After an evening of fruitlessly trying to spool a roll of film on a reel I came to a stark realization that I needed an artistic change in my life. Or, more accurately, this realization occurred after flinging the changing bag on the floor in frustration. I was in the midst of an artistic funk; My zest for photography seemed to have come to a halt sometime in August, and nothing was shaking me from it. The incident with the reel didn’t help either - let this be a reminder to thoroughly dry your reels and make sure they’re photo-flo free.

In the intervening weeks I didn’t do much. I did a little writing. Memoirs to be precise. I thought back to my youth and my coin-collecting days and thought I should re-ignite a similar passion for that by collecting banknotes. One of the more interesting (and inexpensive) avenues of that hobby I delved into happened to be something called Notgeld, emergency money from the Weimar Republic. They displayed a huge variety of styles, techniques, and were very socially aware and expressive. I saw a certain preciousness in these little prints. It’s really something else to hold a piece of art compared to seeing another digital image on the screen. A lot of these notes looked to me to have been done by making woodcuts or linocuts, and one day I suddenly thought, “Hey! I can do that, can’t I?”

I hadn’t done much art in years. Not since TV Cream Toys anyway. I was unsatisfied with my drawing and couldn’t make myself stick with it. I liked my results in Adobe Illustrator but I find the disconnect from the tablet to the screen frustrating. But I thought that there may be potential in printmaking: a means I could use to combine the hands-on nature of drawing and the clean lines and design capabilities of Illustrator.

I got in touch with Randy at the Westminster Art Supply Warehouse to ask about woodcut supplies. Woodcutting supplies and info is, however, quite scarce compared to the relative abundance of lino-cut supplies and info. So I bought ink, paper, a brayer, a baren, and of course the cutting tools and linoleum blocks.

I started by making a simple little print of a cat. I didn’t think much of it but my fiancee loved it and she put it beside her monitor on her desk. Next I tried to do something more stylized. I took one of my old photos from Australia, specifically of the 12 Apostles rock formation on the Ocean Road. I liked what came out and I had fun doing it:

Next I proceeded to do something a lot more ambitious on a much larger block. This took an entire weekend and I had sore hands by the end of it all. Making little squares with geometric precision (or as much as I could muster) wasn’t so much fun. This one is a design of a German city called Esslingen that I visited back in 2004. I seem to be focusing on these old trips because my little digital photos that I took back them seem kind of dated in that they were taken on a 3.2 megapixel digital point and shoot. Not the best image quality, not much room to enlarge, and plus I had a tendency to underexpose too much back then. But using them as reference points for the linocuts gave them a new life.

Most surprisingly, the way people were beginning to respond to these prints was surprising. Much different from the typical “Nice pic” comments I usually get. Even though the content of these prints are somewhat simple, it’s a testament to the enduring reverence people have for the art object.

While the above work took way too long to create, I cut and printed the following block in a couple of hours.

After doing so I posted this on a message board I frequent and someone offered to buy a print. Something about this comment got me thinking about when I was learning about printmaking at the University of Western Ontario. I remember having a good time during my intro to printmaking during the summer of ‘00, but in the fall of ‘01 things had changed somehow. I was an angry young man, or so it probably seemed. What was I angry about? I don’t know. Maybe I felt like every social group I tried to align myself with became out of reach (even though I didn’t really call them), or maybe I felt rejected by them (possibly because I alienated them). I’m pretty sure I felt frustrated that people weren’t recognizing how wonderful I thought I was (especially the ladies). A lack of social skills exacerbated this problem, and the result was a steaming cauldron of angst.

“Why was I taking printmaking!?” I began to think to myself. “What future is there in it? You can’t make money with lino prints! And who does lithography? LITHOGRAPHY! What is this the 1800s?” In fact I began to completely question the use of an art degree at all. “Greek art? Blech! Museum studies? Blah! New media - THAT’S where it’s at! Computers and stuff!”

Of course I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling very well and the result was, in retrospect, an embarrassing tantrum in printmaking class. It was mostly huffing and puffing, but I’m sure I raised my voice once or twice in various classes and generally looked like an unfriendly douchebag (if you’ll forgive the term… but my preppy attire and lack of amiability makes it appropriate in this circumstance). I was 21 years old, but inverting the numbers would’ve been more appropriate.

