Dear Wacom, Where is My Hoverboard?

Digital Painting is one of the most amazing technologies to hit the art world in centuries. It has affected the very way that people perceive and interact with information on a daily basis.
Most of the interest (and money) from the average person for art in this era is largely spent on films and video games. In 2010 $25 billion was spent on video games, and an unthinkable amount for movies. 

And currently the ones that are the most successful are extremely reliant on digital art for their visuals. 

Consider this from 2010: 

 Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/2010.php

Perhaps because of this, most of the progress in recent years has been largely in the 3d field. Video games and rendering in movies have progressed at a frightening pace. Games look real. Animated films look really real. 

Yet, 2d digital painting tools themselves have remained largely unchanged since their introduction. Even though 2d is where all of it begins, in the conceptual and pre-vis artwork stages. 

The Pen and Tablet

For the input devices themselves, apart from pressure sensitivity, (which Wacom doubled from 1024 to 2048 in 2009) we have been stuck on the same technology for about 11 years now, with little or no meaningful progress in the area of actual painting. We have seen the tablets become more streamlined and get more buttons to do fancy things unrelated to painting, but nothing to actually really improve the input process for the pen. 

To understand this better:  Essentially what happens is, when working in Adobe Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, what we have is a binary input from the tablet that detects where on the tablet an input occurred and at what pressure it occurred at. This input is transmitted to Photoshop, which then rubber stamps a pattern on the matching area on the screen, and modifies this rubber stamped pattern based on pre-programmed settings. 

So in the end, it is synthesizing the look of traditional media by pasting an image where the brush tells it to. 

The Wacom Cintiq

For the screens, we have seen Wacom do truly amazing things with the Cintiq, which allows input directly on the surface of the screen, creating the uncanny illusion of actually painting. And the Cintiqs are improving with each iteration. (A thinner screen surface, a faster response time, more pressure sensitivity, and so on.) 

But this improvement is limited to the tablet itself, and so far still nothing has been done to make the brush part of digital painting feel more natural. 

It could be argued that digital painting doesn't need to feel like traditional painting. That it is its own animal. 

 Consider the works of: 

 Craig Mullins: 

www.goodbrush.com

 Android Jones: 

www.androidjones.com

Ruan Jia: 

http://ruanjia.com/

These artists are taking the tools for what they are and are doing incredible things with them. They are blurring the lines between digital, conceptual, illustration, and fine art. They are taking the medium beyond itself. 

But I still can't help but feel that while all the other technologies, and specifically touchscreen and 3d modeling technology, are progressing; that input for digital painting is still in its infancy. Or at least in a sustained adolescence from neglect. 

So, to just lay it on the table, what I want is something like this: 

To work at 24" x 18" touch screen, 

That is as responsive as the Intuos5, 

Which allows me to use brushes on the surface to make the strokes.  

I could see this going 2 ways: 

1. A Supersensitive Tablet 

A tablet like the Intuos5, but that responds to all media that it comes in contact with (such as your hands, or a pencil or a traditional hogs hair bristle brush) and captures all of what feels on the surface, and transfers that to Adobe/Painter, which then displays the brushstroke on the monitor. 

Interesting developments along these lines can be seen in devices like the Optipaint.  (Article here) 

And in Disney Studios Touché.  

Or, 

2. A Cintiq With a Fiber Optic Brush 

The Brush would have fiber optic bristles, which would transmit light from their tips (and if possible, from several nodes along each bristle as well) to optical sensors on the screen itself. If it were possible to have several nodes along the fiber of the bristles, then it would be possible to have even more input for how each bristle is bending, thus allowing the programs to render a much more accurate representation of the brushstroke you just applied. 

Patents for a brush like this already exist. Check this out: http://www.google.com/patents/US5646650

This would allow true to life brushwork and would be what I would consider the Holy Grail of digital painting. 

