Once hosted here at Drawger, Lou Brooks (with a bit of help from me doing some weekend and after-hours programming) has brought The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies back!

Do the right thing: Here it is

I LOVE work surfaces (where the mysterious magic happens) and was lucky enough to snap a few during a recent trip to NYC. Figured I'd share these, for anybody who feels the same as me. Give it up for the work surface, yo!

Steve Broder's work table above. Forty years of hard labor and mad mad love in grisly detail.

Detail of Brad Holland's chaotic and at the same time serene work area, pictured above.  The piece he was working on at the time (inches away from what you see here) was everything you'd expect from the MAN, and then something more, but you don't get to see that.

Tim O'Brien works standing and as such, his board is as straight-up and verticle as the man himself. Here's a small, yet subline detail of his large working surface at the time of my visit. What else do you want to know? BAM!

Snacks served daily at 10:30am (EST).


 

Other Giusti Resources:
Covers collected Alexander Budnitz
RIT Library

And I've set up an album for Giusti right here that I'll be adding to!

Also:
The collected stories of Enos at the FAS
 

Dear Santa, most things that I actually WANT, I can't have. But isn't that what Christmas is all about ... Not getting what you really want?

1. I want to go into the MIKIMOTO Ginza2 building in Tokyo, designed by Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. I would be satisfied just to walk in once and then I would leave, I promise.

2. I want the Optimus Tactus concept Keyboard from Art. Lebedev Studio, designed by Artemy Lebedev. I don't care that this hasn't actually been produced, I want it and yes I deserve it. Yes, this is the second year in a row that I have asked for this but I'm NOT giving up!

3. The Air Genie is a spherical, full-color video-surfaced, helium airship designed by Tom Shannon. Like a lot of things I want, this doesn't actually exist yet. I want it anyway, and I want it as soon as possible. The idea of flying around and projecting whatever I want on the surface of my airship, it's just exactly the thing I want to do.

4. The Lilypad, a floating ecopolis for climate refugees is a concept city designed by Vincent Callebaut Architectures, Hong Kong. It doesn't exist, but who cares? I want to live there anyway. Who the heck doesn't? Come on Santa! Floating cities are cool!

5. The CH4 Wall Decal by Cody Hudson for Bodega is one of those impulse items I know I'll regret later but I can't help it, I want it anyway. Maybe it's just the idea of art you stick to your wall that appeals to me. I wanna do it! I could always peel it off when I get tired of it, right?

6. The MIT 6-D ImageSystem. I asked for this last year from the Santa at Macy's, so I think he's a phoney. I want this and I've been a very good boy THIS year. Please, please, please let me HAVE ONE!

7. Can Steven Heller simply have a legit RSS feed for his Daily Heller column at Print? I'd like to have his feed in my daily news without having to check the Print Site all the time to read what he's going on about...Santa can make this happen, I just know it, it's a no-brainer!

8. I wanna be Randall Enos for ONE DAY. I understand this may be unreasonable, because he values his own body, but I PROMISE to return it (his body) after 24 hours. Image pulled from The Mocha Dick Project.

  Did this finally after many stops and starts: Ohger, a site for students and recent grads in illustration.

  What happened: I've been wondering for two years solid whether I could (or even should) do something for students of illustration, to help them find out who each other are, provide them with a site where they can learn about best practices from professionals and quite possibly get exposed to a few art directors along the way.

   Pacing back and forth on the idea, that's what I've been doing. "Yes I should do it!", "No way you dope, it's a really really lousy idea!", "Yes indeed, I must make this happen if I can!", "Get a freakin' grip dude, it's the lamest idea since melba toast."

  I finally stopped pacing and struck a semi-heroic pose in the mirror. Said,  Yes, " I need to make this happen if I possibly can"

  Why oh why: If illustration hasn't yet crossed the border into the Wild West, where the rules no longer apply and the law is nowhere to be found East or West of the Pecos, it looks to me like that unhappy horizon is rapidly approaching.

  Free is becoming the new normal. 

  Sure thing, most working professionals delivered a free piece of art when they were fresh out of school, in exchange for dubious exposure. Perhaps they did a piece for chump change to get a client listing as well. Today, those opportunities are much more pervasive and abundent  enough to start looking like free is gearing up as the new normal. What are the newcomers supposed to do, except to hopefully band together if they can and take a stand? I'm hoping Ohger will be a buttress in that defense.

