Sunday, September 10, 2006

(23) October 5, 1978 Rapidographs and Gouache

1978: First Class Stamp $0.15 cents
Susan B. Anthony Silver Dollar
People's Temple Jonestown Mass Suicide
Sony introduces "The Walkman " portable stereo player
Steve Martin performs "King Tut" on Saturday Night Live
"Dallas"and"Mork and Mindy" debut on Television
George Moscone and Harvey Milk assassinated in San Francisco
The comic strip "Garfield" appears in Newspapers
"Smurf's", "Garfield", and "Scooby Do" toys were the favorites
I changed colleges this year, transferring to East Texas State University because I found TWU didn't really provide the intensive art training I wanted. Up into this point, I was torn between studying law and art, and I finally had made the decision to go forward with art and art direction. So transferring to a co-ed institution changed my life completely of course. East Texas was in a strange shift itself, and for a brief time in 1976-1982 a lot of really interesting and talented photographers and artists studied there. I believe they were mainly attracted to Professor Lee Davis, who was a wild man that just happened to teach classes occasionally.
Since I was a double major, in both fine arts and commercial arts application, I had a foot in two very different art worlds. The fine arts seemed to be a hot bed of anarchism and the commercial artists seemed more "professional" but somewhat anal retentive. My first year there was learning to move between these worlds, and I spent hours learning how to work a rapidograph on one hand and a triple 000 size brush in another. This was the year I was introduced to gouache (an opaque type of water color ) that I use on a daily basis in illustration now. A real year of growth around my skills as an artist.

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