I gravitated to New York City in the late '70s to pursue a career in visual art, which is what I trained in at university.
I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.
I got out of this school and went to Camberwell College of Arts, a terribly prestigious thing to do. I was there to be a painter. And I sketched so well that, a year later, I was sent to Slade School of Fine Art, one of the great art schools.
The first professional training I received of any kind was when I was 14 years old and we were in Kansas City, Missouri. I attended the Kansas City Art Institute for one summer.
My objective in teaching my pupils is that they should be fitted for any kind of art.
With art, your motor sense should be developed at full capacity.
I doubt if there is a single really excellent art school now available in New York.
I have a BFA in illustration.
The wonderful news is that when a person with my lack of art background can be successful, then anyone can. I'm not super talented and had no art training. Nothing, nada, zip. No workshops or classes.
I learned how to communicate and articulate myself from ballet. It's just insane to me, when they don't think of that as a part of our education.
The best thing is to draw men and women from the nude and thus fix in the memory by constant exercise the muscles of the torso, back, legs, arms and knees, with bones underneath.
We were suddenly faced with the necessity of training a lot of young men in the art of navigation.
I guess I consider myself a cartoonist first, though I was "trained" as a painter/printmaker/sculptor. If there's still any resistance to cartooning in the nuts-and-bolts world of acquiring the means of survival, it's probably mostly on the pay scale. If graphic novels are selling really well and are "growing the book market" or whatever it is a businessman would say about them, I don't see it in the remuneration offered by some of the publishers.
And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.
I was 11 when I was first introduced to live drawing classes and going to art school.
The young man should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. Next, copy work after the hand of a good master, to gain the habit of drawing parts of the body well; and then to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.
And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League.
Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny.
I went to school for fine art. I'm a decent housepainter, but I'm a really good fine art painter.
I studied realism when I was in art school.
As a child, I copied Duerer drawings and Bruegel.
Ruskin's concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone.
I went to art school when I was little.
My mother recognized my artistic talent and looked for someone to teach me to grow my abilities. She found an artist on the street who sent his daughter, Umba, over to begin teaching me when I was only three years of age.
Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.
