Spent the week before last running about in front of a film crew, entering stage left and exiting stage right, when it wasn’t the opposite or vice-versa. (The big problem of course being how the heck do you make in any way interesting a guy who spends all his time indoors crouched on a chair, hunched over a drawing…) So, I have been tramping about the area, scrambling down cliffs and up trees, falling in rivers, shivering in caves and lurking in cathedrals, all in the name of art…
As I have strictly nothing to say this week – I mean it’s still summer, the sun is shining, who wants to work, much less write copy – here’s something I committed a while ago, coming out in the 2004 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market, in the bookshops in August. I have resisted the temptation to change anything, despite my utter dismay at finding that I used the word “things” three times in the first paragraph…
But first of all…
The Knights of Pythias, of all things:
I have a high-school friend whose Mom never threw anything out, and who e-mailed me this the other day. A Driving Safety contest no less. And I had to turn in the trophy after one year, what a thrifty abstemious lot those Knights of Pythias were, (whoever they are, and no I’m not going to do a web search to find out who took my cup back) I can’t even recall if I got to take the thing home, it probably never left the principal’s office…
I certainly wish I could remember what I drew… (and if I used ketchup like Calvin did in Calvin and Hobbes) not to mention what I blew my fortune in prize money on.
More pictures from Oscar.
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The Castle of Gruyères:
Yes, that’s indeed where they make the eponymous cheese (unless of course that’s homonymous, it certainly is synonymous). And no, it DOESN’T have holes in it (that’s Emmental, but they don’t have a castle…).
Anyway, free on the 26th of September around 6:30 pm? Unless by now you’ve seen it already (like me), the Tolkien exhibition will be within the castle walls from September 27th to November 9th. I’ll be loitering around there a couple of afternoons during the show; all the information will be available as soon as I have it.
We’ll also be hanging a few pictures that are NOT in the show in its present form, so even if you’re sick and tired of it by now, there will be new images to see.
And of course, it’s in a castle… Gruyères is an absolutely wonderful region.
And don’t forget the cheese.
Click to see the poster in PDF (90 ko)
THE MAGIC OF JOHN HOWE: TOLKIEN ARTIST, A WORLD APART
Written by Mona Michael
The second son of a farming family, John Howe grew up in rural southwestern Canada. Though he had no formal training in those days, he began drawing at a very young age—improvising in science class, doing sketches of “microscopic water organisms” for his fellow classmates at 50 cents a shot. He first thought he wanted to be a sign painter—painting billboards—but later discovered book cover illustration and began collecting hoards of paperbacks from used bookstores.
No longer selling sketches for change, the illustrator who began his fame with a few spots in a Tolkien calendar in 1987 is now considered one of the premier Tolkien artists. With countless book covers and gallery exhibitions to his name, Howe worked alongside the famed Alan Lee as conceptual artist for The Lord of the Rings movies. He even has his own book now. Myth and Magic, the first compilation of his work, was published by HarperCollins UK in March 2003. All this hasn’t gone to his head though. Howe remembers his beginnings. He credits Artist’s Market (a previous version of Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market) with helping him get started with his career and answers questions from admirers and young artists daily on his website [url=http://www.john-howe.com]http://www.john-howe.com[/url]
You talk about copying book covers on your website. Does that fall into the “draw all the time” advice you give aspiring artists?
I’m a firm believer that people, when they are quite young, should not be afraid of being obsessed with things. The deeper you throw yourself into copying someone else’s work, the faster you get through it and identify the elements which may eventually become part of your own way of approaching things.
There seems to be a self-consciousness about copying things as a student. But that seems to me to be rather strange, because what’s wrong with that? It’s a tradition that’s been going on for millennia. You’re trying to understand another’s work and the only way to understand is to try to do it. I must’ve copied millions of things when I was in my teens.
And you understand things from copying that you don’t get from other types of more structured training?
Yes. Because what are you looking for in all this? You’re looking for yourself somewhere. You’ve identified something that you think you can use. You need to try it and you need to make it your own. Imagine a road. You see a section of it way up ahead—because someone else has been drawing for ages and they’re professionals with all these techniques and gimmicks and gadgets. You get a glimpse long before you could get there by cutting through the woods yourself. There’s nothing shameful about it—it certainly is useful. Once you’ve understood it, you may realize it does not correspond to your aspirations; but now it’s behind you and you can forge on. The quicker you do that, the quicker you evacuate it from your system and move ahead. Holding back out of some notion of originality at any cost will simply slow your progress.
What led to your decision to go to art school?