My behavior did not go unnoticed, and one day while I was in a particular huff my printmaking professor Tricia confronted me and asked me what the problem was. I said I wasn’t sure if I could go on with this stuff. I didn’t see the point anymore. She then led me to the director of the Visual Arts department and, I remember this clearly, the director saw Tricia first and asked, “Ah Tricia, have you spoken with Mister Arnold yet?” when I suddenly came into view.

Below: the Karlsruhe Marktplatz

After having a discussion with the director (Hatch I think his name was) I spoke with other advisers, and finally decided to drop printmaking, get my basic degree and get out of there, and then move out to the west coast (where my family had fled from London to). I focused on my new media course using antiquated software producing what now must seem laughably dated Photoshop projects, HTML webpages limited to 30kb, ZIP drives, and 3-5 minute videos that took innumerable hours to make on a Mac that would crash almost always. At work I now make 3-5 minute videos in 3-5 minutes.

I guess that really says something about the disposable nature of the “new media”. Things date easily. Additionally, everyone’s adept at it. Millions of people know how to use Photoshop, millions of people know how to edit their own video quickly and easily, and even more people fancy themselves photographers. I think I’m coming to see that if you’re going to differentiate yourself as a creative person these days you need to do something different, or at least something that has endured - like printmaking.

I’m surprised I’ve kept up with these linocuts so far. I never had this dedication when it came to drawing, and the results are satisfying and hopefully they’ll endure longer than a digicam snap. Hopefully I’ll keep cutting and printing. And hopefully Tricia sees this blog post and sees I’m sorry for being a brat and that I now wish I had stuck with printmaking.

I started to add color. I’m in deep now.

This is the first in a series of illustrations for the book TV Cream Toys: Presents You Pestered Your Parents For which was released late in 2007. I met Steve Berry, the author, in 2005 during my brief jaunt through England taking a final stab at the world of design and illustration before my life became completely consumed by photography.

He liked my style and so I ended up making illustrations for his book. Here’s a set of three, only two of them ended up in the book.

The first had to do with “Vertibird”, a toy that was probably banned beforeI had a chance to harm myself with it. Because of this disconnect, I was dreading doing the illustration but it turned out the be one of my favorites. The second is for something called “Stop Boris” which was some game for British kids featuring a horrifically large spider. And of course the third is for beloved and cherished Star Wars action figures engaged in battle at the ice planet of Hoth.

[Show as slideshow]

 

The Book I Illustrated

I met a man named Steve on the internet. We had a mutual appreciation of the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, and that led him to see my online portfolio at formerairline.com, then a much different and less interactive site.

In 2005 I decided to give the UK a try, as you may have seen by the pictures. And Steve was there to help me take a stab at the world of illustration in London. Well, it didn’t take, and a month after my move to  London I was getting ready to go to sunny Southern California. But I digress.

However the business relationship had been established and my skills still in demand with my UK contact. In 2006 I started work on his book TV Cream Toys. He doing the hard bit of adding the photos and content, and me doing an also hard bit of doing the illustrations. I’ll be adding more images of the work I did for this book in coming posts. It’s the first real book I’ve been a part of, and maybe the widest audience my book has ever had. I’ve very proud of it, and you should definitely buy a copy from Amazon.co.uk.

I’ll by uploading my work from the book regularly.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TV-Creams-Toys-Presents-Pestered/dp/1905548273

Some more older content. I made this poster in May of 2005 in commemoration of my stay in Germany, done in a sort of Works Progress Administration style.

The Black Forest, WPA Style

These are the illustrations I alluded to in European Retrospective III. These illustrations were never used, although the editor seemed to like them.

Scarlet is a UK women’s magazine that’s essentially like Cosmo but more blatantly sexual. The theme of the two illustrations were simple, watching pornography with your partner, and sex toys. Hopefully these won’t offend sensitive eyes, the illustrations are fairly light-hearted. I have special fondness for the sex toy Swiss Army Toy.