Note: Fiber Optics make the most sense to me, but then again, I failed Algebra 2, so maybe I am not going to be the first person Wacom's Engineering Department is going to listen to on what they should use specifically. I would accept anything that accomplished something similar to this. 

The traditional painters who are still reading will be smirking at all these hoops I am jumping through for this. 

(Hey Gerard, I have an idea, why not just paint on this new technology called paper with this new technology called watercolor?) 

And yes, I am painting traditionally more and more these days as my frustration with the limitations of digital increases. 

But I would love to see this technology become fully realized. The possibilities are amazing and I can't help but want to see them become reality. 

Why Do I Demand this of Wacom? 

Because Wacom has long been the industry leader in this field, and since they brought about some of the greatest advancements in the field of digital painting, I am laying the burden on their shoulders to take the next steps. 

There are already many other companies that are on their trail.  The Flow for the iPad. The Next Window for the desktop.   

But these are not true digital canvases.  They leave us with a sense that the technology exists to make this happen, but without anyone who is actually providing it. (The point here being that if Wacom wants to remain the industry leader, it should definitely listen to me on this, even though I failed Algebra 2.) 

Lastly, some might argue that this is the job of the programs themselves. The 2 industry giants being Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. 

Here is why this won't happen from them: Adobe has improved a little (for the digital painter) in the last decade. It is overall more stable than it was, and its brushes are on their way to catching up with those of Painter. But with their pending move towards a renting "cloud" model after CS6, I am doubtful that we will ever again see any meaningful progress from them. When a company has a captive user market, that must pay them a monthly fee to even use their product, then that company no longer has any incentive to improve its product. Whereas before, they had to at least have the appearance of new features to entice the user market to pay for an upgrade. 

With the new cloud model the users will be paying more than they were before, and with no likelihood of any real improvements. I am not counting on them to have much to do with improving the state of digital painting tools. 

For more on this, read: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/22/adobe-officially-unveils-cs6-and-its-49month-all-inclusive-creative-cloud-subscription-service/ 

(Wether the cloud model is a good idea or a bad idea is a subject we might take up in a future discussion. The question of what to do about piracy is a legitimate concern on their part. The monthly usage fee for a program that may cease improving itself is a legitimate concern on ours.) 

Too Long; Didn't Read: 

I want you Wacom, to take the current Wacom pen, which is a marvel, and multiply it times 100. I don't care if you have to do it with nanobots, gel, cold fusion or beaver pelts. Just make it happen.  

We are counting on you for this.  

And for our hoverboards. Thank you.

No beaver pelts were hurt in the making of this article.  Please send all other complaints to: JustinGerardillustration (at) gmail (dot) com.

St. George Process Articles on Muddy Colors

Recently, along with a few secret projects that I am not allowed to discuss even under pain of death, I have been working on a small show for Gallery Nucleus.  It is based on St. George and the Dragon and it goes up on August 6th.  

To see some of the methods used in the creation of these pieces, check out the Muddy Colors links below.  

Article 1 Link: Traditional Approach

Article 2 Link: Digital Approach

The Most Mind-Blowing Images I Have Seen in My Life: Part II

On a trip in 2009, I had a chance to see the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. While there I beheld one of the most impressive sculptures created in the last 200 years. It was the Saint Marc, by a little known sculptor named Jean Baptiste Gustave Deloye.

Why is it awesome and how comes it to be on a list of the most earth-shatteringly awesome art I have ever seen? Because it is of a dude who who has wrestled down a Winged Lion. And he did it wearing nothing but a tea cozy. The lion looks plainly furious, while Saint Marc looks like he is lost in abstraction, his mind already having moved on from the fact that he just mastered a winged lion. He might be thinking, "I wonder if McRib is back?" Or, "I wonder what happened in the last season of Lost?" But he isn't very concerned about the lion or the fact that he is wearing nothing but a tea cozy.

Note: Some stone-throwers will no doubt cry out that art like this promotes a spirit of senseless cruelty to animals. To that I will say that savage, winged-lions can generally be expected to take care of themselves against unarmed and stark-naked men.

