Tuesday 30 June 2009

Nintendo NES Vector

Here we have a small surprise for all old-school Nintendo lovers. A free illustration of the popular Nintendo NES joystick in vector format. You may use it for a logo of a T-shirt, buddy icon or an avatar...

The artwork is saved in EPS file format, you can use any vector compatible editor to modify or customize it.

Free for personal and commercial use. Download

Note: This illustration is a part of a vector pack that includes all sorts of design goodies. Preview and download availabe here.

Puppy news flash...and video :)

Little Turbo just turned 8 weeks old!
He had his first visit to the vet today
since he's been living with us & he was a real champ!
We begin border collie puppy classes
a week from today and we can't wait.

He's a super smart goofball
and I just know he'll be the teacher's pet :)

Monday 29 June 2009

Little blooms

The wild flowers don't come out here until the fall.
But I carved myself a little stamp garden today.

Sunday 28 June 2009

Vintage Flower Pattern for Adobe Illustrator

A seamless floral pattern for Adobe Illustrator from gtsat. You can use it for creating an artistic twitter background or for decorating design elements in your compositions.

You can explore more effects with the Pattern Bush feature in Adobe Illustrator CS3...


For More information about it you can have a look at "The Hidden Secrets behind Adobe Illustrator's Pattern Brush" video.Download

Saturday 27 June 2009

Happiness

Watercolor & acrylic ink
9 x 12 inches
Click on the image to see it BIGGER

New illustration

Something I'm working on this weekend...
Hope you have a lovely one.

THE ILLUSTRATION ACADEMY

This week I played hooky for a few days to sit in on lectures at the Illustration Academy in Sarasota, Florida. The Academy assembles some of the most talented and successful illustrators in the country to discuss their work and teach young artists in hands-on sessions.

I had the pleasure of listening to presentations by
Mark English:



Sterling Hundley:



Gary Kelley:



Anita Kunz:



and
George Pratt:



If you tried to single out some distinguishing characteristic that accounted for the success of these illustrators, it was certainly not the way they marketed their services. (They had very different techniques.) Nor did they work in a common style-- they used a wide variety of approaches. It was not the stage of their careers (their ages range from 33 to 76) or the medium they used (some painted with computers and some painted with roofing tar). It was not their geographic location (they came from all around the US and Canada) or their gender or their politics. Yet, this group repeatedly won top awards and received choice assignments from the premiere publications.

So what did they all have in common?

It seemed to me that they all shared a deep curiosity about images and the interplay of form and content. Each of these illustrators had the enthusiasm and energy to cast their net again and again for fresh inspiration, exploring new themes and media. This, more than any career roadmap or promotional strategy, seemed to be their common ingredient. Not one of them lapsed into using a repetitive formula. I was surprised at how much of their work was self-generated; one persuaded a symphony orchestra to team with him in an experimental show of projected images to accompany Gustav Holst's
The Planets. Another went on a pilgrimage to the backwoods of the Mississippi delta to develop a project on the blues. Their broad intellectual curiosity added a richness to their illustrations that seemed to distinguish them from illustrators who took a more perfunctory approach.

Finally, I would like to add one other observation about my experience at the Illustration Academy. I've spent enough time around the New York art gallery scene to develop an extreme distaste for the phony hocus pocus that often accompanies the creation and sale of art. Sure, I respect the mystery of the muse-- my skin has tingled at the feel of her breath on the back of my neck-- but I can't stand it when her mystery is exploited to inflate a price or glamorize a particular artist. Many artists and art galleries today operate like the high priests in ancient times who cloaked sacred activity within a mystic tabernacle to keep the uninitiated awestruck.

The artists at the Academy, on the other hand, de-mystified everything they could legitimately de-mystify. They had a healthy respect for the role of the muse in creating art, but they did not expand her role for their own self-aggrandizement. Instead, they spoke in honest and functional terms about the genesis of ideas and the ways that art communicates. It was as clean a discussion of the making of art as I've heard in a long time, by people with a sincere interest in passing along helpful information to younger artists, and it reminded me why I like illustration so damn much.

Friday 26 June 2009

Michael Jackson Vector Illustration - RIP King of Pop

Vector illustration of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, who passed away on June 25, 2009. Michael was a black Peter Pan, who quickly became an icon with his distinct style of performing. This vector artwork is inspired by Michael's '82 album Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, including funk-soul-rock-pop classics as Billie Jean, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' and Beat It...

Michael Jackson's Thriller cover art and the MJ logo are owned by Sony Music © 1982-2009

The .zip file contains PDF, EPS, AI file format versions of the artwork.
Download

Sit!

