Knuckles That Touch The Ground. . .

When I was in college, I was instructed to come up with both a letterhead and a logo that visually described my style of art, for a project in Graphic Design. What I turned in was a disaster, but every failure in life is a learning lesson, and failure in general is a form of learning. I love the people who say they never mess up. If you never make a mistake, how can you ever expect to learn anything? You have to grow.

Anyway, back in college (here I go again with the frickin’ past), I began taking an interest in the making of horror films. I had fallen in love with several Hammer Studios films, and was investing a lot of time and energy into these vintage classics, learning everything I could about how they were made. When the time came, I was certain without a doubt that I had to buy a video camera and start making films of my own. I needed to create a logo for my productions that fit the type of stories I was trying to tell. In the process of trying to come up with a good name, I sat down and went through the art I had accumulated in college, up to that point, looking for something inspiring. I had had quite a bit of schooling under my belt at the time.

What I noticed was that I had inadvertently developed a tendency to create things that were crude and unrefined. Early on, I was a very frustrated student, because I would watch my peers working on the same projects in the class we were in. I felt they were creating immaculate, iconic works of art, while my take on the project was sloppy, naive, poorly designed and lacking in many ways.

This is not me being overly critical and self deprecating of my work (this time). This was the truth. A grander portion of my inability to create quality works of art, back then, had largely to do with me insisting on drawing everything out of memory, without the aid of photo scrap, and without use of a light table or an Artograph. Another problem was my dependency on caffeine.

Not to knock the stuff, but if you’re anything like I was and you want to become a skilled artist, let alone one whose work demonstrates a strong understanding of design, color theory, proportion and perspective, then you might want to curb your caffeine habits. These days I keep it down to a cup of coffee a day, rarely more. I find it keeps my eyes open and I can somehow manage to relax while I work on my projects, without nervously scribbling my through it.

My point, and yes I do have one, when I sat down to create my own personal logo for this blog, I reflected on the lessons I learned in college, and how I struggled to make my art look the way I’d envisioned it. Basically, the Creative Knuckledragger is a nod to that early time in college, before meeting a certain charismatic illustration teacher, and before making the decision to take nearly every single class he taught. 

And these days, I’m deliberately trying to be crude. I think. Anyway, below is the precursor, if you will, to the blog’s title. I dunno why Neo-Barbarism, I just know that basically it was in the same vein. I'm still not sure why I went with the Celtic cross, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had taken the photo in a cemetery I visited on a family trip to Springfield, Illinois. Many's an Adobe Photoshop took place. Go ahead. Act Surprised. 

Thanks for reading.

SLiM