Now the learned among you will say that I may have misinterpreted this particular piece because I couldn't read the placard, and yes, my Parle vous Francais isn't what it used to be.

However, I do have a vague recollection of the winged lion being St. Marc's symbol and that the imagery has something to do with his preaching, (or one of the other apostle's preaching) being "like that of a roaring lion." The artist here has skillfully maneuvered around any appearance of stiff oration, and cut more deeply into the impression and sense of what the impact might be like to listen to a truly masterful and compelling orator contending for what he believes.

Judging from what I see in contemporary examples of sculptures of mighty orators, I can't help thinking that if this concept were to have been attempted in the last few decades, we would either have a dull, square man in a dull, square suit, with a disgruntled finger jabbed in the air, or else we might have a loose collection of junk welded together to give the impression of a loose collection of junk welded together. Given the choice of the three, I am always going to listen to the guy who has mastered a mythical creature, even if he is naked. And most people will generally prefer the place somewhere between pure representation and pure abstraction.

This skillful communication of the idea of a mighty orator, an orator whose voice sounded like that of a roaring lion, is so also interesting to me because it can be misinterpreted. Consider that without the title below: "Evangile St. Marc," we might not know exactly who or what this was. (Though we couldn't help but be impressed.) But given the title and a general understanding behind it, it encourages a rethinking of the viewer's world, and his seeing everyday ideas with new eyes.

The artist may have undertook to make this sculpture simply for the pursuit of excellence in art. He might have done it for the money. Or he may have done this out of a sincere appreciation for a man who believed in something so strongly that he had to shout about it. Who knows? But I derive such pleasure from this sculpture.

Articles

Today's Muddy Colors Post is on Drawing and why it is important. (Especially if aliens come to visit earth.)

Also, I recently did an interview for the Innsmouth Free Press. You can read it here.

The Most Mind-Blowing Images I Have Seen in My Life: Part I

What you see before you is the cover of Petar Meseldzija's Book, The Legend of Steel Bashaw. It is one of the most exceptional paintings I have seen in my lifetime. Like many of you, I first saw this image in Spectrum 9 where it dropped a nuclear bomb on my brain. Never before had I seen an image that so clearly articulated every feeling that I had ever hoped to communicate in art. And never had I seen one executed with such earth-shattering beauty. It was flawless, riveting, and the more I looked at it, the more I was drawn into it.

Now you will say, "Justin, calm down, it's just a picture. Its a dude, and he's on a horse. You're getting carried away." But this is more than a dude on a horse. It is a diatribe against mediocrity and an air raid call to the pursuit of excellence in art. When I saw this painting it gave me the same desire it has given many other artists who see Petar's work, it made me want to change everything. Not only did it instill in me a fervent desire to learn how to paint, but to make images that were worth meditating on, and not disposable imagery destined to be lost in the vast sea of imagery we exist in.

For a long time I had believed that it was essentially hopeless. The attention span for visuals shrinks as digital photography and digital displays increase and lead to a greater proliferation of imagery. In this new digital world the best images are those that are the most clear and the most brief. People are conditioned away from lingering for very long on a single image in the marketplace. There are so many other ideas out there, so many other things to see that it becomes almost morally wrong to create something that demands a person dwell on it in instead of moving directly on to the next idea. Meditating on a single idea becomes an anathema. Even movies find that in order to keep up with the shrinking attention span, they must make scene changes faster and faster to keep audience interest. But in the pursuit of communicating a quantity of ideas we seem to lose the ability to meditate on the quality of a single idea. This image was one I got lost in and never quite made it back out of. It defied the technology-perscribed cultural direction that I sensed was to be the inevitable demise of narrative illustration. After seeing this image I knew that I wanted to make images that were mediations on ideas, and not just flashcards of them.

