Time to concede defeat

It was the Summer of 2002. Attack of the Clones had been released and the ‘Art of ….’ book was truly amazing! The reason why it was so amazing was because it was full of new (to me) exciting illustrators, whose medium of choice was digital! Prior to this point I was a bit sceptical about this medium, especially as my main influences at the time were Alan Lee and Arthur Rakham. If you mention ‘digital illustration’ it tended to conjure up dark and dank images of semi-clad pale skinned women confined to SF novels, likely to be ogled by virgin men at the back of Waterstones. I was getting ready to start my third, and final, year of my degree. And then I made the rash decision to give digital a try. It wasn’t cheap mind. Thankfully it was my birthday though and so I managed to wangle my parents to buy me a lovely A4 Wacom tablet and Painter 7 software.
I spent many hours that Summer getting to grips with it, hoping to have an array of stupendous illustrations ready to show off for the start of term. And I did. In fact it took ages to convince everyone that they were actually 100% digital illustrations because they didn’t look it (because they didn’t feature semi-clad pale skinned women).

Digital suited me well because I was always too precious with my pencil marking & paint brush strokes. I didn’t want to waste a single gram of paper. The real beauty of digital is that it allows you to try something and easily delete it if it doesn’t work out, or if you go wrong. Since then I’ve never really looked back. I was a bit of a trendsetter at college because I was the first to turn to the digital medium in the illustration department. I bet they all do it now.

To cut an incredibly fascinating story short, last year my Wacom pen broke. This is a critical tool for my illustration work and also very expensive to replace. I’ve tried wrapping it up with rubber bands, masking tape, hair ties, glue, made splints for it using kebab skews; all only providing a temporary fix. Last week I was working on a new piece and it breathed its last breath. And so I’ve taken the plunge to buy a new one! It wont be as fancy as my original one but it’s half the price and will do the job. Once I’ve got it I’ll be able to get back to doing some work and I’m hoping it will spur me on a bit more.

On the plus side I’ve had more time to catch up on watching stuff. These past two weeks I’ve watched the following: ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, ‘Sky High’, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ (several times), finished ‘Supernatural’ Season 1, watched all six episodes of ‘Nathan Barley’, 'Red Riding' Part 1 and now I’ve started ‘Skins’ season 3. Not bad for a Wacom pen-less person.