Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3

by Carnell, Thom

  Was there much friendly competition there? Did you ever get a look at some of his stuff and think "Gawd, I need to work harder on this one"?

  Not at all. We knew each other and I knew his reputation and he knew mine. So, we expected it to be good work. I’m not the competitive type, really. I just try to do a good piece and top my last piece. I compete a lot with myself. I don’t know how Thom works, but I figured I’m at my better game if I’m not worrying about trying to beat somebody else. I really felt it was like being part of a team. We just worked real well together.

  My reasoning behind asking that question was that I had asked Thom those same kinds of questions when we interviewed him. It’s interesting to hear you mirror exactly what it was that he had said.

  It was really cool. The art directors there at Topps were awesome to work with. They’d just let us go. From the first season, we’d split [the episodes] up twelve a piece, they’d [requested] sketches for the first six of the first twelve. So, I gave them those sketches and they approved all of them except for one. "Maybe this is reaching a little too far away." After I did those six, they said, "You know what...just go for it." Luckily, Chris Carter loved the work and he’s a hard man to please I hear. He’s sent many people away with their head hanging low trying to figure out what this guy wants, but he really liked our work and Topps, at that point, was won over nicely and I never had to do another sketch for them after that. So, it was really a lot of fun.

  Did the Topps gig get you a lot more exposure and therefore more work?

  Absolutely. I’d been doing two graphic novels for Marvel at the time and that had been the only exposure I’d had. [They] had been traditionally painted.

  What were those books?

  Ruins #1 & #2. They were a Marvel Alterna-verse title. What they were were an alternate universe to Alex Ross’ Marvels. It was the same characters like Phil Sheldon the reporter and you go through his life and how he meets all these incredible super heroes. It’s the same thing, but instead of super heroes, it’s like everything went wrong. It was written by Warren Ellis. It’s like Mad Max does Marvel. It was really cool and a lot of fun. Wolverine had bone cancer, all the X-Men were in prison, Kingpin was the prison’s warden, they’d gouged out Cyclops’ eyes, Nightcrawler was insane and chewing on his tail. It was really crazy. I’d done those or was in the process of doing them. I can’t remember. I wanted to take the X-Files stuff to the next level so that’s when I started to integrate the traditional painting into the computer. So, those pieces are hybrid pieces which seem to work well for X-Files as a concept because X-Files is about technology and the occult and conspiracies. It just seems like it added an extra level in the mix for me to do it on a computer. So, conceptually it made sense. That first season of X-Files stuff was my first shot at really integrating some of my painted work into an electronic format and tweaking it from there. I’m proud of them in one respect, but I look at them now and I think of a hundred things I could have done to take them to the next level, but, hey, it was my first shot on the computer. I think they were real successful for what they were for me. Hopefully, a year from now, I’ll look at the stuff I’m doing now and say, "Man, that stuff is so bad. What was I thinking?"

  I’ve asked this of other people and I’m interested in getting your take on it. Do you feel that the artwork you produce can get a fair shake in that trading card set format?

  Yeah, I know that they’re going to be trading cards when I started out so, I keep that in mind when I’m designing it. So, there are certain things in my mind that I have to consider. One is I can’t really put a ton of detail in it or tiny heads in the background. It’s so small it has to it just has to be an arresting image right off the bat. So, already I limit myself with design so it can make an impact visually when they see it...hopefully. If they had said, "Hey, do book covers" and they’d turned them into cards, then I would have been a little disappointed, because you lose so much. But, if you know right off the bat that they’re going to be cards...

  Didn’t they also do those maxi-cards sets?

  Yeah, they did the bigger cards.

  Those were nice.

  I think they did those because the artwork that Thom and I turned in was about that size. Even though my painting was digital, they could do a print. That first series of stuff I’d do a print and then I would paint on top of the print and then I would send that print in. I don’t do that anymore because I figured out how to do it all on the computer. I couldn’t figure it out. [laughs] Now, I’ve got it down. We’d turn them in and they were like six by nine inches or whatever and they kind of got excited about looking at them that big and I think that’s why they did those.

  The whole presentation of those bigger cards were really nice.

  That was such a fun gig. They didn’t do a fourth series. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t because they sold like hot cakes. Now, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with my work or Thom’s work, but why mess with it? I guess the card market is really suffering.

  I’d like to talk to you a little about how you go from someone giving you a call and saying that they need a painting with specific dimensions and a vague idea of what they need it to have in it to the finished product. Most of the work I’ve seen of yours has an ethereal edge to it. Do you sit down and say, "I’m going to do something really gauzy and willowy and beautiful" or does that happen automatically as the concept goes through the filter that is you?

