I've been feeling very tired lately, which I think is in part because of the cold weather. I've been wanting to crawl into my bed instead of sitting at my work table. Well, last month I managed to finish my art book that I was working on for a long while, so that was one thing accomplished. The other big thing is Pangoland Studios (aka me and Donald) got our holiday card orders sent out, which kind of turned into this massive feat of persistence and stress combined. But we did it and now the next thing to work on is Valentine's day cards, our website, and getting more exposure and customers. I submitted to a gallery show recently, and now I just wait patiently for a response. It's always hard waiting.....

I have been trying to get my postcards out (leftover ones from the American Illustration party) but I need to get postcard stamps first, which should come in the next day or so. I also need to update my website, which I have been contemplating giving a complete face-lift. We shall see. But for now I gotta stop typing because my hands are getting cold.

I BLEW THEM UP!

I decided to try something different by working on some small scale drawings. This little series (which is posted on my blog Scritchy Pictures) contains drawings the size of postage stamps. I realized how much I like the the way lines look when they are blown up from a small scale, and all the little distortions that you notice in the enlargement. I used a 01 and 005 size micron pen and a very fine brush and black higgins ink for the washes.

I just put this image on my blog. I'd been working on it (on and off) for about two weeks and finally finished it. It's part of the artist's book I've been working on and it's four pages put together. Scanning it was a HUGE pain which I had to attempt twice. I ended up doing 6 scans to put the whole image together. I guess I could have just taken a picture of it, but I figured I should just go through the trouble of scanning it because at some point I would want a high res version.

Today I need to post some back-logged entries on the blog. Also I need to start working on something to submit for the next show at the Current Gallery. I don't want to miss the dealine this time.

In the meantime, here's a few pictures I took while working on the piece shown above. The dog played an active role in it's creation.









"Is this some kind of critique?"

Donald and I went to the American Illustration release party in New York on Thursday. Overall it was a great night, despite the drive being a bit grueling. It's a lot of time traveling for such a short trip, but we needed to get back that night. We met a lot of well known illustrators which for me was a little surreal but I didn't feel nervous talking to them oddly enough. We also saw some former college instructors at the party as well. I gave out a bunch of postcards to some illustrators and also got a few cards. It's all about connections, and that was a pretty fun opportunity to make some. I'll probably send out some of my remaining postcards to magazines and stuff this month. Things have been crazy lately and I've been finding it hard to get everything done. I've fallen badly behind on my blog and have not met my goal to finish this artist's book that I wanted to finish by the end of October, but that is mainly due to the holiday cards we've been trying to sell. I've already sold a few sets, so it's a good feeling. Now I just need to sell MORE. Time to work now!

Latest Published Illustration

Here is my latest published illustration in the Riverfront Times. The cheese people you see are the Suspicious Cheese Lords, or my interpretation of them. In reality they are "a male a cappella ensemble that performs concerts and provides church service music for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Although specializing in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, their repertoire ranges from Gregorian chant to original compositions." (excerpt taken from their website)

The assignment was completely open, so I just went with it. The hardest part was figuring out a good composition in which to fit the image and text together. Below is the original and then the printed newspaper version.

Blind

I just posted a bunch of blind contour drawings on Scritchy Pictures. Why blind contour you ask? Well, there are a few reasons. Firstly, they are just really fun to do and they help me loosen up if I'm feeling overwhelmed or in rut. Also, you never know what the outcome will be since you're not actually looking at your paper. I like that aspect of it a lot, that lack of control. If you hadn't noticed, I'd fallen behind on keeping up with postings this week and I decided this would be a good way to catch up. I've mostly been doing pages in the art journal/book I've been working on, but those can take a little time and I didn't have enough to do seven pages in there tonight. Also, I've got to work on these holiday cards if I want to be finished with the designs by the end of this month.

It's Back!

To my shock and suprise my computer arrived at my doorstep this morning via federal express. It only took them 3 days to fix. At least I hope it's fixed. If there are any problems within the next 90 days I can send it back, so hopefully it won't come to that. But right now I am so happy to be able to sit here and use it again.

