Follow the money

What can we learn from contemporary animation?

Waves of Mercy and Grace, Carol L. Douglas. Would I want to wander around a world that looked like my paintings?

The global animation industry brought in about $254 billion in 2017, versus about $45 billion for the fine art industry. Unlike many other growth industries, big parts of the animation industry are located in the old developed economies, including the United States and Canada. It’s a fast-growing sector, averaging about 5% per year.

If you’re a young person interested in a career in the arts, you will do well with a degree in computer graphics. Computer graphics designers working in the motion picture and video industries earn an average of $64,350, and there’s a lot of demand for them in other industries as well. (In fact, the Federal government is the top-paying employer of computer graphics professionals.)

Keuka Lake Farm, by Carol L. Douglas

This means that animation plays a big part in developing our national aesthetic. I don’t play video games, but I’m curious about their imagery, and I like speculating on how it will influence painting. I see this in the work of two young brothers from Syracuse, Tad and Zac Retz. Zac is a visual developer for Sony Pictures Animation. Tad is a painter. Their toolkits are very different, but the end result is often eerily similar.

Horia Dociu is a video game studio art director at ArenaNet. He identified three pillars on which all visual design rests:

• Idea –the intellectual content of your work.
• Design – the stylistic and compositional choices you make.
• Technique – your method of rendering.

He then went on to mention ‘tone,’ which I’m going to call ‘vibe’ because tone means something else in painting. Painters achieve their vibe through color choices and lighting, but most importantly with the subconscious things we bring to the easel. In fine art, we often think of our vibe as a natural state, but it’s also the easiest thing to manipulate into dreck. That’s a good reason to avoid being overly self-conscious about it.

Still, there are some fine painters out there whose work relies heavily on controlling ambiance. An example is Tarryl Gabel. She has an enthusiastic following for her misty, gentle, elegiac landscapes.

Piseco Outlet, by Carol L. Douglas

My kids sometimes play a game set in a landscape that looks like New Zealand on steroids. I enjoy watching because it’s a beautiful landscape, even though the actions are dorky. This raises a question that we painters never ask ourselves: given a choice, would we enjoy wandering around in a world that looked like our paintings? If not, we might have a problem with our vibe.

Dociu went on to suggest that video artists ask themselves the following questions:

• Why am I doing this?
• What do I want to say?
• Who am I speaking to?
• How can I be most expressive to reach the audience?

Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, by Carol L. Douglas

In the end, his talk came down to craftsmanship. It plays a big part of animation development but is given little credence in modern painting. Perhaps that’s why the money flows so heavily in the direction of animation. They’re giving the people what they actually want.

Work ethic

He committed to painting two paintings a week, despite working at a full-time job on the side.

Sun Above Nant Peris, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Rowles Fine Art)

Sir John "Kyffin" Williams was a landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll, on the island of Anglesey. He is widely regarded as the greatest Welsh artist of the 20th century. (If you’re like me, this is the moment where you first come to grips with the idea that there is a Welsh school of painting at all.)

His painting looks a great deal like the lunchtime noodling of my young friend Zac Retz. Zac is a video developer at Sony Pictures Animation. He has a brother, Tad, who’s equally talented as a painter. However, Tad’s work in the ‘real’ medium of paint doesn’t look quite as much like Sir Kyffin’s paintings as Zac’s electronic paintings do.

Fedw Fawr, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Thompson’s Galleries)

That has something to do with their toolkits. Zac’s electronic brush works more like a palette knife than a real-world brush. Sir Kyffin relied heavily on black, which is frowned upon in contemporary painting but not in electronic art. Sir Kyffin’s work looks very contemporary to modern eyes.

It’s not just the technical side of Sir Kyffin’s paintings that compels, but his attitude toward the craft of painting.

Sir Kyffin was born on Anglesey in May of 1918. He joined the 6th Battalion Royal Welsh in 1937, intending to make a career in the military. He failed his medical examination of 1941 due to epilepsy and was forced to retire.