On top of being a artistic philosophical turning point for me, it was also a technical one. If you haven't already noticed, this painting is a city-crushing, Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla of technical achievement. It is at once extremely precise, with profoundest care taken in the focal points, such as the horses thrusting hoof, which focuses the action there for a brief moment as the eye moves through the composition. And then in the areas that are not meant to fight with the focal points, such as the body of the tree and the rocks beneath, there is an elegance and economy of brushstrokes that show a care in execution that borders on perfection. These subtleties are gorgeous upon examination but slip passively into the background when any of the focal points are examined.

One might perhaps think that the success of this painting is the result of chance, that these are not mortar bombardments of awesome-ness but are rather just a few lucky strokes or the result of some secret medium that he mixes on the panel before applying the paint. The truth is more devastating.

I had a chance to visit Petar in 2009, and while there he took the time to show me some of his drawings. I had always considered myself to have a passable drawing ability and felt that I knew a thing or two about the craft. I was a professional after all. When he pulled out his preliminary drawings that he did for his paintings, I saw the greatest drawings I had ever seen in my life and I blacked out. And while I was blacked out, I had a vision. It was judgement day, and I was giving an accounting of myself before the angels and saints. My art was being brought out and passed around. I learned that it was to be compared against Petar's art, which someone had decided was to be the standard by which all drawings from the era were to be judged. The saints and angels wore grim, unimpressed expressions as they shuffled through my pages of scribblings. Then they started watching the recordings of me playing video games instead of working on my drawings and I woke in a panic. I smelled coffee. (Petar makes a turkish coffee so strong that the mere smell of it would wake a hibernating bear who was frozen in a block of ice under 40 feet of snow and had just taken 12 Ambiens and was listening to Blue Danube by Strauss.) He handed me a cup and asked if I was OK.

As we looked through the rest of his drawings I realized that his paintings are not just the result of an excellence in the ability to apply paint, but that they are also the result of rigorous practice in drawing and extremely meticulous planning in the draft stages where he seeks to resolve the visual problems in his image. I realized that Petar is a genius. I felt like I was looking at the blueprints for the invasion of Normandy. While I could not expect to ever be so flawless in my approach I realized that if I was serious about this I would have to take drawing to an entirely new level that I had never even considered before.

If you have not already, check out his book, The Legend of Steel Bashaw from Flesk. In the back are included some of the drawings for the project. If they don't nuke your brain, they will at least knock your socks off. It is one of the most valuable books for the practicing artist to come out in years. Check out the rest of his work on his website here and his new blog here.

Muddy Colors

I was recently invited by Dan Dos Santos to be a contributer to Muddy Colors, an illustration blog featuring articles by many of today's most influential illustrators. Many of these illustrators have impacted my own work a great deal, (Manchess, Donato and Jon Foster among them) and I look forward to their posts tremendously.

My own posts will focus on some of the topics and discussions that have gone on previously at Quickhidehere, such as the digital vs. traditional articles, as well as some new topics, which I lay out in the first post. If you have any special requests for articles or demos that you think might be interesting, let me know in the comments. I'm still coming up with my list of posts for the next few months, and I'd love to hear what you think.

Today marks my first contribution to the blog.

Check it out at MuddyColors.blogspot.com

ImagineFX #56

ImagineFX recently asked me to do a painting of a faun for the cover of Issue #56.

It is out now in Europe and will hit Canada and the USA in about 3 weeks. Along with a short demo on how I did the cover piece above, there are a some great articles by Brian Froud, John Howe and Julie Bell. All of whom are AWESOME. I am really looking forward to getting my own copy.

FFA DEATHMATCH: The Results

Oil: 26

Watercolor: 5

Digital: 37

Digital wins and retains the title belt for another season.

Or does it?

It appears that there were a number of issues and "voting irregularities" at the ballot box. An angry mob has been at my door for days and the press is calling for a recount.

The grievances are as follows:

First, some clever lawyers have counted up the votes independently, and have noticed certain "discrepancies" in the final tallies.

