They say it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something — if that’s true, then by the end of summer, Liam Wesley Goodman will be a master at drawing Cannabis.
Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Goodman is a mainly self-taught artist who has set out to conquer the world of Cannabis realism. His colored-pencil works display insane levels of detail and are often mistaken for actual photos. He told Leaf Magazines he’s always been fascinated by art.
“Growing up, I was terrible at everything. Last place in track-and-field, I couldn’t play an instrument and I was terrible at school, but my parents couldn’t get me away from the drawing table,” Goodman said.
As he went through school, Goodman had two separate teachers who offered the same piece of life-changing advice, a phrase that Goodman would form into the mantra that rules his art to this day: Draw what you see.
The first teacher showed Goodman how to take the phrase literally, to examine and take in each item that makes up the scene, setting him off down the path towards a career in realism. Later, another taught him that drawing what you see meant harnessing the ability to view a subject in many ways. Something difficult, like the crook of a thumb or the head of a trichome, can be a single image, a series of dots, a pattern of lines or shifting shades of color — it’s all in how you choose to see it.
Deciding to draw Cannabis was another gift from the universe. Almost a decade ago, Goodman won a talent contest and was offered a show at Toronto’s Vapor Central lounge. The one catch: He needed some Cannabis art. This was the moment that set him on this current path. Goodman Googled “Cannabis realism” and couldn’t find anyone specializing in the field. Here, he saw his chance to stand out as an artist and carve out his own space within both the Cannabis and art communities.
Since then, he’s gone from drawing flowers to trichomes, then concentrates; each time discovering something new about different kinds of people and plants. Having recreated nearly every form of concentrates, we had to ask our cover artist what the most difficult or time-consuming thing to draw is. Goodman answered without skipping a beat, “(THC) Diamonds. I often have a no diamonds rule.” This is because his technique is to capture a piece one square inch at a time, letting his brain drift so it can take in the natural pattern of things. Goodman said there’s no way to intuit a diamond’s pattern as it takes in the light around it; there are no patterns or shapes for the brain to latch onto, something he described as organic chaos.
Working as an artist full-time, Goodman told us he feels like he needs to be constantly stimulated to keep working, something he’s used Cannabis for since he was 13. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he decided to try his first tolerance break, going from a gram or more of rosin a day to consuming a massive amount once every five to six weeks. “I was constantly chasing terps for that flavor and experience. I needed to take a beat to find the things in my life that also gave me that flow state. Plus, my thoughts are way more random now that I’m not smoking every day,” he shared.
The soundtrack to that new flow state is still a mix of classical music, audiobooks and soundscapes, along with early-2000s pop hits to push that nostalgia button. A self-identified nerd, Goodman said fantasy epics like “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter,” like classical works of music, mirror his style in their length and complexity, which helps him channel that energy into his own work. Generating that feeling of being energized and creative gets him locked in on the hours it takes to complete a piece.
For Goodman, the hours aren’t a reflection of pricing his work, but a way to log all the pencil lead, sweat and tears into a form that anyone can interpret — and a way to show himself just how far he’s willing to go to master this craft and then push its boundaries.
