Recently I watched "Exit through the giftshop" - the Banksy movie for the second time and I won´t get into detail, or do a review, since these exist from far better sources.
I just assume that you´ve seen the movie (trailer here) or know the outlines, to understand the following.
I think that it is a really good exercise about marketing, if you ever want to get an idea of how the artmarket does work, this documentary is a must see.
The sad message and my conclusion first: Really successful art comes not from artists it comes from marketers, and marketers are liars (according to Seth Godin) A marketer can be anyone. And since the profession artist isn´t protected, everyone can proclaim to be an artist if in reality he is a salesman, because thats what Thierry Guetta, pretty obviously, is to me.
The even more sad part of the message is that artist like Banksy and Shepard Fairey who worked a decade on building a reputation through Streetart in the art market, can watch their art being auctioned on the secondary market for 50k $ (-and up) while they have sold it in the first place for literally, an apple and an egg.
Here´s why this will never happen to Mr. Brainwash due to his unique art marketing method:
He makes mostly derivatives of known imagery, this increases recognizability (Warhol principle)
Makes even more parody, or different takes on even more known imagery
Learns from the best of the scene to know what works and what is possible to achieve
He does make sales beginning at the upper prize segment and avoids the apple and egg problem
Uses quotes from well known artists to boost credibility in the media and public relations
Is confident enough to invest a lot of money to create rather an event than just an artshow
Knows how Damien Hirst and other big-players run their business and outsources the creative aspects of the work and concentrates on generating just the ideas and delegating tasks
Appears in a movie with well known artists to underline the value of his work as promotion for his upcoming artshows and to deliver a story that is meant to be told, describing him as a phenomenon
Has no problems with reproducing stuff and copyrights at all, because he is not an educated artist and therefore has not to worry about that matter, because the public doesn´t do either
As silly as it sounds, these are the shortcuts to success that no artschool ever teaches, and a concept that cannot be franchised. To be honest, in my humble opinion it will only work for non-artists, because artists are usually a very passionate folk and do rather work and create fancy ways to standout rather than to please others with the tenth derivation of a work that the public already knows.
The good thing I see in this development, is that when streetart has become the potential to be marketable on the stock market and places like Christies, its just a question of time when digital art can do that. Because screen printing is not art, its a technique and if an artist utilizes it- the result CAN be art.
Fact is that there is not much difference between streetart and the internet or digital art, if you have a message with your creation and you don´t hesitate to post it everywhere on the net and dare to make it viral, the effect is similar to a Banksy graffity between two telephone booths.
The biggest question is to ask ourself what we really want. Banksy has left the actual grafitti-scene because he wasn´t really good at it and devoted his style towards the stencils. When he crossed the borders between street and fine art, he switched to installations which even better transported his messages. My conclusion is also that Mr. Brainwash reflects the extreme of a "worst thing that could happen" to the art world. And its interesting to see that it would not have happened if Banksy wouldn´t existed - he may benefit from Guetta´s success, but its a sad event to know that one is the cause of such a "worst case scenario".
Which obviously lead to the thought if Mr.Brainwash really exist or is it a figure created by Banksy to just smack the artworld? Even if it is an experiment that should only show WHAT is possible to achieve, its a big slap in the face of everyone who believes this stuff, because it shows that artists are replaceable by cogs in the machine.
“I take risks, sometimes patients die, but not taking risks causes more patients to die - so I guess my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math.”
Dr. Gregory House
I don´t think this guy needs any explanation, but in case you are not familiar with House, M.D. you should fill in the blanks with this bit of information first: Wikipedia.
Its obvious that the character played by Hugh Laurie isn´t a fancy guy that everyone loves, but he is intelligent.
If Vulcanians could be humans, I bet he´d be one. But how on earth can a story around a doctor, who is immune to emotions of others become so impressively successful?
The most fascinating effect might be having the urge to beat that guy while at the same time you´ll hug him (manhug:). I believe its the epitome of a stereotype that we expect from a demigod in white.
But with the difference that this doc doesn´t wear white, is drug addicted, a cripple, cheats, and expects that everyone is a liar. This makes him a human, everyone has flaws, he just accepted his and compensates it with a passion for his job.