I had some money from high school that I could only spend on tuition. I wanted to go to art school anyway—that seemed to be quite natural. We grew up on a farm, my brother and I. My brother was the one who was going to pick up farming when my dad quit. It was never in the cards for me, because I was the second one in line and had always drawn pictures. So my parents were very encouraging.
I had a very good friend who had the Writer’s Market. In there was the ad for the Artist’s Market and I thought “Oooh that sounds interesting.” Obviously, I wasn’t ready to start writing to editors in New York. But in there were all these schools with all the addresses. So I wrote off to a half a dozen of them and then chose one.
I was looking for every clue I could get. It was very gratifying to see all of these categories and to realize how many there were. To think, “My goodness—what a large world of illustration and creativity.”
In a previous interview you said you learned at art school that “as long as the sketch is not received, it is not finished.”
I think that’s really a property that’s inherent in illustration. It’s a communication media. You can illustrate your heart out but there’s not much point if it’s not going somewhere for someone. It’s not just a question of expressing things. I do believe that much of the illustration is actually not in the illustration itself; it’s in the person who looks at it.
On your website, you say a lot of your early commissions were nightmares. How did you get those early commissions?
I was very young, just out of art school working for my first commissions. And obviously when at that point you take anything that’s offered because you’re so relieved to get something. You’re more likely to find yourself in a situation where you’re just not the right person for the job. Thank goodness I don’t need to do that kind of thing too often now. I work very poorly in those conditions.
Can you describe any valuable lessons you learned from those jobs?
To persevere. And never to scorn the people you’re working for. This is something that seems a little more prevalent in advertising, where you hear more “clients are idiots” and “the people we’re selling this stupid product to are all jerks.” There is a feeling of superiority towards the people you’re exploiting in a certain sense, which I think is very bad. In my mind illustration is a slightly more sincere undertaking. It’s that you’ve accepted a job, you accept the parameters that are given to you – it’s a book cover, it has to be done by such and such a date—there is a story that you have to respect—which is going to be in the book, behind the cover. And that’s what it’s all about.
What enabled you to leave that type of work for the art you enjoy?
Well, I think I improved a bit over the years—I hope so anyway. And it takes an incredibly long time to establish a reputation, either good or bad. It took me a while to get back in touch with the English speaking world—because living in continental Europe, I wasn’t able to go and see editors in New York and London regularly, to say the least.
You have to do a lot of footwork, before your work does it for you. So, before people see your covers and books in shops regularly, then you need to do your self-promotion yourself, rather than having all these products do it for you without lifting a finger. So there is a lot of running around involved.
What are some specific things that you did as far as self-promotion when you were establishing yourself?
We used to go regularly to the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, Italy. It’s one of the world’s biggest and is specifically oriented towards children’s book illustration. Otherwise, I sent off portfolios with slides and photocopies and all sorts of things to all kinds of people.
What’s your opinion on samples? What’s best to send?
It’s very hard to judge what you should send. To really sum it up and oversimplify it, you have two choices: either you are one of these lucky people who has a large palette of things you can do—I know illustrators who can do 10 different styles and work with equal happiness in black and white and color and stylized, realistic, cartoony or whatever—or, you’re like the rest of us lot who just do one thing and not much else. It’s a little harder then, because it may take you ages to find the first editor who thinks that what you do corresponds to what he wants to publish.
But it is very hard to judge WHO is a good editor for what you do. Because the tendency is to go and see a book at a bookshop and think “oh that’s great—that’s just the kind of subject I love—I’ll go and see them.” But there’s no point because the book’s already done and they may not do another book like that for 10 years, if at all.
Also, so many art students make this terrifying mistake of sending a lot of very boring academic schoolwork—beautifully framed and matted and there’s nothing worse. This is your personality. You are trying to make them understand who you are not necessarily what you do. When you’re just out of art school or still in art school, what you do may not represent who you are.
But once again, once you get anything published—anywhere—it’s a brick in the wall you’re trying to build. So, what you send is very important.
What has your experience been as far as book cover illustrations? Have you had clashes with art directors, marketing departments—changing/altering/putting big text in places you think they shouldn’t?
I have. Usually I accept changes. There’s quite a strict protocol involved in all this. The starting point is a fairly tight sketch. I do mine in black & white, never in color.
In theory, once the sketch has been okayed, clearly defined elements of the sketch should not change. But there may be things in the finished picture which are not how they imagined. Then they may come back and say, “can you fix this please?” or “can you redo that?” And occasionally you get something wrong; you misread the text and put black hair on someone who has blonde and things like that, which are a bit silly—but that’s fine. I’m not always very happy to revisit an illustration, but that’s part of the job.
Of the book covers you’ve done (other than Tolkien), how did you prepare?
