Comics, Galleries, and Dog Food

I suppose all my life I figured on being an artist of one sort or another. I didn't go through the range of aspirations most kids go through. You know, at first you want to grow up to be a caveman. Then cowboy or astronaut sounds better. Then you realize the only way you'll realistically ever see any action is by being a cop, soldier, or fireman. When you get old enough to realize you'd like to live past thirty, you start looking at safer vocations, at which point you get an education and a "career" or pass on college and get a "job". Well, I never went through the hierarchy of aspirations through which many kids pass before settling on their goal, career-wise. No, I pretty much figured I was going to be an artist. 

I did, however go through a series of options about what kind of artist I'd like to be. When I was a wee lad of, oh, say, the years between nine and thirteen or so, I was an avid Marvel comics reader--mostly Spider-Man and Conan, and a few odds 'n ends. My aspiration at the time was to move to New York and work for Marvel--as if. As my interest in comics waned and I gained an appreciation for "grown-up" art, I considered the choice between "commercial" art and "fine" art. Well, there's little difference between the two other than in fine art one often gets to choose what one wants to create (the only other bifurcation in art being the distinction between good art and bad art). I knew I didn't want to illustrate bottles of dish-soap, or bags of dog food, so I decided I'd rather do the gallery thing. 

As anyone knows, life hardly ever goes according to plan. Economic reality began to weigh heavily and I found myself hoping for that dog food or dish-soap gig--anything for a check. I did have a season earning a comfortable income with an in-studio job that lasted about eight years, but nothing lasts forever--not in this life at least. 

Well, I've run the gamut of illustration/design gigs, and now I've come full circle and find myself drawings comics. Will it last? I dunno. I'm also currently doing some story-boarding, something I'd like to do full-time, but we'll see where that leads me. At the moment I'm swamped with work--if only it paid well. Sometimes that caveman job looks pretty tempting. I'm just not sure where one applies for that.