John Hoagland is not just the President of Vanishing Point, one of the leading 3D content providers for Poser. John is also a long time Poser user and an accomplished digital artist. John’s work was recently accepted by the Jacksonville Beach Art Festival in Jacksonville, Florida, and he attended the show for the first time as an exhibiting artist. We asked John to tell us about the show, and to describe the experience of selling his digital art at a traditional art show:

I originally found the art festival when they listed their show on the Zapplication website, which is an online application site. Zapplication streamlines the application process by allowing artists to apply to many shows without having to physically mail slides to each show.

As I was looking over the information about the show, I found that the art festival's website said there were spaces for 170 artists. I later found out that about 60 artists were attending. However, when I counted the number of booths at the show, the total came to about 50. So, yes, there were a lot of empty spaces, including the space next to mine.

I displayed a number of my "Tabby" images, which were framed and available for purchase in a variety of sizes. As people walked by my booth, they made comments about how unique my artwork was. In fact, a number of them commented on the "Portrait With a Ladybug" image - the one that I almost made as a joke. Some people asked what programs I used, but most people were only interested in the fact that my images were digital. I tried to gauge how computer-literate they were before telling them about the art. When some teenage girls came by, I explained that I used a 3D model and rendered the image. Some them even said my artwork reminded them of anime artwork!

But when some older people came by, I changed my description slightly and I simply said that I used computer software to make the artwork. Although all of my artwork is created with Poser, Lightwave, and Photoshop, I think any talk of these programs would have bored these visitors, as if a painter were to tell me about his "red #10 paint" or "sable fine brush".

There weren't as many visitors as expected. A few of the artists said they were disappointed by the turnout. However, since this was my first show, I was actually kind of glad not to have been swamped with visitors. However, it would have been nice to have sold more pieces of artwork.

As some history, I've actually been making images on the computer since I first got an Apple II, back in the 1980's. But, I quickly learned that the home computers didn't have the power or the software to make images with realistic looking people. Around 2000, I finally started learning how to use Poser, mainly because it could do what I couldn't: make images with realistic people. Many of my earlier Poser images were humorous or comic-book style images. By 2003, I had developed a main subject for my artwork: the character called "Tabby". By 2007, I had refined the character into three versions: the first one has long hair, the second version has short hair and glasses, and the third version is a combination of the first two, with both long hair and glasses.

Learn More About John: http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/1647/1/373/
Vanishing Point Website: http://www.vanishingpoint.biz