This little guy is not only unbearably cute
but he's super smart as well.
My oldest son Israel has already taught him to sit
when offered a treat or his favorite toy.
I hope I'm not boring you to death
with puppy posts, but I just can't help it :)

Peacock Tree print

It's now available at my shop.
12 x 16 inches.
That's my lovely son Daniel posing for me.
He's the best print model ever :)

Thursday 25 June 2009

The Lair



Southwark, London

My solo show closes this saturday, so check it out if you are around West London.
I have released a limited edition badge set featuring images from the show (anyone at the opening night might have picked a few up!) - you can get them here. I am retiring the older badge sets too, so once the present batch have gone, they are gone forever...

Puppy Butt

Turbo doing the "pancake" position.
Did you know there's even a Flickr Group
called Animal Pancakes?
The things you learn on the internet...
Ah puppy butts!
One of life's simple pleasures :)

Tuesday 23 June 2009

He's here!

Our little puppy is finally home &
we are completely in love with him.
I tried uploading a little video I made today
but my internet connection is really slow.
You can hop over to my Flickr and watch it there
by clicking on this link

Monday 22 June 2009

Swollen

I had to temporarily say good-bye
to my little tabletop chest of drawers.
Some of the drawers swelled from the humidity
and I could no longer open them.
They went back to the shop to be re-adjusted.
I can hardy contain myself from the excitement
that our little puppy is arriving tomorrow!
Our heart is swollen with love.

Saturday 20 June 2009

My Dad

My dad with his grandpa Abraham.
Being goofy with his baby cousin.
He still makes that same face :)
Looking groovy in the 70s.
My dad is the kinda guy that would wake up
to make my sister Karyn & me
chocolate oatmeal for breakfast
and pack our lunch for school with
little hidden love notes inside.
Happy Father's Day daddy,
I love you.

Friday 19 June 2009

Finished Peacock Tree

Watercolor & acrylic ink on paper. 9 x 12 inches
Click on the image to see it BIGGER
I love this stage, with just a couple of colors in.
Sometimes I'm just tempted to leave it like that.
But then I just go for it.
And Voila!
It will be available as a large print
in my shop next week.
I'm thinking of printing it on
Amate paper,
I need to make some tests this weekend.
I'll be back Sunday to celebrate my Dad :)

New Russian art, AD 1909



These color photographs were all taken in the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1918.





Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian photographer born in 1863. After studying chemistry with Mendeleev and later with Adolf Miethe - one of the crucial figures in the invention of color photography - Gorskii started developing his own techniques and processes of color photography, giving it a quality that even impresses even today.
In 1909, he convinced the tsar Nicolas II to send him on a trip across the Russian Empire, to document its impressive diversity. It was a 10-year project, during which Gorskii took over 10 000 pictures, and it ended up outlasting the tsar himself, and the Empire for that matter, as the October Revolution swept away the monarchy. In 1918, he emigrated to Paris, where he died in 1944.

The image archive of 1902 negatives which were left was bought by the Library of Congress a few years after the artist's death, and was put online in 2004. You can find it here.




Prokuda-Gorskii's most famous photo is of Leo Tolstoy, dated 1908.


But I prefer this monumental, megalomaniac and modest project of documenting Imperial Russia, which at the time was larger than the USSR ever came to be. The diversity of the people, and the shockingly modern colors of their portraits, make them impossible to forget. They are our contemporaries, now that they stopped hiding between the unfocused black-and-whiteness.
They are almost too present.

Austrian (probably meaning also Polish and of other origins) prisoners somewhere in Russia. It's really worth seeing a high-resolution image.


Here he is, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. In a landscape that is (eerily?) ours.
PS. The amazing color bars that appear on some of the pictures are the result of Prokudin-Gorskii's ingenious process, which consisted in taking three subsequent, monochromatic photographs, one with a green filter, one with blue and one with red. He then superimposed the three projections using lamps with a corresponding filter system. I adore these frames, unfortunately some of the images needed additional computer editing (by the Library of Congress) and in this version were cropped.
You can find an extended biography of Gorskii here.

Kitchen counter

Taken yesterday afternoon.
I have a new orchid & a little thyme plant
to keep me company.

Thursday 18 June 2009

Peacock Tree

Peek at a new watercolor I'm working on.
I made the pencil drawing today.
I'll watercolor it later tonight.
I always feel a compulsion to paint
when it's raining outside,
the grayer the day the better.
What kind of day inspires you to paint?