Introduction Part 1: The Little Artist

Before getting too far along here, I suppose some attention must be given to an introduction of myself.

Graphic Design and Art Direction is how I’ve been earning a living for the past 30 some odd years.  Twenty-five of those years I’ve been self-employed. My career has spanned the whole transition from magic-marker layouts and rubber-cement mechanical paste-ups through digital press ready PDFs.  Three of the past years have been extremely rough, income-wise.  But there are signs of hope; signs that the business may survive the last two years of operating at a loss.

I grew up loving to draw. I started out sketching birds, dogs and the animals in the jungle because there were great color photos of them in the set of Britanicas my parents had bought for my brothers and me.  I knew early on that I had at least a little talent because my second grade teacher would march me around the school, into other classrooms—before fifth and sixth graders--and introduce me to them and have me show them my art. That didn’t last very long however, because I learned not to bring the art I did at home to school, and especially not to show it to my teacher.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciated her encouragement immensely--there wasn't a whole lot at home, but she was way more enthusiastic than I, and I really didn’t care for the whole ‘sharing’ thing with the upperclassmen.

I got to work on all the special holiday bulletin boards every year through high school, I think. By fourth grade I would answer ‘commercial artist,’ (which, back then, was pretty common terminology for 'an illustrator' in advertising) when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.  That, or a cartoonist.  I loved Walt Disney.  I had a couple ideas for comic strips that I played around with on the blank back pages of my notebooks and doing large illustrations of them in color on the brown grocery bag papers we used for covering our text books.  My favorite was ‘Butch and the Canines’—inspired by ‘Top Cat’--(I’ll have to see if I can draw up from memory the group of characters I had created.)

I got into drawing sports figures.  Baseball, basketball, especially football—I loved the colors, the uniforms, the bodies and muscles in motion.  And besides, reference photos were much easier to come by.  (Britanica Encyclopedias had become off limits for me, once my mother discovered missing pages) The back cover of the Daily News could always be counted on for great material for a new sketch idea.  The Sports Illustrated magazines at the doctors were the best. A lot of my friends liked my pictures to the point they would request specific teams and players for me to draw for them.  I didn’t mind. It was cool.  They said I was going to be a famous artist one day. 

I never let on that what I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Yankees.