What is this column? I’m going to do that classic “answer by saying what it’s not” thing. First, it’s not going to be the definitive answer on anything. It’s not going to be “the way”, I’m not going to preach from on high on how things should be done.
I draw for a living and in an age when folks are trying to crack the code to making art, but I want to share the human experience behind the images you all see. This business is wonderful and treacherous, I’ll share stories here about how I get by.
If that’s instructive, then cool. But none of this is gospel.
My name is Mike Hawthorne, and welcome to Draw is Life
I like Aesop Rock but he’s hard to pin down. I could call him a “rapper” but most of you would conjure up an image that is 100% wrong.
He’s this middle aged, puffy-eyed white guy, perpetually weird, sometimes depressed, but always a great lyricist.
And he’s not a huge “success”. Not in the way we’ve come to think of when we think of rappers.
Not like the other guy who uses a similar name.
Now, they have similar names and both rap, which had some feathers ruffled in the hip hop world (well, if you know who Aesop is). Turns out A$AP Rocky didn’t bite Aesop Rock’s name, for reasons I won’t get into here, but the info is online if you’re curious.
Also, turns out Aesop might have gotten his name from another Aesop who collected fables or something…?
But I digress.
Aesop Rock has this track where he talks about a specific painting of Van Gogh’s that Aesop liked and how the world views Van Gogh as a “madman and a failure”.
Aesop Rock - On Failure (Official Audio)
It’s struck me, coming from Aesop, who still does $20 dollar shows and who doesn’t look like a “successful” rapper, especially compared to his more popular name-sake.
It also got me thinking about Van Gogh’s contemporaries. Specifically Degas, who was a big success in his time and after. The average person has seen Degas work, but it’s a toss-up whether they’d know the name. Where as everyone knows Van Gogh, likely due to the tired old ear story.
What am I getting at?
Well, it’s that I see a commonality between Aesop and A$AP, Van Gogh and Degas and it’s that none of the comparisons and “success” talk matters. They’re all successful to me, in that they all made work they felt strongly about despite whatever obstacles the world put in front of them.
I had a professor in college that once said we students all took it for granted that we made things. “Do you know how rare that is? Most people consume their entire lives, and never produce anything!”, he explained.
That resonated with me because most of my life I’ve spent in a sketchbook drawing things no one will likely ever see and I never think twice about it. I find so much fulfillment in the work itself, selling this stuff is just a means to buying myself time to make more of it.
People who have never made anything but a Wikipedia post about Van Gogh will casually call him a “Madman and a failure” despite his having made hundreds of drawings and paintings.
Sure, he can be called an important artist now, remembered for posterity, but who cares? He’s dead, he’ll never know.
But in his lifetime he made things and that had to count for something to him.
Degas was a success in his time and his work makes people money to this day, but again… who cares?
In his lifetime Degas would still go do copies of paintings in the Louvre well into middle age. That’s like purposely giving yourself homework decades after highschool, for fun.
You ever do that?
Artists do it all the time.
Aesop and A$AP all tell their stories, with varying degrees of “success”. The success part is out of their control, but the making part is.
In art “success” is often defined by other people who you have no power over.
So, pardon my French, fuck’em.
Please go draw, or paint, or knit, or write, or play the harmonica. Who cares if you’re a “success” or not. All you can control is what happens in your small life, so live it and make things and find solace in the fact that you’re doing something more than those voyeurs eager to pin a label on artists.
Speaking of “selling art to fund making more”, I’ll be offering the first 15 Batober peices over on the comic art auction site NerdCrawler. Follow me there to be notified when it goes live.
Oh, and here are the last week’s worth of Batober pieces!
Triumph
Storm
Illuminate
Safe
Problem
Terror
Dress
Relief
I have one more left to do, “Celebration”… but haven’t had a celebration in me yet. Hoping to draw that today.
Thanks for following along during Batober with me, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
Hey, Hysteria: OMG is coming along nicely! Here’s a preview.
Thanks for your time, talk to you next week.
Your boy,
Mike
The past couple of these have been really inspiring. I need to hear this. Much appreciated (especially the Bat drawings!).
Mike, thanks for writing this piece. When I started making my first comic I also had someone commend me for being someone who makes art, rather than just consumes it. It was eye-opening for me, I'd never thought of it like that. Here's to all the makers!