Morfa Conwy, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA (courtesy Christies)

His doctors advised that he take up art for his health, intending it as a hobby. Instead, Kyffin scraped his way into London's Slade School of Fine Art, despite an indifferent academic record. He went on to be senior art master at Highgate School from 1944 until 1973, at which point he was famous as a painter. Sir Kyffin died on Anglesey at age 88, leaving his entire fortune of £6m in paintings and other assets to Welsh arts organizations.

Knighted in 1999, Sir Kyffin was a Royal Academician and Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales Colleges, Swansea, Bangor and Aberystwyth.

Sir Kyffin was a highly-disciplined painter, setting himself up a target of completing two paintings a week while teaching at Highgate. He kept this rate of production up through his lifetime.

Mount Snowdon from Nantlle, Sir Kyffin Williams, RA

“I never had to think what shall I paint,” he said. “I don't think how I should paint it. The whole thing to me somehow is far too natural a thing. It is there and I am the vehicle for expressing it.”

He was a self-described depressive and obsessive. “I paint for kicks rather like Van Gogh painted for kicks—excitement. Maybe if you're an epileptic you crave excitement,” he said. “And I wanted the excitement of a strong dark against the bright light. It does something for me like other people take alcohol.”

David Wynn Meredith was interviewed by the BBC last week about Sir Kyffin. “He believed that you had to love your subject matter, and if you don't love anything you can't communicate,” he said.

“And Kyffin certainly did love. He loved people, he loved the mountains, he loved the seascapes. He was totally committed to his craft as a painter. Painting was his life. And he viewed it not in any emotional way at all. As he often said, ‘it's my job.’”

The lesson of pacing yourself

It’s a great idea, but when God ordains something else, you’d best go along quietly.

Mary Day returns to her home port, by Carol L. Douglas.

Tad Retz is the perfect houseguest. He’s stayed here twice and is so unobtrusive that I’ve never actually met him. I do know his older brother, animator Zac Retz, whom I met in a cemetery.

Tad arrived late Saturday night and left very early Sunday morning. I would have stopped to see him before church, but he had already finished painting and catapulted off to his next destination.

Contemplating that amount of energy is exhausting. Then I remember that Tad is the same age as my youngest child. It’s no surprise that he bounces around like a corn kernel on a hot griddle.

The motto of coastal Maine ought to be, “make hay while the sun shines.” That’s also the guiding principle of plein air painting, and art festivals and craft shows. Spin like a dervish while you can, and rest after the season ends.

Still, everyone needs some down time. I received a horrifying photo from a friend. She has a second infection in her face. Last year it was a sinus infection run amok; this time it’s in her eyes. Like me, she works an intensive summer season. Cutting corners and being overtired resulted in some impressively ugly mug shots.

I try to identify the signs of overwork before I get sick. On Thursday, I painted at Rockport harbor. I forgot my palette, so I whipped home to collect it. I careened back into the closest parking spot, only to realize my brush holder wasn’t in my backpack.

You can't finish a painting when your central boat leaves, or that's my excuse.

At noon, the central boat in my composition cast off its buoy and headed out. I packed up, and found a parking ticket on my windshield. “Three strikes and you’re out,” I told myself. Instead of working, I went out to lunch.

Noting that I’m mucking up small things usually stops me from screwing up spectacularly. I have a busy week ahead and then I’m on the road for three weeks. I will steal my rest where I can in the coming days.

Still, I’m flying to Baltimore as you read this, on a 24-hour, last-minute visit. I wish the circumstances could be different, mainly because I’m going to pray with a friend who’s gravely ill with cancer.

“I’m no good at it,” I told my friend Helen when the idea first burrowed into my consciousness. Years ago, my cousin was in hospice in Atlanta. I picked up my brother in Virginia and we tore down I-81.

Self portrait with cancer, charcoal, by Carol L. Douglas.

We arrived to learn that she’d just awakened from her coma. She moved from hospice to rehab and lived another eighteen months.

I told this to Helen as an example of how my praying didn't matter. She read it differently. “I think you need to go to Baltimore,” she said. I gasped as I grabbed the implication.

And so, I go. You can set your sights on Tarshish, but if you’re supposed to go to Nineveh, you’d best just get on with it.