Painting For My Muse: 2015

Nosce te Ipsum. That's Latin for "Know Thyself".

Growing up, most kids don't understand or have long term goals. However, I knew at a very young age that being an Artist and creating artwork was what I wanted my life to be about. My artwork is my legacy, not just for my children, but for those that appreciate my work.

In order for you to really get to know my art and who I am, I need to start from the beginning. My beginning. I've never told my story before. I tend to be a very private person.

In fact, when I got into the illustration industry it was dominated by male artists. I decided to go by my last name, Albrecht, so that art directors would think I was a guy and would in turn look at my art without prejudice.

Over the last 20 years a lot has changed in the art industry and likewise so have I. I'm inspired to share my story now due to two things that recently happened to me.

A great book!

The first was a book I read called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. A friend of mine suggested I read it and I'm glad I did. It resonated deeply with me. I stepped back and analyzed my life, only to realize that I was an Outlier.

The second reason which made me want to share my story is that my daughter's elementary school had a Career Day and they asked me to come talk about my career as an artist.

A few days after speaking to the children, my daughter came home with a stack of letters from the kids that heard my lecture and they were all inspired to be artists, just like me.

With that said, I hope that I can inspire you as well.

Art In My Veins

I was born in Houston, Texas in 1974. I was surrounded by the art and the creative thinking of my parents.

My father went to art school and studied photography and commercial art. He had a good camera eye and a talent for graphic design and type-setting. I've always envied his excellent pen-manship.

My mother was a 1970's version of Martha Stewart; she could sew clothes, do needlepoint, bake anything, grow vegetables and flowers, make any kind of craft (I treasure the hand-made Christmas ornaments we created one year when I was little), and she had a natural talent for drawing both still life and nature scenes. It seemed inevitable that I was to become an artist as well.

Painting by my mother (age 14)

I owe everything to my parents. Both of them were very supportive of my interest in art as I was growing up. Some of my fondest memories of my mother and I were the countless hours we spent together drawing and coloring.

Creative Spark

I consider myself lucky. I truly believe that I was born in the right place at the right time. At a very young and impressionable age, my imagination was fueled by growing up in Houston (aka NASA Control), a city known for it's art culture and sleek and futuristic architecture, and by seeing all the original Star Wars movies in the theatre with my father.

My mother and I meeting Darth Vader

I still remember meeting Darth Vader at Foley's and getting his autograph after my mother convinced me to come out from behind her legs... to a 4 year old, Darth Vader was really intimidating (especially after seeing how he treated a princess!) I still have that autograph, btw.

Sci-fi and fantasy books were another influence on my imagination as a child. Since iTunes, Netflix, and cable tv didn't exist in the '70s, my only source of entertainment other than toys were the books that my mother purchased for me. No matter if we had the money or not, my mother always bought me books to read; it was an addiction that started with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I also treasured the collection of Greek Mythological tales that I had and spent many hours reenacting at the deeds of the gods and heroes of Olympus.

Do, Or Do Not. There Is No Try.

I have never been afraid of taking a chance or doing something new. I am the sort that if I put my mind to it, there is nothing that I cannot do. There is no better example of this than when I was 8 years old and snuck into my father's art studio. Unbeknownst to him I took a set of his acrylics so I could paint a poster of a wildlife scene that I got from my school's recent Scholastic Book Club sale. I didn't know how to paint, however, I had watched Bob Ross paint on tv a few times. I still have the results of that first endeavor back in 1982:

My very first painting (age 8)

I entered my very first school Art Show competition at age 10. I drew a profile of a swan using a No. 2 pencil. Not much detail, just an outline.

My first Art Show entry, a swan (age 10)

I'm proud of this piece for the simple fact that it represents that I was not afraid to put my talent and skill up on a wall for evaluation and criticism.

Do It Yourself

Way before today's DIY craze, I decided to teach myself how to draw. I never took any special classes or had any formal training as a child. Instead I bought lots of books on "How To Draw". Everything from animals, the human figure, landscapes, trees, flowers, and plants to books on painting in watercolor, oil and acrylic, books on pen & ink, font types, and professional cartooning.

Examples of the books I used as a kid

I even inherited my mother's collection of drawing books published in the 50's & 60's. Most of the topics are nature and landscape oriented, which were the subjects that she loved the most.

If I wanted to figure out how to do something, my only option was to buy a book and read how to do it. At this point the internet was still in its developmental stage and YouTube didn't exist. For giggles, here is an example of one of my early cat drawings.

Drawing of a Kitten I did as a child

In spite of all the "technology" readily available today, reading and research are still very important for an artist. For every idea that I get for a painting I want to do, I spend countless hours reading and researching about what I want to illustrate. For this task I love going to my local Half Price Books! I make notes of details that I can put into the painting and I study illustrations and photos of the subjects that I am painting about. I think at one point in my life, I had about 7 tall bookcases worth of books.

