WORK HABITS, BABBLE AND INSPIRATIONS

My brain is constantly moving. Now, I'm not saying that brilliant things are always flowing through it. It's just that I'm always thinking and it jumps from thought to thought.

One second I'll have an idea for a new illustration and the next I'm thinking about what it would be like to be in a car accident and have your lower torso ripped off. Other times I'm trying to fall asleep and I'll wonder if a little bit of Cancer is growing inside my body or maybe I'm just thinking about how much money I have in my bank account.

It's annoying. I just wish I could get my mind to silence itself sometimes and focus.

When I get an idea for an illustration, I know it sounds clichéd, but it just clicks. Maybe I'll go to a comic store and see something that interests me or I'll see a photo, or someone will say something that will trigger an image in my mind. Then, I'll stare at a blank piece of paper and it's kind of like looking at clouds and looking and looking until you'll see an image. I will usually do a few sketches to kind of flesh out my idea a little before I start on a final. Unfortunately, by doing this I think I lose a lot of the initial spark of the idea and emotion, but this also allows me to refine the concept and elaborate on it. Sometimes your gut instinct isn't always the best approach to a problem, sometime it is. It's hit or miss. Then comes the actual illustration. I don't know any other the way to describe my state of mind while working on a piece other than a nervous wreck. If I smoked, I would probably smoke a pack of cigarettes in an hour while working, but instead choose to calm my nerves with Cherry Coke. I know it doesn't make any sense, but it's my only vice. Well, that and DVDs. But that's a whole other story. What I've learned over the years is that the more nervous and uncomfortable I am, the better. To me, comfortable art time either means (1.) you are superhuman, or (2) your mind is not working and you are not learning.

Over the years, my work has served as a great form of therapy for me in dealing with things going on in my life. One example is, in 1995, I had a bad break-up with a girlfriend (well, at least bad for me because I was crazy for her) because she felt that drugs and partying were more exciting to be around then me. Now, I'm sure that there was more to it than that, and I was very young then, but out of that situation I began drawing angels. But not just regular angels, but angels doing drugs, partying, and basically screwing up their lives. I know it seemed kind of holier than thou in approach, but it was very helpful in getting some shit out. Those drawings turned into a story I've been working on for a few years now, even though the whole emotion behind the story has been gone for a long time. It's the story of an angel sent down from heaven to save a girl, very similar to my ex, and ends up getting sucked into the whole party scene. Her "mission", the girl, ends up overdosing while she is off being decadent and feeling that she cannot report back to heaven given her failure, she dyes her blonde hair black and in a very horrific scene amputates her wings. After that she has a very unpleasant meeting with the devil, disguised as a drug dealer, and ends up committing suicide by jumping off a building with wings made of newspaper attached to her back. The universal message of the story is the fact that we cannot transcend until we reach rock bottom, or something like that. I'm still working on it and will hopefully get it published. It's a very personal story that I think I need to tell.

My grandma thinks I'm on drugs.

I came home from college one Christmas, ripped and baggy clothes, bleach blonde hair and went to visit my grandma Sayre (on my mother's side). I've never been comfortable around her and usually would go to sleep on her couch so I wouldn't have to talk to her when I would visit. Well, on this particular occasion I was half asleep on the couch and through blurry, droopy eyes, caught her making a move on my sketchbook, a place definitely not reserved for people of the older age group. I just remember the words "oh shit, oh shit" whispering over and over in my head as I watched her flip page after page, her eyes growing wider and wider the more she looked. Now my mom is an occupational therapist, someone who helps people with drug dependency and mental problems (read: wackos) so in front of me as I slept (wink. wink.) my grandma proceeded to discuss with my mother, my possible drug problems and/or psychological issues. It kind of made me laugh, but it also made me sick to my stomach to hear someone who should be close to me talking about me like I was some screw-up. And in her eyes I think I have always been. She didn't agree with me going to art college and thought it was a waste of money. When I graduated, she figured I would throw on a suit and get a job in a big ad firm selling lies to the common people, or something like that. I can't totally blame her though. I think that if she would have known the things I was dealing with in my life and THEN looked at my drawings rather than trying to interpret my life from my drawings, they would have made more sense. My mom's response to my grandma: "Jason just draws what he draws." Couldn't have said it any better. I don't say it enough, because I don't want to come off as a mommy's boy, but she rocks.

When I draw an angel shooting up or smoking a cigarette, I am not trying to be sacrilegious in any way, but merely making a comment on the world around me. Unfortunately, good people do bad things. People I see as angels participate in self-destructive behavior and that doesn't change the fact that they are good people. I remember writing once that there is nothing more painful than watching someone you truly care about hurt themselves with drugs and then change right before your eyes. I still feel that way.

I am inspired by a lot of things. I love comic books and have for years. I love Norman Rockwell. I love Art Nouveau. I love anime movies. I love video games. And somehow I manage to take what I like the most about all of those things and other stuff that captivates me, and regurgitate it into my work. I love talking with artists about their work. I love having my face two inches away from their work and looking at each brush stroke or pencil line, hoping that they were a nervous wreck like I would be, when they placed that mark. To me doing art is both mental and physical and I dread the day when physically it will be impossible for me to draw, whether it's because my eyes are shot or my hands are shaking from Parkinson's. Like I said. I think about a lot of things. I wonder what it's like for an artist in the after-life when they can't physically touch the paper they are going to draw on. And sometimes I wonder if this lifetime is going to be the only time in my entire existence when I will be able to do art. This is the main thing that drives me, the feeling that my time is slowly running out to do what I want to do and draw all the images I want to.

But it keeps me on my toes.

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