Happy Things-August
Hello everyone!
Here are some things that made me truly happy in the month of August (in no particular order)
1-Gouache: I've been looking a people’s work they've made in gouache a lot for the last few months and finally decided to jump in and get some. What a crazy medium-it's like watercolor crossed with acrylics. I'm still pretty bad at them, but it's a lot of fun.
2- 11/22/63 by Stephen King: I'm only in the first quarter of the book, but already I'm totally in love with the idea, the setting, everything. This is the little diner in the book "Al's Fatburger" equipped with a time-traveling pantry. Awesome.
3-Our 3rd Floor: There's this amazing space in our new house with windows facing the Channel and a little daybed with a window beside it. When it storms I make a point to go up there and read or draw.
4-Engagement! After dating the woman of my dreams for a little over 5 years everything finally came together where I could propose. It's an amazing feeling. She's the greatest!
5-The Martian by Andy Weir: Ok, so I read a lot this month. Actually this was an audiobook, but whatever. There's a dude stuck on Mars who has to survive the most hostile environment any human has encountered for a very long time. Yeah, it's basically incredible and you should read it.
6-Bread: I have tried baking bread a total of 4 times in the last month and every time it's gotten slightly better. This is one of my hilariously deformed loaves I made one day.
7-Cold-Brewed Coffee: I drink a lot of coffee. Probably too much. The only rub is it's been in the upper 90's and over 100% humidity here on the island most of the summer. Cold-brewed coffee is incredibly delicious especially when we get the beans roasted locally from Eastern Shore Roasting Company.
8-Macrodontia cervicornis or Long Tooth Beetle: I bought a male specimen of this beetle at an art walk in Salisbury and it hangs on my studio wall for me to see every day and think "that thing is awesome"
All this comes from Ennis and I keeping a 'happy things' journal on and off for the last couple of years. The idea is to write down some things every day that made you happy. It helps you see the good in every day and keep your spirits up on the bad ones. Also Fran Meneses over here has been doing the same thing but illustrating it and I borrowed that format because I thought it was totally brilliant!
I just quit my job
I just turned in my resignation letter to my boss giving them notice that in 4 weeks I'll be gone. I've been here a year and a half and it's just time to move on. My wonderful girlfriend just got her dream job on Chincoteague Island, Virginia and if that's where she is, then that's where I want to be. Things always work out in the end, or at least they have lately. Things have been so insanely uncertain lately that I'm barely sleeping, can't focus on making things, and just shuffle around doing nothing when I'm home.All kinds of questions I couldn't possibly answer racing through my mind all night long- things I have absolutely no control over.
This move couldn't come at a better time- proven even more when I told them I was quitting they were relieved to finally tell me my position wasn't being renewed. The permanent position (meaning tuition remission, benefits, days off, salary etc) I'd been waiting for, working my butt off for just disappeared. Had I not been quitting who knows when they would have told me? I would've had to be a contractor for another year before it was even available, and this was after I was 'guaranteed' I would be going permanent. It's not the fault of my managers, or any one person in particular, really. It just goes to show how much worrying changes things - exactly none.
So with the burden of that removed, I'll be finishing the last 4 weeks of work here and preparing to move on to the next thing. That next thing is working part-time on the island (bike distance!) and doing everything I can to make myself an independent artist. I'll be drawing, painting, writing, designing, and posting right here to my hearts content - doing honest work to make ends meet until I can support myself with what I make. Is is a sure bet- absolutely not, but neither is waking up everyday.
I'm finding myself to be very lucky to be in this position, and to have one way or another, made the right call. I can't wait to see what's ahead, even with no way of knowing what that might be. Like Tom Petty said: "under my feet baby, grass is growing, it's time to move on, time to get going"
In the coming months I want to do more. I want to share more of my process. I want to connect with other artists and learn about their processes. I want to be out in nature more. I want to bike to work.
You might think this is all really stupid, and it very well may be. It may blow up in my face. But I can't allow myself to be afraid to fail. The door has opened, and I'm going through it.
