Why I No Longer Draw Much Anymore
As I mentioned in my last post regarding the caricature of James Garner, I actually no longer draw much anymore despite it having been a lifelong passion since I was a young kid and making up my entire professional career. My old Disney work colleague asked me why that is, so maybe it’s something I should try to explain, as it is something I’ve asked myself over the years and have gradually concluded quite consciously why I no longer enjoy the process.
Here then are essentially the 3 main factors that have had an accumulated effect on my dwindling desire to draw for much of the last 10 years or so:
1) The Digital Age:
As a traditional media illustrator I was finding it increasingly more difficult to keep pace with the steady transition the industry was making to digital tools starting in the mid-1990s. I am a self-admitted technophobe and I just found that I was neither able nor willing to make that transition, with my final efforts being at best a hybrid of old and new. I went crazy attempting to learn Photoshop, constantly finding myself going around in circles trying to accomplish anything, usually just striking out altogether. I learned as much as I could to get by, using PS as a colouring tool but never being able to draw or truly paint with it. I would still ink characters by hand and scan them in to be coloured, while still painting all of my backgrounds traditionally with gouache on illustration board, then also scanning them in to meld together with the character art. The result of my technical inadequacies was that my talent as a traditional illustrator was in decreasing demand by the end of the 2000s.
2) Lack Of Inspiration:
This is also a big reason, as I believe one has to be inspired by the world around us, societal norms, entertainment, other artists, etc. To put it bluntly, as a 20th Century Man who still loves the societal norms and pop culture of my youth, I am not inspired by anything I see around me anymore and have no reason to document anything in the form of a cartoon. In fact, in today’s ridiculous 21st Century world, any visual satire runs the high risk of being set upon by the easily offended Left, who will then proceed to destroy you. This was certainly what I was increasingly experiencing firsthand in my later career as a college instructor in an animation program, and which ultimately led to my finally throwing in the towel and leaving after 12 years of teaching as the situation became exponentially more stifling over the last 3 or 4 years.
3) Loss Of Traditional Media:
As digital media has taken over more and more of the illustration landscape, hobbyists who draw and paint for pleasure are finding many of their art supplies either becoming prohibitively expensive to purchase or almost impossible to find at all! In my own case, the tools of my trade like gouache paint, ink, and brushes are now costing a small fortune, and in fact the wonderful Winsor & Newton series 7 sable brushes I’d been using since the 70s are no longer available in art stores and nearly impossible to purchase online. Additionally, there are no longer any good black markers with the desired mix of flexibility and sturdiness to be used in the live event caricature trade I’d been doing for years. So yeah, basically I’m out of luck in having accessibility to the tools of my trade, whether for commercial work or just producing art for my own personal pleasure.
And this, my friends, is why I really don’t do much drawing anymore, sorry to say.
