David Cherry: Well, the writing is better than I had hoped for, and the layout and production are top notch. If I would change anything, I would just wish that I could have done even better with the art and/or had a year or two more to play with it. But then, I can always say that about anything I have ever done. For the conditions and the time allowed, I think we did a heck of a job.

Initially, part of my job as the artist on this project was to do the actual layout of the book. I had never had that opportunity before and looked forward to it. There is a lot of power in being able to do the layout. You get not only to do the art, but to decide how it will be presented as well.

My good friend, Lillian Butler, helped me out initially, since she knows Quark Express(tm), the program used to prepare manuscripts for printing. And I was working with a fellow at Ballantine named Alex Klapwald, with whom I had worked on prior projects.

The initial concept was that we would have only eight pages available for color and that everything else would have to be done as monochrome sketches, scattered throughout the text. Not much thought was give to chapter headings, borders, designs, etc. We were just going to do some sketches, pop them into the text and do seven color paintings plus a double spread map for the color section.

But as time passed and the body of work grew, it became obvious that what we really needed was a more expanded book with full color throughout. That would be exceeding both our contracts and our budget, but that is where good editors like Shelly and Bill come in. Your job was to come up with terrific text. Mine was to do the best art I could. Theirs was to take what we came up with and make the best possible book. They certainly did that.

Last fall, Bill flew down to Dallas to see how far along I was and to take a look at the new art I had done. Due to personal complications, I had been slower than he would have liked in my production, so I know he was not looking forward to the trip. "Oh, #$%%&!" he must have thought, "David won't have enough done, and I will have to try to hold myself back from killing him."

But he seemed instead to be both surprised and pleased. He was still shaking his head and going, "Damn!" when we were coming back from lunch an hour later. Being a harsher critic of my own work than probably anyone else, I had not expected such a reaction from him. It was the greatest compliment he had given me in twenty years of working together. It was at that point that I began to think we might have a chance to get the project bumped up to full color, if the publisher's reactions were anything like Bill's had been. And sure enough, before too long the word came through that we could pull out the stops and go for the gold.

In order to put together the layout I wanted, I taught myself Quark Express and set about designing something that would look different and would display the art well. Fred Dodnick, head of the department at Ballantine, directed me to Sylvain Michaels, an expert in Quark who is one of the top outside contractors working with Ballantine.

With Sylvain's patient help, I was able to master Quark enough to turn in a fairly clean and useable layout of the first chapter. I was readying myself to tackle the rest of it when word came in that Fred and Sylvain wanted to finish the project themselves, using my design as a template. I was more than pleased. I knew how excited they were about the book, and I knew that they would treat it with almost as much love and respect as I would. I also knew that they were faster and better than I am at Quark, so it was with no reservations at all that I left the rest of the layout in their capable hands. I was not disappointed. Not one bit. They did a great job, and they followed my plans for it, almost to the letter.

There are places where my choices would have differed, naturally. But no one could have done better overall, least of all me. I am very grateful to them. They brought my baby home in style.

Teresa Patterson: Were the illustrations for The World of Shannara done as paintings or as computer renderings?

David Cherry: Both. Some works were done totally by hand. A few were done totally on computer. Some were done sort of half and half. My goal here was to illustrate the book, not to enlarge my portfolio. I can paint and draw. That question was settled a long time ago, and I have nothing to prove to anyone on that point. I know that there are purists out there to whom anything done on computer is of diminished value. They are free to think what they like, but I know from experience that not many of them have the skill or expertise to produce quality art from scratch on the computer themselves. If they did, their views would be changed by the experience.

At Ensemble, we have a life drawing class once a week in the evenings. The professor who we have hired to conduct the class is a very old school sort of guy, and I think that he has been surprised that all these people here doing computer art could be so competent with charcoal and newsprint. To him, computers seemed a cheat. He didn't know how the graphics programs worked actually, but he had some idea that we just punched a button and the work was done for us in some miraculous way.

So last night, I invited him back to my studio while we were on a break and showed him what I do. I brought up a white background and, using my graphics tablet, began to draw in black, just like we were doing in class. The strokes were mine. The decisions as to how broad, how much pressure to apply, what to erase all were mine. I drew a flat black silhouette of a figure. Then, using white at very low pressure, I began to go into it, laying down highlights where light would hit, slowly at first, building up forms and shape as I went. I hadn't gone far with it when the professor caught on. Why, this wasn't what he had thought it would be at all! What I was doing on the computer was, step by step, the same exact thing that I had been doing off the computer for him in class.

