Me....in action!

Stamp Carving from Geninne Zlatkis on Vimeo.
I made this 10 minute video today
to show the whole process
of making a hand carved stamp.
It might take a while to load so be patient.
The music I used is called
"Bigger Situation" by Leo Kottke,
a favorite of mine :)
Enjoy!

Deconstructed

New print set I'm making for my shop.

It's a block print deconstructed version

of my latest watercolor piece.

It will be sold as a set @ my Etsy shop
when I reopen it mid May.
It is printed onto beautiful
Fabriano Medioevalis
4.75" x 4.75" paper.
It will be signed and numbered.

***I wanted to thank all of you
who have written to let me know
you are keeping us in your prayers
during these scary times in Mexico.
We are staying away from the City,
healthy & tucked lovingly under God's wings.

Psalm 91:4 (KJV)
He shall cover thee with his feathers,
and under his wings shalt thou trust:
his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

ROSEBUD

John Updike, one of the world's greatest and most highly regarded writers, died in January at the age of 76. From the day he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, Updike worked tirelessly to produce (in the words of his New York Times obituary) "a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism so vast, protean and lyrical as to place him in the first rank of American authors." It's hard to imagine a life more productive.

Here are just some of the international awards he received for his brilliant work:

1959 Guggenheim Fellow
1959 National Institute of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award
1964 National Book Award for Fiction
1965 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
1966 O. Henry Prize
1981 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1982 National Book Award for Fiction
1982 Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award
1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
1984 National Arts Club Medal of Honor
1987 St. Louis Literary Award
1987 Ambassador Book Award
1988 PEN/Malamud Award
1989 National Medal of Arts
1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1991 O. Henry Prize
1992 Honorary Doctor of Letters from Harvard University
1995 William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
1995 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
1997 Ambassador Book Award
1998 National Book Award Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2003 National Humanities Medal
2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
2006 Rea Award for the Short Story
2007 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction
2008 Jefferson Lecture

Updike wrote over 60 books during his lifetime. In his last months, as he knew he was dying, he completed one last book, a final collection of poems entitled Endpoint. One reviewer wrote,

In their last years, many artists cast aside all their usual flourishes, dismiss the circus animals and simply set down, as directly as possible, the realities and inevitabilities of old age. So John Updike has done in this moving book of poems.

So putting aside all the wealth and fame and world travel, what lesson does Updike have for us about the true nature of happiness? Updike writes:

To copy comic strips, stretched prone upon the musty carpet--
Mickey's ears, the curl in Donald's bill,
The bulbous nose of Barney Google, Captain Easy's squint--
What bliss!

Seems like you can either start working on that first Guggenheim fellowship, or you can pull out your pencil.

In color

Watercolor & acrylic ink on paper
9 x 12 inches

Water Lilies

Sketch for a new piece I'm working on.
9 x 12 inches

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine:
he feedeth among the lilies.
Song of Solomon 6:3 (KJV)

ARTISTS AT WAR: GILBERT BUNDY

Gilbert Bundy (1911-1955) painted with a light and elegant brush.



Look at the graceful way he handles the bouquet of flowers on the table:



... or the foliage and chandelier in the background:



Bundy gained fame as a cartoonist in the pages of Esquire magazine in the 1930s. He painted delightful watercolors of the leisure class at play, specializing in millionaire sportsmen and glamorous show girls.









High society photos from this period show the handsome young illustrator out on the town, dressed in his tuxedo and escorting some beautiful young chanteuse to gala parties. Here we see Bundy in his studio with yet another gorgeous model:



Bundy fell in love with the right girl, married her and had a baby daughter. Life was sweet.

But when World War II came along, Bundy decided for some reason to leave it all behind and volunteer to work as an artist in the South Pacific for Hearst newspapers.





