Presenting: Jamie Smith

 

 Jamie Smith lives in Ester, Alaska, outside of Fairbanks, and publishes the comic strips "Nuggets" and "Freeze Frame" which have appeared in newspaper's around the state as well as in three books.  He's also an accomplished editorial cartoonist.  Jamie teaches Sequential Art in at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been a force in the Northern Alaska comics scene, organizing various comics jams, workshops, and a 24 hour Comics Day in Fairbanks, in which participants produce a full comic book from start to finish in a days time.  He also put on the "Cartoon North" gallery show, spotlighting sequential art from Alaska and nationwide.  He's recently started a new blog "Ink and Snow" documenting his Spring 2009 drawing class.

Jamie had a lot of great advice:

"One of the finer points I frequently mull over is the divide between reclusive, in-grown artists and the contrast between them and outgoing or aggressive or savvy self-promoters etc. I think in hindsight my advice to aspiring talents is to first secure employment in the food service industry." "Being a waiter for years taught me not so much about people skills, promoting whatever's on the special and self-confidence, it basically just helped me to get over it and stop caring so much, just do the job and do it well. Training oneself to walk up to relative strangers and try to sell them stuff gives a valuable perspective on peddling artistic talent."

  

"Another key point I always try to drill into beginning art student's heads is the analogous ratio of success in sports: everyone's into it at a young age, but the field seems to exponentially narrow the older one gets until only a select few are left - which is not to say folks ever have to stop participating or (more commonly) become a spectator relegated to the sidelines. I think what sets the people who stick with it and find whatever measure of success to keep them motivated is the simple element of time, as in disciplining oneself to devote the majority of their energy towards the craft. In my most bitterest sometimes it explains the disproportionate number of retirees that flood the arts, or trust-fund babies, or being bankrolled by their significant other, or cluelessly naive/stubbornly idealistic (lots of student loans), or some combination thereof. More power to 'em."

"My challenge has increasingly been to make drawing relevant and real to students: by the time I get them at college age they are damaged goods in the sense that the majority of them have long since written off art, and/or are seeking an easy "A" for a humanities credit. Seems there's always been somebody in about middle/high school in the class that is the designated artist, who can draw rocket ships or dinosaurs really good (i.e. look realistic) and everyone else just gives up & bails on trying thinking they suck. So years later they are still carting around this baggage and I take it upon myself to deprogram them and reinstall some validity if not vision. In that way as a cartoonist it doesn't come across so high & mighty artsy-fartsy; it is a low-key, non-intimidating back door into art as it were. Like teaching figure drawing for example - I always now start out with a lesson first in caricature; it really helps approach what is normally the hardest subject matter in a looser, less stressful way."

Cartoon North
Jaime Smith's Books
inksnow.blogspot.com