Jesse Lee Hockman, is an artist and illustrator based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. The best way to find his art work is either www.facebook.com/jessdrawingthings or www.instagram.com/jessdrawingthings. In a Facebook post you mention that for the month of September you're challenging yourself to do a drawing a day. How has this been going so far? Yes! It is going great! Well, minus one day. This past weekend I got a little sick and wasn't able to complete a piece on Saturday night. Not for the lack of trying though, I spent 3 hours trying to flesh out ideas but I couldn't make anything work. Otherwise though it has been fantastic. I've themed these drawings around the idea of children interacting with imaginary creatures. The creatures are constantly departing words of encouragement or advice to the child. These phrases that I use as titles are things that I constantly remind myself all the time or motto's I try to keep in my daily life. I hope that if I can keep this central idea through out the month i may be able to turn it into some sort of book and maybe kickstart it. How did you learn your craft? Drawing was something I have technically done since I was a child. At the age of nineteen I decided to take it more seriously and eventually enrolled in a liberal arts college. I graduated with a degree in art studio with a concentration in drawing and a minor in art history. Ultimately though, my greatest amount of learning came after college. I've devoured every tutorial art video on youtube that I felt could teach me something, it didn't matter if it was a technical tutorial, about the psychology of art or the business side. I really believe that greatest thing I learned about making art is that you have to slow down and enjoy the process more than the end product. When did you realize you wanted to be an artist? At the age of nineteen. It was a rough moment in my life. I had been going to school for computer engineering at a state school and struggled to enjoy the subject matter. During my second year, my father passed away from an experimental treatment that was suppose to aid in fighting the brain tumor he had. The treatment was known to increase chances of blood clots and we believe one ended up in his lungs. With his passing I stepped back and asked myself "What do I really enjoy in life?". This question wasn't answered easily. It took me dropping out of school and moving back home for a while to figure out that art was the answer. Your about section notes that you mostly work in graphite. What attracts you to this medium? How does it help you execute your ideas? The thing that attracts me to graphite is it's simplicity. It is one of the simplest ways to make art but can lead to the most complicated pieces. I do enjoy other mediums but all my pieces start as a pencil drawing, when I sit down to make a piece all I have to do is grab a pencil and paper. There is no setting up paints and water and finding the right brush or prepping a canvas. It's just a piece of paper and pencil. It's also a very forgiving medium if you have a delicate hand. I can work though ten to twenty ideas on a piece of paper without having to worry about getting a new piece of paper because I can always either erase or incorporate any stray marks. This all culminates to the the idea that drawing is the most basic form of representational art and graphite is the easiest way to execute an idea quickly but maintain the energy of a gesture and the tightness of precision. Do you face any challenges in translating your ideas to the page? If any, what helps you overcome them? Any artist that tells you they don't is lying. Their reaction to those challenges is really what matters and probably determines their answer to this question. Personally, I struggle often and it is usually due to my state of mind or my environment. I've come to learn that having anything that will pull my mind away from the work at hand will cause frustration. To counter this I listen to music with only instrumentation and no lyrics and I don't leave the TV on or listen to podcasts during this part. The rendering portion of art making is much easier and I can listen to podcasts or watch television during this portion. Now on the subject of what people would typically call "artist block" or the inability to find inspiration. I'll be cliche and quote Picasso, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” In other words, if I can't get a concept to work I will pick an object and just draw it. This just gets the creative process moving and allows me to mindlessly draw while my brain can flutter between ideas to find a way to make it work. I also have 5 or more projects going at once typically and will just work on one of them if another is giving me problems. At what point do you say “I'm done!” when working on a piece? This is probably the biggest struggle with my artistic process. I'm a perfectionist at heart and have trouble leaving things a lone that bother me. I actually have a painting right now that has already been sold but I am struggling to find what bothers me about the piece in order to finish it. Often I ask "Does this effectively express the idea and emotions I want it to?" and "Is the highest level of quality and skill I'm capable of reached?". If I answer yes to both or just one of these questions I am usually willing to call a piece done. Are you experimenting with any techniques, materials, or concepts right now?
I've recently took a dive back into oil painting. It's been a few years since I had really worked in this medium. I'm kinda bumbling my way through right now. I do have a plan to adjust my work flow to speed things up and come out with a better end product. I jumped right into painting quite a bit lately without fully fleshing out the ideas. This has lead to some frustration. My plan for future works is to fully flush out a drawing at the size of the intended final product and mount a copy to a board. This will allow me to paint directly over my drawing and not have find the proportions or have to render everything completely over again. Outside of drawing, how do you fuel your imagination? The easiest way to fuel the imagination is to experience life and what others have to offer. I step away from the art. Travel, hiking, rock climbing(my other love in life) or experiencing new things is the only way I know to inform my art better. Is there anything else you'd like readers to know? I'd just like to reiterate that if you spend all of your time working and not experiencing what life has to offer then your art will suffer for it. As an artists we are typically the more introverted types and would rather sit at home or in the studio and just work. But getting out and meeting people that have similar interests or very different ones can help a lot. Art is a form of communicating our experiences and emotions for the world to interpret in a visual way. If you don't have those experiences you can't communicate effectively. Photo credit to the artist.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |