Interview with Duane Keiser

Duane Keiser is a painter from Virginia with a trend-setting blog called A Painting A Day. The title says it all. Since 2004, in addition to his larger works, Duane has created a postcard-sized painting every day (give or take a few) and sold each one through his blog. His amazing work and clever marketing strategy have earned him an international audience of collectors and a feature in USA Today. I’m honored that Duane took time away from his easel to answer some questions at Creative Journey Cafe.

How did you develop the discipline to make a painting a day?

My painting teacher, Ray Berry, was also my karate teacher. I’ve practiced, quite intensely, a very traditional and rigorous form of Karate for around 23 years (Shotokan Karate of America). In a Shotokan practice we will often perform a single, basic technique a thousand times. We try to make each technique the best we can make it until, one day and tens of thousands of techniques later, it becomes second nature to us.

These kinds of practices are incredibly demanding and they require that you make up your mind to finish them. Our personal practices often involve setting up a specific challenge for ourselves like, say, making a thousand punches everyday for a month or making a practice of some sort everyday for a year, etc. (Ray made a hard practice everyday for 14 years and didn’t miss a day!) So by the time I attempted a painting a day, that kind of mentality was already ingrained in me. I’ve also been lucky to have been surrounded by people a lot more disciplined than I am throughout my life, so when I made up my mind to make a painting a day I did so with many examples of what real discipline is. I’m generally a slacker in comparison! 

For those of us who might try a similar experiment, what challenges will we face and how can we overcome them?

As I mentioned above, you first have to make up your mind and commit to the project. You will not get anything out of it if you treat it like a hobby - like something you can take or leave depending on how you feel that day. Ray always used to tell his students that painting is blue collar work (ie if road workers can work on a hot asphalt highway in 100 degree weather all day long, we painters can certainly drag our asses to our easels to paint, even when we’re a little tired, bored, frustrated or even sick.)

Time will be a problem too - you need to plan and build your day around each session. Keep your easel, paints, and brushes ready to go at all times so that you don’t have a half a dozen little things you need to do in order to start painting. Prepare a few dozen supports in advance.

Set up a reasonable duration for yourself because everybody has a different situation in their life. So maybe say you can make a painting a day for a week, rather than a month or a year.

Expectations: if this is your first time doing this, or if you’re just learning to paint, don’t worry too much about good or bad. Just paint. Treat your paintings like experiments or meditations - you are savoring some object or scene via paint. Whether that paint forms a masterpiece or not should not be a concern. It helps if, in the beginning, you take some pressure off yourself by making this a private affair - no blog, no selling, etc. Just paint. When you are done with each painting, pin them to a wall. When you have 50 or so, sit down and take a look at what you have and then maybe make a decision about making them public or not.

Can you talk about money and art? You seem to thrive as a fine artist, selling every painting you post on your blog. How did you develop your business side?

I, like many artists, was always concerned about business mixing with my paint and muddying my palette, so to speak. I didn’t want to end up making widgets - meaningless products created for sales (ie rent) rather than as a pursuit of a deeply personal aesthetic vision.

Being business savvy, I think, starts with viewing marketing and selling as creative pursuits rather than necessary evils. For instance, one day several years ago I decided to have an art show in my studio of my small works. I priced them extremely cheap. I bought lots of wine and beer - it ended up being a big party. It was a great time, lots of paintings sold and many people bought their first original paintings. I sold work that was honest and meaningful to me and lots of new patrons went home with paintings that were meaningful to them. It was a wonderful feeling and it was good business.

Your powers of sight are extraordinary. Your work is representational yet not photo-realistic. How do you define that line between rendering objects accurately yet not making it look like a photo?

I generally (I stress generally) don’t like photo-realist work because the paint itself is usually dead. There is no poetry, just a rather bland description. Paint is mysterious to me - you place a mark on the canvas, then another and another until, maybe, something happens. If it is right, the paint and the subject mesh together into some unnameable third thing. You are never quite sure how or why it happens but you know it when it does and it can just as mysteriously disappear on you if you overwork it. James Elkins compared painting to alchemy in the sense that it can be a transformative process whereby paint becomes something else rather than simply representing a subject (ie Rembrandt’s paint almost becoming skin in his self-portraits.) So I suppose I don’t really think in terms of stylistic lines (ie photorealism, impressionism, etc.) but rather I try to be sensitive to how the paint feels under my brush while at the same time staying connected to what that mark is representing.