Good Grief!

For a while when I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a cartoon artist; after all what would be cooler than drawing the Sunday Funnies all the time or working and doodling for Walt Disney?

One of many Snoopy & Woodstock doodles

It takes an extensive amount of knowledge on the human anatomy and objects to be a good cartoonist. After learning the amount of training and daily work required for the job, I changed my mind.

There’s a lot of competition and you have to be the top 1% to make it. Woodstock and Snoopy are still my favorite characters, and I doodled them a lot back then.

Learning the Basics

Throughout my early school years, my favorite subjects were always Ancient History, Literature, and Art. I counted the hours until those class periods would roll around. I was successful in all of my classes because of the encouragement I got from my mother. She was always there to help and direct me when I needed a push in the right direction.

It goes without saying that the class I loved the most was Art. Duh! Later on in Junior High, Art class began to teach me concepts that are the foundations of art: appreciation for Still Life drawing and fundamentals like Color Theory and Color Relationship.

Here are some examples of my evolution and understanding of Still Life Drawing:

Apple (1986)

Apple (2006)

My Influences

Next, I want to talk a bit about my early influences because they play an important part in how both my life and art career have turned out so far. I had four major influences:

I Want My MTV

Television wasn’t the same after the debut of MTV and neither was I. Both of my parents loved music and there was a constant stream of it playing at our house, whether it was off the record player or blaring out of the radio or TV. I was exposed to a variety of music growing up, and British New Wave was my favorite. =)

The Fab Five!

Even today, music has a big influence on my art. I get ideas from music that I hear on TV and from instrumental pieces that I like in films I watch. One thing is for sure, I always listen to music while I am working on art. Whether it's one song or instrumental piece in particular or an entire film soundtrack, there is something about music that helps me hold a mood that I want while I am painting or drawing.

Let's Role Play!

For my 10th birthday, my aunt gave me a red box called Dungeons & Dragons. It was 1984 and this RPG was taking the bookstores and hobby shops by storm, again. What was very interesting was that this game was based solely on using your imagination, doing math, and rolling dice. It was hours of fun and it ignited my creativity. This is probably the best gift I ever got and a very important moment in my history.

I still have this old box set!

I spent hours staring at the art and illustrations inside this gem. They were so COOL, I mean there was a Dragon on the cover and warriors, mages, and all sorts of other cool creatures inside that I was enthralled. I knew that one day I wanted to draw and paint like this and be in a RPG game.

BAMF! KAPOW! SNIKT!

The next big influence that I stumbled upon was comic books. It was the late 80’s when I found Wolverine and the X-men, but it was love at first sight. It was the art, that captured me, and in particular artist Jim Lee.

My favorite heroes!

The stories were fun and amazing. The characters were cool and marvelous. Like music, comic books would play a role in opportunities that I had later on in my life and art career.

Simply Elegant

The last key influence on my early beginnings happens to also be the one that made the biggest impact. In the 80’s, Patrick Nagel’s “elegant” women were a huge success, most famous was the cover of Duran Duran’s Rio album. I fell in love with his simplistic style, so much so I imitated his art for a while. They do say, “Imitation is the best form of flattery.”

The Art of Patrick Nagel

I will have to give credit to Patrick Nagel for giving me the courage to draw people and portraits. Drawing portraits can be very intimidating, but Nagel’s simplistic style made it look easy. However, I quickly found out that what may look “easy”… is not always so.

Minima Maxima Sunt

"The smallest things are most important".

For me, the 90's were a sequence of "small" opportunities that opened the door for my success in the art industry. To really understand how I got there, I need show you all the pieces that fell into play.

Going to the Dark Side

In the wake of losing my mother at age 12, I came face to face with the reality that no one lives forever.

Ironically, I became obsessed with the idea of immortality and began to read hundreds of books on vampirism, angels, and demons and became fascinated with ancient Egyptian culture and mythology. I began collecting old books and any artifacts that I could find.

My 1st Edition - In Search of Dracula

This was the first turning point in my life and the one that put me on the path I am on today. Ultimately I figured out that if I couldn’t live forever, then perhaps I could create a "masterpiece" that would stand the test of time.

My art is the place where I share my inner thoughts, concerns, passions, and questions about life and the universe. There is a piece of me in every work of art that I create. My ultimate goal is that I inspire the viewer. I want everyone who views my art to walk away feeling something.

Taking a Ride With My Best Friend

When I started high school, I met a senior girl and we became fast friends after we discovered we had three things in common we liked: the artist Patrick Nagel, Depeche Mode, and Anne Rice. Ironically, only a few months after we met, she picked me up after classes let out and on the way home we had a head-on car crash on a little two lane farm road.

