When I first started using Photoshop, I was really obsessed with using filters. I ran around experimenting with them constantly. And just with noodling around and tweaking settings on every little thing I could find. It’s a good way to learn the program though, I think. Just testing out every damn little thing you find. You end up with a lot of wonderful messes, as far as illustration goes. Sometimes you luck out and figure out how to have all the experimentation hold together. And other times, the program wins, and you get sort of lost in this ugly excessive texturizing.

I used to teach Photoshop as part of my job a couple years back. And I saw that this whole business of getting caught up in using too many filters and layer effects is pretty much par for the course. Especially when you’re starting out. All weird special effects. No real substance. A lot of people never seem to move beyond this phase of using Photoshop, I’ve noticed. I’ve probably been working with Photoshop since maybe 97, and working with it pretty intensely since maybe 99. That’s probably when I started to get good at it, I’d say. I’d so some really wildly elaborate pictures, with all kinds of layers, and effects and colors and textures and just general madness going on. Like, I got good at using filters. And that’s cool, cause you can do some pretty sweet things.

But I feel like I’ve developed beyond that point recently. When I started drawing out these different objects and things from dreams that I’d been having. I did probably 15 or so different ones. Some came out really awesome. But they were so damn simple. Instead of having like maybe 35 different layers, with all different kinds of nonsense going on in them, I started working in only two layers. One for my black line work, and then one for the coloring above that. There’s no background in any of them. Just white space. No filters. No layer effects. It’s just me and a small handful of tools, zeroing straight in for what I want, and pulling it off pretty quickly and easily. And getting results which are arguably better than things I spent infinitely longer struggling with in the past.

I think that’s a trick in art, and writing and music, and all kinds of creative disciplines, that I’ve run up against over and over. Over-complicating everything while you’re learning. And as you start to really get good at something, you just start shedding all the complexity, and the confusion. Or maybe it’s just that you start to manage it better, or pull patterns and wisdom out of all of it. Start to integrate it all a little more fully. I know, for me, I naturally seek out complexity in order to challenge myself, and move past where I am. But I feel like I’m starting to really get a handle on my focus. What I want, how I want to get there, and how to bring other people along with me. And it’s a pretty good feeling. I don’t know how evident it is to outsiders, but I can feel the change happening in my work. The stripping away of all the layers and the filters and effects. And just getting down to business.