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Summary: I randomly selected the book, “RGK, The Art of Roy G. Krenkel” off of my shelves of inspiration to do a book review. Along with a brief overview of the book’s contents there are some of my opinions about aesthetics in fantasy art.

Read the entire post at www.StudioBowesArt.com

Dear Reader,
Please note that I do publish my blogs primarily from my website. If you would like to stay up to date, use the above link, and you can subscribe to the RSS feed there. ~ Thank you, Brian

I have a friend who runs a retail store, and in the course of a conversation I asked what her bestselling items were. She laughed and said that until recently she would have been convinced it was the red bracelet, but after running reports just the night before she was shocked to learn that not only was she wrong, but so wrong that the biggest seller wasn't even on her radar.

The only thing she could attribute her mistake to was perception v. reality. Because she had recently sold two red bracelets and heard many other customers comment on how lovely it was, she was convinced it had to be a hot item. Thanks to inventory tracking software, however, she's always able to keep on top of the truth about her business, something that makes the difference, a big difference, in success versus failure. If she had ordered based on perception she would have a backlog of red bracelets and hardly enough yellow necklaces, her true bestseller, to meet demand.

Understanding the importance of reality is important for any business owner to be successful, and that means you too, authors. It's so easy to get caught up in the letters we receive from readers and the good reviews for our books. Those are the things that keep you writing and excited about your work, but five people writing to tell you that your series is amazing and asking for more books does not mean your series is a bona fide success. It's simply your perception of how successful the series is, or should be. The reality can only be seen in your numbers. Five people aren't going to make a book a bestseller. Heck, they aren't even going to make it worthwhile to self-publish. However, it is quite possible that five people could write to you, begging for more, and 50,000 more buy your book. Now you have numbers and numbers are reality.

Let's face it, reality is often one of the hardest things to face, but facing it head-on is what will help you achieve the success you want. Facing reality means you know what your career looks like, and knowing the truth can help you make decisions, the right decisions, about your future.

Jessica

Summary: What follows here is my story of becoming involved with my immediate neighborhood to solve the issue of an unsightly asphalt ramp. The result is an example of how we can use the power of illustration better the world we all live in.

Read the complete blog post here: steps-in-the-right-direction

Dear Reader,
Please note that I do publish my blogs primarily from my website. If you would like to stay up to date, use the above link, and you can subscribe to the RSS feed there. ~ Thank you, Brian

"Humble" would be the word that can summarize my feelings about attending this year's Illustration Master Class. Never in my life have I been surrounded by so many incredibly talented and wonderfully supportive people. My plan is to revisit many of the ideas and experiences from this trip through different blog posts. I thought I would just start with an over view of the whole experience first.

The Illustration Master Class is a week long intensive workshop focusing on Fantasy and Science Fiction Illustration. Rebbecca Guay is one of the central organizers ( if not "the" central organizer, ) and she is supported by a faculty that reads like a "who's who" of Fantasy/ Sci Fi Illustration; Donato Giancola, Scott Fischer, Gregory Manchess, Dan Dos Santos, Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, and Art Director Irene Gallo. This year's special guests were none other than James Gurney of Dinotopia and the Gurney Journey, and Art Director for Magic the Gathering, Jeremy Jarvis. If you don't already know these folks and have an interest in the this field of Illustration, I would HIGHLY recommend searching these folks out online.

The outline for the week went something like; arrive on Friday, meet the faculty and thumbnail/ sketch critique on Saturday, followed by a healthy dose of "Get the F to Work" on Sunday through Thursday, ending with a clean-up and open studio on Friday. Each day was punctuated by 2 talks given by one or two members of the faculty. These were great moments to open up my mind and just soak in the incredible talent and intelligence of the presenters. During the studio hours, the faculty would circulate between the 85 participants and encourage, guide, suggest, and paint with them.