We survived, thankfully, but the event sealed our friendship and we took it as a sign of fate that we were meant for each other.

We spent countless hours on the phone and spent many nights at each other's houses. We wrote stories together and drew illustrations of all of our characters. One day while listening to Depeche Mode we decided that we should illustrate all the songs that Depeche Mode had written. These things combined are what started my 10,000 Hours.

Depeche Mode's Breathing In Fumes B-side

I'm sure you are wondering: 10,000 Hours? What's that?

According to Malcolm Gladwell, every person that has been successful in life (Bill Joy, Bill Gates, or the Beatles for example) can attribute their success back to their early beginnings when they practiced their craft every day, all day, year after year until they perfected it. Typically this period of time adds up to about 10,000 hours (or more).

Let me put it into numbers for you. From 1989 to 1995, I drew an average of 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Over a 7 year period that is about 13,000 hours.

I'll give it to you visually.

This is a portrait that I did in early 1990:

Lewis Alucard "Dracula" (1990)

This is a portrait I did five years later in 1995:

Brandon Lee as The Crow (1995)

And a portrait I did four years after that in 1999:

Michael Praed as Robin Hood (1999)

Commercial Art

The next opportunity that came my way was that since I already “knew” how to draw, I decided to take a Commercial Art class as my first elective in high school. I learned a lot about graphic design, type setting, layouts, working assignments and project deadlines; all of which would prove invaluable when I started my career after high school.

Commercial Art "Transformation" assignment

What is really interesting, was that I also had a unique situation present itself while I was taking this class. My best friend started going to the Art Institute of Houston and she shared her learning and assignments that the instructors gave her with me. Think about that for a moment. I was in high school and getting college level learning on the side... for free!

Traditional Photography

While in high school, I also took three years of Photography. Now, I’m talking “old school” Pentex K-1000, roll of film, developer tank in a dark room, style of photography. I learned how to control film speed and aperture by hand to produce any special effects I wanted since there were no fancy "filters" on a manual camera. Other types of special effects that I created, like "polarization" and "colorization" were also done in the dark room with chemicals.

The most important thing I learned in photography, however, happens to be a critical skill for artists: Composition. An artist has to be good at Composition. If your art doesn’t have a good layout that the eye can follow with a natural flow, then publishers and art directors will not like it. Three years of photography gave me the opportunity to fine tune my layout skills.

Five Sketches A Day

My photography teacher told me that I had to buy a journal and that every week by Friday I had to complete 5 pages in my journal. It didn’t matter what I put in my journal as long as I worked on and turned in 5 pages. So, every week for 3 years I drew or wrote on 5 pages. It taught me to practice my art skills… daily.

Anatomy study of a still life Skeleton

I didn’t get it at first, but later on I understood that by doing daily journaling, I was keeping my hand in “my craft” by practicing techniques via doodles, sketches and studies.

It also happens that my photography class opened the door for my next opportunity. You see, my teacher, knowing that I was into art, made a deal with me that once once I completed my photo assignments, I could to go down the the hall to the Drawing I class that Ms. Macy taught and participate in her classroom. I got the benefit of learning from two classes at once, though I only got credit for Photography. Still, I was the only student at the school that got this privilege.

Finding My Niche

After I got out of high school, I knew that I wanted to illustrate for RPG companies and my local hobby shop happen to carry the latest and greatest in the industry.

They also had this "new concept" game, one that you bought, collected and traded cards to play an opponent. It was called Magic the Gathering. From the moment I saw the artwork in it, I knew that I wanted in.

Ad for Vampire the Masquerade

While browsing the hobby shop, I also spotted my next opportunity. There was a new RPG company that was rising up in the industry, called White Wolf. It was like love at first sight. I knew that I wanted to work for that company and that my Gothic art style was perfect for their books.

Leaping Into the Art Industry

The next turning point in my life came in 1995, when I established my own business identity, Albrecht Illustrations. I also saw a flyer advertising a sci-fi convention coming up. I signed up for the art show and prepared some prints and originals to hang.

Turns out, I was in the right place at the right time! My art attracted the attention of an art agent and after meeting for lunch and talking the offer over, I agreed to sign on with the agency. My agent sent a sample of my work to a show in Atlanta to be juried, and I got in.

Cover art by Michael Whelan

Turns out it was a NASfiC (North American Science Fiction Convention) show, the most prestigious show in America that year.

For fantasy and sci-fi artists, both NASfiC and WorldCon are like the Formula 1 Races of the art industry. Both shows rotate in and out of North America and Europe. They are very prestigious since the Art Show gets exposure to every major book publisher and Art Director in the industry.

