In college, I split-majored, in both graphic design and illustration. I’m a cartoonist, but when I graduated high school, that wasn’t a common part of art-school curriculum. In illustration, I learned the most important aspect of rendering; figure studies. After all, there will never come a time when human anatomical knowledge is unnecessary. The skill to draw any part of the body you inhabit will never hold you back.
However, I was naive in my choice of studies. I was so eager to learn all that I could, I didn’t grasp that graphic design requires the left (analytical) side of the brain, and illustration (creative) requires the right. For a green teen, it was too much; I burned out and then dropped out. I couldn’t jockey back and forth across the hippocampus day after day. While trying to ink the sewer grate for the cover of the second Mike The Pod Comix, I had a psychotic episode and hurled my sketchbook down the dorm hallway.
The sewer grate, folks. The sewer grate. (1991)
If none of this makes sense to you, then hello, normal person. Continue reading
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