Bob Staake on visual thinking and advice to new illustrators
Excerpt from an interview with Thomas James
http://www.escapefromillustrationisland.com

Spend more time reading, spend more time conceptualizing, understand metaphor, understand allusion, think of your illustration as merely a vehicle, a vehicle for expressing yourself. Express something bigger than illustration, no differently than a trombone or a tuba is a vehicle for expressing your musical sensibilities. The tuba is going to exist but it is going to be lifeless, sitting there unless you apply your lips to it and actually blow through it. It’s what’s going on in your head that is coming out the other end. View your art as a conduit for ideas. Anyone can draw, anyone can create a pretty picture. There are a lot of pretty things in the world. All you need to do is walk into a book store and look at the children’s books and there are a lot of awful things, there are lot of good things too. What are you going to do to make your work stand out. So, my feeling is always, be able to think as a visual person… you won’t be able to develop the visual skills to think like a visual problem solver by belaboring over whether or not you are using a 2-ply bristol or a 3-ply bristol or a 2h pencil versus a 4h pencil. These are ridiculous concerns. If you pick up a stick and dip it into ink and you are able to create a line and then draw that way [you are communicating]. These are just ridiculous concerns of artists. Materials and what program to work in, these [concerns] are inconsequential, they have nothing to do with communicating visually with the public, nothing whatsoever. If you start treating your art as an extension of a visual thought process and a language, you will see your work absolutely improve dramatically. You will start to see your work living in a completely different dimension so that it isn’t simply decorative and some sort of aesthetic accoutrement to fill up grey space.
[In addition], the best advice I can give in terms of editorial work, which is where most young illustrators start… see yourself as a carnival barker of sorts. Your role whenever I open up that newspaper and see that blast of grey there, you are creating an illustration that is going to grab my eyeballs and I am going to look at it and say, ‘what the heck is going on here’! Do not tell the entire story in that illustration. Pique my interest, get me to then go ahead and read the headline and the lead of the story, bring me into it. Hopefully at that point I’ve been engaged and will go further into the story. But in your roll as an illustrator, you have done a noble act by getting the reader to integrate with that grey copy. At that point, once you’ve got them, your role is done and you can be happy. At the end of the day, it’s a tough thing to do with the glut of information out there, to be able to make people stop and go “Wow!” or “What on earth is going on here. I want to find out more about this.”

The idea of working on your own projects (a book as the example he gave) instead of working seeking the approval of others (illustration annuals) is a wonderful concept. It might not work, but I really like that idea.

And I agree with Shane Rebenschied: he does sound like a ” grumpy, inflexible curmudgeon “, but I really, really like how, after all these years, he´s still so passionate about illustration.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this interview. I hope it helped you to consider another side of the business.