In 1944, Bundy was accompanying the Marine invasion of Tarawa when a Japanese shell exploded in his small landing craft. Bundy survived but was trapped beneath the bodies of four Marines. The wreckage of the craft lodged on a coral reef within range of enemy gunners. For most of the day, Bundy remained pinned beneath the corpses, drenched with blood, as enemy bullets and shells strafed the remnants of the craft. When it finally turned dark, Bundy freed himself and swam away from the wreck, taking his chances spending a night alone in shark infested waters rather than endure another day under fire. The Hearst newspaper reported, "He was believed dead for three days. His reappearance startled his Marine mates."



Bundy returned to the U.S. but never recaptured the joy in his pre-war art. On the anniversary of his ordeal Bundy committed suicide, thereby rejoining his fallen comrades.

Sometimes I think about how a sensitive, observant artist such as Bundy perceived such horrors. Of course, I also wonder what lured him to leave his loving wife and daughter in order to paint war to begin with.

Arthur Koestler wrote persuasively about why artists and writers chose to immolate themselves in the flames of World War II. They were not fearless patriots or fanatical believers. To the contrary, many believed that "to love one's country is vulgar, to love God is archaic and to love mankind is sentimental." Yet, some other force drew the artists toward their doom: "there is no escape, and he feels it; so he goes on trying at least to name the nameless force that destroys him."

In trying to "name that nameless force," Koestler wrote of his friend, the young writer Richard Hillary who became a fighter pilot and was shot down in the Battle of Britain. Hillary was burned beyond recognition. After months of painful reconstructive surgery, his face was horribly disfigured and his hands resembled bird claws. Still, some of the most beautiful young women in London pursued him. Rather than embrace whatever semblance of beauty that remained in life, Hillary pressured the air force into letting him fly again and the next mission ended him. Koestler wrote that Hillary

flies like a moth into the flame; and having burned his wings crawls back into it again.... Why then, in God's name, did he go back?.... [H]e was the only one left , and he had to go on paying the tribute [to his fallen comrades]. For the survivor is always a debtor. He thought he came back [to civilization] for the fellowship with the living , while he already belonged to the fraternity of the dead.

Hillary's motives, like Bundy's, were more psychologically complex than mere patriotism. He wrote that people who feel guilt for "imaginary debts" account for many of civilization's great accomplishments:

You could not expect healthy motives to lead to the morbid act of self-sacrifice. The prosperity of the race was based on those who paid imaginary debts. Tear out the roots of their guilt and nothing will remain but the drifting sand of the desert.

Art and war together in the same petrie dish can result in situations that are not always easy to understand, but which are worth investigating. I will offer a collection of such stories in the months ahead.

Color overload

One of my favorite Sunday activities

is going to the city with Manolo and the boys.

More so if it includes a visit to the Market
(Mercado de Medellin).

I love spring and sandal wearing weather!

Royalty

Edmund, king of the blooming
magnolia tree.

Click on the image to see it BIGGER.

Made just for fun,
after working on many "for work" projects lately.
Watercolor & acrylic ink
on paper.

Colorful Mexico

People often comment
on how colorful my work is.
I guess it just rubs off from this
amazingly colorful country I live in.
This is my local Post Office :)

MAPS

Nothing is more solid and constant than the earth beneath our feet, right? It provides us with objective standards for measurement ("milestones" and "landmarks"). The physical location, dimensions and characteristics of mountains or streets or rivers can be quantified and recorded on maps that can be read and agreed upon by all.

Isn't it interesting, then, how various artists can view that same objective reality so differently?


A map of Florida from Walt Disney's Dumbo, with storks parachuting baby animals down on the circus.


The earth as a jester, with cautionary Latin maxims.


New York City as a huge penis


A map of London from the 1851 World's Fair

The earth may appear constant to a farmer or an engineer building a road. A map maker has tools and standards to depict the earth as objectively as possible. Artists look at the same object, but what a blaze of creativity in their responses!



The earth as perceived in 1940s romantic fiction, where the single most important thing on the planet is that rendezvous with your true love


A 15th century map of the earth

A 4th century map of the earth


A Hollywood map shows how California contains a microcosm of the rest of the world for purposes of filming movies.

Guerrilla marketing

(via)

Last Night

I'm back working with birdies
after a month of bird-free art
and it feel oh so good! :)

Unfortunately I can't tell you
what I'm working on
just yet...but soon.