  I guess the first thing I do whenever I get a gig is to try to think of how I want to please myself first. I don’t know what it is that is in me naturally that draws me to that kind of imagery. Even when I was doing editorial stuff for magazines like Administrative Radiology, where I worked as an art director while I was still in school. It sounds really square, but some of the greatest artists of the past decade have worked there or done art for them namely Matt Mahurin, Greg Spalenka, and David Tillinghast who is a very, very successful editorial illustrator. There is a whole slew of people who went through there and the publishers said, "Hey, do whatever." [The magazine] goes out to hospital administrators, who are not people who read ghost stories typically, but every time I did a cover, it ended up being weird. [laughs] I had one lady call up the Associate Art Director one time and say, "Listen, the guy who did your cover has got some real problems." She was like a psychologist or something and she was really worried about me. She said, "He needs some professional help right away." It was a piece about not communicating and [the painting] was a portrait of this weird looking guy and his mouth was obliterated. It was done in an angry way, I guess. [laughs] I think a piece is successful when it evokes some kind of emotion. I’ve had enough training that I can make a pretty picture, but to evoke an emotion that’s something that is special about imagery. It’s what makes the difference between just an image and a piece of art, something that evokes an emotion.

  So, let me ask you this, what is more important to you: technical proficiency or emotional content?

  I think it’s important to be proficient if your showing your handiwork and it becomes "Hey, look at me and my technical proficiency." [However], I think it’s more important to tap into some kind of emotion whether that is happiness and extreme joy or sadness or whatever the underlying theme is. That’s first and foremost, but I think the technical ability you use to get there is the different voices that we hear in artwork. It’s like comparing Primus to Everclear. They’re completely different sounds with completely different backgrounds, but they both are successful in either their strengths and their weaknesses. They can evoke all those emotions, but they use different technical criteria to get there. So, we’re all striving to tap into the emotion. That’s what, to me, is the most important thing.

  It’s like the line from the film Blade Runner where they say, "It’s a test to provoke an emotional response." I believe it’s the same kind of thing in art. I’ve seen artists who are technically proficient who are just somehow fell short of that em
otional content mark. On the flip side of that, I’ve seen drawings from children with no technical proficiency that just dripped emotion.

  Even my son will do some drawings that are just freaking crazy. I study them for a couple of reasons; for emotional content and technical proficiency. When he was a baby, you’d put paints in his hands and just let him paint. You wouldn’t tell him how to mix paints or what colors to put next to the other and that kid was doing crazy stuff.

  I think children have this innate honesty where they’re not worried about "Will they like it" or "Does it follow all the learned rules of composition." They just do what they want to see and sometimes that’s much more profound and powerful than someone who’s been to schooling for their entire life.

  Thankfully we live in an age where you can be a lousy draftsman and still be a very successful artist. I love that because we’ve finally figured out that it’s about what [the art] does to you. I appreciate somebody who can make the paint do whatever they want, but I appreciate more somebody who will let God do whatever he’s going to do with those natural forces that dictate gravity, humidity, and whatever it does with the paint just by accident or the laws of nature and chaos. I appreciate somebody who can just let that happen. The best art lies somewhere between those two extremes.

  Recently, I was reading some discussions on The Net between artists who were debating how an artist should paint exactly what he sees and forget the consequences vs. the train of thought that says that an artist must self censor in order to preserve or validate the norms and mores and what is acceptable in the society he lives in. What camp do you fall into?

  I don’t think I fall into a camp. This is a great time to live because you can do whatever you want. If you want to validate social norms, it’s completely acceptable. I think that’s an appropriate way for art to be used. To create art that questions those values is also appropriate. The role of an artist is to create and destroy. I don’t have any manifestos.

  I think it’s interesting. We were just mentioning the comic industry and I agree with you that it’s a great time to live. Where someone like Alex Ross can paint something that looks almost cinematic and so real and then you have someone like Kent Williams or Dave McKean that is almost expressionistic and is a depiction of an "altered reality" and both styles are getting work and people are buying it...

  ...and both are equally appreciated. I love that. If I can do all of the above... [laughs] I push myself to the limit. "I want to paint exactly like J.C. Leyendecker." On the other hand, I say, "No, I want to do some Marshall Arisman paintings." It’s like when you listen to records and hear different instruments and you can appreciate them all. I just came back from an exhibit at the L.A. County and they had Charles Macintosh’s work in one area and they had Henna Hšch who is one of the most prolific or at least the most famous of the female artists who were part of the Dada Movement. They did a lot of collage work. I loved both shows. They didn’t relate to each other at all. Macintosh was an architect and a furniture designer from the Art Nouveau period, but they were completely different schools of thought, but both absolutely connected on an emotional level. I want to do what they did. [laughs] I saw a piece that Henna Hšch did called The Bride and it looks like a little throw away piece that she just busted out. I was looking at it thinking, "Ooooh..." I drug all my friends over saying, "This is the best piece in the show. Look at this thing!" I’m practically on my knees licking the thing, loving it. The guys with the clickers telling me to back away from it. All my friends are saying, "Man, you’re whacked out."

