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Tales of Inspiration
Hello, Mr. Kistler,
I've wanted to send you this e-mail for many, many years. I'm not sure why I put it off, but I did. I suppose I wanted to really cement my place in life first. When I was a child, there was this TV show you might have heard of, called "Learn to Draw with Commander Mark". Well, between you and me it was the most amazing show in the world. I swear my eyes must have been like saucer bowls when I watched it, and I ruined countless surfaces trying to emulate what I saw there. I didn't really have paper, least of all drawing paper, so I used whatever I could.(This enraged my mother to no end, apparently a lot of things are not meant to be drawn on!) You see, through chance and circumstance, I was born into a fairly rare level of poverty in our great US. So you can imagine how it went over when I told people I wanted to be an artist.
I watched your show, I drew planets, I drew angular buildings, I drew little space men with cones for noses. And when our TV got stolen, I kept on drawing anyways. I drew ninja turtles and trees, I drew whatever came to mind whenever I could. I loved school for this reason, as a child. It was the one place I could draw and no one would laugh at it. I even won a few awards over it. And always I thought back to Commander Mark, this mythological space hero, the champion of imagination. I even saw you once, at elementary school one time. You were doing a little presentation for some children there, but it wasn't my class. I saw it through the big library window, and it blew my mind. I made a bolt for the door but the teacher managed to cut me off. You likely didn't hear the resulting brawl outside that elementary school library, right beside you. But I promise I gave it my all. Alas, I was a child, and no amount of effort was going to get me in there to see you. I was dragged off to detention by my she-hulk teacher, and eventually a paddling, haha. My only regret was that I didn't run fast enough!
You left the school and that was that, I don't even remember what school it was now. And I continued to grow up, and draw, and have people tell me that art was a poor choice of interest for someone in my financial situation. But I continued to draw! My interests shifted from ninja turtles and trees to monsters, from monsters to dragons and knights, from that to some other fantastical caste of the imagination. My teenage years were spent on the move from foster family to foster family due to a run of unfortunate tragedies, and though I lost every possession I owned a number of times- my art.. my art I could take with me anywhere. All I needed was one thing I could scratch against something else, and I was back in business. And because of that, I went through a lot of stuff and still managed to stay both sane and happy. Again, all because of that courageous space commander in his silly jumpsuit.
I've read similar stories now in your guest book. I can't imagine how amazing it must be to have changed so many lives. You are surely one of the heroes of our lifetime. I suppose my story is already longwinded enough, but the long short of it is, is that I fought my way out of several low situations with art as my guiding light. And despite being told my entire life that art would not help me succeed as an adult, it has opened more windows for me than I will ever have time to follow. I am the graphic artist and consultant for a prestigious university, I am the art director for a video game company, and I even have a side job doing 3D art in yet another venue. I try wherever I can to get other budding artists on the right track to follow their ambitions. I live a happy, full, productive, profitable life, and I am only just getting started.
And all of that, because of Commander Mark. Because of you. From the bottom of my heart-
Thank you,
Dylan Maddox
In the mail from a fan:
It was summer time, the sun was sitting high on it's imperial throne and kids gathered the streets like mobs sucking up the sweet nectar of life. Of course I was glad school was out and I traditionally slept till 10:00 and went outside and hung out with friends. I had just finished fifth grade and was looking forward to an exciting summer full of adventures. I was ready for days full of bike riding climbing trees and being outside constantly.
About two weeks into the summer I found how exciting it could actually be, sarcastically speaking of course. I found myself lying on the couch hours at a time rummaging through bags of chips, watching cartoons, sitcoms, what ever could keep my interest for at least half an hour. I was flipping through the channels when it happened. I landed on PBS, a channel which I watched very infrequently. What I saw was a close up of a piece of white paper on it a cartoon pencil was being draw being a chubby hand. It caught my attention the drawing was good, I found myself drawn to the way it all came together, how simple shapes became essential parts of the piece. The camera zoomed out revealing the artist, a plump man with a thick mustache, who seemed way to excited about drawing. At first I felt like changing the channel, and in think I might have but I came back to it and watched as he went over shading, foreshortening, the key words to 3-D drawing our as he called them renaissance words there are twelve total. I found out the show was called Imagination Station and was hosted by Mark Kistler.
Something happened to me. It was as if the hidden talent with in me had found its way out through this Imagination Station; it was a way for this talent not just to be a part of me but a strong part of me my niche in life. The next day I grabbed some paper from my Dad's printer and dug through a drawer for some pencils. I threw myself down in front of the T.V and for thirty minutes I was submerged in an entirely new world. In this world Mark was my guide he taught me the basics. I followed his every word and slowly mastered the 12 Renaissance words. And every morning that summer for half an hour I was in this world creating creatures and places, transforming them from circles and squares into what I considered masterpieces. I was the master of a whole new world.
His methods were awkward and at times corny. His songs about shading, the ninja action lines were new to me and strange. I was poked fun at a few times, but that show changed my life. It gave me an early understanding of art techniques vital to creating beautiful pieces of art. As I sit drawing in sketchbooks and listening as people gather around and complement my work, I have to remember I would have never gotten this good if it wasn't Mark Kistler's Imagination Station.