Celebrations

Last month I celebrated a very special birthday and I spent the day enjoying it to its fullest as a food-lover and an artist by restaurant-hopping and drawing my meals.

You can well imagine the stomach ache I ended up with after all that food, but it was well worth every bite of grits, biscuits, sausage, eggs, raspberry iced tea, soup sampler, open-faced ham and apple sandwich and dessert sampler.

This month I also celebrated another very special but different anniversary as the one year anniversary that I began a journey to transform and improve my life. From last year to this year, I worked every day to achieve a healthy lifestyle and lose 90 pounds. It's extraordinary to know that just last year I was fighting obesity whereas now I am in the best shape of my life. Through all the ups and downs, I have been reaping in the benefits every day and I am greatly looking forward to continuing this journey of healthy living for the rest of my life.

This change has lead to fun little moments of creative inspiration, such as when I designed a personal home menu to organized my meal options. It was certainly a joy to whip up and it's functional!

Finally, the good news keeps coming as I also produced on a series of illustrations for a children's story in which the author was inspired by Zhuangzi's famous butterfly dream philosophy, taking on a whimsical view of the question of self and distorted perspective. Both subject matters that match quite well to my artistic views and work in style.

Here's to another exhilarating year of continued hard work, fortune and success!

Sketchbook Pages VIII: NYC

I am newly returned from a fabulous promotional trip to NYC alongside fellow illustrator, Joanna Estep. Despite the unexpected highs in the mid-90s and multiple blisters on our feet, we prevailed and walked our way across half of Manhattan to distribute portfolios.



In addition to promoting and walking, we visited Jo's friend and Vertigo's Madame Xanadu artist, the delightful Amy Reeder, to talk shop, eat, share inspiration and get a peek of the current issue in progress. Check out her gorgeous comic art at her website as well as at the nearest comic shop near you!



Quite unexpectedly, we managed to walk by the Illustration House, where I enjoyed getting up close and personal with a number of Bernie Fuchs's stunning pieces. Of course, I loved seeing the Rackham, JC Leyendecker and Jessie Wilcox Smith originals that I remember from my first visit.



Thursday night we also hit up Sketch Night at the Society of Illustrators where I ran into the lovely and talented Lisa Fields. For an alternate view of the same models, take a look at Lisa's sketchbook pages from the same night over at her blog. The surprise company was grand, the models were great and the live music was worth the cover in and of itself.



If only the trip could have lasted longer, who knows what or who I would have run into accidentally next.

In the end, I successfully promoted my portfolio, made new friends, enjoyed familiar sights and past company, lost a little weight and gained more experience in navigating the streets of Manhattan. Fall semester classes have begun and my students are busy familiarizing themselves with the AAU's online classroom, so it's back to work teaching and illustrating for me.

Sketchbook Pages VII

Sketchbook Pages VI

Futurama Redesign

One of my favorite tv shows is returning to air, and I'm so excited for the new season of Futurama that I took a moment to redesign the characters and the ship. The redesign is heavily influenced by the Nautilus of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, because great design never goes bad.

As for why they are all posed vaguely like pin-up girls? The more apt question is why not.

Sketchbook Pages V: Ross Park Zoo

Sketching adventures through the nation's 5th oldest zoo:


The Amur Leopard has a passionate dislike of machines that make loud noises.


The tiger on the right took a break from his nap while I was sketching to stand up on his hind legs and greet me face-to-face from three inches and a pane of glass away. I never expected I would ever stare down a tiger in my life.


The Great Cats of Asia exhibit is housed in a beautifully designed massive wooden cage. It seems old and weather beaten, which just adds to its appeal.


The colors of the building and surrounding landscape are quite marvelous, too.


I've never seen a bald eagle in person before. Luckily, the zoo has three and they can be very communicative at times.


The crows are rescued animals that cannot be released back into the wild. These crows have clipped wings as a result and can only fly the short distances in their cage.

Sketchbook Pages IV

Bonus: Not only does working for the AAU's Fashion Department provide exposure to a vast array of inspirational fashion illustrators, it also builds an appreciation for the care and attention that is given to fabrics in mass, form, drape and pattern. The following black and white striped outfits by Schiele, ERIC and an unknown artist (please comment if you know!) are captivating in design and construction. The stripes, which is a pattern that is typically stiff and unyielding, flow along the fabric, broken by the folds and drape to accentuate the soft femininity of the figures.

Sketchbook Pages III

A few things I've been meaning to archive here. More to follow.









Bonus: Schiele's Portrait of Hans Massmann, 1909, that I keep admiring wistfully. Not only does he incorporate his lovely organic patterning and lines through the piece, he successfully combines them with strong shapes and geometric compositional elements, generating a powerfully designed portrait. The earthy colors reinforce this feeling of strength, as well as the manner in which Hans Massmann is glancing from the corner of his eye at the viewer from an elevated position, even though he is seated and relaxed.

