Interview with Ron Crabb

Hello, thanks that you have found some time for being interviewed on Digital Abstracts. A short biography and things about how did you start your career as an artist?
I had an artistic leaning ever since I was a little boy and by high school had decided to become an illustrator and fine artist. I intended to go to the University of Illinois for a fine art degree but for various reasons decided to move to California. I was twenty and working at a sporting equipment store in Los Angeles, a completely non-art related job. But we often sold uniforms to local kids sport teams that needed to have silk-screen printing of the team names on them and I moved to this company and began designing all sorts of t-shirt art. I learned the art of hand-lettering while still dong fine art paintings and through a friend got an interview with KABC Television in Hollywood. They were busy with the Olympics in 1984 and needed a large staff of artists to handle the extra workload. Apparently they liked my odd portfolio of t-shirt art and oil paintings and they gave me a job. When I started there we were still using traditional methods to create art—paint, airbrush, rub-down type, but in 1985 we started working on the Quantel Paintbox and my digital art career began. I quickly went from doing news graphics to motion graphics and as the cable boom developed the amount of work exploded. I have been doing digital art of some kind ever since.

You are known as a matte-paintings artist, why did you choose exactly this? I know you have been doing some motion graphics and other stuff.
In the late nineties I was still doing primarily motion graphics work but the industry was changing. Design schools were turning out lots of motion graphics designers while at the same time advances in technology (the Apple computer among others) started making the cost of motion graphics less expensive to create. Budgets started shrinking, companies began to struggle and I saw the writing on the wall. I felt the need to explore some new options in my career. I had been doing matte panting work for commercials since the early nineties but now decided to explore the possibility of doing mattes for films. It was a little more specialized. I could capitalize on my photo-real skills and still use technology I was very familiar with. I created six self-promotional matte paintings, put together a nice portfolio package, and sent them out to visual effects companies around LA. I ended up at Cinesite working as a concept artist and matte painter for X Men 2.

If you not an artist, what would you do?
I would be a writer, and by extension, maybe a filmmaker. It’s the story aspect of creating art that I am drawn to so one way or another, I would want to be involved in telling stories.

You moved from Los Angeles, why? Why did you choose another place to live in? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this place?
We had been visiting friends up here in the Northwest for a number of years and just fell in love with the place. We wanted to move up here for years and when I began freelancing on film matte paintings from home it became apparent that this could be done anywhere. We consulted with some clients and after getting their approval, we moved in 2003. Working remotely really is no different than working I the next room. The only drawback occurs when trying to acquire new clients. Being this far from Hollywood puts me a bit outside the social circles and meeting new people means travel and requires more work.

What is your inspiration? What if you have an urgent and interesting project to do and you are tired and very low on inspiration? Do you have that moments?
I do have those moments as all artists do. It’s maybe even a bit more augmented by my isolation. It usually means my imagination hasn’t been ignited in awhile and the solution can be a variety of things—looking at other artist’s work on the web (lots of great websites for that–CG society, Mattepainting.org, and many more). Sometimes it’s just getting out into the beautiful environment (great part of being in the Northwest). Or maybe reading a good book. I find that if I get away from the computer for a break and find a source of beauty or imagination, that does the trick.

What do you feel, when you have to work on things you don’t like to do? And at the end you aren’t happy with the result at all?
This does happen on occasion. Welcome to commercial art work. It’s part of any creative business and but I find that it just makes the rewarding jobs more fun.

What is your worst client story?
I’ll have to wait until I retire to tell this story. Past clients always have the possibility of becoming future clients!

What are your plans for the future?
Good question. Right at the moment I’m enjoying working on the films and getting to do some of my own work in between. It’s a pretty good setup and there are no plans to change it for now.

Can you explain some things and steps about your work process. First, when you start a project, what things you do first?
Almost every project begins with research. Whether it’s matte painting or illustration I always find it’s a good idea to research other artist’s work that are similar to my current project to see how they might have solved similar problems. Often there’s technical or historical research to do. It’s actually a fun part of the process for me and is the step that starts igniting my imagination. It’s when the “What if?” questions start getting answered.

What would you advice for young artists? From where to start their careers? Do you think design education is important?
I think you’ll get the same answer from any working professional artist. Learn the basics of art—drawing, lighting, form, texture, perspective, composition, design. You never really stop learning these things but a foundational knowledge of them is a good foundation. The temptation is to jump the the cool technology tools and software programs too early. Resist that urge and learn the basics first.

What are your all time favorite works? Why?
If you mean my own, my current favorite is “Keep a Sharp Eye”. I love the story telling aspect of illustration and it was fun to do. It was the first in a series I’m calling “Illustrations From Untold stories” that I hope to do many more of. The idea was to create images that evoke a strong sense of story to give people’s imagination something to do, and to challenge myself to get better at integrating story into my work and not just make a pretty picture. The second in that series, “He’s Out There Somewhere” I like a lt as well. Another is “Milltown Morning”. There’s a lot of detail I that one that I really enjoyed creating and I think it does a good job of re-creating the lumber mill town that was on our island at the turn of the century.

If you mean other artist’s work, the list is too long to enumerate here but in general I still love the work of early illustrators like N.C. Wyeth, Rockwell, Parrish. There are many contemporaries I love looking at too—Craig Mullins, Chris Stoski, Dylan Cole, on and on. There’s always something I learn from viewing other artist’s work and I never tire of it.


Thanks for having me and I hope you’ll find the interview helpful.