Learning the hard way?

You're only as good as your last work...

In my 40 some-odd years of producing artwork for clients, I have been very fortunate to have folks that helped me on my journey. A number of the great people I worked with at NASA and other companies were very instrumental in my early success as a "space artist". While working as an exhibit designer at Johnson Space Center, my supervisor referred me to a new company that had just formed-Eagle Engineering. Eagle was a company made up of several dozen former Apollo engineers that were instrumental in putting men on the Moon. The President of Eagle at the time, Hu Davis, was the project manager for the Apollo 11 lander, the Eagle. Hu was a great mentor that loved to share his knowledge of all things space. He, along with all the other engineers at Eagle would drop by my desk and critique every piece I did for technical accuracy. I was drinking from a firehose and was occasionally frustrated with the continual constructive criticism. In order to avoid this, I worked hard to anticipate these comments and learn how "space worked". Just when I thought I had it down, I would be informed that some widget wouldn't work in a vacuum or that the concept I was drawing wouldn't fit in the payload shroud of a particular rocket. I persisted however, and finally got to the point where the comments were just a trickle. At that point, I decided I would turn the tables and put something in my art that was a trap for one of my usual critics. I put a something that looked incorrect on a spacecraft that would cause the critic to point out the flaw. When he did this, I had already designed it in such a way that if I did what the critic said, it would malfunction and potentially break. I then explained to him I had worked around the problem and showed him the modification I had already incorporated in the design. After that interaction, the critic was a little less anxious to comment.

I don't really I dislike constructive criticism. I was already doing paintings for NASA while I was completing my art degree. One thing we did in design classes was to critique each assignment as a group. I had never done that before as I was mainly self taught in art. At first I was intimidated but gradually relished the experience. I learned much from these critiques and will always listen to others ideas and opinions on my work. I don't always agree, but there have been a number of "aha" moments where others saw something that I had missed entirely.

Another thing I learned is that you are only as good as your last painting or image. I quickly learned that I had better make every piece suitable for the world to see. In 1983 I painted a lunar oxygen mine that had some perspective and color issues. It just wasn't one of my better pieces. To my chagrin it was picked up by Time magazine and run as a double page spread. After that, I was very careful to start over if I wasn't completely satisfied with a painting.

The "unfortunate" image is shown here.