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Interview with Ken McCracken
Featured Artist for August 2001
Would you introduce yourself and give a little personal background?
I am a lawyer, who has basically given up the real world for a fantasy
world.
How long have you been an artist? How long have you been creating fantasy art?
In October 1998, a friend of mine showed me some tattoo flash in a magazine
he had. The magazine paid $75 for a published piece, and I thought I could
do something like that. A short while after that I discovered Elfwood, and
it has been downhill ever since.
Have you had any formal training in the fine arts?
Yes, I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for two
years, studying painting and art history. I cannot emphasize enough what
little influence this experience has on what I am doing now. It was great
for what it was, but it was much more about students stripping themselves
naked for performance art than it was about developing any technical
ability. I wish now that I had taken scientific illustration while I was
there...
I quit doing art for 12 years after that, until 1998...
What are your biggest artistic influences and inspirations?
I didn't do fantasy art until relatively recently, but the Roger Dean covers
for Yes, the Hildebrandt calendars for Tolkien, and basically everything I
ever saw by Frazetta kept me interested in fantasy art since I was a kid.
The gamut of traditional art history has also been an enormous influence -
in particular Gustave Dore.
Can you describe your creative process - how you come up with ideas for a new drawing and how you take those ideas and create a finished piece of art.
I can't describe it accurately because I don't know how it works really.
Sometimes I am driving to the store to buy Pop Tarts or something and *bing*!! there is the
pic, right in my mind. Sometimes I literally sit in
front of my computer with my head down in my hands for days and I can come
up with a pic that is workable, but invariably not as good as the Pop Tart pic. Go figure.
After that, it is a pencil drawing scanned into Photoshop, using the Mighty
Smudge Tool to smear everything into place. Conventional media scares me,
because it hath no undo.
Do you have a favorite fantasy artist or an artist you admire?
Robh Ruppel and Jean-Pierre Targete are EVIL and must be stopped. They make
everyone else look bad. And of course the usual litany of Whelans, Broms,
Lockwoods and so on. *Sigh* So much great talent.
What advice would you give to young artists who are just starting out?
Swallow your pride and learn how to take a crit. Don't be afraid to copy,
and even trace in order to learn! Use the internet as much as you can to
put your work in front of others' faces and see what reaction you get. Keep
trying until you get into Epilogue!!
If you could be a character from a fantasy novel, movie or game, who would you be?
Probably "Q" from Star Trek: Next Generation, because he is daffy and
all-powerful. Yikes! That, or Cthulu.
Finally, what cartoons did you watch as a kid?
I didn't watch many cartoons, because that required getting out of bed
before noon on a Saturday. I loved watching Speed Racer after school though
(I like good anime, I just can't do it) and also the Three Stooges and the
Little Rascals. Uh, they are kind of like living cartoons, right??
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