It doesn´t matter if you want to become a better artist, illustrator, freelancer or CEO, you think you are indispensible because you run a business? Then read on:
Push the limits, if you think your idea is great, think twice (differential diagnose)
Don´t believe that any result is a dogma and need to be worshiped, counterproof
keeping a clear distance to clients can help being more objective
Learn to let go and the art of the head fake in order to solve difficult problems
You cannot please everyone, make clear decisions and stick to them
Put everything and the status quo into Question, even, or because everything seems to be fine
The last one is the most important one, be hard to yourself and your peers, work hard on that part and the world becomes a better place.
I´m not too fond of medical TV series, to be honest I don´t watch TV, (sometimes a series on DVD) but the main character is too interesting and the little truths about human psychology give a lot food for thoughts.
Well, House encourages and motivates himself and his colleagues with the methods above, which are absolutely substantial to becoming indispensable, regardless of what you do.
Incorporate these rules listed above in your day and you are ahead of your competition.
This is a personal answer to a blog post from someone not related to art or the artists business.
Nonetheless, I feel its important to take the time and contemplate myself as a part of answering the following question:
If you have ten minutes unscheduled and the phone isn´t ringing, what do you do? What do you start to do?
Again a Seth Godin post, according to him, you can judge an organization or a person by what they do when they have a bad day, or the extreme opposite, when no routine or crisis is on the schedule.
What I have learned through my apprenticeship was worth a full time business, such as the one I´m running right now, and the rule is simple:
See the work!
I had filled three years of my life in an apprenticeship with just seeking the work. And unlike others who just seeked work to look busy, I learned to pick up and see what I CAN do and what seems to be the most fun to me.
OK, that wasn´t always possible, but I had asked to do the work I wanted to do, so much that others gave me the chance to do it.
This has changed my view and there is no such thing as laziness, probably my 10 minutes that I have without a ringing phone, business email or commission to work on there is a big pile of options I can chose from:
Writing a blog post like this one
Putting up new works on my web portfolios
Trying out a new tool or technique
Going through my folder with started but not finished works
Tidy up desktop or workplace (no kidding)
Reading blogs community news and see what the competition is up to
Backup data
Updating website with new works, text or searching for flaws
Trying out a complete new technique that I always wanted to do, but never had the time to
Go for a stroll with the camera and trying to find some nice textures
Just making a nap and take a small break
Tidy up mail-inbox
Writing invoices
Doing the taxes
You see: no idle time ;)
I think its also quite important to acknowledge that as artist you have not only the big responsibility of putting the "status quo" into question, its also important to expose yourself to failure every here and then.
Its not possible to be a true artist if you are not able to make failure and experiment.
No one wants you to climb the Mount Everest unsupported, but a different perspective on the craft you have mastered can bear a crucial enlightenment.
I spoke with a so called local artist after a show / event, where I represented my work and she discussed that its only possible to define a "style" by narrowing the focus, she was very much surprised that I said that the only possibility to create a "style" is to make failure, or better said expose yourself to failure by doing experiments.
That said from a person like me who does 70% digital art, maybe comes with a surprise-tag to her in that discussion and I found it funny. But sad at the same time that people often are so shortsighted.
As artists we face several problems and this post is speaking about the problem "That people don´t get, its actually work I´m doing" - resulting in the next problem "Getting asked to do work for free"
The first problem in question is depending on how artists speak, act and create a public image of what they do.
We never would estimate that someone with the name Hajime Sorayama would do a single work for free, even if you find tons of his work in fan-galleries across the globe. This is simply due to the fact that he has built a reputation around his work as an authority. If you ever want a reference on how to paint "chrome" or even "gynoids" you´ll stumble about Sorayama.
Sure it takes ages to create this public image and its a long personal growing process, that begins with the serious recognition in the family. Artist raised by parents who are professional artists have it easier to deal with this problems, and probably grow faster into the habit of showing professionalism to anyone.
The first problem I see is that most artists are obviously too easy enthusiastic about new ideas and fall into the habit of speaking to early about things they will do, but havn´t done yet.
