Stephen Gilpin's Blog

 I think the key to handling a backpacking trek is to always be generally active. Walk, run, bike, skateboard, roller skate —- whatever. Our bodies are made to move, and we need to keep them moving. I hear they tend to last longer and perform better that way, AND you’re more ready to take on that backpacking trek that comes up now and then without having to put a lot of time into getting in shape.

You can spend that time instead on figuring out how to make sure you have what you’ll need and still be able to carry that monster of a pack on your back.  Those things are heavy. 

As a second-year illustration student at the School of Visual Arts, I sat confidently in Jim McMullan's figure drawing class working through yet another series of five minute poses. This would have been my second semester in his class, and I had the notion that I'd picked up a few things. I was blending the High-Focus Drawing ways of thinking with inspiration from Egon Schiele. I recall having the distinct impression that I was making some significant progress. My drawings were pretty different from the character the rest of the class was attempting to achieve. The elegant lines that Jim tried so adamantly to train us to execute were replaced by something resembling the scrawlings of someone crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. After some time, Jim came over to me and sat down. 

"You're not a genius." He said. 

This obvious news had been hovering near me for a long, long time just waiting for a willing conduit to deliver it. It was devastating. I think he said a lot of other things at that time, but I was too pissed to recall anything else. It took me most of a week to cool off. After calling him an egotist (I apologized a couple years later), I began to submit myself to his instruction in earnest. He was a great teacher, and I credit his way of thinking about drawing with much of my success as an illustrator. 

He carried a kind of pathos into class. Drawing became an empathetic experience with the subject. I began to think of "how it felt" to stand, sit, do or be whatever the subject was manifesting. He created words when necessary -- "thisness" is one I recall particularly. Drawing began to require a degree of openness and humility that I found I had to struggle to supply. To say that he was passionate about drawing really doesn't suffice. Art making to him was like worship-- a divine experience that if executed with adequate connection to the heart would manifest to the world what that artist was made to do. 

Jim's work still challenges me. After listening to a recent podcast interview he did with Giuseppe Castellano, I ordered an old book of his called Revealing Illustrations (grab a used copy of this gem) where he detailed his process as he works through a commission. I just had him as a drawing instructor, and I'm kind of bummed I didn't get to hear more about what he thought about watercolor and the illustration process. The man  can do more with one line than I can do with a thousand, AND he can articulate WHY that is even possible. 

There are probably better watercolorists out there, but I haven't seen any personally. He makes watercolor do all that watercolor can do and then some. 

I was riding my bike this morning, and I thought that in your personal artistic odyssey, you might benefit from this recommendation. If you already know about Jim McMullan, revisiting his work is always a good idea. If you've never heard of him, check out the books I've mentioned and any other stuff you happen to run across. He's an artist that, to my reckoning, manifests his heart through his work with supreme skill and intention as well as any I'm aware of. 

And I think that's why I ever wanted to be an artist in the first place.

After a couple decades of working as an illustrator, I feel I need to return to class and hear those upsetting words again. I hope it won't take me a week to recover this time. 

Check out Jim's work at jamesmcmullan.com

#resources#drawing#watercolor#illustration#renegadeartschool

 Deadpan Stan.

    I take so much in stride anymore that I get amazed when I back up and actually reflect on what exactly is going on. I created this character (or maybe “discovered” is a better term) over 20 years ago when I was crafting comics in college. Someday I’ll have to expound more fully on the nature of all the characters I had created over that time. Seeing how they’re all little facets of my own subconscious displaying traits I was ignorant of at the time is just . . . weird.      So Deadpan Stan was an undertaker with a drinking problem that played a kind of Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner game with another character — a mostly naked man with no head. His goal was to capture the obviously dead naked man and put him in the grave where he belonged. Deadpan was never successful. Even when he was able to get the corpse into the ground, the corpse had friends who would dig him out.      After many years marinating in the seasoned wine of time, the spiritual reality (or what others might describe as “unconscious”) of what these characters were communicating is becoming clear. “Deadpan” means to be unexpressive of emotion. Saving the rabbit trail of psychoanalysis for another time, I’ll say that’s me all the way. What emotion I hadn’t stamped down by the time I created the character was just about taken care of in the next couple decades. I found I would drink to be able to “feel”. I was perpetually trying to bury the indestructible, open, honest, ego-free Life that was within me. I had no connection whatsoever to this at the time I created this dude. I just thought "Deadpan Stan" would be funny name for an undertaker.     After being keenly aware of what had become stubborn habit, I participated in #soberoctober this month to get a chance to reflect. In my time engaging the Spirit in the dark on morning, this image came to me, and the doors were opened to a super wide area of my life that needs some healing which is awesome. The human spirit has an unlimited capacity for growth, and I’ve got some (more) weeds to get dug up here in the near future.  

Hey guys!  What to Do When You're Sent to Your Room  won the Comstock Read Aloud Book Award for 2015!  I'm pretty encouraged by it.  Now the book gets a gold sticker on the cover.

I've updated my portfolio page!  Really, no kidding.  Just click on the link in the bar.

Hey guys!  This is pretty neat.  One of my books I wrapped up recently was selected for "The Original Art" children's book illustration show that starts at the Society of Illustrators this month.  Those Candlewick people really know how to put a book together, and Ann Stott's script is hilarious. You can buy it here.here.

Hey guys!  I've got a new book you all can go out and buy for cheap.  Get one from Amazon.com, and if you bring it by the house, I'll draw a little snowman in it.

You'll notice this illustration from the previous post.  I worked it up in full color on the pretext of it's being for promotional purposes, but I really just wanted to do it up right.

Pretty "artsy fartsy" I guess.

I've got my Comics Crash Course coming up next month, and this is the shirt design for this year.  I really got into the technical challenge of limiting myself to two colors of ink and still getting all the effects I needed to make the design work.