We recently connected with Alex Brock and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but making a career out of art is so hard. To be more specific, being able to have a successful career while also keeping yourself creatively fulfilled and make what you truly love is what’s so hard. I’ve been looking back lately and really trying to identify the magic I had while still in a safety bubble before stepping into the professional world. If I’m honest with myself it’s a total grass being greener on the other side scenario, but there is absolutely something special there worth pinning down.
As I’ve ventured out into the world since art school and gotten older and had to pay the bills, all the free gaps and cracks that the magic of inspired personal art happened in have started to close up. What that left was only really making art when I had to do it for work or under a tight deadline. To make a long story medium I had been doing art for Magic the Gathering for two or three years and things had been going great. In 2021 I was able to quit my day job and freelance full time. I got to do cards for the Lord of the Rings set which was a full blown dream job. I loved that, even though there are things I would maybe have done differently, it was one of, if not the peak of my art “career”. Not long after that I got into a convention/art showcase across the country that would take place in October 2022. I was getting by freelancing but only just, and I started to bank all my hopes on this convention and that I’d sell a bunch of oil paintings and “make it” or get to the next level, whatever that meant (this was not a well thought out plan). So I dialed it back and turned down freelance work for a few months to make and finish a bunch of personal work for the show, which was financial blow #1.
Then I gravely underestimated the costs, not just financially, of taking a cross country trip (Tucson AZ to Reading PA) to a show with all the hotels and food and gas. I also scrambled together a camper top for my pickup truck to store everything in so it wouldn’t get wet, destroyed, or stolen. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up in the middle of the night spazzing about my life’s work getting ruined in the back of my truck! It was all fine though, and the event was absolutely amazing and totally worth it for the experience and meeting awesome people, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of my girlfriend who came along for the whole perilous quest. But the expenses heavily outweighed whatever I made at the event. That was financial blow #2. I way overstepped my reach, it was a huge stress test.
A month after getting back, my dog who I’d had for over 8 years and was my first dog that was just “mine”, got really sick and had to be put down. I went through so much to try and get her through it with procedures and multiple vets but she was too far gone. If you’ve ever had a pet you know how expensive vet bills can get and quickly. That was financial blow #3, as well as a huge emotional blow, and at that point I was cleaned out.
Only about a month after that my friends who I’d been living with in our rented house got the news that the owners wanted to sell, and we had to move out. Because rent prices were so high and we were kind of handy and gung-ho about building stuff and watching a bunch of off grid living videos on youtube, we opted to try and renovate the guest house (read: garage, it was literally a garage) of my friends brother in exchange for super cheap rent once it was done. We learned a ton and had some fun literally building our living space around us, it was rewarding. BUT we were in way over our heads and it was so much more time and work than we anticipated. What ended up happening with all of this is that art just got completely pushed to the back burner for me. I was in complete survival mode and being in that mental space, let alone physical space was anything but conducive to making art.
I had no choice going back to a regular job. I said uncle and got a full time warehouse job to get back on my feet, pretty much just doing that and working on the renovation, there was no time to make art. I think it was just a prime recipe for burnout.
It was so conflicting because what had previously been a dream job I now dreaded to do every time I had to sit down and start painting. I was constantly wrestling my feelings and real artistic desires against all these ideas of what other people would think, or what someone else would say I should do: that it was a real dream of mine for so long; so many other people would kill to be in this position; I’m throwing away an amazing opportunity; that maybe if I just push through a little longer it’ll get better and somehow I’ll enjoy it again; I’m making a huge mistake; people would be disappointed in me; other Magic artists did way more cards than me before moving on, the list goes on. It was one of the hardest choices I had to make. But the map is not the territory, the dream or idea of something is not the reality of doing the thing itself. All that stress and turmoil made it abundantly clear what I DIDN’T want to do and what was really important to me artistically, and that’s being my own art director and making what I’m inspired to make.
This goes back full circle to what I mentioned at the beginning, and my focus in art has looped around to something in the past too in a weird way – looking for something I had when I was still in art school, extremely hungry and desperate and determined to do whatever it took to “make it” or be successful or start an art career. During that time I was coming up with my own ideas and cracking open my psyche, learning what makes me and the world around me tick, having a dialogue with the beauty of the world and filtering that through myself. All of that in an effort to make things that would be good enough to get me a job. But once that finally happened, all that self discovery and exploration felt like it withered away because I’m executing someone else’s ideas and vision, I’m having to make compromises and choices that I otherwise wouldn’t, it just didn’t feel like my art. Don’t get me wrong, working with Wizards of the Coast was by far the best job I’ve ever had and everyone was great to work with, but it was just really hard to admit to myself that I didn’t really want to do it, maybe I’m just not cut out for it or it’s just not the right fit for the type of person and artist I am. But I just knew in my gut that this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing.
