Art-R-Not-US

When I was young, I had it in my mind that I would be an artist. More specifically, a commercial artist, like, say Norman Rockwell.

I'd have done it, too, except for two little things:

1) No talent, and 2) No chance of getting any ...

I dabbled. Conned my folks into buying me the Famous Artists correspondence course when I was sixteen. I did two lessons, didn't like what they had to say, and quit. Spent three years paying for it at twenty bucks a month.

I once did an oil painting for a friend. He wanted a still life, a bowl of fruit. He was happy with it. Of course, he went on a couple years later to become a smack freak, so mayhaps his judgment was less than sound.

I did a storefront window banner at a meat market once, using tempera paint. My mother got me the job. It was terrible. Two of the words I lettered onto the glass summed it up: Fresh Tripe.

Later, I came across an engraving instrument used to identify tools, and realized that the process could be used to etch glass. I did a handful of pictures this way, and sold a couple at a flea market. As a gimmick, if you put them into a shadowbox and used a tensor light along one edge, they would glow an eerie green.

There were a few cartoons along the way. As a hippie, I was the staff cartoonist for an underground paper called The Word. Cost a quarter, if you had it. If not, Hey, no charge, man, peace. Did a panel about a bunch of -- what else? -- dope-smokin' hippies: Odd George, with JJ, the Kid, and Sweet Maryjane, whose head was always shrouded in smoke ...

Did some toons for a couple of house magazines for the forestry industry a buddy of mine edited.

Found a method of itty-bitty-dot drawing that appealed, and did a book cover for a doctor's self-published poetry book, based on his daughter.

Eventually, I transferred this technique to scrimshaw.

But, all in all, I didn't have the chops and knew I never would. I think the moment I realized it was the first day of college, when I stood in line next to a guy who had been a portrait artist at Jackson Square, in New Orleans, and who was putting himself through school that way.
He took a pencil out of his pocket and on the back of a notebook, and in about forty-five seconds, sketched a portrait of me that could have been a fuzzy photograph. I couldn't begin to do that, and knew I never would be able to learn it.

Writing is so much easier ...