Lords and Ladies

With the upcoming fall, I myself have fallen into deadline maddness! School has started again, and balancing projects and classes is once again all consuming. BUT! As time passes I can start to share more of the projects that are underway. For now, here are some character sketches of a gentler era. Was it really gentler though? Well, the dresses were prettier.

Get Higher, Baby!

Kelly's Takeoff from Antoine Revoy on Vimeo.

I think I found a new hobby. I LOVE being in the sky!

Kelly's Landing from Antoine Revoy on Vimeo.

Don't Look A GIft Raccoon In The Mouth

Hotdiggity, run like the wind Bandit!

Falmouth Heights

Each year, for one afternoon I head down to hangout ocean-side with my brother and his wife in Falmouth, Massachusetts. It's great to get my one beach day a year... but every time I manage to cook myself to a lovely shade of flaming pink. I'm AWFUL at sunscreen application. I managed to make myself look like a calico cat, AGAIN.

Here's my view, looking south across Vinyard Sound... patiently waiting for Air Force One to arrive. We got to see the helicopters heading to Martha's Vineyard last year, but no luck this year.

3x3 Children's Show No. 8

What a great week!
I received news that one of my images from Princess and The Golden Fish, published in Cricket Magazine, has received a silver award in the 3x3 Children's Show. I could not be more pleased!

The image is one of 10-13 images for a four part story, written by Eugie Foster. It's from the third installment, and called for a close up as the story's climax neared. Often, I am dreading searching for imagery online, so Photobooth is my best option. I've seen Joe Quinones' great photobooth posts on his blog, and this inspired me to add my own.

Well... you got to make due with what you got, right? More typically, the animals are photo-bombing left and right.

Viterbo's Medieval Wall

Another of my favorite parts of Viterbo was the quiet, sun soaked road that lead you by the city's outer wall. At this place, a tower built on top of a segment loomed over the wall which historically usually extended outwards slightly so as to be able to observe the exterior of the walls on either side. It had had arrow slits, ballistae, and a place where presumably catapults and cannons could be mounted on top for extra defense. Sounds a tad cheesy, but I liked to envision the townsfolk scurrying along the top of the wall, ready to protect the livestock and people within the walls.

The sunsets here were... brace yourself... truly magical.

2011 Original Art Show

I am beyond thrilled to be included in this year's Original Art Show at the Society of Illustrators.

"With children's book production on the rise came the strengthened interest in the art behind the book. Founded in 1980 by Illustrator and Art Director Dilys Evans, this annual exhibit showcases the original art from the year's best children's books. Selected by a jury of outstanding illustrators, art directors and editors, this year's show features 122 books chosen from 650 entries submitted nationwide.

Celebrating it's twenty-eighth year, the Original Art exhibit is not only an opportunity for artists to display their work, but has become an important event in the New York publishing calendar. It is a favorite destination for Art Directors and Editors seeking new talent as well as for school visits."

Over At The Castle, written by Boni Ashburn and published by Abrams Books For Young Readers will be on display and hopefully, but not probable, I will be able to join the opening. My teaching schedule makes it a bit complicated. I get soooo nervous at those events, so it might be a good thing to have one less sweaty, shifty eyed illustrator in the room ;). Here are the details:

October 26, 2011 - December 29, 2011

The Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd Street
(between Park and Lexington Avenues)
New York, NY 10065

Opening Night
October 27th, 2011
6pm

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

When I was not feeling up to concentrating on my ink washes, I had my trusty sketchbook in hand. Viterbo has more than enough cafe chairs and fountain edges to rest upon. I think it was secretly meant for us journalistic drawers. While taking a seat and sketching the great signs, I was always torn: Diet Coke or Beer. Same price... one's much better. Now, I was able to find a decent beer in Italy. No hating, but it's not a country known for its brews. Menabrea* was quite tasty, and I highly suggest their Ambrata. I'll have a review up shortly!

*Warning: Menabrea's site is teh suxor! Right up there with my queue on Alitalia. It's not really a country born out of efficiency. Just sayin'! But damn, they got siesta right!

Urban Sketchers Feature With Fred Lynch

Fred Lynch was extremely kind to mention my stay in Italy on the Urban Sketchers blog. Urban Sketchers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel. Fred is one of the North American correspondents, and you can check out his other articles by following this link.

© Fred Lynch 2011, Door of Hell

His ink paintings are astounding, and if you ever get a chance to see one in person... they amaze even more!

Masterpiece wins 2011 Children's Crown Award

Yahoo!

While away, I received the lovely news (complete with a fancy framed award) that Masterpiece had won this year's Children's Crown Award.

The mission of the Children's Gallery, the Children's Crown, and the Lamplighter Awards is to encourage elementary and junior high students to read wholesome and uplifting books by providing lists each year of the best literature.