Here are some sketches from what I've been working on lately. I haven't had much time or focus for finished work, but I've had this concept of this young priestess in my head for some time that I wanted out. She's an adventurer, explorer, and does nature magic. It's a silly idea, but might turn into something eventually.
I asked for a critique on the Internet and it broke me
I haven't properly posted here in a month. If you ask any type of person whose job it is to do things on the internet, this is not good. You're supposed to post something once a week at minimum. But what if I don't have anything good? What if I'm just trying things out and none of it really sticks? What if I'm having a little bit of a crisis (relatively speaking, in levels of crises).
I did something stupid. I did something really stupid. I went to Reddit.com, mainly known for 2 important things -anonymity and cat gifs- and asked for criticism.
There is a nice part of the site with sub-reddits about Android phones, Graphic Design, Illustration and Art Critique. The last one is where I went seeking a very misguided sort of criticism that sent me into an creative tailspin. I honestly really like creative communities on the site, and have gotten a ton of good feedback and camaraderie there. A month ago though, I went on and posted a link to my website and asked for "absolute and honest critique of everything I'm doing right now". Stupid. Stupid barely contains how idiotic of a thing this is to do. Without formal critiques, without professors and classmates to shoot down bad ideas, and without my artist friends, I felt absolutely alone. I knew I needed critique, and didn't care where it came from. I have pretty thick skin, generally, I mean I work in public service and deal with terrible people all the time. Vonnegut once said on writing:
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
The same applies to art, and boy have I been sick. I wanted to please everyone, and have praise heaped upon me with the guise of seeking 'honest critique'. I deserved it, I admit, but I learned some valuable lessons about my process and myself.
When you read things like "First things first: you are probably not a designer." Your heart sinks a little bit. Ok, a lot. I went to school for that, I worked really hard at that. There are other things and a lot of them true, but I won't post them here. It wasn't just one thing though, that sent my anxiety into warp-speed, but it was the little foxes, a death by a thousand cuts that wore on me. My confidence was entirely sapped away and every time I sat down to make- I had those words racing through my head.
The one that jumped at me the most though, and helpful to boot, was a critique of the amount of content I was putting up on the web. My approach since late last year was to blast as much as possible into my little ecosystem and try to get better. That's it. Make lots of stuff, put it on the internet, and get better at those things. The problem is that some of it is more appropriate in some places more than others. My Juxtamotion Facebook was only pointing to these blog posts, and my site is full of half finished sketches and ideas, but very light on finished products. For me a lot of it was making up for ground I felt I'd lost over the last couple of years of not really doing what I wanted, so I over-compensated. Every drawing went online, every idea was better than no idea in my mind. I think this was a mis-step, but one I want to learn from.
So, in that, I want to illustrate (heh) how I'm going to go about posting my stuff for the time-being and draw out a bit of a road-map of where you can find my stuff.
Sketches, Ideas, Works in Progress, personal stuff: Juxtamotion Facebook, @mattsmith_makes on Instagram and Twitter
This stuff is off the cuff, not always finished, and not always relating to artistic endeavors. Here you may find the following: photos of beerz, photos of cats, photos of sketches, ideas etc. Less formal-more fun. I like posting here a lot.
Finished Works, more serious ideas, written things: Here obviously, on my blog. My behance profile and dribbble.com (maybe)
Middling Ideas: the aptly titled "junkdrawer" here on the site. These ideas are in a sort of purgatory, with not enough to flesh out a finished piece, but more than just a sketch. This is good for showing process, I think, also that I'm working working working. I will be pruning it extremely harshly in the coming week and may turn it into a tumblr style blog thing with just pictures. We'll see.
A little bit of housekeeping here: I redesigned my site, let me know if it sucks! I bought a big ole graphics tablet and have been making more digital work. Here's some of that:
Thanks for listening to me whine and stuff! Things are looking up!
-Matt
HAPPY 2014!!
I officially suck at illustrated type. Here's to working on that this year!
