mean,

1:26:44

it is what it is but I feel

1:26:46

good about what I did. Something

1:26:49

like I could have moved faster here. Once

1:26:51

I had done the illustration stuff

1:26:53

and I got pretty successful, the

1:26:56

more they wanted me the worse I got because

1:26:58

the deadlines became more

1:27:00

stringent and the imagery oftentimes

1:27:02

wasn't as fun or whatever it was. And

1:27:05

so, I've always kind of held back a little bit in

1:27:07

terms of doing fine art and trying

1:27:09

to be super successful at it because

1:27:12

I didn't want that same kind of having

1:27:14

to knock it out. And so, actually last

1:27:16

four or five years, I've been working on some of these big

1:27:18

commissions for a collector and

1:27:20

I haven't shown in galleries because I haven't wanted

1:27:23

to. I want to do these commissions and

1:27:25

just not do the shows for a while

1:27:27

and then what I do shows again another

1:27:29

two, three years when there'll

1:27:32

be some different boxes and the workers

1:27:34

will be gone, do something new. Okay.

1:27:37

I'm gonna do Stalin on a teacher taught

1:27:39

her a thing. Did you study more from life

1:27:41

or from masters when you were here? I

1:27:43

did both. I studied from life. I

1:27:45

didn't use any of the tracing tools

1:27:47

that they used. I can't remember what they're called

1:27:50

now but the projection stuff.

1:27:53

Now you do it with all sorts of stuff but I didn't

1:27:55

use any of that. I always drew free hand. Okay. What

1:27:58

people would do is you get a photo, let's say this photo reference. difference.

1:28:00

You could trace it out or you could freehand

1:28:03

draw it and then you take that and

1:28:05

you put it in an image projector or

1:28:07

print it out and blow it up and

1:28:10

then you work on that. I would always redraw

1:28:12

and draw a freehand.

1:28:15

So, I would screw it up but I have to draw two

1:28:17

or three times to get it right into

1:28:19

practice. And also, I still use that

1:28:21

process because when I

1:28:23

draw, I'll draw it a little sloppy.

1:28:26

So, I have to move things around a little

1:28:28

bit and that creates these interesting edges.

1:28:30

That's a kinetics that's important to my work.

1:28:33

Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about yours is there's

1:28:36

a little thing that if you had traced

1:28:38

it, you would have never created these

1:28:41

varieties from life. Yeah, and

1:28:43

I saw that in Pontormo. Pontormo would

1:28:45

do two or three nipples and six

1:28:47

or seven fingers, house look and you just

1:28:49

leave them there. That created this sense

1:28:51

of it was cool but

1:28:54

also a sense of vibration and momentary

1:28:56

is gonna move in a second to something else. In

1:28:59

your book, you talk about consistency

1:29:01

and there's a quote in there. So, start

1:29:04

thinking of the frame around your artwork as

1:29:06

a window into your world. The marks

1:29:09

you make explain the rules of that

1:29:11

world that better be consistent. Are

1:29:14

you talking about in a

1:29:16

single work or in a body of work? Oh.

1:29:20

Yeah, yeah and that consistency

1:29:22

can be how it changes. So,

1:29:24

think of a gradation. This can be consistently

1:29:26

a well-structured, well-designed art but

1:29:29

it could go from strong light to

1:29:31

ambient light to shadow. So, there

1:29:33

can be an evolution there. That's what a curve is

1:29:35

is it's always changing directions incrementally

1:29:38

and going from down to eventually

1:29:41

up. But is that ringing true

1:29:44

and having a focus of what you're

1:29:46

trying to say with your work? Clearly,

1:29:48

you understand that what that mark is

1:29:50

doing for you and just

1:29:52

the way I almost went into engineering

1:29:54

because I like math before I discovered art

1:29:57

as a young man. So, I like to know why things

1:29:59

work. I like to figure it out. So, that's

1:30:01

just my thing. It's not all good.

1:30:03

You know, for most people, they don't need to know

1:30:06

every single why but I like to know it. So,

1:30:09

a lot of times it's just emotionally rings true

1:30:11

but every mark has to be in service

1:30:13

of something. Stan L Okay.

1:30:16

So, what do you enjoy more? Quick sketch or longer effort? Marshall L Yeah, I

1:30:18

like all the process. I like to mix

1:30:20

it up. Like sketchbooks, I'll do more of

1:30:23

kind of Sargent-esque kind of stuff or quick sketch

1:30:25

oil paints. It'd be more my Sargent hat

1:30:28

on and then the longer it'll be more my Rembrand

1:30:30

where I'll build up wet over dry. Stan

1:30:33

L So, you know, I like all that. I

1:30:35

don't at this point, I've been doing it long enough and

1:30:37

I went through my early years

1:30:39

as a realist doing stuff pretty tight.

1:30:41

I don't like to sit there and render a big

1:30:44

painting, a full painting with a fully rendered and

1:30:47

if you'll notice my work, it's designed

1:30:49

in such a way and that's kind of the

1:30:51

nature of chiaroscuro stuff where you have

1:30:53

light and shadow, most of the information is in

1:30:55

the light, you don't have to render the shadow. Most

1:30:57

of the information is in the foreground, you don't have to render the background.