In 1992 Sandra Morrow librarian at Brentwood Christian School in Austin, Texas, applied to the Texas Christian Schools Association for a grant to establish the Children's Crown Award (the Crown Classic is the runner-up) for children's books for fourth through sixth graders. The grant was awarded the following spring. In 2002 Sandra received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Lubbock Christian University. In 2005 she received the Distinguished Alumni Citation from Abilene Christian University. She was recognized for her distinctive professional achievement for the Triple Crown Awards.

Now students, teachers, parents, librarians and interested individuals are encouraged to nominate titles for this award from books that are published or reprinted within the last two years. At the center of the award process is the criteria developed at the time of the grant. Each year twenty books that convey wholesome values, uplifting characters, and edifying themes that inspire children toward positive goals are selected by a committee of readers from participating schools.

Students vote on their favorite book each spring, and the results are tallied and the authors, publishers and schools are notified about the winners and runners-up. During winter, the lists for the following school year are sent to participating schools, as well as to authors and publishers whose books have been selected.

Thank you to EVERYONE involved! I am so pleased that Masterpiece is close to many children's hearts.

Via di Paradosso is "el gorgo"!

After settling in and not being so confused by my trusty map, I found one of my favorite spots. Oddly enough, it was just around the corner from where I was living. Via di Paradosso was a longer street that elevated ever so slightly about the ancient stream bed below. It traced the edge of an olive oil bottling company, which then opened up into open fields and crowing roosters. Why I loved this street was because of the gentle distance it offered. Sometimes, I get a bit overwhelmed being IN and SURROUNDED by the city buildings. My rocky roadside wall provided just enough breathing room for me to take it all in.

That, and it was a less traveled road than most, which meant I barely got heckled by on-lookers. Me likey!!!

Parco dei Monstri, Bormarzo Italy

The Lynch family was very kind to take me to some of the nearby towns. The first we visited was Bormazo, in the province of Viterbo, in northern Lazio, Italy. The Park of the Monsters (Parco dei Mostri in Italian-language), also named Garden of Bomarzo, is a Renaissance monumental complex located in Bomarzo.

Walking through the park was like going through an ancient amusement park. The gardens were created during the 16th century. They are composed of a wooded park, located at the bottom of a valley where the castle of Orsini was erected, and populated by sculptures and small buildings divided among of the natural vegetation. During the nineteenth century and deep into the twentieth the garden became overgrown and neglected, but in the 1970s a program of restoration was implemented by the Bettini family, and today the garden, which remains private property, is a major tourist attraction. The park of Bomarzo was intended not to please, but to astonish, and like many Mannerist works of art, its symbolism is arcane : examples are a large sculpture of one of Hannibal's war elephants, which mangles a Roman legionary, or the statue of Ceres lounging on the bare ground, with a vase of verdure perched on her head.

And this was my subject matter for that afternoon.
A fun surprise was a reclining woman with a dog. I thought it looked striking similar to me and Lily.
And last but not least, I loved the smaller town of Bagnaia. You need to drive through this quaint village on the wasy to Bormarzo, and I highly recommend taking a walk through the medieval section of town. My pronunciation of these Italian words has been atrocious... so if I refer to a town called "banana", I mean this place.

Piazza San Pellegrino, Viterbo Italy

About one minute from where I was lodging, was the heart of the medieval district of Viterbo. The street are narrow, tall, and maze-like, but I loved that the inhabitants found an opportunity to plant bright flowers that radiated off the dark gray walls.

Here's a really fun link to 360˚ photo of the medieval streets.

Piazza di San Lorenzo, Viterbo Italy

One of the first days in Viterbo, I set out for the cathedral of San Lorenzo. The cathedral was, according to legend, built on the site of an Etruscan temple of Hercules and although this can not be verified, Etruscan and Roman foundations can be seen on several of the buildings which make up the Piazza di San Lorenzo where the cathedral is situated. An early medieval parish church to Saint Lawrence had formerly occupied the area before construction began on the cathedral in the late twelfth century. Even as it was constructed, the town was already spreading northwards down the hill, leaving the plaza somewhat isolated on the highest edges of town, thus restricting its attraction to the townsfolk, a disadvantage which the local bishops for years attempted to reverse by granting the cathedral special religious privileges.

The cathedral was at the height of its significance during the middle and end of the thirteenth century, when it and the attached Palazzo dei Papi di Viterbo was the home of the papal throne following its flight from Rome and prior to its resettlement in Avignon. Two popes were buried in the duomo: the first was Pope Alexander IV, whose tomb was bizarrely demolished during sixteenth century renovations, and the location of his remains are now unknown = OOPS; Pope John XXI is more clearly marked despite several relocations, with a handsome tombstone originally laid over him following his death in 1277 (when his study's ceiling in the papal palace attached to the cathedral suddenly collapsed into the room below due to structural weaknesses as he slept).