The reason for this is perfectly explainable. While the votes were being cast on the blog I also was receiving several votes through emails. Now, I realize that admitting phantom ballots which only I have access to could be considered sketchy but this is why I am in the visual arts and not in politics.

Secondly, many of you pointed out that the sparks and hot spots in the watercolor and digital piece were what pulled you over to digital, and that these effects could have been easily added to the oil piece. This is an excellent point, and I was remiss not to have included them in the oil.

Finally, a number of you wished to invent a 4rth category for digitally affected oils. (These digitally affect oils actually received 5 direct votes, and many more implied votes.) Many people suggested that if this category had existed it would have won out over its watercolor and digital counterpart.

Digitally affected oils is a very interesting idea to me. It seems like an excellent way of utilizing the best of both mediums while at the same time minimizing their respective weaknesses.

I will talk more about this later.

Back to the polls. The general consensus appears to be that

Oils seems to have the benefit of superior texture, beauty and as LuisNCT said, "oils supports a longer observation."

Digital for color, clarity and contrast.

Watercolor for the grit and the mood.

While these each have their merits, I would love to find a synthesis of all of these. And an airship full of all the treasures of ancient egypt. But a method that allows for a synthesis of all of these will do for now.

This brings me back to a digitally modified oil. I like the idea because I am still in love with blending classical methods and with modern technology. And one thing that has afflicted me as I experiment with oils is that people no longer see art in the way that they saw it 300 years ago. We no longer have to travel all the way to Paris to see the Musee D'orsay (which everyone should), or even across town to see fine art, but instead we now generally take in art through the glowing squares of digital media.

So if any of us decides to execute a painting and show it to the world, it is probable that 4 out of the 5 people who see that painting will view it through a monitor. The world is fast becoming predominantly digital.

So does this necessarily mean that images created digitally will have certain advantages over their traditional counterparts as it is disseminated to the culture at large?

Consider this example:

You may recognize it from a previous post.

This is an oil painting of the acrylic and digital painting from December. This time I did not paint directly over a watercolor as in the Doomhammer posts, but rather started on a new masonite panel and copied a new drawing over, and then executed the piece in oil over the course of a few days. It took longer, but I enjoyed the actual creation of it more.

What is frustrating however, is that the original piece has a luster that cannot be communicated by the digital copy here. The charm of the original is that when you look at it and see it from different angles, the various pits and nicks in the paint catch the light and give it a sense of depth. This is because it literally is made up of layers in space, which light passes through and before then bouncing back to your eyes, creating an effect that you cannot get any other way. The glazes give the shadows true depth and the highlights are actually closer to you in space and so appear even brighter. It is a dimensional object with a life to it that cannot be communicated through a digital image. I love this about oil and it seems tragic to lose it through digital copies. Yet, almost everyone who sees it will see it digitally.

But on the other side, the mere ability to display an image digitally is 100% certified actual magic. The technology that allows you to see this on your monitor is light literally being projected into your brain through your eyes. It is the coolest thing since the invention of fire.

This is a debate that has plagued me for some time, but I am certain that there is a synthesis of all of these out there that is worth pursuing. I also think that we are only just now beginning to really explore the possibilities in digital art for merging the classical with the contemporary with technology.

So that said, my next few personal projects that I hope to post up here will be experiments in the digitally affected oils.

Note: The best exploration and debate on the traditional vs. digital art topic that I have come across on the web can be found on David Apatoff's blog, Illustration Art in his January and February 2007 posts. It's worth a read.

FFA DEATHMATCH: Digital vs Watercolor vs Oil

Its Battle Royal and the rules are anything goes. You are the judge.

Which of these do you like the most?

Digital

Watercolor

Oil

Note: Both the traditional pieces are being displayed as they were scanned in, with no digital effects, magic filters, or cheat codes in.

ImagineFX

For those of you who have been wondering about the specifics about my method of working, (and I know there are at least 2 of you) this month my work has been featured in an ImagineFX workshop. 

