Interview with Thomas Fluharty at Lightbox Expo 2022

Note: Due to circumstances outside of our control, this will go live on the main Anime Herald site on 9/15/2023. We apologize for the inconvenience.

• Interviewer: Seth Burn
• Editor: Samantha Ferreira

Anime Herald: What is your origin story?

Thomas Fluharty: It’s a long story.

Anime Herald: Go ahead.

Thomas Fluharty: I grew up drawing all the time. I competed with this other kid, Timmy Miller or Timmy Mitchell. He and I just drew all the time. First grade, not to brag, but we drew differently than the other kids. I knew I could do it easily. It was something I loved to do.

I got involved in drugs around eighth grade. I stopped drawing, went into a very dark time.

Sometime around 16 years old, after lunch, in tenth grade, I was stoned, I would bring pot in to get high at lunch. I went into the tenth-grade art class. The teacher there would say, “You could do this, you could do this. Why don’t you go into the vocational class, try out for the eleventh and twelfth grades? You could do art, and that could be your complete day. I thought to myself, “I hate math, school sucks, nothing else interests me other than art.”

I went to the vocational school [on] application day, and they said, “Sure, you can come.”

So, in eleventh grade, I’m learning about design and layouts, I’m learning about printing, about drawing. In twelfth grade, my high school teacher told me, “Tom, you can do this. You can do whatever you set your mind to.” That was something I had never really heard before. My father wasn’t really in the picture.

In twelfth grade, my friends were going to art school. They asked me, “Are you coming?” I was like, “Well, I don’t really have any money.”

My father came back into the picture. He was a distant father, and an alcoholic. He said, “You’re going to go to school one way or another. Bizarre story. He’s killed one night in a robbery. It was in the news.

Anime Herald: F*ck.

Thomas Fluharty: It’s nuts.

He’s killed, it’s on the news. Because he was killed in a robbery, I was able to go to school for free. So now I’m going to Pittsburgh, for free. When I was at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I met up with a guy who was an art director in Dayton during the Winter months. He said, “Tom, stop drawing Mick Jagger, stop drawing Pete Townshend. If you do markers, your foot is in the door.

I go back to school. I do markers like crazy. This is 1982, 1983. Digital doesn’t exist. I just pour everything into markets, illustration. I keep drawing J. Giels Band if you remember them.

Anime Herald: Of course. Centerfold.

Thomas Fluharty: Yeah. So, I’m painting all these things. But I made myself marketable. When I was done, I sent my work to New York City. Two places, doing markers, I looked in the black book, which was a sourcebook on art. These two places in New York City did marker work, and layouts, and storyboards. One place called me out of the blue and said:

Thick New York Accent Guy: “You Tom Fluharty?”

Thomas Fluharty: “Yeah.”

Thick New York Accent Guy: “You draw?”

Thomas Fluharty: “Yeah.”

Thick New York Accent Guy: “You draw out of your head?”

Thomas Fluharty: “No.”

Thick New York Accent Guy: “Why don’t you come up for a trial.”

They flew me up there. I trained for a week. They said, “You got the job.”

There was an artist there, Ken Bald, who drew Dr. Kildare and Captain America. He was best friends with Stan Lee. They moved me up there. I started with storyboards in 1983.

Kenny Bald trained me. For thirteen years, I did storyboards at Gem Studio. We were the premier storyboard place in Manhattan. From 20 years old to 33, I did storyboards there. They paid me good money.

I moved in as sort of the top artist there, and trained artists and stuff. It was really cool. It taught me how to draw, it put me in all these scenarios of drawing very difficult, complex scenes out of my head. Learning how to construct, how to draw from the ground up. All of that is seen in my drawing to this day. What’s underneath all of the drawing that I do is forty years of drawing.

So I did that. When I left there I started getting into magazines. Mad Magazine rejected me in 1993. They said, “Great stuff, but it’s not what we do. Go back and do more ‘a la Mad’ work.”

So, I’m still working at Gem, doing storyboards. So then I go back a few years later. My friend, Kevin Sackler, said “Tommy, take your work back.”

I’d been practicing caricature, working on caricature. So I go back, I show them my work, and uh… they gave me the cover, which was absolutely insane. I did the cover in 1995, Alfred E. Neuman dunking over Shaq. That was a crazy break.

I finished my contact. Moved to Minneapolis. Did editorial work for all of the magazines. And then I did storyboards for twenty more years. Then, all the editorial stuff happened.

I started getting classically trained in 2000. I wanted to learn how to paint in oils. I went from Minneapolis to St. Paul, and started training with two classically trained artists. And then, I also started studying with Joe Paquet. He’s a great and famous Plein Air painter. These guys shaped the way I started thinking and drawing and painting.

In the meantime, I reached out to Schoolism in 2010. I started teaching. Then, I started drawing on social media, putting up my work, and building a following, and engaging with people. Building them up, and edifying them, and lifting them up, and helping them, and saying things that are helpful.

That’s where I am to this day. It’s this cool thing where I fell in love with drawing. The 901 Indigo Bleu pencil sort of rocked my world when I found it. I just started drawing in that way. It was pretty crazy. Now, I draw with the 901 all the time.

People draw, and send it to me, and tell me how inspired and helped they were by me. It’s been really super cool. I’ve very grateful. I have a lot of great artist friends. I’m honored to be a part of that community.

Anime Herald: That is a great origin story.

Thomas Fluharty: Thank you.