2013 is over! Kaput. Done for. There were some good things and some really not so great things. My family is all still here and we're as healthy as we're like to get, so there's nothing to complain about.
For this website though, 2013 was amazing and it's only getting better. In December I had the most traffic in the history of the site! Almost 700 pageviews in December and over 2000 this year! I really cannot express how happy I am that people are coming to my site and seeing my work. You can see a huge slump through the summer- that was kind of a weird time for me and I really got away from my personal work and didn't put much up here at all.
On November 11th, I made my relationship with illustration Facebook official and really applied myself to putting things online. Look at what happened after that! I know they're just numbers and really mean nothing to anyone but me, but I can't overstate how much confidence that breeds.
This year I made more than I've ever made before and I've never felt better. Seriously! This year I developed this insane habit where I go to bed at a reasonable time then get up and make stuff all morning until I go to work around noon. I can't overstate how beneficial this has been, I highly recommend it.
If you like my work and want to show your appreciation, the biggest thing you can do for me is to like my Facebook page, this post, or share any of my content in your chosen social circles. That is worth way more than money to me right now, and will make me feel like I'm really doin' thangs, just like Big Bear here.
New works (in progress) for December
Hello all!
I've been busting my butt making new stuff so I thought I'd put some stuff up here and talk about how things have been going kind of wrong.
Red Fox in Snow - 2013
9x12"
Ink and Watercolor
detail (sorry for the watermark :/)
There are some problems going on with this guy, and it's definitely not the last stab I plan on taking at the red fox. I like using really diluted ink as a wash for snow ( I love red foxes in snow) and I think his washes are ok for his coat. The face is pretty rough and he has somehow grown two rear left feet. Weird. I'm not being self deprecating for no reason here though, I think it's a really good way avoid repeating stupid mistakes. Practice.
Popular culture aside, I really enjoy everything about foxes-the mythology, their mannerisms, and obviously the way they look. When I lived in West Virginia all of the foxes must have been exponentially more cunning than the ones in Maryland because I have seen at least 6 in the two years I've lived here. That's been really interesting to me lately though-seeing animals in parking lots and driveways that previously I'd only ever seen from a distance. I've seen a 10 point buck in my metro lot 3 times just hanging out. He doesn't have a thing in the world to worry about compared to his WV cousin.
Crystal Discovery - 2013
4x6"
Ink and watercolor
I've been thinking about the intersection of logic in crystals and fungi lately. More on that later. This is a really quick little thing I did all in one day. To be honest it was mostly practice, so it's pretty rough around the edges as well, but over all I like the idea and composition.
Odd Deposit - 2013
9x12"
Ink and failure
I worked on this guy for maybe 10 hours altogether and I bet the very first thing you notice is that weird and lumpy circle above the mountains. Life is full of lessons and the one I learned that day is this: if you're going to a bunch of time on something, do the most complicated part first. How many times have I drawn a perfect circle in ink? No times. Zero amount of times. Why then would I wait until I was done with this entire piece to try and freehand that sun? The good part about the situation is that it scanned in really cleanly and I think I can color it digitally and take that sun out. It's a real shame though, I wanted to paint it.
Dark Djinn - 2013
9x12"
Ink, coffee, failure
ugh the bleed, THE BLEED
The last one here is similar to the one before it in that I messed things up right at the end, though I didn't spend nearly as much time working on it. 2 big things happened on this one I spilled coffee on it, and used the wrong type of pen. The coffee thing isn't a huge deal, I just scanned it in and can paint it digitally, but apparently the pen I was using had a different type of ink that did not agree with the paper. The unfortunate thing about it is you can't see the bleeding until it's too late. The only parts affected were really small details but it still bothered me. Ah well, live and learn. That's kind of what this whole post is about I guess: learning. Someone wise told me once that experience is only gained by failure and that you must not be afraid to fail. I've been gaining experience by leaps and bounds the last month or two and a lot of that experience has stemmed from doing something either entirely avoidable or just careless. All of these are works in progress or works that need to go in a different direction-though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes changing course can be exactly what you need.