The most difficult part is when you read a text and it just doesn’t give you a picture. Quite often you don’t even get a text—you just get a cover brief. I’ve done jobs where you have the format, sometimes not even the final title, and the editor’s comments on what he’d like to see. Maybe—or you just have nothing and you go ahead and do something that feels it’s appropriate. It’s quite common in an industry run by sales meetings and publishing schedules. Occasionally writer and illustrator will deliver their work at the same time.
How do you handle rights for your covers? How do you use sub-rights?
Basically—this is only for book covers—the editor purchases the right to use that illustration for a book. He can reprint the same book for a million years if he wants, but he can’t put that cover on a different book without your permission. You are allowed to resell that cover for a different book to a different publisher. It’s never a fortune – and you would be wise to not sell it to a competing editor for a similar book in the same country. For example, if I do a cover for an English editor, I’m happy to resell it in Germany, Greece, wherever. The original remains your property.
For Tolkien it’s a bit special—because although I theoretically have the right to sell Tolkien related material to other editors—I don’t. I go back to HarperCollins and ask what they think of it and quite often they refuse because the covers are quite intimately tied to the books. It’s a bit of a gray area; so I prefer to abide by their decisions.
The Lord of the Rings series of board games is your first experience with game illustration. What are the similarities/differences between game illustration and other kinds of illustration?
There are graphic differences because it’s quite cluttered. The illustrations had to accommodate massive amounts of playing squares and text. So it meant doing something tone on tone with only a very small area where you could really let the contrast come to the front. There were also a great number of cards. It’s hard to slow down and treat them properly, as illustrations rather than just whacking them out. You tend to imagine all the cards at once and then it’s hard to keep your concentration on any one when you’re doing it.
Is there anything you wish someone had told you in the early days of your career?
Lots of things. They’re not things that you’re apt to listen to when you’re starting out.
It is your living, after all. You must never undersell yourself. It’s very difficult when you’ve been contacted by an editor and you’re trying to figure out how much you should ask for the job and they say, “Well what do you want, what’s your fee?” And you may be so happy to have the job initially and you don’t want to scare them off by being too expensive. On the other hand, you can’t expect the same fees as someone more well known. This is why agents are so useful. Agents can talk about money without getting embarrased.
You said, “Drawing must seek for interest not admiration, because admiration wears quickly.” Do you think this philosophy is responsible for your success?
Well, I’d like to think so. I’m not a big fan of these artists who basically take a body-building magazine or an issue of Playboy and put a dragon behind the girl and make it into a piece of art. I loved that when I was a kid, because it is a question of admiration, you admire the technique and all the gloss. You’re basically blown away by how well done it is. But it’s all on the surface. It doesn’t matter if something is technically quite flashy. That’s not where the interest is. I really believe there is a strong value to narrative painting that goes much deeper than appearances.
I think you’ve either got something to say or you don’t. And if you have not a terrible amount to say but a really flashy technique, that’s fine. You can get away with that sort of thing for ages and it will appeal to adolescent boys at 18, but it may not have the depth to carry it through into something a little more serious and a little deeper.
Did you have any reservations about The Lord of the Rings movies?
Yes, for a quarter of a second or so! I was so embarrassed when they phoned up because I didn’t have a clue who Peter Jackson was. I couldn’t just ask on the phone, “excuse me – how many movies have you made?” So it was really quite a leap into deep water. But there were no risks involved, because the full family went down to New Zealand. With such an opportunity, if it doesn’t work out you just come back.
What was it like suddenly being surrounded by all these people entrenched in Tolkien world creation?
It was great. It was very strange. New Zealand is already a world apart; while it’s culturally American, English, European, it’s geographically so far away that you feel a bit out of touch. And then we were in this other parallel world—Middle Earth—working away and it was quite disorienting but enormous fun. Added to that the enormous privilege of meeting Alan Lee. After years of wanting to one day meet him, here we were working in the same office.
There was such a spirit of—people who worked on the project consistently say this—there was a real Fellowship of interest and enthusiasm, knowing that there’s not going to be a remake of this film in our lifetimes. You know that it is something special. But that doesn’t mean there’s something intrinsic which will make it work; you still have to work hard. We worked 10 to12 hours a day—drawing straight—which is unimaginably difficult. But there was a real momentum behind it all. You carry part of it and part of you is carried by it.
MONA MICHAEL is assistant editor of Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market, Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market and freelances as a writing consultant.
Reprinted from 2004 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market
Copyright © 2003 by Writer’s Digest Books
Link to Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market at Writer’s Digest Bookstore: http://www.writersdigest.com/store/booksearch.asp?category=Market+Books
