How to use this Page

It's been a busy summer so far and I've been teaching a lot of summer camps - but I finally made something for myself! Well - not exactly for myself. It's a donation for the upcoming art auction for the Mitchell County Animal Shelter. They requested animal-themed art this year so this paste-paper collage is what I put together. I tried to do this the other night and it was a terrible failure, but I'm pretty happy with this one, so into a frame it will go.

This mystery art has been making the rounds online…and in honor of the All-Star break in baseball, we approve…of whatever it is.

Artist Mary GrandPre, who created the cover work and illustrations for the US editions of the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling, will be appearing in person tonight at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. According to the website, Ms. Grandpre "takes to the Corcoran stage to discuss her impressive career and to share her delightfully stunning illustrations which have earned her so m... Read the rest of this post

Art Insights, who sell official Harry Potter artwork, have updated with some new character prints from the Harry Potter films. Starting here you can see the new series of character prints which retail at $48.00 each. The website also has some very high end prints of two deluxe covers from the series by Mary Grand Pre; the Flight on the Dragon from Deathly Hallows, and Grimmauld Place from Order... Read the rest of this post

The author of Cinema Panopticon and The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 has a new, disturbing
website.

[Via Flog]

We forget what they call their little booth group of Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, Brian Wood and Jill Thompson, whatever they call themselves, they will be at booth #1322 and they’ll have neat things to buy.

Jill will have copies of Magic Trixie, Magic Trixie Sleeps Over and Magic Trixie and the Dragon for sale as well as new swell embroidered patches (see attached photos).

I’ll have preview art of the new series from Dark Horse called Beasts of Burden.

I’ll also be signing autographs, doing commissioned sketches,chit chatting and generally being Jill. And I’ll be Twittering. (ooh- Ahh!) Come one come all!

Cliff Chiang will have assorted prints and postcard sets for sale, and of course, commissioned sketches.

Brian Wood will have 125 copies of his self-published sketchbook Public Domain 2, which is 120 b/w pages, signed, numbered, and sketched in, for $20. He’ll have another set of mini-screenprints, as well as VERY few replica “PRESS” badges not unlike what Matty Roth wears in DMZ.

Becky Cloonan will have limited edition silk screens. More info at her blog.

Here’s where to find some top notch artist in San Diego!

Spectrum Fantastic Art will again be exhibiting at Comic-Con under the Donato Arts umbrella in Booth #4503. We’ll be appearing with (naturally) Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, and Stephan Martiniere. Brom will be our special guest all 5 days and will be promoting his new book, THE CHILD THIEF.

There will be original art, prints, and books for sale; Underwood Books will premiere their new pulp-art poster book, STRANGE DAYS and TWILIGHT TOURS, a guide to the real Forks, Washington that’s the center of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series. We’ll have free postcards, buttons (while supplies last), and a color poster promoting James Gurney’s October release from Andrews McMeel, IMAGINATIVE REALISM: HOW TO PAINT WHAT DOESN’T EXIST.

We’ll also be hosting live oil painting demonstrations by Donato (Thursday 1-2pm), Rick Berry (Friday 1:30-2:30pm), and Gregory Manchess (Saturday 1:30-2:30pm).

Over at Illustration Friday, artist Rama Hughes writes about a found art project he does with his students called Beautiful Trash:

At the beginning of the school year, I invited my students to contribute to my Collection of Beautiful Trash. I promised to use it for an end of the year surprise. Over the course of the year, they got really excited about the quality of their trash. As soon as the school year ended, I browsed through the detritus, selected the most compelling items, and bound the beautiful trash into these three volumes.

My own collection of beautiful trash starts now!

With The Complete Alec’s pub date approaching rapidly, we’re getting more and more Eddie Campbell , including an interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid at The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log:
I was reading the autobiographical novels of Henry Miller, but now I can’t recall whether I was reading them because I wanted to go that route or whether they inspired it. Essentially I liked the idea of finding things to write and draw in the life I saw around me rather than just filling out the readymade narrative templates of thriller and fantasy and soap opera. There’s new stuff everywhere if you take the trouble to look for it. I do know that I didn’t see Spiegelman’s or Pekar’s work ‘til 1982.
Meanwhile, over on his blog, Campbell digresses about many essential things, such as the history of copying in art:

A note to any of those younger readers still hanging about after the pictures finished. We’re not looking at cases of artists ‘ripping off’ another artist. there was a time, long ago, before you were born, when if you wanted a copy of something, you couldn’t just scan it. Pictures in books were printed from engraved woodblocks, which would wear out after much use. Thus fifty years later, if a reprint of the book was required, it would be necessary to hire another artist to hand-copy the whole job. And each successive artist copying the same images would be likely to add his own touches. He may also not have had access to the earliest version and have worked from an intermediary copy. It was akin to a shakespearean play, which would have to be restaged and performed anew for each generation.