It's a lovely, more quiet location in the city, and for the last two weeks of my stay, was home to an Opera festival. You could hear bellowing baritones and soaring sopranos over the Loggia's walls. A real treat.

Mama Mia!

They do in fact... say Mama Mia in Italy. I was so excited.
I'm ending out the Journalistic Drawing program in a day or two, and could not be more amazed by such an energetic, dedicated bunch of students. I will certainly offer a link when their work is posted on the Drawing Viterbo blog, this coming fall. I am honored to have served beside Fred Lynch, recalling how great his words of wisdom were when I was his student.

So, I am eagerly awaiting the return to my studio/studiomates (and big scanner!) and hopefully be able show you some of the work I made in Italy. In the meantime... pictures of Rome! Saint Peter's is... you know what... words can't describe how amazing it is inside. These pictures don't even cut it.

Ciao!


I also found a super awesome art store down one of the crooked streets in Rome. I loved the pigments!

A Good Day

Montefiascone, overlooking the city of Viterbo at sunset. Fred Lynch took a fun photo!

Buono Baffi!

That line is about the only thing I can say without thinking in Italian. Yes, it's true, I answer questions with the line, "Nice mustache".


It's been one week since coming to Viterbo with the Montserrat College of Art, and I think I am finally understanding the streets and customs of this city. Surrounded by a medieval wall, I am living in an area where most of the ancient buildings are still being inhabited. While it is fairly hot by day, the mornings and evenings are amazingly temperate and ideal to sit by window and watch the city's inhabitants "passeggiatta", the tradition of strolling the streets before dinnertime. Typically I chose my lofty viewpoint instead of participating in this slow walk, since I am one of the only ones roaming the city during sieste (1pm to 4:30pm), therefore exhausting myself by 7pm. I've been drawing/sketching/painting everyday and cannot wait to get some of these scanned. It's wonderful to be in the constant act of creation and I am grateful to get back to observational drawing.

More later, but here's the first few pictures!


Ciao!

Anish Kapoor: Leviathan

Wooooooah. These images are amazing!



MONUMENTA 2011
Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais in Paris
Leviathan from 11th May to 23rd June 2011

Each year MONUMENTA invites an internationally-renowned artist to turn their vision to the vast Nave of Paris’ Grand Palais and to create a new artwork especially for this space. MONUMENTA is an artistic interaction on an unparalleled scale, filling 13,500m2 and a height of 35m. For its fourth incarnation, the French Ministry for Culture and Communication has invited Anish Kapoor, one of his generation’s greatest artists, to produce a new work for the Nave’s monumental space, from 11th May to 23rd June 2011.

Thirty years after his first exhibition in Paris, MONUMENTA marks Anish Kapoor’s return to the French capital. He is considered as one of the most important sculptors of our time. His work has profoundly enlarged the scope of contemporary sculpture, as much by his mastery of monumental scale as by the colourful sensuality and apparent simplicity emanating from his works. Born in Bombay in 1954, he has lived in London since the 1970s. His work rapidly gained international recognition and has been awarded numerous prizes, including the famous Turner Prize, which he won in 1991. His career has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions at the world’s most prestigious museums, including the Louvre, the Royal Academy, Tate Modern, etc. Recently, he has been commissioned to design the key landmark for the forthcoming Olympic Games in London: a 116-metre-high sculpture entitled « Orbit ».

The artist describes the work he is creating for MONUMENTA as follows: “A single object, a single form, a single colour.” “My ambition”, he adds, “is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

Here is a link to more photos, taken by Stefan Tuchila. I love the combination of something that feels so thin and brittle, next to something heavy and bulbous. The sense of scale must be amazing. Uuuugh so jealous to not be able to see this!

Illustration Friday: Midsummer Night

Well, this weeks topic is a great one, but unfortunately I have a frustrating experience with it; a bit fraught with miscommunication. This was a poster for a theater season of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream" and was eventually killed. Sometimes it's those projects you work the most hard on, that end up... well... still being not worth it. I'm still waiting for my kill fee on this! :(


But, it was a fun enough project for me to try out some digital enhancements. I also had a second version that kept more of the under-drawing's grittiness.

I felt as though the first painting (above) was a bit too over manipulated and I wanted it to have a connection to the tradtional media a bit more. So I opted for a limited palette over the drawing. But, I think once again some of the soft gradients just felt a bit too polished for me.

Here's the original under-drawing, with its range of subtle texture.


Wow, sorry to be such a Debbie Downer with such a fun IF theme! I did have fun with the architecture in the piece though!