What artists - contemporary or otherwise - excite you?

The ones that excite me include: the three V’s - Velazquez, Vermeer and Vuillard. Also, Rembrandt, Corot, Constable, Chardin, Cezanne, Hopper, DeKooning, Diebenkorn. Contemporary: Thiebaud, Howard Hodgkin, Ray Berry, Robert Bauer, Jane Wilson and about a half a dozen others I can’t think of at the moment.

What’s the purpose of art?

Honestly, I don’t think I can put it into words, which is probably for the better.

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I’d like to thank Duane for his time and for sharing his knowledge and experience with us. Be sure to visit A Painting A Day, and forward this inspiring interview to your creative friends! 

Oh, and don’t forget - Leave a comment! Tell us what you think.

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Dale Stephanos is one of the top illustrators working in the field today. His clients include Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Mad Magazine, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Herald, Sports Illustrated, and Golf Digest. Dale was kind enough to visit Creative Journey Cafe to answer some questions about his life and work.

Why did you decide to focus your career on caricature, despite your ability to paint and draw other things? Was it a natural decision or did you force yourself to focus?

I just always loved caricature. There’s something magical about drawing a portrait that looks more like a person than a realistic portrait. Picasso said something about his art being a lie that tells the truth. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to think that maybe truth is overrated. If someone tells you a good story, and you get a lot out of it, does it matter whether it’s true or not? For me, that’s what caricature is.

And to be honest, caricature has always been the currency that gets me into the best situations. When I was a kid, the easiest way to make friends was to get them to laugh by drawing them or other kids and teachers. After that, it became a little business - a drawing of the band Kiss for some math homework.

A lot of people say it was a brave decision to become an artist for a living, but for me it was the path of least resistance. For whatever reason, I’ve always had this weird ability to do this small thing and I’ve been rewarded for it. That doesn’t mean I haven’t worked very hard to develop my ability, but I think I had a decent head start.

Your illustrations have appeared in some of the top magazines in the world. Talent aside, how did you do that? Did you set written goals or hire an agent? How do you market yourself?

I never set written goals, although I like the idea and always intend to start doing it. I’ll write myself a note to start on that.

There are many routes to where I am at this point. For some magazines, I had a good working relationship with an art director back when we were both starting out and I was able to ride his/her coattails. Other times, I’ve had a piece in whatever newspaper and an art director saw it and kept me in mind. I also do a fair amount of email promotion, and I subscribe to a service called AdBase which is a contact resource for illustrators.

I maintain several online portfolios. There’s my own site, www.dalestephanos.com, and www.illoz.com, my favorite portfolio site, and www.theispot.com, which is the best advertising investment I’ve ever made.

Another way into this market is to target one person at the publication you want to be in and do a “custom” piece for them using a story they ran a photo with.

There are also the annuals - Communication Arts, The Society of Illustrators, and American Illustration are the most popular. A lot of ADs use these as source books to find new talent.

Lastly, the best way to get work is to do outstanding work when you have it. It’s hard to put an advertising dollar value on being on the cover of Newsweek. The way I think of it is that every time I have a job, I’m advertising my name.

What’s a typical workday like for Dale Stephanos? Do you maintain a strict schedule, or do you work whenever?

I get up early, my wife and I get my kids breakfast, go to Starbucks while bouncing between NPR, sports radio, and Howard Stern, get home and read the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and USA Today. Then it’s into the studio, check email, look at a couple of blogs - yours, Drawger, the Art Department, Velonews (biking), and get to work.

Today I had sketches for a book cover due, as well as sketches for a magazine spot. In addition, I have a full page and two spots due tomorrow, so I’m finishing those up. I just finished a pretty involved advertising job that I KNOW will have to be tweaked because ad jobs always are.

So I’m painting, sketching, trolling for reference, shooting my own reference, and trying to come up with brilliant ideas at the same time. Oh, and there’s the usual invoices/contracts to be filled out and sent.

How does being a stay-at-home dad affect your work? You’re also a bicyclist. How do you fit it all in?

My kids come home in the afternoon and it’s very important to me that they know someone is always here for them, and not to feel as though they’re in my way. My studio is set up with another computer for each of them, and they’ll do their homework in here, or have fun drawing on the floor (on paper) or playing computer games or whatever.

They’re getting old enough so that I don’t need to hover over them, so if it’s nice out, they go outside and I can still hear them. If a pack of wild dogs or coyotes attack, I have a great view, and I know how to dial 911. For the most part though, I try to be available to them from when they come home and when they go to bed. It’s the best part of my day.