Michael Fiffe interviews artist Trevor von Eeden for the latest Comics Journel, and his LJ includes outtakes and a generous helping of art to show what makes von Eedon such a noteworthy figure. There’s also lots of juicy comic book history:

MICHEL FIFFE: Your last and most extended run on any title was Black Canary from ’91-‘93, which was on one of the only female-led comics of its time. You were paired up with yet another relative newcomer, writer Sarah E. Byam. Considering your longer than usual stint on that title, what was the creative process for you and Sarah during her first big break?

VON EEDEN: “Same as in all of my work for DC Comics — little to no direct communication with the writer at all. I believe that Sarah Byam called me once or twice, and we spoke briefly over the phone, but my work at DC Comics was never collaborative in nature. I was interested exclusively in doing the work, not in ‘networking’. I picked up a script, went home, drew it, and then handed it in. That’s it. Thriller suffered when my creative fire, my enthusiasm, was doused after the ‘chair collapsing’ stunt that the DC editor had tried to pull on me. Although to this day, I still don’t remember who’d sat behind that desk, insisting over and over again that I ‘take a seat’. Maybe Alan Gold would remember, since he’d ended up literally ‘taking the fall’.

Ease yourself out of the holiday mood and back into the workaday with The July 4th Project, an assemblage of new superheroes by an assortment of fine cartoonists curated by Chris Duffy. Above THE STAR-SPANGLED BADGER designed by Julie Van Voorhis, drawn by Andrei Molotiu.

Happy Independence Day everybody! Before you go out to watch the fireworks this Saturday, there are all kinds of fun ways to celebrate this special day at Please Touch Museum.

In our Program Room, kids make their own light shows with ‘Light Projector Fireworks.’ Kid will be able to use colored transparencies, liquid watercolor paint, baking soda, oil, and vinegar, to create their own fireworks display on a light projector surface. This activity is based around the ideas of Reggio Emilia, a prominent figure in the history of early education. Emilia believed that the learning environment is an important part of how children learn, and in this activity children are able to interact with and manipulate their environment in a way that allows them to be creative and expressive. The extra dimension of this activity is that it also enables them to recreate their own fireworks displays, which are a familiar part of celebrations and holidays around the world!

There will also be activities in the Program Room that allow kids to explore the history around this holiday in a fun and creative way. With the ‘Make a Five-Pointed Star’ activity, kids can make and decorate their own stars using a technique that was used by Betsy Ross, a famous Philadelphian who sewed the first American flag! And just like Betsy Ross, kids can make their own flags from white paper, and strips or red and blue colored tape. These activities provide children with the materials to create these important historical figures, but still allow for open-ended creation, an important aspect of all PTM’s art experience activities.

And don't forget to check out the marching band parades in Hamilton Hall at 12, 2, and 4 where two percussionists will lead a parade through the Hall and kids can follow behind and make music of their own!

1.I'm pleased to say that we are safe and sound in Pennsylvania with my parents. We spent most of the last month, and all of last week boxing up our things, sweating in the heat and humidity, packing the trailer and moving from St. Mary's County, Maryland. This stop at my parent's home is for the month of July and then we are back to our home in Maine. After reading the blogs of other New England friends it is obvious that they are saturated with rain. I hope things dry out a bit by the time we get back... but even if it doesn't, we know what we're getting into. 

2. I'm getting very excited about the Vermont College residency that is coming up quickly. I'm doing all my required reading and workshop notes. My bag is packed (as long as I wear the same clothes for the next 10 days) and the financial aid stuff is moving forward. I still have to look at the workshop choices and try to make make some decisions. Even though this seems like a solid step forward in my development as a writer, I still have a little bit of a lost feeling. Is this what I should be doing? Should I just be giving up instead of investing this time and money in something so subjective and unstable? 

3. If you didn't get to see the images from my Art Show and Sale they are up on my facebook page. Here is the link. If it doesn't work... you may need to have a facebook account.

