Personal Evolution and the Practical Applications of Laser Cats
⊛ LaserCat • Finally Framed and on the wall at Medusa Brewing
Recently I’ve been taking part in the #AMonthInPaper challenge on Instagram, sponsored by the Paper Artist Collective, of which I am a proud member.
Now, I haven’t been the most active of members recently. I’m trying to fix that. Thus the participation. The most fascinating part of the challenge has been seeing the huge variety of posts and images everyone has been sharing. More personally, skimming through (long) past art has kicked off a spot of retrospective rumination.
In particular, the post for January 6th, “How I Learnt” got me thinking about how I started dabbling in paper cutting all those eons ago, before the earth’s crust cooled.
Originally I wrote a long-ish paragraph detailing my educational track and the winding, pothole-flecked path that lead me to study illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Then I accidentally deleted that and can’t figure out a way to bring it back. Thus, you are spared. The important part is that I started my art career as an illustrator. And now I make art for gallery shows and, eventually and most satisfyingly, people’s enjoyment in their homes.
Which got me wondering: Why did I make the transition from illustrator to what I do now? Would I ever go back? Could I?
The answers to the second and third questions are pretty straightforward: Sure.
Everything I’ve learned in my current work can be applied to illustration. There’s not that much of a difference in my approach to the two kinds of work, excepting illustration’s emphasis on team-oriented creativity. The creation process follows roughly the same path: Ideas and themes > a whole bevy of images that get narrowed down to one > color adds emotional impact.
In the best cases, I create work I would never have thought to do on my own, and I add new themes to my arsenal for future work. It’s a lot like commission work in that way.
Laser Cat is a great example. Just look at how the good people at Medusa Brewing have adapted a piece of art that I thought of as finished for such a wide variety of contexts. From product illustration on cans and glasses to tees, our little kitty has stretched its claws and become something new. Most recently, and here’s a sign of the times, she’s stretched out on a face mask. Which reminds me, be safe out there.
The first question is a little stickier. How and why did I transition from illustration towards what I typically do now?
I’ve come to realize that the answer isn’t simple, and the move gradual.
Even before I moved back to Japan, I was playing with the idea of showing work in galleries or selling directly to art lovers. At the time, it was still considered “necessary” to live in the city to be an illustrator. Sketches and ideas were just starting to be delivered by email. Fax was still in wide use. Delivering the final artwork via the internet wasn’t a thing yet. And I didn’t particularly want to live in the city (says the guy whose last three homes have been in Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Osaka).
As the internet and computers became a larger and larger part of the illustration world, deadlines paradoxically kept getting shorter. Most smart illustrators switched to digital production. I stubbornly hung onto getting paper cuts. This digital > analog > digital pendulum keeps happening. Likely, it will never stop.
So, there were technical and deadline reasons.
After moving out of the US, these became even more pronounced. These days, a lot of the fears about long-distance communication of ideas and art have been mitigated. At the time, they guided me in my current direction.
The materials I found after moving here inspired me to make art previously inconceivable. And maybe not easily reproducible.
And then there were thematic reasons. After a while, I wanted to build on certain themes or ideas.
On occasion these would pop in as illustration assignments (Laser Cat, the Constellation Book, etc.). More often than not, I would need to pursue them on my own.
All-in-all, I think this has been a good direction. There’s a backlog of ideas I want to explore. There’re a few very cool and very vague ideas of how I’d like to evolve my work. Art lovers and collectors have some amazing ideas for commissions which scratches the itch to work with a team. And every once in a while someone comes to me with a cool illustration idea that introduces new themes to explore. Like cats shooting ultra-powerful beams of light from their eyes.