After the kids hit the hay, I work until midnight - sometimes later if things are hectic. Somewhere in all that I try to find time to maintain my relationship with my wife, and stay in shape. I enjoy bike racing, and it’s very demanding. I just make sure it’s part of my routine.

You were obviously talented from an early age, but can you tell us how you developed your financial and business side as a freelancer? A lot of artists aren’t very good with money.

I’m only good at spending money. As I mentioned before, I’ve been lucky to be rewarded as well as I have up to this point. It could all go away tomorrow. I don’t think it will, because I keep chasing work, but it could.

What is your greatest motivating factor as a creator?

Why do dogs bark? I just can’t help myself. It’s like the way we get hungry. If you think about it, it really is reproducing in a way, so it’s the same kind of primal urge, to create. Well, not exactly the same, but still. I can have a week when I’ve done ten pieces, worked way too many hours, spread myself much too thin, and the day when I finally get a breather I’m back in the studio poking away at some drawing or painting, hoping things pick up soon.

You made a transition from traditional media like oils to almost entirely digital art. Can you describe the pros and cons of making the switch?

Digital is easier in every way. I like working digitally because it’s safer and more time efficient than most traditional media. When I used to paint for work, I’d have the hassle of getting the support, preparing it, transferring the sketch, waiting for parts to dry, etc. Then I’ve have to shoot it, or scan it, and God help me if the art director needed changes. I’d have to go in and paint the part over and do all those other steps again.

The thing I dislike about working digitally is that I feel like none of my work actually exists. Also, my favorite thing is to get right up close to paintings and see how they were done. You can almost participate in the process doing that, seeing where the artist had to paint his way out of a jam, or seeing brushstrokes that may not show up in print. There’s nothing like a good painting. I miss that, and I’m getting itchy to get back to it.

What digital tools do you use?

I use an Apple dual core 3 ghz computer with 16 gigs of RAM and a 1 terabyte external hard drive that I back up onto automatically every hour using Apple’s Time Machine. It’s pretty cool. If you have a crash, you can start up again and visually flip through back to a certain time. I use a Wacom Cintiq 21UX monitor, which is basically a Wacom tablet that’s a monitor. You use a stylus on the screen. It’s like being back to pencil and paper. Very cool. Also, I have a 30 inch Apple Cinema Display. I use the two of them as one big desktop. You can drag things from one screen to another.

For software I use Photoshop, Painter, and Sketchbook Pro for drawing. The Sketchbook Pro interface is the best of them all. I highly recommend it if you draw on the computer.

Who are your biggest creative influences?

As with any creative person, it’s a long, long list. Some of the highlights:

Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Son House, Ornette Coleman, Tom Waits, Jimmy Page, Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Bugs Bunny, Speed Racer, Wile E. Coyote, Mike Ploog, Alex Ross, Gottfried Helnwein, George Tooker, Odd Nerdrum, Chuck Jones, Bill Waterson, Ayn Rand, John Steinbeck, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman, Cormac McCarthy, Frank Frazetta, Hans Hoffman, Fred Otnes, Mark English, Tamara de Lempicka, Joel Peter Witkin, Richard Avedon, Otto Dix, Mark Seliger, Charles Schultz, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Philip Burke, Jesus Christ, the ‘04 Red Sox, David Levine, C.F. Payne, Mark Fredrickson, Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantini, Mark Spitz, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Lucien Freud, Charles Bragg, Andrew Wyeth…the list goes on and on.

If you could recommend 3 books that would help enlighten other creative people, what would they be?

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was pretty important to me when I started out. Hunter S. Thompson’s work inspired me to try to use a different part of my brain, but I wouldn’t recommend getting there the way he did. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is kind of a no brainer if you’re just getting your feet wet. Overall though, you can’t underestimate the importance of working with good music around you.

Lastly, how do you challenge and improve yourself as an artist?

I try not to get stuck looking at other illustrators’ work or my own. I try to see and hear new things and not fall into that comfortable spot where you eventually stagnate. It’s important to balance your life and your work. I think of the visual of filling up a bucket while I’m living my real life, so when I get in my studio I’ll have something to say. I’m very competitive though, and there’s no worse critic of my work than me, so I’m always trying to top myself. Hopefully, that will keep me improving.

I’d like to thank Dale for a great interview. Be sure to check out his blog at Drawger. Leave your comments to this post (below)!