I Just got back from a long lecture from character designer/artist Stephen Silver, offered for free on my campus here at San Jose State University. This semester totally beats last semester if not just because I actually have some breathing room to attend some of these unique opportunities and events. I'll be the first to stand up and say I'm not a fan of Stephen Silver I never cared for the show Recess, I saw one episode of the ill-fated animated version of Clerks, and I've never seen Kim Possible or Danny Phantom or ever cared much for their visual style. But that being said The man Has worked for Warner Bros, Sony, Nickelodeon, and Disney so you know that theres gotta be a reason. I only really went because I had nothing better to do on this lazy Saturday morning, and I was blown away.

This is like the 6th or so artist lecture I've been to so far this semester, and once again I'm amazed at how good of a speaker these artists are. They just can talk for hours at a time about their own influences and stylistic choices and what motivates them in their work and life, It's really kool I hope I can be half that good with my people skills someday. Because essentially they're coming and teaching all these art students and thats what really earns my respect as an artist, it's one thing to just be an amazing artist and have some awesome skills, but when you split your time and actually try to pass on your skills to someone else and just teach some of what you know Thats whats really kool.

Stephen Silver split his lecture between showing his art, showing what inspires him (particularlly in character design), speaking on how to really enjoy life drawing, doing a drawing demo right infront of us, and answering questions and I enjoyed every minute of it. A great teacher inspires you to work harder and really gets you thinking about improving your own work. So now I really just want to sit here and draw for the rest of the day, and almost more importanly I have more inspiration of what to work on and better ideas of how to go about my drawings, I had a similar response after Paul Madonna came and spoke a couple of weeks ago.

One kinda side thing I wanna say too is he was using this program called Sketchbook Pro and man I'm jealous it looks way kool for drawing with a tablet... but I get back here to my dorm and I look it up and it costs 180$ >.< they sure don't make it easy for us poor artists do they!? Well they have a 15 Day Free trial so I'll get to mess around with it for the next couple of weeks at least (including spring break!)

Remember Kids: KEEP DRAWING!
LATER
DC