Anime Herald: You mentioned a lot of musicians. Was music one of your other passions?

Thomas Fluharty: Drawing musicians? I always loved music, but I was more a fan of pop culture. The things that we love. Pee Wee Herman. I don’t know if you love Pee Wee Herman, [but] I love Pee Wee Herman.

Anime Herald: No, but I remember him.

Thomas Fluharty: The Princess Bride.

Anime Herald: That, I loved.

Thomas Fluharty: Things that we love, things that move us, that we find ourselves interested in and fans of. I started drawing dogs and sharks. Cowboys, especially. Things that we find intriguing, I find intriguing.

Miss America would be a theme, a series that I did. I just found them fascinating. As I draw these things that I’m fascinated with, I’m maybe able to awaken the idea with people that “Hey, these things are cool.”

I just draw what I love and these things seem to connect with people.

Anime Herald: What’s your process for creating?

Thomas Fluharty: Number one, I have to love something. I’ll start off saying “I want to draw that.”

I’ll gather high-res pictures of whatever it is. I just recently did Keith Haring. He was a pop artist.

Anime Herald: In New York.

Thomas Fluharty: I’ve had him on my radar. I gather all of these high-res pictures, cool pictures. Mostly obscure pictures. I don’t want to draw the picture that everyone has seen. I want to draw something that maybe not many people have seen.

I’ll take those pictures and then I’ll draw because I want to warm up in the morning. I’ll draw for maybe three hours. I try to draw for three hours, just what I want. No one’s going to create a post.

This whole process is, “I love it. I want to explore it. And then, I want to be able to post and talk about it, and be helpful. That’s sort of the process.

The cowboys are things that capture me. I keep coming back to that. I realize that I’m monetizing that, but I also love it. It’s not just for money. And I also do commission work, and editorial work.

Anime Herald: With the Cowboys, are these cowboys you created in your head, or did you find models for them?

Thomas Fluharty: There are two ways to approach it. Again, if you draw cowboy pictures that everybody has seen, everybody has seen it. So, I’ve done that. But I’ll also find a cowboy movie that’s cool… if the cowboy is cool, I’ll draw it, but I’ll spoof it. I’ll push it and pull it and sort of wonk it out. So, that’s one way.

I am also doing a cowboy painting for 2023 that’s a saloon fight. They’re all knocking the crap out of each other. Hitting each other with bottles, shooting. It’s a crazy, pushed, world of caricature, and cowboys. It’s a love of cowboys and exaggeration and drawing and painting.

I went to a photo shoot. I asked these cowboy reenactment actors where I live in South Dakota. I went to Deadwood and asked these dudes, “Would you be available for a photoshoot?”

They were like, “Sure!” I paid them $100 an hour. I had this incredible photo shoot. These are pictures that I don’t want anyone to know of. I need great lighting, I need and great characters.

This painting is killer because these guys are so authentic. They’re actors, they already know, right? That I took myself. That’s what I drew from. It’s not like I’m borrowing from a picture that someone has seen, that could have copyright infringement. It’s really cool, I’m super psyched about that.

Anime Herald: You mentioned learning traditional painting. Are you still doing that? Are you working in oils these days?

Thomas Fluharty: Exclusively in oils. I draw with the 901. I do some pastel drawings as well. It’s a traditional approach.

Mixed into my work is a classical education, mixed with some exaggeration. That is present in my work, but the fundamental classical education, Dutch-Flemish technique, is how I paint.

Anime Herald: I love the old masters.

Thomas Fluharty: They’re great.

Anime Herald: Who were the artists who inspired you back in the day?

Thomas Fluharty: N. C. Wyeth, and his son Andrew Wyeth. N.C. was first. After I became classically trained, Andrew became more appealing to me. He’s less character-driven. Christina’s World is more representational. N. C. Wyeth is more Treasure Island, more character, big nose, cool shapes, big clouds, over-exaggeration. Those two for sure.

(William-Adolphe) Bouguereau was always amazing. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres is another French painter. I’m so blown away and inspired by French painters. You also have Jean-Léon Gérôme. He was amazing. Another one is Paul Delaroche. These are painters that I constantly look at. I mean, I like Rockwell, but I don’t love Rockwell. I’m not setting him aside. It’s just that I’m not drawn to American illustration, I’m drawn to more classical painting.

Something in parting. If you want to get great, study with great people. Be humble. Be teachable. Draw and paint as much as you can, but study with great people so that you aren’t practicing mistakes. And you can do it, but you have to get around a great education. Study with someone teaching in their atelier. A classical education. Buy books on it. And then if it’s exaggeration, study exaggeration. Study caricature. Al Hirschfeld would be a great caricaturist to study. David Levine. I might be someone somebody looks at, but I’m not pushing myself.

Whatever you want to get into, study the greats, the people that you love. Peter de Seve would be a great character designer. Carter Goodrich. Look at these guys. Wherever you want to go, become educated with great people.

Anime Herald: You’re an educator now. What do you teach beginners?

Thomas Fluharty: At Schoolism, I have a drawing fundamentals class, which is five weeks of drawing, seeing shapes, value, composition, perspective, and gesture. Those things are very important elements of an image.

I teach at Patreon. I unpack things and record myself.

I also have an oil painting class, and I have a 901 Indigo Bleu class on Schoolism as well.

Anime Herald: Thank you very much, this was fantastic.

Thomas Fluharty: Thank you.

Thomas Fluharty can be found on his website, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and at Schoolism.