Drawing Conclusions 1995

a: Black India ink on paper, 21.59 x 27.94 cm (8.5 x 11 in.)
b: Water color over black toner xerographic reproduction, color xerographic reproduction, 21.59 x 27.94 cm

This I tell people, my first job as an artist was as a character artist working in the New Century Timepieces shop on Main Street, U.S.A., Disneyland, California. This of course, does not include odd and random paid assignments to design tee-shirts for teams, draw caricatures for special occasions or paint signs. It was my first "show up at this time" regular paycheck for drawing.

I started in 1995, which was less than a year after having earned an associates of arts (AA) degree in Art, Advertising Design from Cypress Community College*. The program itself was less than 6 months old when I heard about it from my theme parks connections - at the time I had already quit working in theme park restaurants because, with degree in hand, I was pursuing my career path of art, i.e. doing page layouts with Pagemaker® for a community newspaper. The position at Disneyland required the artist to create original Disney Character art to order, which would then be reproduced for the face of a wrist watch.

Although it wasn't necessary to do so, I re-applied for a job for weekend work at Disneyland, restaurants again (Bengal Barbecue, Adventureland), which was the excuse to spend gas money to continually submit art in hopes that an opening would allow me an artist position in the watch program.

I got hired because the program lost two artist and sumer was approaching.

Now, getting to the point...

Each artist is asked to write her/his biography. These weren't artist's statements describing artistic intents, high-minded or other. These were short biographies displayed to inform guests of whom was sitting within the store's windows. It was also, I'm sure, an additional document adding value to the package of the original art, watch and certificate of authenticity.

Above is my first biography, which for no other reason than to be different and because it interested me to do so, is written as a 12-panel comic strip.


*Yes, I've only a AA degree from a junior college. Everything else is hard work - well, as hard as scribbling can be.