I think this is just a particular people pleasing idiosyncrasy of mine, but whenever I’m making something for someone else, whether I intend to or not, I set aside a lot of my own desires for the sake of what I THINK they would want. Which doesn’t even make sense because if you think about it, they’re hiring you for you to do what you already do! They want you to be yourself, to the extent that it fits the purpose of the work. But it didn’t matter, with the pressure of a pretty quick deadline and it having to be “good enough” for a published game that wasn’t just for me, whether I wanted to or not I would censor myself and resort to pretty rigid and safe ways of making art. On top of that I could never compromise and do things looser and more quickly because 1: I suck at doing it, and 2: that also wasn’t up to this internal standard I have, so they also took quite a bit of time. It’s totally contradictory I know. And the more I resisted and procrastinated, the worse this process would get. I’d wait too long and have to rush and compromise on more ambitious or interesting ideas and kind of dispassionately knock them out.
Where all of this has landed me is kind of an overcorrection into the opposite direction of trying to find that magic again in making personal work that scratches that curious and explorative itch of making what feels like something being drawn through you from something bigger than yourself, or engaging with the muse. I’m also out of the weeds financially and in a way better living situation thanks to lots of help, which is a huge blessing because this wouldn’t be possible without that. Art is so hard to make in survival mode, it’s something that is more of a side effect of an inspiring life, even if you take inspiration from non-conventionally beautiful things.
Through all of this I’ve really learned about the place I create art from and why, and kind of had a big idealistic bubble popped about doing commercial illustration and thinking I was cut out for it. Even if the work I made came out good on the outside, what it took internally wasn’t sustainable. I learned how special and sacred and important it is for me to still be able to play. There’s a quote from Ursula K. Le Quin I think about a lot, “the creative adult is the child who survived.” And I was going down a path that was slowly killing my inner child and I desperately need to preserve that.
Alex, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
What got me into art was games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and TV shows like Dragon Ball Z and Gargoyles, and Beast Wars toys. Later I found a lot of fantasy and concept art for games and movies online which really got me into digital painting. There was a website that’s no longer around called CGHub that probably left the biggest impact on me. Nowadays Artstation is the go-to site for that type of art. Then in college I was exposed to a lot of the old masters and the French academic style of oil painting. I think one of the best ways to sum up what I’m going for is old master style oil painting with a dark fantasy twinge. What got me into doing freelance fantasy illustration for Magic the Gathering was when finding art online, most of my favorite ones were done for some form of fantasy trading card game or board game. This led me seek out other companies like Pox-Nora, Fantasy Flight Games, and Hex before finally working with Wizards of the Coast.
What I’ve most recently moved towards doing is my own personal oil paintings and sculptures, as well as learning how to 3D print and bronze cast stuff. At the moment my current approach is to make the weird personal paintings that I really love without any intent or hope of them selling, while attempting to make money with resin and bronze cast sculptures, incense holders, dice rollers etc. I’ve yet to see how it’ll pan out!
What I’m really inspired by now is a lot of the ancient wisdom traditions and their conceptualizations of the cosmos. Joseph Campbells insights into mythology, Carl Jungs ideas about archetypes, 19th century occultists ideas about spirits, old Greek and Egyptian magic, the elements, and planets, etc… All of these things are really the foundations of fantasy and sci-fi in all it’s forms today. I’m really looking for something in all of this and making art about it is a way of exploring and engaging with it. Oh also music! lol
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
This is kind of specific and may only stick to a few people, but I think it’s becoming a lot more ubiquitous. Learning 3d modeling and rendering for reference has been one of the biggest game changers and things I love about painting. I think this applies to people who are more inclined to sculpture in general or think about art, whether it’s drawing/painting or not, in a 3d form/sculptural way. But you basically have access to a movie set and costuming and lighting if you’re willing to take the time to learn it, which can be a godsend if you don’t have access to models or good reference pictures. And that’s the catch is it can be very technical and tedious as well as expensive with the hardware required, and is a whole other skill set in itself. But if you’re already inclined in that direction it’s super fun and opens up a million possibilities with what you can make look realistic. Blender is a free program that can basically do everything you need to make a finished render.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
When it feels like I’m tapping in to something greater than myself, something that’s fundamental or lying within the ground of being. Like a primordial spirit or essence of something, even just a feeling or atmosphere that I’ve nailed down. and when someone else receives that same idea or feeling from the art I’ve made. It’s like having a heart to heart with no words.