  I figure that if illustration (which is the only thing I actually like besides kids playing baseball) is going to hold some ground, I can at least help get these students talking in one place if I can. Hopefully the pros will stop in to offer encouragement as well.

  OHGER.COM - for students of illustration and recent grads (one year out only). Hit me!

   Like everything else I try to help with, it may well be dashed to bits on the rocks below. If that's the case, so be it. I'm giving the idea time and effort  now and at the very least I don't have to pace around any more thinking about it.

illoz logo by you know who

illoz link

If Business Week is right and the days of the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle are numbered, it probably means that a lot of other major regional dailies will fall right behind them.

If it's an inevitable truth that the daily news we read will soon only be found behind the smudged screens of our iphones and laptops, it might be time to start wondering how illustration follows along.

So far, no one seems to have figured this out, at least not in a way that makes much sense.

Here's an example of The Chronicle using a Joseph Fielder illustration, taken from print and brutalized with extreme prejudice for the web edition. If you miss it, don't feel bad. It's only 64 pixels wide. You can get a bigger view by clicking on the little fellow. I wonder how many people bother?

The segway from print to web isn't going so well for illustration and if you deal with web code at all, you will have a fairly good idea why this is so. It's just a hard design nut to crack, if it is crackable at all.

Some news outfits do make an effort. The New YorkTimes makes the case for illustration here with a John Hersey spot, handled as well as probably can be done. ( You may have to SIGN UP to view it )

What this sort of thing means to the art directors at the Times is that the days of designing around illustration, which the Times always handled to great effect, are over. The web likes rectangles. Wrapping type can be done on the web, but it's tedious and rarely worth the effort. Design looses out to the grim realities of HTML. Perhaps illustration does as well.

When Dale Flattum was asked to design a tour poster for the Melvins, he hired his son Eli (5 years old) to do the job for him. I dig it.

Not sure why, but today I've already received two email spams encouraging me to enter competitions and receive prestigious awards.

....

The first came from the 2007 Create Awards, who have over 300 categories, ranging from illustration to underwater photography. They have awards for just about anything you can think of!

Here's the illustration winner from 2006, which is a 3-D rendering of a living room... Okay!

....

The second spam arrived from The Portfolios.com 2007 Competition, who bill themselves as "the premiere international creative award show", so I suppose that must be true. I must be hopelessly out of the loop on what's hip, because I've never heard of any of the people who won illustration awards from them in 2006.

Just in case it's not hit your radar yet, the AIGA has a blog devoted to illustration, moderated by Christoph Niemann Here's the AIGA intro: "Illustration lies in a no man's land, somewhere between fine art and clip art. Though illustration remains a powerful and versatile communication tool, it often plays a lonely role in the graphic arts. Illustrators operate from isolated studios, ignorant of the concerns of designers, who in turn are oblivious to the needs of illustrators. Design Forum: Illustration is an online forum built to bridge the gap between these two worlds. It's a place for criticism, commentary, and dialogue between illustrators and designers, to explore the evolving role illustration plays in today's publishing environment." Hook up to it

The Communications Arts 48th Annual Juried Illustration Competition uses the tag line "The Most Prestigious Illustration Competition in the World" in their print matter, both front, back and inside. On the web, they back off a bit, saying it's just the "most important". In a world where words can actually gain market and attention, chest thumping with "the largest", "the best", "the most remarkable" starts to feel as intrusive and dishonest as spam. We're smarter than that, but apparently CA doesn't think so. What slogans like that are supposed to accomplish is provide some price insulation for the advertiser and boost my ego if I decide to buy. It does neither and with the word "communication" front and center, you have to wonder who exactly they think they're communicating with.
 

Drawger recently got a boost in traffic from the right-leaning blog, Little Green Football. Why did the LGF traffic arrive to wander around here? Basically, to bolster their commonly-held view that artists and illustrators, in particular, are afflicted with a severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS for short). Drawger is singled out by LGF contributors as a case study in examining the disease as it manifests itself in the arts.