RSAnimate have a nice animation about the motivation and the driving force behind it.
The interesting fact is it purely applies to artists that money isn´t the driving force, but the reward of:
Satisfaction - mastery of skills - autonomy
The problem with these above mentioned keywords, is that some clients (black sheep ) do exploit this very often.
While in a factory you won´t find autonomy, satisfaction and a mastery of any skill, people tend to do art as a hobby. No wonder that some scammer, even commercial ones try to exploit this and motivate artists to work for "great exposure", promise them that its a great chance to get better, facing a challenge and on top of it all,you´re autonomic, this means you get exactly all these things any one can dream of...but wait, where is the hook?
You got it, here´s the hook, you should do work for free, or very low.
The video shows the example of Linux with the idea of enthusiasts doing exactly this.
But this is a whole different story, since anyone who contributes to Linux does only a fraction of the whole work. Today it would be labelled as crowd sourcing, but the video describes it better, its called contribution.
My solution and how I deal with this problem is simply that I do only work "for free" when it is a personal work or a by-product of a commercial project and share it with the community, which in turn is also a contribution.
The trap most artists fall for, is to think that great exposure will bring them fame and fortune, and business as well.
But forget it, its hard work and these three cornerstones: "Autonomy, mastery and purpose" must be inherent if you ever want to be a freelancing successful artist. Anyone who wants to sell you something else is simply a scam.
Even modern artists like Banksy or Hirst have built their capitalistic business of art around these cornerstones, just with a slightly bigger public image and the fortitude of the stock market in the back.
When you followed the many links and instructions from the first Photoshop brushes tutorial, you have gained a good insight in the capability of Photoshop as a sophisticated painting tool.
This guide gives basic advice on how brushes do work in Photoshop, get to know which dialogs are important to create your digital paintings and to create your own toolbox.
To get the most out of this tutorial, you should have basic knowledge about Photoshop, such as setting up a document and how layers do work.
Digital painting is as much work like oil painting, you can work out many or less details as you please, you can work one hour on a painting or hundred. But one thing is for sure: its not possible to produce great imagery by pressing just one button.
Painting digitally has some advantages such as "undo", changing the size of the canvas or cropping at any time and most important: layers. If you are good at drawing traditionally, chances are that after time and tenacity, you´ll reach a level where your digital creations look similar or even better than your traditional works. You can try out more and be brave with colors or perspective.
A foundation in traditional painting is not a prerequisite, but it helps, even if it is just drawing with pencils or ballpen.
TIP: Be honest to yourself, cheating, painting over or tracing from a photograph will NOT help you get better or faster there.
The secret "keys" to a magic workflow
Fortunately there are shortcuts, make use of them often and treat yourself with a better workflow.
Below is a list of tools and brushes I use all the time:
Note, this is my personal list, changed shortcuts are marked red, have a look at the standard PS keyboard shortcuts. I highly recommend to customize shortcuts and keys, this makes you more familiar with integral parts of the program and leads to more workplace ergonomy and speed.
Painting related: [B] The brush tool - allows you to paint with a wacom tablet like with a brush [R] Smudge - In earlier PS versions R was the smudge tool, so I changed the shortcut [E] Eraser - allows you to erase something from a layer Canvas related: [A] Canvas rotate(since PS CS4) usually the key [R] I have set the shortcut to A [SPACE] Hand tool - to move the canvas [Z] Zoom - allows you to zoom in, I use CTRL++ and CTRL+Ü for in and out zooming and [CTRL+Ä] for actual pixel view of the image Color related [ALT] The eyedropper tool - this tool picks colors from anywhere in a picture [X] Switch between fore -and background colors - great for black and white sketching Layer related: [V] Arrow tool - to move and place objects or layers [L] Lasso tool - allows you to select a specific area [CTRL+T] Transformation - this allows you to freely transform a selection [CTRL+SHIFT+N] Create a new layer Process related: [ALT+SHIFT] color picker tool - allows you to pick another color on the fly [CTRL+Z] Undo - allows you to undo a step [CTRL+ALT+Z] Step back - allows you to undo more than one step I recommend to set the key for "step back" toF1 for example, most people don´t read the help anyways.
