Posts by Jed Alexander

For the most part, I’ve had the good fortune of doing work that doesn’t compromise my beliefs. But a few years ago I wasn’t so lucky.

Inevitably someone is going to compare your work to someone else’s. And when someone says, “This reminded me of your work” it’s hard to know what they mean.

Art is not a eugenics program. We’re all mongrels with our own unique deformities, and that’s what continues to keep artists and the arts in general interesting.

Babar the elephant and Curious George are old friends. They were some of the first people we grew to know. They might not be real people, but they were some of our first ideas of people.

There will be no wine. There will be no cheese. Some of them will check it out of the library. Some of them will buy it at a flea market or a garage sale. Some of them will get is as a present from their grandparents. If that’s a compromise, I’m OK with that.

What better way to protest a cabinet full of ex-Goldman Sachs execs than to deny them the opportunity to buy art for 24 hours or so? Think of the outrage.

How come those graphic-y novel pictures fail to deck the walls of high-class galleries and command the same big bucks? What do we need to do to get taken seriously around here?

I draw comics. I make books. I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. No, I didn’t “arrive.” There was no “big break.” It was more of a slow gradual climb up a steep hill that’s just starting to level out.

This is a lesson you have to keep teaching yourself if you want to be any good at all. And the thing about it is, you have to think you’re better than you are, before you can realize that you aren’t.

If you want to portray movement in illustration, studying great animation can be as valuable as studying a great painting.

The quality of the work is either there, or it isn’t, and no amount of resume padding is going to change that

I feel that envy. Because I want what you have. Now you may think this is all deeply unhealthy, but I know a lot of artists who thrive on it.

I’ve always envied improvisational musicians and performers for their ability to engage in a spontaneous collaboration.

We need to consider illustrators the true collaborators that they are. It’s not about where their name ends up on the cover, but how we treat their contribution.

So art-making is a struggle, and struggle is pain. There is the pain of the work itself. All work involves a certain amount of pain.

Make art if you want to make art, and make as much or as little as you want and don’t worry about whether you’re compelled to do it.