Additionally, I'm still gaining loads of experience in keeping up this site and if something goes wrong or looks weird or is broken I might not know about it. So if something weird happens when you're here, shoot me a quick email and I will extremely grateful.
The Difference Two Months Makes: A reflection about practice
Hey folks, I logged onto my Dribbble account today to put up the genie piece that I was really proud of and much to my chagrin I saw these two images:
The idea was there, the execution was not. Click to enlarge (please don't though, it's bad)
BURN IT WITH FIRE
You can click on them if you really want to. The thing is I had an idea that I really liked, but I had only very recently tried to get into this kind of line work and had really never tried digital coloring at all. I posted both of them to dribbble.com and kind of forgot about them. The reception was tepid at best and I left that idea behind, a failure. I revisited this particular idea partially on a whim and partially because my friend Leigh Ann had really liked it and I wanted to improve on something. The lines are ok on the scanned in one, but not very strong at all. There's some sense of volume, but it's weak and all over the place. What bothered me the most were the sloppy lines that made things look just slightly off and made everything look weird to me. The color is bad and over saturated in the digital version and I didn't bring the original in large enough to get rid of some of the fuzziness from the low res scan.
Here's the version I re-did last week. Now, it isn't perfect, believe me, but it's an improvement. For this one I used the wrong kind of pen for the type of paper I used and I thought I was completely boned, but kept going. I figured I could see it out to the finish to see if I could correct what I did wrong last time. The end result looks pretty decent at this resolution, but can't get much larger without seeing the MAJOR imperfections in the lines and colors.
The reason I'm doing this post though, is not to point out all the little flaws and imperfections in my but to illustrate that with daily, purposeful practice improvements can be seen. I've been seriously busting my butt trying to get better with my line consistency, my forms, and a hundred other things- but in a vacuum, it seems all for naught.
It's hard to see where you're improving and growing with your face so close to the page so-to-speak. So like the last iteration, I put this on the internet in a major way to see what would happen. This one drove much more traffic to my site, got positive comments on Reddit, and doubled my pageviews on my site. Now, that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but to me, personally, it's huge. People were coming to my site and seeing my content. People were commenting positively and providing real feedback. I wouldn't call this piece perfect, not by a long shot, but I decided to do it anyway. I was so discouraged by the reception of the last iteration that I almost didn't put it up, and just could have just kept tweaking the lines and colors for weeks. In the end though, I decided to call a spade a spade and put it up. Sure I could keep working on it, but I'm a chronic overworker and I knew I needed to let it go to move on to something more productive. That's not something I would have done 2 or 3 months ago for sure, but now I know that's a pitfall to avoid.
I might be meandering a bit here, but the point is this-art is a practice. In yoga, there is no 'winning'- just practice. You deliberately do your poses - even if they aren't perfect, and reflect when you're done on what you can do to improve and take that with you when you're done. I see drawing and art in general the same way. There isn't any 'winning', when you can quit and stop forever as the victor. You sacrifice, practice deliberately, and when it's done you put it away and move on. I've learned so many things from this project that I can take with me on to the next one-which is worth more than any amount of likes, or upvotes, or pageviews.
A month in review
Since the beginning of the year I've been completely focusing on making myself a better designer. I've been attempting to make something every single day and upload it to the internet. I've also been focusing on promoting myself online. I've got some friends and designers on twitter, almost no one on tumblr, and a nice bit of followers on dribbble. Squarespace is so incredibly awesome with stats and as you can see below, I'm slowly but surely growing. Getting the "Pro" versions of Dribbble and Vimeo, were also very good decisions.
The combination of making content, and publishing that content to various social type sites has been a boon for me. Online promotion has never been a strong suit of mine, but like making things, it's something to get better at. So, a month in, I'm feeling really good about this, and hopefully I can turn some of this momentum into some client work. If you like my stuff, it would mean a whole lot to let me know. Maybe share it with your friends, or just a short email. It goes a long way.
I'm feeling very positive right now, and practicing my tools has been great. Here's to 11 more months of this!