In the mean time, a fun Meme:

Yourself: Creative
Your partner: Talented
Your hair: Short
Your Mother: Resourceful
Your Father: Intelligent
Your Favorite Item: Watercolors
Your dream last night: Family
Your Favorite Drink: Water
Your Dream Car: Jeep Wrangler
Your Dream Home: Uncluttered
The Room You Are In: Studio
Your fear: Sickness
Where you Want to be in Ten Years? Proud
Who you hung out with last night: Manolo
What You're Not: Talkative
Muffins: Carrot
One of Your Wish List Items: Book
The Last Thing You Did: Paint
What You Are Wearing: Skirt
Your favorite weather: Cool
Your Favorite Book: Bible
Last thing you ate: Häagen Dazs
Your Life: Peaceful
Your mood: Happy
Your Best Friend: Fun
What are you thinking about right now: Dinner
Your car: Silver
What are you doing at the moment: Blogging
Your summer: Roadtrip
Relationship status: Married
What is on your tv: Nothing
What is the weather like: Cool
When is the last time you laughed: Today

Back to the Basics

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953)

It never stops being astonishing, the way the dynamics of a piece can outgrow the original input, the aesthetic conception, the initial conceptual framework.
I had heard a version where it was Rauschenberg asking De Koonig for a drawing that was dear to him. The story as told by Rauschenberg is so much more human, and impressive.

Vector Art Retrospection (1963)

The video below was discovered by a twitter search query for the key phrase "vector art" "Alan Kay presenting Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, one of most influencial programs in the history of graphical user interfaces...

Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963. This video was extracted taken from a longer one in" Thanks t to zapatoche.

11 Abstract Brushes for Adobe Illustrator

Here we have another stunning collection of abstract vector brushes for Adobe Illustrator from humannature84.

This pack contains 11 brushes that could be used for creating abstract elements in your vector illustration...

To use the set, load the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator File>Open (Do not use the click & drag method). Once you open the file, all you need to do is to bring up the brushes panel (Window>Brushes) and apply the brushes to your strokes.

You can explore a variety of abstract effects by experimenting with different stroke sizes and colors. Download

Hello Love

Watercolor & acrylic ink on paper
7 x7 inches

Minimosaic

Happy Monday!
One of the fun projects I told you about
in my last post is a collaboration with
Minimosaic!
Alisa generously offered all of my blog friends
a 20% discount by entering the code g20
in the coupon section at checkout.

Dress-up

Two ideas for an eye-opening surrounding:
Chris&Ruby's Footies, socks for your chairs

and TRASH:Any Color You Like, a rapidly growing project by Adrian Kondratowicz, based the simple idea that trash bags are also sculptoric forms.



(via)

Reality Show

(Working hard on a show with the Portuguese academic group CITAC...
Here's a teaser of the performance, called Reality Show:)

REALITY SHOW from Vvoi on Vimeo.

The Little Things

Do not say a little in many words
but a great deal in a few.
~Pythagoras~

I've been busy with many fun projects but I can't
talk about them just yet ;)

*for detailed information about some of the pretty
objects displayed in my studio click here and read the notes.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 24

What is it?


A slashing tempest?


A rugged granite cliff?


A rolling river?


The tail plumage from a firebird?

Naw, it's just the way Robert Fawcett draws a face:



This intense little portrait (approximately 4 inches tall) is a virtuoso performance by a master draftsman. Look at the speed and facility with which Fawcett employs a dazzling array of marks on paper to channel the designs of nature. This is what I call drawing!

Fawcett took draftsmanship very seriously and was fiercely proud of his ability. As Roger Reed of Illustration House observed about some of the lines in this drawing, "he must have used a bamboo stick to draw with, like he searched for the most difficult-to-control tool in the box."



Do you prefer your drawings less intense? That's OK. Simplicity is another weapon in Fawcett's arsenal:



I am pleased to be working with Auad Publishing on a book about the life and work of Robert Fawcett. I hope you will keep an eye out for it.