My art hung in the art show with the “Best of the Best” artists in publishing at the time: Michael Whelan, Brom, Brian and Wendy Froud, Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson and Don Maitz just to name a fraction of the incredible talent that was in the Art Show. I felt extremely honored to be there and it was great to meet and make acquaintances with many of the artists that attended that year.

It’s All About Networking

From 1995 to 1999, I sent my artwork out to over 110 art shows in the US, some which I attended, so that my art had the most visibility in the marketplace.

The goal was to get noticed by potential Art Directors in order to get commission work because I am a freelance artist. You can only be successful if you network and stay visible in the Marketplace. You also need to maintain relationships with your connections by staying in touch with them, and in today's social media world it's easy to do!

The Thrill of Victory

All my hard work and networking paid off in spades. I have shown at such prestigious shows as World Horror Con, World Fantasy Con, GenCon, Comic-Con San Diego, and World Science Fiction & Fantasy Con.

Afifa, the Herald - Jyhad CCG

I got the opportunity to be a part of a CCG (collectible card game) by White Wolf, I was featured on the cover of a comic book by Dark Muse Comics, and I contributed illustrations to a RPG game published by Vajra Enterprises. I also illustrated many stories featured in the small press magazines produced by DNA Publications. All the goals that I had wanted to achieve... became a reality.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas est

"Knowledge itself is power".

Opportunities are everywhere. You just have to learn how to see them in order to seize them and this is where knowledge comes into play. I can also say, without a doubt, the old saying “in the right place at the right time” is very true.

My art and network connections have granted me several unique opportunities to meet and share my art with actors, musicians, and writers that are the inspirations for my art. I’m very lucky and very grateful.

For example, I had the opportunity to meet the band, Depeche Mode, in 1993 when I won front row tickets and a back stage pass to a concert they performed in Houston.

I brought the portrait (above) to the show along with some of those song illustrations I mentioned earlier. The band loved them and Martin kindly autographed his portrait for me.

Words of Wisdom

At ComicCon San Diego ‘96, I had the opportunity to meet and hang out with one of my favorite comic book artists, Jim Lee. Even better, a mutual friend of ours took me on a tour of Wildstorm Studios.

Iron Man #2

I watched Scott Williams ink the cover art above and I saw the “Pit” where all the aspiring artists work while Jim Lee oversees them. Over the pit was a sign that Jim put there:

Seek not the Master, seek what the Master sought.

You see, kids of all ages grew up wanting to be a comic book artist just like Jim Lee. However, when Jim brought these kids into his studio, his coaching to his students was that they needed to be themselves and not try to be him.

His mentoring of his students was inspiring and I took his lesson to heart. I was so busy trying to imitate the art I liked and trying to create art that publishers would like... that I forgot to just be myself.

Learning from the Best

At GenCon 2003, I had the opportunity to meet a contemporary master painter named Donato Giancola. A mutual friend introduced us and I had the chance to sit and watch as Donato painted and shared tips and tricks that he uses to create his art.

Donato working on Joan of Arc

Given his background and formal training in art, it made me realize that I had a lot to gain from taking traditional college classes. I decided then and there that I was going to paint more classical themed art, just as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood did, based on classic literature that I had read and loved growing up.

Another result of this meeting was that I enrolled and started working on an art degree in my spare time. These classes have given me skills and perspective that I didn't have before.

Ars Gratia Artis

"Art is the reward of Art." I derive much of my inspiration and creativity from mythology, ancient history, music, and classic literature and art.

Here are some of my favorite master painters:

The Lament of Icarus

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

John William Waterhouse

Caravaggio

Jean Andre Rixens

Leonardo de Vinci

Herbert Draper

Rembrandt

Gustave Dore

Arthur Rackham

Alphonse Mucha

Here are some of my favorite subjects and writers:

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves"

Greek Mythology

Classical Antiquity

Sir Thomas Malory

Dante Alighieri

William Shakespeare

John Milton

Bram Stoker

Mary Shelley

Edgar Allen Poe

William Blake

Here are some of my favorite composers:

Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig van Beethoven

Richard Wagner

Carl Orff

John Williams

Danny Elfman

Hans Zimmer

Howard Shore

Sting

Cirque Du Soleil

Contemporary artists in the industry that have influenced me:

Art by Alan Lee

Alan Lee

Virgil Finlay

The Brothers Hildebrandt

Patrick Nagel

Yoshitaka Amano

Frank Frazetta

Michael William Kaluta

Drew Struzan

Michael Whelan

Larry Elmore

Thank you for taking time to read my story and I hope that you walk away inspired and interested in Art!

~ Albrecht

Painting For My Muse

Friday, August 21, 2015

My Bio

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

My Technique and Materials

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

How I Became An Artist