FAERIE

Next month one of my paintings will be on display as part of the group gallery show FAERIE at Krab Jab Studio. I will be attending the opening reception on February 9th from 6 to 9 pm. I'm excited and honored (and a little nervous) to have my work hanging alongside some of the masters of fantasy art! If you're local to the Seattle area, I hope to see you there!

The press release for the show is below:

FAERIE: Contemporary Fairy Art Group Show

February 9th – February 28th, 2013

Opening Reception Saturday, February 9th, 6 – 9 pm
Location: Krab Jab Studio, 5628 Airport Way South, Ste 246, Seattle 98108

Ushering in a month of beauty and magic, Krab Jab Studio is hosting FAERIE, a group show filled with some of the world's brightest and legendary fairy artists.

Curated by local artist Julie Baroh (with the assistance of Tara Larsen Chang), this show is a dream come true. Raised on books illustrated by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Brian Froud, Julie has been an admirer of fairy art nearly all her life and continues this tradition in her own work. As facilitator for Krab Jab Studio, Julie sought to include an art show that allows the public to see for themselves the wonder of the fae world, through the eyes of contemporary artists.

Featuring the fairy art of: Amy Brown, Allen Williams, Brian Froud, David Thiérrée, Echo Chernik, Emily Fiegenschuh, Eric Orchard, Fred Fields, Gary Lippincott, Gregory Manchess, Heather Hudson, JB Monge, Julia Jeffrey, Julie Baroh, Justin Gerard, Myrea Pettit, Norman Taber, Olivier Villoingt, Omar Rayyan, Poul Dohle, Sheila Rayyan, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, Tara Larsen Chang, Terese Nielsen, Toby Froud, Todd Lockwood, Tom Kidd, Tory Taber, Wendy Froud, and Yoann Lossel.

Independent Lens: Beauty is Embarrassing

Last night after dinner I intended to go back up to my studio to work, but got stuck watching a documentary on Independent Lens called Beauty is Embarrassing.

The film tells the story of Wayne White, an artist I was not previously familiar with, but should have been because his fingerprints are all over one of my favorite childhood TV shows: Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Beauty is Embarrassing explores what it's like to be an artist and the feelings of accomplishment and self-doubt that go hand-in-hand with creating things for a living.

Wayne White's wife, Mimi Pond, is a cartoonist and writer. I would have liked to hear even more about her work. Because I am also an artist married to another artist, I like getting a peek into the ways other artist couples make their relationships work.

To see the documentary, check your local PBS station to see if it's being broadcast in your area. If the air date has passed there is usually a late night re-run soon afterwards.

Artist in Residence

ImagineFX Magazine has a recurring feature called "Artist in Residence," which showcases the studios of working artists. Issue #91 (currently on newsstands in the US) takes a peek into the studio Vinod and I share in the house we rent.

Here's a little extra info that wasn't printed in the article about the challenge of setting up a shared studio :

A casualty of moving to a new state every four years for the past decade, our studio is ever changing. It's not perfect, but we have everything we need to run our freelance illustration business.

When setting up the studio we usually pick the largest bedroom in the house. Dividing a room into our own personal workspaces can sometimes be a challenge. In the past, we have experimented with different set-ups including placing our drafting tables back-to-back or facing one another. During the year that we lived in an apartment in Wisconsin, we each had a studio in a separate room, but that wasn't much fun because we'd have to yell across the apartment while we were working to talk to each other. 

Bonus photo!

Random toys, my dry erase schedule board that I try my best to keep up with, and a drawing by my niece:

Toy shelf: required for every art studio.

  

Two minor corrections to the printed article: Vinod is currently a senior concept artist at Motiga–no longer with Monolith Productions. We also haven't lived in an apartment for about eight years now. There appears to have been some confusion in the article when some of the text we provided was edited for space. (The latter correction is obviously not a big deal, but I'm a perfectionist.)

Flashback

As our fellow work-at-home artists would probably agree, an art studio can get pretty messy. I always do my best to clean up the area around my desk after each project, but rarely do I have the time to tackle the entire studio. One of the goals we had been wanting to accomplish for the past several months was to clean up and re-organize our studio supply closet. 

Even more junk lurks behind that door.

We finally got the chance to begin the task during the holidays. We made an even bigger mess dragging everything out of the closet and stacking it into piles in our workspace and hallway which forced us to finish the job quickly if we wanted to reclaim our home office.

We pawed through big cardboard boxes full of unused canvases and drawing pads, old paintings, scraps of matboard, and various other odds and ends. We also looked through a half-dozen old portfolios of artwork to see what was worth keeping and what wasn't. There were product design drawings from our time at The Franklin Mint and concept drawings Vinod did at Ravensoft. There was a lot of my student work from Ringling. There was also artwork from my childhood, some of which was close to 25 years old. We pulled out drawing after drawing, sharing (and laughing over) our old artistic triumphs and failures.

When I was taking my first art classes as a child, for some reason drawing with colored pencil on black board was all the rage. Maybe the cool effect of the bright colors standing out against the dark paper gave kids like me a greater sense of accomplishment. I had a bunch of these old colored-pencil-on-black drawings including this totally rad name plate I made, probably circa late elementary–early middle school:

I think maybe this belongs on my new business card...

*So who remembers the video game Flashback?  I didn't have the right system to play it on, so I rented a Sega Genesis solely to play that game. I guess my love for Flashback hinted that Blade Runner would eventually become one of my favorite movies.

Bunny Sketches

Why do so many life drawings of animals feature reclining poses? (Hint:stop moving!)

Before creating the simple gouache painting I made to celebrate 2013, I did a few quick rabbit studies while playing with my bunny friend. Most of the sketches took around a minute or two. He didn't sit still for much longer!

Best Wishes for 2013!