I am the first to admit that there are ways to use a computer which will allow someone who can't draw or paint their way out of a paper bag to come up with some fairly decent images. But it is also true that the good graphics programs allow traditional artists to do everything on the computer the same way they would do it off the computer. In the end, it is just a tool, like any other, except that it is more versatile, more powerful and far faster.

Garett Jax by David Cherry From The World of Shannara Copyright © 2001 Bill Fawcett and Associates. All rights reserved.

I recall my first mass-market paperback cover back in, I think, 1982. I had done the drawing, transferred it to the board, airbrushed the background, painted the figure, and then laboriously erased away the airbrushed background bit by bit to reveal the white gessoed ground. It gave me just the right feel of clouds coming out of the dark background. But it took days of long hours to get it just right.

I turned it in. The publisher loved it. But I had done it in green, as the scene had been described in the book. The publisher wanted it done in blue. There was nothing to do but start over from scratch.

The money I would make from doing the cover would compensate me for the time it took to do the first painting. But I was working for free on the second one. Do you think I would have quibbled for one second about the purity of art if I could have popped that image into Photoshop and changed the image to blue in less than a minute? Do you think I would have felt any less an artist? Not likely. But I would have worried about it more. Now I know better.

Teresa Patterson: Based on your diverse experience, what advice would you give to young artists approaching the field?

David Cherry: First, be sure you are trained to make a living in some field other than art, just in case you have to. Art, especially freelance art, is one of the only fields left where having a degree from an outstanding college means next to nothing. What really counts is whether you have a killer portfolio. If you do, you can show that and get work.

I have never once had a client ask where I went to school. They couldn't care less. All they care about is whether I can create the image that they need and do so on time. That being the case, it is possible (though by no means always preferable) to use one's time at college earning a degree in another field. That way you increase your available options in life. You can always learn art on your own if you talk to the right people, read the right books and devote enough time to it.

On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to be able to go to a really great art college, such as Sheridan College in Canada (which is basically a farm school for Disney animators), putting all your eggs in one basket might not be such a bad idea. But even at the prestigious schools, competition for jobs can be fierce. Dropout rates are over 60 percent. And a lot of the people who do fight their way to graduation still end up flipping burgers.

Second, (and I think this is a loose quote from one of the masters -- Da Vinci, possibly) be careful whom you marry. Being an artist, even when you work for a company, is seldom a 9 to 5 job. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy being married to an artist. The pay is often minimal. The hours are brutal, and it is easy for your mate to feel neglected.

Third, make an effort to meet and become friends with people who are already making a living doing the kind of art you want to do. You will learn far, far more useful information from them than you will from your teachers. And knowing people in the business is always a plus when you are ready to start looking for work.

Fourth, whether you intend to illustrate books or produce game art, I would strongly advise that your first priority should be to become expert at drawing and painting by hand. Not just passable. Not just good. Expert. In this field, nobody pays a dime for anything second rate. A portfolio of "good" stuff will net you little more than a large pile of polite rejection letters.

But what about computer artists, especially 3D artists? Why should they bother to learn traditional skills? First and foremost, it will make you a better artist. There can be no better reason than that.

But additionally, even though I know that there are a lot of genius computer artists out there who do not feel comfortable with traditional media, I think that the market place is changing somewhat. More and more, I see traditional artists entering the field of computer art, and more and more I see the art directors looking to hire people who can do both, if for no other reason than that they can be used by the company in a wider variety of situations.

Look at it from the art director's point of view. You have two applicants. One is a specialist at 3D modeling. He is killer at it, but his skills beyond that are weak. The other may not be quite as good at modeling, but he is very good and has an outstanding portfolio of traditional art which means that he would also be useful for concept art, marketing art, and (assuming competence in Photoshop or other 2D graphic programs) probably good at textures, lighting, shading, etc. Which one would you hire?

I know. It depends -- mostly on how badly you need a really killer modeler. But in most cases today I think the person with the wider variety of skills will have an advantage over the specialist.

Teresa Patterson

Teresa Patterson is the co-author, (with Robert Jordan) of The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, and with Terry Brooks of The World of Shannara. The writer of various fantasy stories and non-fiction articles, Patterson served two terms as president of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Before becoming a writer she produced science fiction conventions and received her Master Class rating as a fantasy costumer. Patterson lives in Texas with her roommate, nine cat children and an ever changing number of raccoons.

Click here to learn more about David Cherry.

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