1:31:00

So, I've kind of non-background backgrounds

1:31:03

and the shadows are more or less void with a little

1:31:05

bit of line work in them and so I'll actually

1:31:07

create a gradation of realism oftentimes

1:31:11

where I'll go to purely abstract shapes,

1:31:14

simple gradations, go from painting

1:31:16

to drawing where this literally does but

1:31:18

I'll do that in the painting and it keeps things

1:31:20

fresh for me. I'm not focused

1:31:23

on every little area and it's my

1:31:25

attention span then as hell because each area

1:31:27

has a little bit different problem and then getting those all

1:31:29

to ring true is

1:31:31

kind of fun. How can I make line

1:31:34

abstract painting, realist painting and drawing

1:31:37

all work in the same deal. Stan

1:31:39

L And what medium do you want

1:31:41

to learn? Stan L You haven't. John A

1:31:43

And there's two answers to that. I'm actually playing

1:31:45

with writing right now. That's one of my things

1:31:48

that I'm doing while I'm kind of hiding it. Stan

1:31:50

L Well, you've done it already. John A Yeah, I did that.

1:31:52

That's one of the reasons I did that. I'm actually writing

1:31:54

a novel for my kids. Stan L I have a love

1:31:56

letter for my kids. John A Yeah. So,

1:31:58

I just have fun. I've always always world built.

1:32:01

Stan L Is it in

1:32:03

graphic now? Are you listening? Marshall L for

1:32:08

Disney comic books and then they

1:32:10

went out of business before they ever... Stan

1:32:12

L Did they ever print? Marshall L No,

1:32:15

they never printed anything but they gave me a nice advance that allowed me to be a fine

1:32:17

artist. But I did that so I could work with

1:32:19

these kind of mythological

1:32:21

ideas for kids. Stan L Any

1:32:24

more books in the works? Marshall L I

1:32:26

might. The publisher wants to do another one, this is doing

1:32:29

pretty well and I've got a whole series

1:32:31

five, six, seven books I could do. So,

1:32:34

yeah, at some point there'll be another one out. Stan

1:32:36

L Okay, are you working on one? Marshall L Not

1:32:39

yet. When I did this, I structured out very loosely three

1:32:41

or four and I mean, I've been teaching long enough. One

1:32:43

of the reasons I'm doing this with you

1:32:45

and doing the new masters and art mentor stuff is

1:32:48

I won't be doing this forever and I won't be around

1:32:50

forever so I want to get out whatever I

1:32:53

know and what I've got and what art is giving me, I want

1:32:55

to put it back out. And so, and as

1:32:57

many forms as I can do that. So,

1:32:59

it's great to have it recorded, you know,

1:33:02

all that stuff and then in the book form

1:33:04

too, I'll try and do that and then just everything

1:33:06

I got is not mine, you

1:33:08

know, it's me stealing from all these other

1:33:10

great folks. So, I want to get it out there

1:33:13

because like I said, the treasure hunt is

1:33:15

hard and I think I have a few ideas that

1:33:17

are useful that don't get talked about

1:33:20

or don't get talked about in context or

1:33:22

at least in my context and so, because it could

1:33:24

be part of the conversation. So yeah,

1:33:27

there'll be more, I'm not sure when. Stan

1:33:29

L mythology,

1:33:41

you know, tough it out, life's a battle, cook

1:33:44

yourself up by your bootstraps kind of stuff that's an

1:33:46

American idea of you

1:33:49

work hard, you know, and fight

1:33:51

the good fight then good things will happen, that kind of

1:33:53

thing. There's enough of that I think. I've got

1:33:56

a series I've been meaning to do for probably 20

1:33:58

years on female. Okay, so there

1:34:01

is gonna be a popular one. Yeah,

1:34:03

and there is Foxy boxing

1:34:05

the school News

1:34:13

yeah, I'd have to think take

1:34:15

on that or yeah, I'm so playing with that it's

1:34:17

gonna be kind of Submerged

1:34:20

idea I like cliches because

1:34:22

there's certain truths and they push buttons

1:34:24

specially in the stay in it But I'm gonna play

1:34:26

at least in the beginning with active and passive

1:34:28

the males were active the female would be more

1:34:30

passive But there's also in Be

1:34:34

a long answer so I won't get into it, but we

1:34:36

spent a long time with the male mythologies So

1:34:38

I want to deal with more of the female mythologies

1:34:41

in life And then I have a series of landscapes

1:34:43

on a do since I'm living in beautiful landscape

1:34:45

country last question Where

1:34:48

can people buy the book? I can

1:34:50

get any place books are sold

1:34:52

is what my publisher tells me to say yeah

1:34:54

You can go online or to whatever

1:34:56

bookstore and if they don't have it they can order it, but

1:34:59

it's all over the place and it's It's

1:35:02

in several languages now, too. Oh, yeah,

1:35:04

and I'm there those are Continuing

1:35:06

to add it. We just came out in mid-summer. So it's so

1:35:09

fairly new. Yeah, but they sent me

1:35:11

a German edition I think there's two or three languages

1:35:13

other than English now There

1:35:15

should be four five or six by the end of it.

1:35:18

Awesome So figure drawing for artists

1:35:21

making every mark count Thank

1:35:23

you very much. Thank you. It's my pleasure To

1:35:27

come up and spend some time with me. Of

1:35:29

course. I hope that is it. Yeah Yeah,

1:35:32

that would be great and you're all welcome to none.

1:35:35

Sure. No, you're not all what's your address? That

1:35:39

it got cut cut Alright

1:35:42

guys, thank you for watching