So much for the theoretical part, now on to the practice:
Make the most of your brushes
Its intriguing to see how many brush resources are available for Photoshop, but if you are here for painting, its important to get the fundamentals down, otherwise the fancy stuff isn´t going to work*.
I have done a tutorial of an X-Men character with just 2 brushes, if you follow this tutorial, you understand why there is seldom a need for more than 2 brushes.
To make the most out of even the standard brushes, make yourself familiar with the brush-related dialogs
#1: The toolbar dialog: Its useful for opacity, pressure sensitivity and flow, I mainly use opacity between 55%-75% and flow 75%-100% but this is a matter of personal preference.
#2: Right-click-menu
The next toolbox can be reached with a right click while a brush is in use.
You can always change the brush size with the key [ALT] pressed while holding right click and then moving the pen either to the left or right, softness can be changed by moving up or down. But when you want to reset a brush size or chose another one, this dialog is quite useful.
#3 The brush settings dialog
The next dialog is the most powerful one, its the brush main menu.
On the left side you see the main properties and if you click on one, you´ll instantly see options on the right hand panel. On the bottom you see the direct impact of your settings -pretty simple?
TIP: Get yourself into the habit of doing random warm-ups before starting to work on an actual piece, that gives you enough reason and time to explore this dialog pretty much.
There is no universal receipt of what works and what not, its all about habits, preferences and goals, but I can´t stress enough how important it is to make use of it!
I like to achieve naturally looking works that contain realism and a traditional look. The best way to master the settings is to experiment when looking at traditionally painted reference works. Go to a museum, study the old masters, make photographs and try to match colors and strokes/textures.
#4: The tool-presets dialog
Try to imitate crayons or pencil, if you have created an outstanding brush, you can save it into the tool presets dialog, the last and also important dialog box related not only to brushes:
click the icon to add a
brush to the presets dialog
#5: The agony of choice: Colors
For colors and palettes, you have several options: Kuler, standard color dialog, or swatches:
Often suggested by professionals is to create a layer just for mixing colors. Then pick a color with the eyedropper tool and mix it on that layer, this allows to change colors in your paintings intuitively .
An advanced technique would be to duplicate that layer and change colors via [ALT+U] to expand the one palette to pick colors from.
The "essential" Photoshop brushes in action
I won´t limit anyone, but if I´m asked for a useful advice, it will sound like this: Less is more!
Better get the most out of one brush than to get entangled in a mess of brushes you don´t know anything about. Get an expert in the round brush and you´re nearly a master of all brushes.
Nr. 1 The simple round brush, lets see what that one can do
I use this brush for most detail works and areas which need fine definition such as skin, clothes, etc, its really a reliable allrounder. Its something like crayon, pencil, airbrush and pen in one even more powerful in combination with the smudge tool.
Below you see an example of the round brush in action, no other brush was used for this sketch. Only the above shown settings and variations thereof were used in this somewhat detailed drawing.
Whatever you are going to paint, the round brush can do it. I´d go as far as saying that this is the most important brush to master for any beginner of the medium.
Nr. 2: The rectangular brush
The only other brush you´ll need
This one is different, you cannot soften it in the right-click menu, but you can combine it with a dual brush setting, add the scatter element, or add texture to make it even more powerful.
The best use for the rectangular shape lies in creating rough concepts and defining landscapes, applying textures is also fun with this brush.
Below you see an example of this brush in action. The aim of a rough concept is not to deliver a final rendition, its best to use low contrast values to paint random shapes and work them out as you see something in them, this is also a great exercise.
Its easy, once you got used to see the shapes, a great tool to train this potential is called Alchemy.
In another blog post about imagination I explain a bit more about shapes and pattern recognition ability in general.
Concept artists and industry professionals use this technique to begin their outstanding works, one mentionable fellow is daarken, from whom you find highly recommended video tutorials using the rectangular brush in a masterful way.
See the video teaser below for my process from a rough concept to a semi- final artwork
Or if you have the time, the full video (25 minutes) with explaining subtitles can be watched at dtuts.com for free.