Illustration Master Class 2009

Last week I attended the 2009 Illustration Master Class in Amherst Massachusetts.  The faculty included the amazing talent of Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Greg Manchess, Charles Vess, Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, Irene Gallo, Scott Fischer and Dan DosSantos along with guest appearances from Michael Whelan and Jon Foster, among others.  

Donato Giancola elaborating on the finer points of galaxies

Dan Dos Santos showing some mad skillz.

Michael Whelan about to go to work

Charles Vess showing us how to do magic tricks with paint

It was a very intense week of lectures, demonstrations and projects with the faculty working very closely with each student to give very personalized guidance. It was a highly rewarding week and I cannot thank the faculty enough for so generously giving their time and efforts to the students. I learned a great deal from the course and I will be posting some of the work I did there in the coming days. It felt like going to Hogwarts where all the professors are literally teaching the students how to do magic.  

And in case you were not yet convinced. FLYING MONKEYS.  

For more images Irene Gallo's Flickr pages for a look at the mayhem. They have a great overview of the whole week as well as images of Greg Manchess being awesome, Fantastic art in progress and myself in a fight to the death with Allen Williams.

And for the run-down of the event she has also posted a number of entries on her blog.  If you are interested at all in possibly signing up for the event in 2010 you should check it out.

An Invitation to Microvisions at the Society of Illustrators and a Confession

I'm honored to have been asked to submit to this year's Microvisions show at the Society of Illustrators. MicroVisions is a charity auction for the Society's student scholarship fund that is put on by Dan Dos Santos and Irene Gallo. It goes up April 3rd and will be on display for a month before the pieces are set up for auction on ebay.

This year there are some amazing artists that will be contributing. Among them is Gregory Manchess, whom I must credit with the bulk of my painting eduction.

Confession:
When I was in college I stole a Step by Step Graphics guide that featured an amazingly helpful demonstration by Manchess. I picked it off the shelf, leafed through it, and immediately, I recognized its immense, earth-shattering value. Then, without breathing, without altering a single a muscle, I looked left and then right, like a crocodile, invisible at the water's surface. The magazine snapped into my jacket and I fled out of the library, ducked past the hostess and ran off into the night, clutching this prize to my chest. 

I know that I am a terrible person. I know that I have stolen from future generations so that I could possess this treasure as my own, so that I could hide its dark secrets away inside my brain, swirling through tiny solar systems and packed into cabinets full of old memories. It is a tragedy, I know.

But now, thanks to this Microvisions show, I feel like I can make amends for my past wrongdoing. I feel like I finally can make penance for this terrible act of barbarism against education. Yes, that's right, I am hoping that by contributing to a charity auction that furthers young artist's eductions I will be able to amend this wickedness from my youth.

However, (and this may baffle theologians) if I had it all to do again I have no doubt in my mind that I would immediately steal this Step by Step guide on Manchess again. (moreover, I would also take that other one on Peter DeSeve that Cory got away with.) 

I know it's wrong, but this magazine is a reliquary. It's mine! It is precious to me. Yes, precious... It's mine, it came to me!

Anyway, all that to say I am terrified to be up on display next to such amazing illustrators. (See the final terrifying list here) I wouldn't miss it for the world. My plan is to paint three of these 5 x 7 pieces before April. I am painting three, first as a safeguard against turning in something lousy, and second as a chance to experiment and learn more about oils. So in the coming weeks I will be posting a few of these and hopefully sharing some findings with everyone.

Until then, I want to send my sincerest apologies to every student out there whom I have wronged by stealing that Step by Step guide on Gregory Manchess back in college. To the innocent youth whose chances at a future I have dashed in my greed.  Although I refuse to give it back, (and will take it with me to the grave) I believe I can offer you something just as good and that no serious student of illustration should be without:

THIS LINK TO AWESOMENESS
It is a link to the demo that Gregory Manchess did with Massive Black. It details in real-time most of what was in that Step by Step guide and it is every bit as valuable. This video is worth its weight in gold. 