4. I'm working (pretty much pro bono) on an illustration assignment. The manuscript is a collaboration of two high school students for a Portland non-profit. The experience should be interesting as includes some cultural research. jamarattigan have you heard about an African dish called Fufu?

5. Grandma and Grandpa get to have us for a whole month and are even taking the kids for one week on their own. Unending thanks and gratitude! (I'm really looking forward to a break.)

The Human Printer is a group that prints CMYK dot pattern photos by hand. Using markers they replicate the halftone effect of traditional CMYK printing.

(via Today and Tomorrow)

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lampshade, the world we live in has been profoundly influenced by the work of American designers. Below is an extract from Design in the USA by Jeffrey L. Meikle, part of the Oxford History of Art series, which discusses automobile design and the marketing strategies by Ford and General Motors in the 1920s.

The automobile was the most significant technology of the twentieth century, transforming the way almost all people lived, worked, and identified themselves. More than any other manufactured artefact, it engaged the attention of designers, of critics predicting design trends, and of anyone interested in the appearance of things. In 1916 the automotive engineer William B. Stout (1880-1956) observed that the motor car was no longer ‘merely a mechanism for traveling’ but ‘a part of the home equipment . . . standing at the door . . . reflect[ing] the personality and the taste of the home within’. Announcing that ‘style has come to the automobile’, he maintained that car manufacturers would soon ‘take every advantage of art knowledge’ to create ‘an appeal consistent with its mechanical performance’. The automobile was a luxury in 1916, with 3.4 million passenger cars registered, one for every 25 inhabitants. However, the success of the Model T Ford soon transformed popular fantasy into universal reality. Even then, one of every two new cars was a utilitarian Model T, first introduced in 1908, cheaply mass-produced on a moving assembly line since 1913, and sold for about $500. By 1928, there were more than 20 million automobiles registered, one for every six people. In the meantime style had become central to selling cars. For many Americans the focus of materialized identity had shifted outward from the relatively fixed traditional domesticity of the home to a perpetually changing public realm of technology. Eventually this outward machine-age gaze turned back inward to appliances and home furnishings, but the American love affair with the automobile was the start of it.

Evidence of design’s significance came in May 1927, when Henry Ford (1863–1947) shut down the vast River Rouge plant, an international symbol of industrial modernity, and quit making the Model T. He was reacting to competition from General Motors, whose low-end Chevrolet, only slightly more expensive than a Model T, sported a lower, more rounded, better integrated silhouette. The automotive market was approaching saturation. Most people who wanted cars already had them, and new car sales were mostly replacements for unstylish Model Ts. Despite Ford’s key role in industrialization, he was ambivalent about progress and had long considered the Model T as a tool for improving the lives of farmers. But Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1875–1966), president of General Motors, recognized the automobile’s radical cultural novelty. He realized the public would reward a manufacturer who enabled them to drive inexpensive cars resembling the sleek, hand-crafted Auburns and Marmons of the upper class.

Sloan’s strategy at General Motors transformed the marketing of automobiles and the design of most other mass-produced consumer products. The first part of the strategy involved rationalizing the various brands GM had acquired through corporate takeovers. From the inexpensive Chevrolet up through Buick and La Salle to the most expensive Cadillac, there was a model for every price bracket and always something higher to aspire to. GM also perfected a system of ‘flexible mass production’, basing the different product lines on a limited number of chassis sizes and body types and differentiating them with minor cosmetic variations in fenders, bumpers, radiator grilles, chrome accents, and interior details, very much as the furniture makers of Grand Rapids had built up stylistically distinctive cabinets or bedsteads by adding layers of differing ornament to otherwise identical forms.

The second part of GM’s marketing strategy put this hierarchy of models into dynamic motion through time. The so-called annual model change, firmly established by 1927, was intended to stimulate demand by introducing minor styling changes into each model each year to create an impression of novelty even if a car’s mechanical functions remained essentially unchanged. Dramatic, newsworthy design changes occurred initially only in the most expensive models, thereby raising expectations among consumers who could afford only lower-priced models. In subsequent years such innovative details would migrate down the line, enabling even purchasers of the lowly Chevy to enjoy features recently limited to society’s economic elite—but subtly reinterpreted to reflect the presumed vulgarity of lower income groups.

