The Word Glorified Gets Thrown Around a Lot

From illustrator to glorified turd polisher. Or so it seems. When I struggle with drawing, it’s usually because I’m doing it the wrong way. In other words I’m relying on memory, what I remember about drawing and design in those 8 years of college (part time), instead of working from photo scrap, as one of my illustration teachers calls it. But any progress, theoretically, is still progress.

Yet I see the results I make, and I catch myself thinking “oh no problem! I can clean this up in Adobe Photoshop in a jiff!” The problem with that is the drawing never gets improved upon. But maybe I should begin from the beginning.

You see, back in 2004, I’d had an idea for an ink drawing that I wanted to do for my dad’s birthday. My dad and I share a love and passion for heroic and mythic fantasy, specifically, author Robert E. Howard’s Conan. It’s a common interest that began, ironically with the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

Anyway, back in 2004, I had barely two years worth of college so in class I did the best I could with drawing “the right way.” I had originally learned from memory, and relied on it to create this humorous, if not somewhat dark caricaturing of my father and myself re-imagined as R.E. Howard-esque barbarians.

I figure the reason I didn’t do the drawing the way I had learned it in college was due to the fact that the project required cartooning, something I was interested in, but was learning illustration and graphic design instead. This is a decision that has continued to haunt me throughout my career (LOL!) as an artist. I often think I should have at least learned the basics, but everything happens for a reason.

Getting to the other image, this triadic is from a sloppy rushed ink drawing I did in 2013. I cleaned it up in, you guessed it, Adobe Photoshop (aren’t you surprised?) and added some colors, but in the immortal words of special effects artist and Face Off contestant Roy Wooley, “it’s hard to polish a turd.”

Although I kind of like it. So there you have it, folk(s). Cartoon barbarians. I hope Sergio Aragonés doesn’t sue me for copyright infringement! I kid. I kid. Although anything is possible. Kidding.
Happy Arting. 

SLiM

All Images © Stephen L Morris 2020