New Year News!

This first morning of the New Year, I opened an email from SILA West telling me that my illustration (Rich Boy) was accepted into Illustration West 48!! ...a really nice way for me to start the New Year..The work will be exhibited online for two years and exhibited at a gallery in Los Angeles in March 2010. The judging panel juried over 1200 entries and included Glen Sagan- Sagan Phior, Ronnie Herman- The Herman Artist Agency, Keith Batcheller-Illustrator, Christy Ottoviano-Christy Ottoviano Books, Victor Juhasz-Illustrator, Vincent DiFate-Illustrator and Bill Perkins-Disney and High St Studios. I feel truly honored...

Jon Han

Finished paper on rising star and Pasadena presenter Jon Han for Murray. Jon has been gracious enough to consent to an interview by me which I will post here in the future. Love his work. As soon as I saw Jon Han’s silkscreened work on the table in Pasadena, I felt a connection. The simple shapes and fresh forms, the lines and colors appealed to me. Jon Han was born in 1981 and raised in California. He has a BA of illustration, from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and currently lives and works out of Los Angeles, California. His client list reflects an impressive array of news and science publications including: The New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Business Week, Plan Sponsor-Runner's World, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, NYU Physician, and New Scientist and more. He has been recognized in Illustration NOW 3, Print Magazine Regional Design Annual 2008, American Illustration 27, Communication Arts Illustration Annual 47, Society of Illustrators New York Illustrators 50, and Society of Illustrators West 47. To say that his star is rising would be an understatement. Work assignments for him began in his senior year at Art Center.

Redhood and the Wolf

Winston Churchill

I've been working on a magazine cover assignment for Hartford. Picked the decade of the 50's, TIME magazine and am using a Ben Shahn/David Stone Martin (DSM) approach. I was going to go for black and white but Churchill was such a colorful character. I probably could have pushed the color even more, but I was concentrating on the line, which is tricky. DSM was an assistant to Ben Shahn and it shows in his work, especially the jazz album cover designs from the fifties. May do some other versions...hmmm.

monks en masse

This was made in PS from a photo I took of a friend's son at a lake. Thinking of doing a drawing based on this photo...
Happened upon Daniel Sprick website...pretty amazing contemporary realism.
Making progress on Gary Kelly ( Neo Realist ...as long as we are talking labels:) paper.

from Illustration: A Visual History by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast

“ In the early 1960’s, New Journalism was a form of editorialized reportage pioneered by Tom Wolfe (who coined the term), Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Peter Hamill, and others for magazines like Esquire, Evergreen, Ramparts, Rolling Stone, and New York, among others. Usually written in the first person with literary flourishes, which was uncommon in most newspapers at the time, the approach challenged traditional, objective, third-person journalism by injecting more spice, and more personal insight, to the reportage stew. Parallel to this innovation in the 1960’s as an illustrative approach with many facets, partly to complement New Journalism, and partly to shake off the rigid notion that illustrative Realism must be a totally faithful representation of life. Like the New Journalists, Neo Realists attempted to look behind the facade of reality to amplify the nuance of say, a particular gesture or expression to impart more, not less, truth. Neo Realism brought more dimension to illustrative practice than the routine, cardboard reality that was de rigueur during the 1940’s and 1950’s in editorial and advertising illustration.” (Heller and Chwast, p. 137)

Welcome

A welcome read,...Ben Shahn's, The Shape of Content.

"I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none."
– Ben Shahn

IF: Magnify/Mail Me Art 2

Taking a break from writing papers to paint a submission to the Mail Me Art 2 project. Find out more here:) The stamps are the King and Queen of Hearts designed by Jeanne Greco,
a very talented designer. LOVE her calligraphy on her site. The stamps helped inspire my illustration. Painted with GOLDEN fluid acrylics. In a way, I magnified the queen, and gave her a bigger crown.....mothers figure large in children's lives sometimes:)

IF: Modify (Modified)

I prefer non-GMO - fed chicken. (i.e. (genetically modified organism)
Illustration is a combination of watercolor and digital and is a detail of a larger illo.
The original illustration, done in watercolor, was modified digitally:)

IF: Shaky

Doing some research for the Dream assignment and came across a photo in the Library of Congress of E.L. Mitchell, a Denver Colorado Councilman who was associated with the KKK in 1880. It inspired this illo....creepy...a politician with shaky credentials.

Birdsong versions

Still working with this image...experimenting again....
Hear a rare interview (podcast) with Brad Holland here. There are lots of them at SideBar. Kind of like NPR's Car Talk but with Dwight and Swain. Four color conversations about comics, art, and pop culture. Great to listen to while working....

Maira Kalman And the Pursuit of Happiness

The New York Times "And the Pusuit of Happiness Blog, about American democracy and posted/published on the last Friday of every month online, is a favorite. I love Maira Kalman's illustrations and how she weaves them with her hand drawn words. It is really simple but profound really. I especially like her "Soldier No. 53"from May 29th "At Ease" post. Like children's drawings, her illustrations are straightforward and this is, I think, what makes them so powerful. These are the drawings of some former very young students (first and second grade) from my museum classes. Watching these young children make art were some of the best art lessons I have ever had.

NEWS: Creative Quarterly 16: Winners Announced!

I am really excited that this illo of mine was chosen in the runner-up category of Creative Quarterly 16! To see Charles Hively's Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art & Design and CQ15 (last competition) winners go here. The runner-ups are only posted on the website (hopefully soon:) and not included in the print magazine....that's ok, I am thrilled! The next deadline (CQ17) is in July! Congratulations to all the winners! Now,...back to the drawing board:)
Have a great weekend...

IF:Crave

A place of one's own is craved by many today....
Thoreau understood this.

Image made digitally in Photoshop and Illustrator. The bird was drawn into the image in Illustrator.

Experimenting with space

Experimenting with space...took the photo of the trees last winter and pasted down a recent line drawing and wash of dog... Then into PS for cutout effect. The photo ends but I inked in the tree trunks below the photo margin...

IF: Theater/ Weeping Cherry

The Weeping Cherry tree provides a lot of drama in the theater of the garden.

Inspiration

Trip to Ithaca. Decided to push the saturation in PS.
Ithaca is such a colorful town:)

reading and listening to....
Elizabeth Gilbert's thoughts on writing
Elizabeth Gilbert's talk at TED conference on creativity.
Maira Kalman's talk "The Illustrated Woman"at TED

Design & Illustration: Blog Header

Header designs I needed to do asap for a blog with content for brides and bridesmaids...I was really inspired by Robin Zingone's website. I found her thanks to Illustration Mundo. I really wanted HER to design this, but alas, I think she is a tad busy being famous...All I can say is WOW! Enjoy!

Work in Progress: Sketching Cats

Revisiting these two sketches I did a while ago. Will refine the drawings and plan color.
Sorry for the bad photos..click to enlarge.