KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Jan Adkins is an illustrator, museum designer, educator and expert in the profession as an artist.
For nine years he was the associate art director at National Geographic Magazine, explaining the space shuttle, lasers, submarines, Soviet rockets, satellites, nuclear physics, marine archaeology, forest fires, volcanoes and the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Directing a team of researchers and doing original field research himself, he unraveled some of the most interesting topics ever addressed by Geographic during its golden age. Jan's job, according to his editor-in-chief Bill Garrett, "was like getting a doctorate every third month."
He has written scripts and treatments for the Discovery Channel, NOVA, and the BBC, and narrative voiceover for interactive corporate training programs. He taught editorial illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design for several years, and taught illustration and graphic design at Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore. He’s associated with several exhibit design firms and frequently consults on exhibits for zoos, art museums, science and natural history museums.
Jan started his presentation by saying: "I am a living, breathing dinosaur. Why? Because I have made a career in the arts."
Art is a social necessity. It gives society a vision of beauty and power. It is a slice of time that allows us to make connections.
Some time along the way, Art abandoned us. It no longer became a way of sharing culture and ideas. It became obscure and opaque. We began thinking that artists are "those people." Those black-clad skinny people in New York or Paris. Art became a priesthood, exclusive.
Art is not icing on the cake. It is powerful. It holds its own weight.
One of the downsides of being a freelancer is the general misconception that artists make art because it is something they do in their free time. It is something they like to do. Little do they know, Art is work.
Both illustrators and graphic facilitators do the same thing--they are interpret someone else's ideas. It is Art doing a job.
In school we were done a great disservice; as we moved through the grades, our school books had fewer and fewer pictures.
Architect Louis Sullivan said that we are visual thinkers. We cannot think in words, but in blocks of words and pictures.
Another disservice perpetrated on us: we are forced to think on 8.5" x 11" (or A4) sized paper. When we do this, we are corralled, we are constrained. Graphic facilitators are wonderfully free. But our clients are not. They think in PowerPoint decks, white papers and reports, because this is what their livelihoods depend upon.
We think in stories and metaphors, and give order to speech that aggrandizes the ideas. Metaphor is our medium. To properly mine those metaphors for richness, we have to choose those metaphors and sound bites. This changes the details of what was said. But our work is to interpret what they meant!
Our politicians motivate people through metaphors and sound-bites:
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." ~JFK
"An Iron Curtain has been drawn across Europe." ~ Winston Churchill
Even though our clients my not be gifted in oratory, it is our role to use pictures to provide that gift of language through images.
Art school is a terrible place. It is a place where people go who hate math. It is a place where people go to express themselves. But what is important is not whether or not they were successful in expressing themselves. Instead what is important is that they express the subject. All good art is transparent to the creator, with the story and message shining through.
If our presentations are so beautiful that they distract the audience from the content, they fail. We are not expressing ourselves, we are expressing our clients' ideas.
In art school, each artists is struggling to be top dog. They are not so interested in sharing ideas, in exchanging skills. Graphic facilitators share!
Art school students, in their minds, are addicted to the image of the black beret and the pencil mustache. That is to say, they are romanticizing the idea of the artist: removed from society, thinking lofty thoughts, producing work according to the emotional life.
They don't realize that Art is a job.
My advice? Take a job in outdoor activities to get away from your art. But those of us in the profession of art, we do work and then we go home.
One of my students was addicted to his depression and his dark clothes No matter what the assignment--didn't matter if it was Heart of Darkness or Winnie the Pooh--an illustration came back with the crucifixion somehow incorporated!
Here is an exerpt of Jan Adkins guide to Illustration:
TELL THE STORY
It's the only guide we have. Even when writing a novel, you have to figure out what happens. Telling the story is the necessity. It is the original art. We tell them with icons and metaphors. We tell them around the fire.FOCUS THE EDITORIAL EYE
You are not expressing your own ideas or aggrandizing yourself. You need to trim down what you capture. In publishing, writing books doesn't pay.
WORK FAT
Contrast and black and white composition is more important than color. Arrangement, masses, composition.LOOK AT A TREE
The cartoon version in the back of your head is wrong. Most people use the icon or symbol of things instead of looking and drawing what they see. Look at a tree. They are all different: the noble oak, the whimsical birch, the gnarled pine.
TAKE COURAGE
Just start. Set limits. Just start. Do not start out to do a masterpiece, just show up to work and do a yeoman's job as if you did not care about the outcome. As illustrators, we can isolate, we can edit, we can fabricate things that do not exist, we can zoom in, zoom out, show time, capture spirits. Try that with a camera!DIRECT YOUR OWN DRAMA
Our clients are craving this. We can create what they cannot. A good actor knows that the real emotion is not in the face, but in the whole body. Learn to draw the whole body, the dancer's pose, the weight of oppression, the expansion of exaltation!DON'T HIDE BEHIND THINGS YOU CAN DO WELL
Hemmingway said that the writer is forced out into the deep water. Go beyond what you think you can do.
ASK FOR DIRECTIONS
Every answer for every problem exists within the problem. You will have to ask simple questions of your clients. Ask, "What have we missed here?" Clarification, specificity. There is a difference between listening actively and listening passively.
STEAL
All you can get, baby. Don't reinvent the wheel. You see what's works and take it. The term "style" is a trap. At age 20, you don't know anything. Style will get in your way. Great art is transparent. The importance step is to digest and assimilate what you steal.MAKE A FACE BOOK
Create a book out of 100 blank pages. Find every magazine you can get your hands on and cut out all the faces. Paste'em into the book.KILL YOUR LITTLE DARLINGS
The precious side projects will distract you from the heart of the matter. Get the little details out of your head.
SIMPLICITY
That's it.
KNOW MORE THAN YOUR READER
Research is the basis of your art. Learn to learn. You must be conversant with the facts that affect the life and work of your clients.
FINALLY
Two important facts are key:
(1) editors hate to publish blank pages;
(2) Illustration is not a capital offense.
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