Neal Adams on being an artist

“I see myself as a craftsman; I see myself as a storyteller — I never thought of myself as an artist, because nothing ever came easy. I’d always kind of assumed that artists were people that God came down with the magic wand and went ‘plunk!’ and said, ‘You’re an artist,’ and they got up from their crib and drew a picture of whatever, and I was never able to do that. Everything I did came hard, it was never easy, and it took time, and it took study, and it took thinking about it and worrying about it, and it came to me as a craft. Now I know some people who, it seems to me, that the stuff that they do is, as a result of some kind of ‘plunking’ of God, or whatever magic thing that happens, and they seem to be able to do these magic things with their hands, and they don’t seem to think a whole lot about it. As a matter of fact, some people seem very brainless about the things that they do, and I just don’t understand that, and I don’t think of myself as that type of person.”

— Neal Adams (via)