The topic in which Drawger came up? An article on the much-debated Call For Entries poster  from the Art Directors Club. LGF's view on the poster? It's supporting evidence that the artistic community damages the USA with a self-loathing liberal agenda. The unquestioned conclusion over at LFG is not so much that the artistic merits of the poster are highly suspect, but that it's content provides conclusive evidence of an out-of-step artist intelligentsia, bent on doing harm our nation.

Within the many comments, "...the makers of images are solidly opposed to the US war effort", fairly well summed up the unified view. "Artists who would be doing posters and other images if this were WWII are today solidly on the other side", was a quote that also got some attention.

It's informative to know how the graphic arts community is perceived in these divisive times. Clearly, the illustration community is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as an active ingredient of the far-left.

Illustrators themselves may see this differently. The profession is largely a "gun for hire" racket, after all. A professional may find themselves working for EXXON one day and SAVE THE FURRY SEALS the next. How an illustrator thinks politically rarely has much to do with paying the bills and taxes.

From an outsiders point of view however, this is clearly not the popular consensus. The left largely embraces the graphics community as their own, while the right generally views the entire enterprise as highly suspect and at the very least, not contributing to solutions.

Is this worth thinking about? LGF clearly has a political agenda that is narrow and not particularly inclusive, or tolerant of dissent. They are not the issue. The widely held perception of the graphics profession on both the left and right is an issue that might need some attention, however, if the profession is to be trusted by all.

 

Everybody needs to make a living. Some people make a living as an illustrator. Still others make a living illustrating like other illustrators. Chris Gash is just such a fellow, making a living illustrating in the same style as the well established illustrator, Mark Matcho. People who watch illustration (there are probably a dozen or so) are well-aware of Matcho and also most likely aware that Gash does Matcho pretty well. Not a big deal, really. It happens in all walks of life. Copying someone who's popular to make your way in life, it's bound to happen. What normally happens with illustrators who make a living by working in the style of a popular illustrator, is that they work along the fringes of publishing. They work the small magazines, much like a Kiss cover band gets to play the local clubs, but not much more. But, when an internationally recognized and well respected magazine like US News & World Report decides to hire Gash for a multi-page, three spot story (November 27, 2006 issue - pages 67-74), it might give the hard working professionals, who've staked a lot of time and money on refining and promoting their unique style, a bit of pause. The Kiss cover band is suddenly playing Madison Square Garden. What’s happened here? No doubt about it, the excellent art directors (and they are excellent) at USN have known about Matcho for years. The man promotes himself well. He's been at the drawing board for almost twenty years now. And, also without a doubt, the art department of USN is aware that Gash is lifting the stylistic chops of Matcho to make a living. Anyone with an eye for art can spot the alarming similarities without effort. So, let me ask a question. If Matcho is Kiss, and Gash is the cover band, and US News really is Madison Square Garden, hasn’t everybody that bought a ticket just gotten ripped off? The sad conclusion that I reluctantly arrive at is that USN simply doesn't care that much. The public won’t know the difference, unless they’re sitting on the front row like myself. It looks like Kiss from the cheap seats. Who cares? Right? Well, I for one want my money back. Mark Matcho - Chris Gash

A nice write up by Bill Russel at The Northern California Graphic Artists Guild web site, where Adam McCauley waxes about Drawger, and offers advice on proper blogging, such as "readers can't detect irony" . Thanks Bill and Ad! I guess the secret is out...

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Stumbled by complete and happy accident into the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art where the second floor was dedicated to exhibiting the original comic pages of Chris Ware. Made me immediately think about Roy Lichtenstein - half a century ago, basically recreating comic book panels and having them widely regarded as fine art. Struck me as a bit amusing that it took another half century for actual comic panels to be regarded the same way. Don't know if it was because of the Ware exhibition or not, but the gift shop was awash in contemporary illustrator/artist wares from the likes of Baseman and Biskup. It's probably remarkably uncool, but I've posted a photo gallery of shots taken (mostly) by my son, John Z. during our Chicago trip.

Yo - wi fi post here from The Atlanta Bread Company in Sarasota Florida. Just left the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art - where not only is the art collection mind bending but the Museum of old Circus stuff is insane! I'll post pics when I get back. In the meantime, here's a really lame virtual tour of where I just was.

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Kevin Pope is up and running with FishStiks.com and is posting daily humor of the Kevin Pope variety. Worth checking out.