  "What’s with Cliff? He’s gone round the bend."

  I like to do that. We’re all derivative of something, whether we like it or not, we’re influences by the world around us, other artists, musicians, and writers. I think the more you listen to those and the more you can appreciate a variety the more effective you are going to be, and more well rounded. Even if you look at all of that stuff and decide to be a purist, that’s great.

  At least you have that wealth of experience to draw from. Now, how important is pushing the artistic envelope to you?

  Very important. Every time I sit down to do a piece I try to experiment with something. I don’t like to tell my clients that because they like to feel I know exactly what I’m doing and I have an exact process of how I do it. My process is that I have no process. [laughs] So, I really am trying to tap into an emotional thing when I sit down to do something. I try to be very economical with my time in so doing, I spend a lot of money [laughs] so I’m not economical at all. I’ve got computer stuff, cameras, paintbrushes, and airbrushes - all kinds of stuff. Who knows what I’m going to use? I might walk outside and pick a feather off a dead bird that I found in the yard and scan that right into the computer. It didn’t cost me anything except for the scanner and the computer and the software, but that’s nothing. [laughs]

  Now, let me ask you, what are you running? Are you purely a Mac format?

  Yeah, I’m Mac format. My fastest machine right now is the Mac 8500/180.

  That’s a good machine.

  It is a good machine. It’s got 164 MB of RAM and a 5 GB hard drive.

  Yeah! You’re not messing around.

  And I run out of space all the time. I average about three pieces a week and by the end of the year I’ve done anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty pieces. I hope I can continue to do that for as long as I want to. I just love being an artist. I love it.

  You mentioned some of your clients and I want to touch on that for a minute. You’ve got a pretty impressive list of people here. I mean, people like 20th Century Fox, Lucas Arts, Marvel, DC, Bantam, Harper Collins, Ballantine, Sierra On-line, Interplay, Wizards of the Coast, Honda, and L.A. Gear. Is working with bigger companies such as these any trouble and do you ever feel restricted when they come to you with pre-conceived marketing strategies?

  Luckily, at this point in my career, they come to me because they like what I do. Some people are going to have some restrictions, but if they come to me they kind of know what they’re going to get. If anything else, I’m pretty consistent with my work. I let myself have two dogs a year out of a hundred. I won’t let a piece go unless I’m happy with it, but I’ll let myself put two out the door if I’m deathly sick or whatever. I had both of them in March, so I’ve been killing myself trying to keep up a certain level the whole rest of the year. Some people have certain criteria that they have to work within and that’s a challenge for me and I like that. Some people just go for it and that’s scary sometimes because I don’t have anything holding me back so I better do something cool. If I don’t then I guess I just suck.

  [laughs] It’s interesting because I had just spoken with Brom and he had said that sometimes people will come to him and say, "This is what we want and it has to have this and that" and there is a certain amount of leeway they give him, but they are pretty specific and that was driving him crazy and he was like, "I’ve got to get another type of work."

  I haven’t seen enough of Brom’s work as I’d like to, but if I were to call Brom as an art director I’d kind of know what he was going to do. He’s been consistent enough so I could call him and say, "Go for it" and I know he would do some awesome work. Those are the best art directors, [the ones who] look at your work and they know you can handle it so they say, "Go do me some good pieces." Again, we have to live in the real world and there’s clients who need specifics and I consider that a challenge. I don’t dislike that when somebody says, "Hey, it’s got to be this," because, then, it’s like, "Ok, how can I take all of these rules and still pull of a good piece?"

  "...and still make myself happy."

  It’s a personal challenge.

  Getting back to compositional stuff, when you begin a new piece, you say you push yourself, do you have a completed picture in your head of the piece before you even start it or do you have happy accidents?

  Well, I think my work falls somewhere in between. I try to setup a framework that I can
have accidents within. So, I’ll do all the groundwork where I’ll do sketches and value studies to prepare myself for taking a particular direction. Then, when you get the original piece out there, and it starts happening, sometimes you have to let go a little bit. I’ve studied enough painting that I know that if the accident is really turning into junk that I can force it to look pretty good. I can make it do what I want it to do, if that’s what I have to do. I’ll try to let as many good accidents happen as possible before I try to say, "All right, darn it, get in line!"