My personal journey here started 2 days prior to the IMC, with a plane flight into La Guardia airport in New York. I was up all night the night before preparing everything that I could think to bring with me, maybe I brought too much, but I remembered my portfolio...at 3AM! Sheesh! In a focused hurry I printed out 7 new prints, and whammo, there's a new portfolio. I believe it represents the best of my work as it is now. It was kinda fun actually. I slept mostly on the flight, connected in Philly, on time to LGA in a little puddle jumper. I brought my drawing board ( the standard one, 24x26" ) on the planes. On the first flight it was in the overhead compartment, on the second flight it fit in plane's closet. To circumvent any hassle from the airlines, I played the neurotic-artist card, which seemed to work.

The evening that I arrived I crashed at my sister in law's house in Queens, where I found out that New Yorkers, unlike San Franciscans, like to eat tacos rather than burritos... which is just weird. The next day I had arranged to meet with Dorian Iten at the bus station to ride up together. We met at the depot and prepared for the 4 hour bus ride. Most of our time was spent looking at Dorian's portfolio from the past 2 or 3 years in Florence where he'd been studying. I don't mind saying that already I was feeling quite small! We made it to Amherst College around 3pm and signed up for one of two groups. I accidentally signed up for the group that was headed by Donato, Dan, Boris, and Julie. What I had meant to sign up for was the group which had Jeremy Jarvis, Rebbecca, and James Gurney in it, as they worked in water-media to one extent or another. It was like choosing between 'brilliant' and 'awesome!'

This post is the result of two different conversations with two different friends that I've had in the past few months. In conversation one; my friend said to me that one of the best ways to solve your own problems in life is to find somebody else, give them advice, and then follow it yourself. I don't doubt that he was talking about me to me.

In conversation two my friend and I were talking about our personal voice in illustration, I recommended to her that she take a closer look at the work that inspires and influences her, and examine them for all the qualities that she liked. In other words, the "why," as in "Why do you like that piece of art?" In doing this that she would be able to see the continuous thread that ran through all these disparate images, and that thread would be her personal preferences, her aspirations. Expanding out from there, she would be able to strengthen her own works by explicitly understanding her influences. Simple, right?

So, you see, this post is me, taking my own advice, and hauling some art into the light, expressing my perceptions of them in an effort to reveal qualities which I endeavor to imbue in future illustrations.

Mood and Tone; The concept

Two artists who are wonderful in the conveyance of Mood and Tone are John Jude Palencar and Alfred Hitchcock. Both of whom are able to create intense, and sometimes somber, moods in their works. I've been a fan of John Jude Palencar's work for quite some time, however it is rarely the subject matter he chooses which captivates me, but it is the way he portrays things, his technique, pallet, and composition. Which add up to the creation of specific moods through out his work. So, it is his use of the tools at hand which he chooses to express himself that I admire.

Because John Jude Palencar's expressions are often psychologically charged, that, I thought a nice companion artist would be Alfred Hitchcock. True, Alfred Hitchcock works in a different medium, but he incorporates many of the same tools to create the myriad of moods and tones in his work. He is a Master of composition, in the use of lights and darks, and also in his ability to imbue a psychological tension into his pieces. For this side by side comparison we'll be looking at a still image from Psycho that I pulled off the web, along with an image from John Jude Palencar's website. I should pause here to thank Mr. Palencar for his express permission to use his work here, as well as to credit the Opera Company of Philadelphia who originally commissioned the Madame Butterfly piece that we'll be looking at. Links to these sites can be found at the bottom of this post, please check them out after your done reading.**

"Put light colors next to light colors and dark colors next to darks, then where you want the viewer to descend, put dark next to light." ~ Harvey Dunn.

This succinct sentence holds the cornerstone to quality illustrations, and the nature of communicating with images. Part of what Harvey Dunn is talking about here is a strong value structure. A strong value structure is absolutely essential towards crafting and communicating with an image. If that structure isn't there, the picture will be confusing and ineffective. As artists we are communicators, and through the conscious use of the tools at hand it becomes possible to communicate those ineffable qualities of life, rendering visible the invisible.

Pretty heady stuff, but there is a simple way to view this as well:
Mood=Tone=Value

To start with let's open ourselves to the wholeness of these terms, as they encapsulate multifaceted concepts.

Mood can be a slippery idea to get our hands on. People talk about mood all the time, but what are they really saying, what is a mood? As a working definition let's agree that mood refers to an emotional state of mind. We can talk about moods like, Joy, Elation, or their counter