Help is on the way

It's another computer update. It seems like this blog has thus far been mainly documenting my current computer fiasco and not really art stuff, but since I use my computer for a lot of illustration, I figure this counts. I just finished working on the final illustration for the Riverfront Times a few hours ago and I have a sense of relief now. Yesterday I took my computer to the Apple Store for them to look at, and it was sent out for repair. The motherboard and airport card need to be replaced in order for there to be any hope the problem gets fixed. In the meantime I've been using a friend's computer. I should have it back in no longer than two weeks. I hope to spend the rest of the day working on my backlogged Scritchy Pictures entries, and also maybe coming up with some promo ideas.

And so the saga of my computer chaos continues......

My machine is still being crazy and has gotten worse in the past few days. We've done so much troubleshooting on it and with no success that I think the only thing to do is take it in to be looked at. I'll make due until Sunday, but I wish the timing could have been better. I have an assignment to work on for the Riverfront Times and being unable to use my machine is just a thorn in my side. But I suppose, like any good illustrator, you find a way to make things work, no matter what, and I will just be keeping that in mind during this week.

Also, I was hoping to get a promo made soon and work on finishing the line of Christmas cards we've been making since summer, but it may be at a slightly slower pace than usual. You may have noticed that I have not posted images for the last 6 entries on my blog, and that's of course due to this technical difficulty, but I've still been doing work, so it will be posted eventually, just not necessarily soon.

*Sigh*....

: (

The end is near?

No, not the end of the world, the end of me finishing working on this book that I've been slaving away at since May. I have a bunch of pages to finish that I have painted the background for and have been staring at them for months, not sure what to do with them. They may just end up being cut out if I can't think of anything worthwhile. As much as I want to finish this thing, and I have a loose goal of trying to do it by the end of this month, I really need to work on a self-promotional piece as well at some Christmas cards for Pangoland Studios. Maybe something in this book can be used as a promo piece and I can kill two birds with one stone?

A bad sign

This is not good. When I turned on my computer this morning, I got the same error message. I thought everything would be fixed by reinstalling the system, but apparently not. I restarted again, and now it is working okay, but I don't think I've seen the end of this problem. I have a bad feeling.....

I've been trying to be optimistic about it, but I think at this point I'm just in denial.

I wept for days...

Oh, my POOR computer.... Why?!

My computer started acting really crazy last week and I'm not exactly sure why. From what I researched, it had something to do with a "kernal panic." Whatever the hell that little bugger is, it made my computer really sick and prevented it from turning on at all. The other day I spent about 83 minutes on the phone with the 1-800 number apple has for support. 20 of those minutes I was on hold. In the end, nothing we tried worked, and today I had to finally give in and pull the plug, or rather, erase everything on it. I had to do this with the last computer I had many times before it finally bit the dust. Luckily, this time I got to back up most things I needed. I will have to rebuilt my itunes library from ground zero, but that is such a small price to pay compared to not losing EVERYTHING. I just finished installing a hell of a lot of software that was lost in the erase, and I hope the worst is over. Call me weird, but I use my computer for everything and we have grown very close, so it was a bit hard forcing myself to wipe the system clean. It was like knowingly giving a friend amnesia. There was really no other alternative that would not have taken a LOT of time and patience and computer problem-solving skills that I don't have, so I put it out of it's misery.

All this computer chaos has kept me from checking my email or uploading new images on my blog, so I will have to get to that sometime soon. But right now I have to do more transferring of files. I'll write more later.

Filthy Lucre

These are two clippings from the Riverfront Times featuring my illustrations. The article was about Malcolm McLaren and the direction that the hip-hop industry is going regarding the marketability of artists and their products. For one of the illustrations I used bobbleheads to show how artists can be puppets used to make money, and also as a example of the kind of useless crap that is often churned out by these artists to, again, make money. The other illustration is my imagined version of 50 Cent's cologne line.

Egg cartons are best

I'm sure many other people already know this, probably scores of elementary school art teachers and the like, but I recently discovered how convenient and useful egg cartons are in place of paint palettes. Not only do they give you a cheap and disposable alternative to real thing, but they also hold your brushes really well.

New Work Area Setup

This is my first entry on this new blog, and it seems only fitting that the first post be about my new work area. I decided to move my work table to open up the room more. Before, my work table was parallel to the shelves and it felt too blocked in. Plus, it had been that way for a year, so it seemed like a good time to change it. Now it's much more open and the room feels better. I don't know, maybe it's that feng shui thing or something. Also, I decided to take pictures to document how nice and clean it looks. It's usually NOT, so I needed to record the moment. I'm gonna try harder to keep it neater in the future. We'll see how long that lasts.