Under Sloan’s guidance, General Motors developed an overarching design policy. In 1927 he established an Art and Color Section with a staff of 50. As director he appointed Harley Earl (1893–1969), a designer with experience creating custom auto bodies for Hollywood actors. Earl had just achieved a resounding success for GM with the 1927 La Salle, which boasted long front fenders, a roof gently rounded at the back, elongated side windows, and such elegant detailing as a chrome band between cowl and hood. As the Art and Color Section set to work on other GM models, the concept of the motor car as a thing of beauty, not merely of utility, became democratized. Using modelling clay over full-sized wooden forms, Earl’s stylists sculpted low-slung bodies notable for integrating the formerly disparate parts —engine and passenger compartments—of a closed automobile. These stylistic innovations exploited a shift in manufacturing from labour-intensive composite bodies of sheet metal on wooden frames to ‘all-steel’ bodies stamped in huge presses with dies whose wide-radiused curves encouraged a sculptural flair. Earl brought style to the masses.

Although developments at GM echoed for decades, immediate attention in 1927 focused on the Ford Motor Co. With journalists wondering whether Henry Ford would ever make another car, his associates were busy designing and tooling up for the Model A, introduced to great fanfare five months after the demise of the Model T. Although the new model was easier to shift and drive, endearing it to the increasing ranks of female drivers, stylistic improvements were modest. The Model A appeared somewhat sleeker, with lower road clearance, a longer wheelbase, bumpers of two flat parallel strips of chromed steel, a radiator with an elegantly curved frame, and a gently rakish backward slant. Even so, compared with GM’s bottom-of-the-line Chevrolet, there was nothing particularly innovative about the Model A. Its significance lay in the fact that America’s most famous industrialist, the inventor of the mass-production assembly line, had to spend $18 million on retooling just to keep pace with more artful competition.

Ford’s experience made an impression on other business executives who faced market saturation, consumer resistance, falling sales, and intense competition. Two out of three businessmen surveyed about the significance of ‘art and business’ spontaneously mentioned the Model A conversion as a cautionary tale. One executive referred to it as ‘the most expensive art lesson in history’, a phrase that carried special significance for those who heard his prepared remarks at a dinner meeting on 29 October 1929, the day the bottom fell out of the stock market. With the economy sliding from recession into depression, many manufacturers turned to product design, both as a means of overcoming competition in their own industries and later as a panacea for restoring the entire nation’s economic health.

The spring Xeric winners have been announced and they are:

Joe Boruchow – Stuffed Animals: A Story in Paper Cutouts

Adam Bourret – I’m Crazy

Timothy Godek — !

Adam Hines – Duncan the Wonder Dog (Note: there were several cartoon Adam Hines — hope this is the right one. More here.

Joshua Smeaton — Haunted

Note: Art is from each artist but not necessarily their Xeric winning project.

PR:

The Xeric Foundation has announced its most recent grant recipients. A total of $22,002 was awarded for five comic book projects. The Foundation has awarded in excess of $2M to comic book creators and nonprofit organizations since its first grant cycle in September 1992.

Established by Peter Laird, co-creator of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Northampton, MA based foundation offers financial assistance to self-publishing comic book creators in the US and Canada and to qualified charitable and nonprofit organizations in western Massachusetts.

The next deadline and review dates for comic book grants are September 30, 2009 and November 1, 2009, respectively. The charitable organization grants are decided annually in March and announced separately.

There is a new auction underway for a rare pencil sketch by Harry Potter artist Mary GrandPre for one of the three drawings she made to be used on the cover of Time Magazine in 1999. As seen here, Heritage Auction let us know this fabulous sketch is framed and signed by the artist on the lower left, and includes  the following:

A handwritten note from Mary Grandpré attached to the back of this p... Read the rest of this post

Doodler (Goldman), Todd H. 2009. The Zoo I Drew. Random House. (July 28(ish) publication)

This one's a keeper. And not just for zoo keepers either. Though this one boasts that it is "zoo-keeper approved." (And who am I to doubt Todd H. Doodler?!) I loved this one. Loved it. It had me at hello. Its bright red cover is fluted; I loved feeling all the ridges--made it so much more appealing. The art is fun and playful. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. The Zoo I Drew is an animal (well zooish) alphabet book for youngsters. Each letter has an animal and a rhyme to go along with it.

A is for Alligator...
With a mouth full of teeth
and a body that's covered in scales.
The alligator likes to bask in the sun
and swim with it's powerful tail.

M is for Monkey
Hanging from its tail,
The monkey likes to play around.
It swings from tree to tree
And seldom touches the ground.