Greg Manchess is an illustration ninja. He has uncanny powers.

The Hobbit featured on Tor.com

Recently, I did an interview with the wonderful Irene Gallo of Tor Books on the Hobbit illustrations. Many of you will already know Irene from her work in the fantastic arts community and from her blog, which is a great source for what is afoot in the illustration and sci-fi art world. Others of you may remember her from an earlier Quickhidehere post on Comicon 08. This new interview on the Hobbit illustrations is now up on Tor.com. In it you will find a lot more about the process and thinking behind the illustrations as well as my take on how to roundhouse kick your way through an economic recession. Check it out.

Smaug: Symbolism

I have always seen Smaug as the great dragon from Beowulf. Tolkien was a Beowulf enthusiast and it was he who first spoke for the merits of the Beowulf poem on its literary quality and narrative elements, as art and not just as a means by which we can learn about Anglo-Saxon history. He writes at length about this in his lecture,"Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics."
In creating Smaug, and in writing of Bilbo's interaction with him, Tolkien drew heavily from Beowulf and the stories reflect one another clearly.
In both stories a thief takes a golden cup from a sleeping dragon. The dragon wakes up and realizes that a piece of his treasure horde has been stolen. He searches everywhere for the cup and cannot find it. He finds the track of the thief and follows it, circling all around his trove. Then when he cannot find him, he returns to his mound and lies in wait, like a cat, eyes slit, murderously alert, for the thief to return.
Then sitting brooding there over how he has been wronged, he is overcome by his fury and wrath. Tolkien said himself that "...The episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at this point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same."
There is something very human about the dragon's actions and motivations in both stories. They are fascinating because you can relate to them.
John Gardner, in Grendel, which is his adaptation of the story of Beowulf as told from the antagonists point of view, also writes on this same dragon. Gardner takes it further though, and he works down to the character's essentially fatalistic worldview. He deals with what type of human thinking leads to a man becoming what the dragon in these 3 stories is. The Dragon in Gardner's Grendel, is an ancient creature, very much a miserly, mean-spirited old man. He knows everything there is to know. He sees everything from every angle and has determined through the obviousness of existence that there are no absolutes and no basis for truth except what you determine for yourself. The Dragon believes that existence is a chain reaction of accidents. No beliefs or ideoligies can be real. And in the end, after stripping absolutes away, the Dragon is left with nothing but his own immediate greed as the only substantive belief that consistently appeals to him. His last admonition in this story, his last advice to the Grendel, and to the audience is, "to find a pile of gold, and sit on it."
In Grendel, the Dragon becomes archetypical of nihilistic thinking. All the Dragon has left is his immediate greed. His desire for possessions in this, isn't the desire of the collector or the caretaker, that it is the gold's beauty or craftsmanship that appeals to him, but rather that other creatures might want to possess it, it is the far end of greed that wants something for the sake of preventing another from having it.

Another concept that has been put forth on the dragon in The Hobbit is that he could be seen as symbolic of the traditional relationship between evil and metallurgy. Perhaps even of industry, as these were themes that found their way into Tolkien's writing. Originally I was very taken by this idea and I wanted to make the dragon look like he was made of bronze that had patinad and that his scales were of metal that was rusting and flaking away. I like the idea that he literally did eat his gold and metal to give him armor, and that, like all things earthly, it was deteriorating away. His original skin and scales are long since gone, since he started introducing these heavy metals into his system, and now he must eat ever more and more as he ages, to keep his skin armored as the old metal rusts and flakes away faster and faster.

However, as much as this idea made arcs of lightning in my brain for being a cool visual metaphor, it simply wouldn't do for this image. The classic image is of a red dragon and in the end, I preferred a more personal, brooding, hateful greed that I see in the dragon to the more abstract notions of metallurgy or industry as the dragon being symbolic of. I may at some point go back and do a version of the dragon with metal flaking off him, but for now, I will stick with a more classic Smaug who is fascinating enough on his own.