Pigment Miasma

Nothing can replace value studies as the most important part of the creative process for me. Though having a respectable palette to use and abuse does come close.

Books, Clothing and Accessories

Out today through Delmar Cengage Learning is Michael Fleishman's new book, The Drawing Inspiration: The Visual Artist at Work.

"Drawing Inspiration is a one of a kind text for beginning illustrators. This book examines the relationship between academic and professional illustration through the ideas and first hand experiences of professional illustrators working in the field today. With hundreds of diverse hand-rendered and digital images, readers can explore a world of illustration that has no limits. While learning the fundamentals and basic principles of illustration, readers will also gain insight on how these concepts can be used in the professional world. Drawing Inspiration will not only educate readers, but it will also inspire them to reach their full artistic potential."

It contains words of wisdom from a wide variety of incredible and inspirational artists, including Peter Cusack, Marcos Chin, Marshall Arisman, Jack Tom, Dice Tsutsumi, Andrea Wicklund, Drew Struzan, Shaun Tan, Sterling Hundley, Yuko Shimizu and many more!

I was lucky enough to contribute to this book, which is all the more relevant as I continue to teach figure drawing for the Academy of Art University.

Another t-shirt is available through Mysoti, continuing the obsessive crazy animal theme:


My sea monster squid has been skinned, flavored with a little William Morris and slapped on a laptop.


For the formal occasions, a plain, ugly wallet that I'd nearly thrown away was transformed from blah:


Into a personal handmade clutch or shoulder purse:


The bookstore I am employed at is closing at the end of January and I will be moving onto some exciting charitable illustrative opportunities. I'll also continue to teach, be rewarded in it through the development of the students and, of course, pay the bills. For the first time in two years I will be able to visit friends and family out of state. 2010 is shaping up to be a positive year.

T-Shirts? Why not.

Through MySoti, t-shirts are now available featuring the vector illustration of my favorite SEA MONSTER:

And for the tea snobs like me out there, declare your love with your choice of Green Tea:

Herbal Tea:

or Black Tea:

Monster

Got slammed by a flu or cold this weekend, which I'm still woozy and recovering from. I did see that Coop of A Patchwork of Flesh received my submission to his online blog gallery of Frankenstein's monster.



I assume from my portfolio work, people don't see me drawing dark pieces but I do like to make them. I just like to make the dark aspects subtle. With Frankenstein's monster, the surgical procedure of the creation is the part that intrigues me the most, even though I feel ill when looking at real surgery photos. The bolts and nuts have become a quintessential physical aspect of the monster, and in this case, I envisioned how they could be incorporated without putting them in the flesh as a part of a restraining device.

In the meantime, after reading the original description of the monster, I did a piece heavily influenced by Jenny Saville. The only problem is that it does not evoke what has become the popular assumption of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's monster at all. Still, it was fun to draw and intriguing in how the second drawing begins to take on a more sinister aspect, even though that was unintended.



The request for work for A Patchwork of Flesh was a fun expendature of time and creativity. It was also a great excuse to explore new materials and their effects. For everyone who wants to submit, no matter what the level of artistic training may be, visit the blog for more information. All submissions welcomed and encouraged! Thank you, Coop!

Swag

While in NYC to attend the Society of Illustrators Student show, I picked up a few items of note. Postcards from the Met are great to use when determining colors in a composition. They had a gorgeous exhibit on 19th and 20th century painters: Vuillard, Mucha, Sargent, Lautrec, Van Gogh, ect. I was very pleasantly surprised and awed by the touches of perfect color in the Degas pastels.

I finally found a watercolor travel kit I like, a Pentel Aquash set from Kinokuniya, which I removed the provided colors from and filled with my favorite colors instead (naples yellow, permanent red, perm alizarin crimson, venetian red, permanet violet, lavendar, antwerp blue, turquoise blue, davy's grey & payne's grey: a very earthy palette).

At the Strand, I picked up a Moleskin storyboard sketchbook, Strand tote and Lemony Snickett's The Composer is Dead, featuring music by Nathaniel Stookey and illustrations by Carson Ellis, an inspirational culmination of story, sound and visuals. When I can afford to, I'm picking up Neil Gaiman's new children's book The Dangerous Alphabet and Meomi's first Octonauts book out of sheer love.

The disassembled book on the bottom is friend's copy of Oliver Twist, which I will be re-binding sometime after the 22nd as a bookbinding demo for friends. If you're in the area and you want to know how to stitch & bind signatures as well as make a hardbound cover, let me know.



I also ended up making a set of three small hardbound portfolios: illustration, painting and black & white illustration. The pages are removable and they fit neatly into an envelope I made to protect them for carrying them easily in my purse.

Plenty of plans coming up for the summer, including teaching figure drawing, working, as well as a few secret projects. Keep up on my interests and updates on Twitter.