Artist On Hand

When Robert Hudson packed up his belongings in Idaho and headed to Indiana about two months ago, he took everything he needed to continue his career - except his reputation.

For the past 18 years, Hudson has lived off a growing career as a pencil artist and painter with a special knack for Western art.

But by moving home, the 45-year-old Claypool native has had to start his career over and prove himself to a whole new audience.

"I could go to an art gallery out (West) and introduce myself and most of them have heard about me," he said.

"Now, I come back here and visit an art gallery and they say, 'Robert who?' So I've gotta start all over again."

That was the initial outlook at Castle Gallery in Fort Wayne when he introduced himself. But after seeing some of his work on Hudson's website, they agreed to host an exibit featuring his work.

Aside from the exhibit, Hudson is now working on several projects, including a mural for the town of Etna Green and has begun teaching art classes at the Blue Lion Coffee House in Pierceton on Wednesdays.

Hudson said he's always had the passion and interest for art, but his career was somewhat misdirected at an early age by a high school art teacher.

"He advised me to take phys ed cause I didn't have any talent and that I was wasting his time," Hudson recalled recently while sitting in the Blue Lion, where some of his work is on display.

"He was a professional. I figured he knew what he was talking about, so I took phys ed."

Despite the criticism, he continued to doodle on the side and eventually moved to Idaho in 1980.

His career started out in the early 1980s, oddly enough, in a Lewiston, Idaho, fitness gym, where he worked out and was asked to draw a bodybuilder. The owner of Dave's Gym was so impressed with the drawing that he commissioned Hudson to draw something for the business.

"And then somebody saw it and said, 'That looks just like this guy,' and asked if I did portraits. Then I went on to portraits and then pencil drawings," he said.

Women are his favorite artistic subject, many of which become tasteful nudes, but the lack of a market led him elsewhere.

That's when he began applying the natural backgrounds and terrain in his own backyard of northern Idaho for Western art, typified by Indians, cowboys, mountainmen and horses.

His artistic style hit a chord in the Western states, where Western art is more popular.

Except for a single class he took while in the army, Hudson is self-taught.

"I took one two-hour class and the next morning, got ordered to ship out (to Vietnam) and couldn't take any more classes," Hudson said.

He quickly developed a talent for highly detailed pencil artwork. But pencil drawings are as tedious as they are detailed. Some of his projects involved 400 to 500 hours of work to complete.

"There's no room for error in a pencil piece. It's like you're playing chess against Big Blue. You've got to think way ahead of yourself before you even make a stroke or a shadow because you can't erase. You can erase, but it mars the paper and then you can't get the same effect," Hudson said.

To induce a high level of concentration, Hudson would absorb lots of caffeine, sugar and loud rock music. But the degree of concentration needed for pencil drawings was a mental and physical strain that caused occasional headaches and sore eyes, he said.

Although he was getting $2,500 to $4,000 per artwork, the amount of time involved was too much and the pay rate didn't work out to much more than he could make baling hay, he said.

So he switched gears and began painting a few years ago. Once again, he felt like a beginner, but gradually saw the prices for his work rise from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.

"With my oil paintings, I can have a studio with a window. People can come in and talk to me while I work, and you can listen to talk radio because painting is so much more relaxing. If you make a mistake, you can just wipe it off," he said.

For Hudson, his career is part of an evolution.

"I will never do another major pencil piece ever again in my life," he said. "It takes too much out of me."

"I'm going to paint the rest of my life, until I wanna start sculpting, I guess."