E H O W A R D J O H N S O N 3
Currently: I’m a page designer and illustrator and at a mid-sized east coast newspaper. Most of my work is for the print product but it often finds its way to the website. Mostly, I use Photoshop and QuarkXpress there. I teach and freelance, too. There I use Adobe Illustrator and Indesign as well. I always have and will continue to draw for myself. But now pen rarely touches paper, my art/work is almost exclusively in Photoshop.
Before 1962: My ancestors were – if you go back far enough — all puritan farmers. My parents were among the first of them to get college degrees. My father was an engineer; my mother’s degree was in nutrition. Their avocations were photography and painting respectively. They accepted and encouraged — again respectively — my leanings toward a career in art
1962-1966: In my Midwestern suburban high school I was an average college-prep student who did surprisingly well on standardized tests. The only art I made, I made for and by myself because the art courses at school were of the potato-print sort. I was on the swim team and a drummer in a rock band. But weren’t we all.
1966-1970: I began my college career in industrial design at a big-10 university slowly moving towards the artier side, therefore my B.A. is in fine arts. I learned the traditional arts of printmaking in class and the state-of-the-art techniques of it at the student newspaper. I spent as much time at the newspaper as I did in class.
1970-1975: After college, I worked at a couple of job shops and ad agencies.I designed pages and made illustrations there. I freelanced too and began, in earnest, to draw for myself (about myself,) experimenting with all sorts of techniques.
1975-1981: I finally got a real job at a mid-sized New England newspaper. I could now design pages and make illustrations that were both satisfying artistically and put food on the table. Even then the skill sets required to do this were changing all the time but keeping up was half the fun.
1981-present: Moving on up, I got a similar job at a larger newspaper. computers happened, turning my skill-sets on their heads. I continued to design pages and make illustrations but with mouse and monitor not pen and paper. Keeping up is still fun.
2001-present: At a nearby university I – as an adjunct — teach undergrads the art and craft of typography, digital drawing and photoshop My courses are mostly mostly of my own invention. They are mostly face-to-face, but I use blackboard and other online technologies. I’m half way through a Masters in Education Technology there too.
Keeping up, learning new skill-sets, became a skill-set in its self, sometimes seeming to be the most important one. Perhaps it is, but it is not the only one. So as much as I investigate the “new” by keeping the newest versions on my machine and trying things I’ve never done before, I research the “old” by trying out others’ ideas via tutorials, and by wandering around, taking noting of and “borrowing” what I see in museums, online, wherever. I try to keep practiced in the basics — the really old stuff, art history, philosophy, even life-drawing — to better judge what to keep and keep up with.
If it matters to you, I’m a reasonable healthy 60-something white male, twice-divorced with a daughter and a grandson. I’m a skeptic, cynical and prone to irony, but you’ve probably figured that out already.
Portfolio: Always a work in progress. The latest version is available on request. As are names of employers or schools, grades and references.
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