Very interesting Capt. I never knew, that you knew so much about art. Question about your artwork: I know you've mentioned working as a cartoonist (illustrator) in the past. Can you tell me more about that and also do you work in other mediums. I have my own little art story that relates to BS in art. I'll post about it, in awhile.
For me, art as a way to give a visual narrative to my creative expression as I was always coming up with characters & stories as a kid - but I was not a natural when it came to drawing. I was naturally creative, but not gifted with talent like some of the other artists I met. Whatever skills I developed came through practice.
I wanted to be a comic book artist, but just didn't have the skill, patience or persistence to get to that level. Without the skill to render realistically without hours of painstaking effort, I fell into cartooning.
My art school education took place just before the computer age took off, so I was only educated in pre-computer art. I had a comic strip in a school newspaper & I've dabbled in various mediums since.
I tried at different points to get into syndicated cartooning, but no leads ever took off.
I did quite a few freelance commissions, but never enough to make a living off of - and for me, it was always laborious & emotionally fatiguing, taking far longer than it was worth.
It took me a while to admit that I just didn't enjoy illustrating as an occupation because it took more effort and time than I wanted to commit (and then there were the mistakes - after 3 weeks of work, spilling ink on it, or finding I spelled something in the piece wrong, or smearing a face on a finished portion with the side of my hand, etc.).