doing the art thing

it’s never too early to teach children about the devaluation of labor!

IF YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS ALREADY, YOU SHOULD TRY IT

Oh, you're not that special. We have computers to do that now. If you died tomorrow, we have your image. We have your voice. We have your biometric data. We can just duplicate you, it's no problem. Who needs flesh and blood? Who needs agency and free thought? Who needs the human soul? You're just a tool. And when we're done with you, we'll just toss you aside and find someone else.

It’s the lack of suspension of disbelief.

When you see something someone else has drawn or painted, you take in the content faster than you take in the technical aspects. You experience it as pseudo-real, the same way you stop perceiving animated characters as drawn or book characters as written as you get into the story.

On the other hand, when you yourself have made something, all you see is the machine behind the theater, so to speak. You’re probably thinking about lines, shading, coloring in a “does this make sense? Is this the best decision I could have made?”-kind of way.

I think that’s also why sometimes, pictures you haven’t looked at for a long time starts looking nice to you again, à la: “Hey past-me was unto something! Why can’t I replicate it nowadays?”. It’s probably specifically because you’ve forgotten the process of making it that you are now seeing it with fresh eyes.

Before the computing era, ILM was the master of oil matte painting, making audiences believe that some of the sets in the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogy were real when they weren’t. They were the work of geniuses like Chris Evans, Michael Pangrazio, Frank Ordaz, Harrison Ellenshaw and Ralph McQuarrie ! Forever thank you, to their handmade art and the work of their colleagues, that made us dream of impossible worlds and fantastic places across Earth and the Universe.

There are more background paintings on this article, featuring comments by the masters/artists themselves ! 

Some of the following pieces were made by other artists 2: