art – Page 40

Peanuts Global Artist Collective Murals

A new project began this week called the Peanuts Global Artist Collective. Seven artists were chosen to interpret the Peanuts characters on 15′ x 10′ murals at Hudson Square in NYC. Similar projects are happening in Paris; Seoul, South Korea; Berlin; San Francisco; Tokyo and Mexico City.

Hudson Square is in lower Manhattan in SoHo, on the west side.

The artists are Mr. A, Nina Chanel Abney, AVAF, FriendsWithYou, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Rob Pruitt, and Kenny Scharf. You can see them here.

And here is a map of the locations of the murals. It’s in an area I love. I have mentioned before the old Keller Hotel at Barrow and West Side Highway in Greenwich Village; well this is just a little further downtown from that. I take this route sometimes when I meet up with my cousin at her office down in SoHo.

The murals will be up for three months, so I’ll get to see them when I’m in NY June and July. I look forward to it.

A perfect collaboration

bloomcounty

I don’t know if it was meant to be an April Fools joke, but I took it that way seeing today’s Bloom County. I’m not sure where else it is published, but I follow it on Facebook and it comes up in my feed.

Today, Bloom County is called, “Calvin County” and it features Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes.

At first I wondered by Berkeley Breathed did this. Why would he copy Calvin and make him the star of today’s strip. And the drawings of Calvin were so perfect, that I thought he probably traced him.

But if you look at the byline, it gives it away – it’s signed by both Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed!

Perfect April Fools day comic.

You can see the full comic here.

The internet has changed cartooning

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Cartoonist Dan Rosandich wrote an article called “Cartoonist cost cutting.” I thought it had to do with the supplies. He was writing about the disappearance of paid staff political cartoonists by newspapers and he blames the internet, which of course decimated the whole newspaper business, not just cartoonists.

But in many cases, the internet has allowed many more cartoonsits to flurish and work for themselves and be seen by many more people who might not have seen their work.

Also, regarding art supplies, I don’t remember the last time I was at an art supply store since I do everything digital now. I don’t even remember the last time I bought a pencil!

Dan has a couple of more articles regarding the way the world wide web has affected cartoonist. He is not a happy camper. But the internet has changed so many professions. I think along with newspapers, retail has to be the biggest, Amazon is taking over the world. Even supermarkets are closing because people shop for food online now!

Some more of my favorite comics

I’m always finding comics that I really like, they just pop up. I think most of them I find on Facebook, where they are posted in comic sites I follow. See? Social media – again, leading the way when it comes to comics.

Right now I’m loving Man Martin’s Inkwell Forest. Martin Man did the Billy and the Giant Frog comic that I wrote about in the past. I didn’t realize at the time that the Billy comic was a part of the Inkwell Forest comics. Man Martin is doing what I thought would be a good idea – having different comics with different themes under one masthead.

You’ve probably seen the Simons’s Cat comics on social media, they are all over the place. They are short cartoons by Simon Tofield. I don’t know if I can post the short films here on the blog, so here is a link to them.

Dunce by Jens K Styve is really good. The drawing and the writing are perfect. I mostly see these on Twitter, but it seems that daily strips are posted at Instagram here. Just seeing the drawings is really enough, it’s beautiful.

Petri Dish by John Sutton is funny, but I love the drawings very much. Petri Dish centers around the life of Doctor Thaddeus Euphemism, a scientist along Bob, a bobot.I love how the characters don’t have many facial features, yet they are still so expressive.

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Our yearly block party

We have this great block party in our neighborhood once year in March. Everyone comes out and shows and sells their art, there is live music and food and everyone knows everyone. It’s a lot of fun. It’s on Gifford Lane, hence, it’s called the Gifford Lane Art Stroll.

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We visited the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival

We went to Lake Worth for the Street Painting Festival this weekend. We usually go Sunday, when most of the work is done, but this year we went Saturday and it was interesting because we saw all the art being created.

Each February the center of Lake Worth, Florida, is shut down for the festival.

It’s mostly chalk art created by all sorts of artists from young children to accomplished 3D artists. There is live music, lots of food and lots of art. It’s worth a trip if you’ve never been.

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Fun art weekend

Every year on President’s Day Weekend, we have the Coconut Grove Arts Festival and St. Stephen’s Art Show in our town. It’s 3-day weekend of art, music, fun and friends.

One of my favorite things on Sunday was Lime, the group from the 1980s, one of my favorites. I had forgotten about so many of their songs which defined my youth.

A few friends and I were standing near the park and all of a sudden, Lime starts performing, that’s the video above I ran right over. They sang all their hits, “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight,” “Guilty,” “Unexpected Lovers” and more. So great.

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Shaun White wanna be

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I’m playing around with Tombo and Jacomo again, getting “Paws” ready for it’s return.

Looks like Jacomo has a new hero.

Sketchy vs clean when it comes to cartooning (and painting)

I read a great article by cartoonist John P. Weiss called “This is the Secret to Your Creative Success” where he talks about different cartoon styles – sketchy and clean – Krazy Kat vs Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.

He vacillates between the two. I try to do that but sort of fall in between. I want to be sketchy with my cartoons, but I end up being clean, with a bit of sketchyness in them.

The reason it hit home with me is that I’ve been thinking of doing a new style of comic – a single panel but possibly black and white and sort of rough. I still have plans for my comic strip, but this comic panel would be a once-in-a-while thing.

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I sort of did something like that here with Morning Joe. It’s not my usual style. It was almost drawing with my eyes closed. Even the words are sort of sketchy. This HQ Trivia cartoon is rough, too.

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This Cross Fit comic is so much cleaner. And this is my style that I usually go with. I want to go with even a rougher style than the Morning Joe one but I can’t find any samples because I don’t allow myself to do that.

Here is the article by John, think it’s a great read. I don’t think anyone has ever talked about this before.

Steal like an artist!

I read these two books by Austin Kleon “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work!” Austin is a writer and artist who lives in Austin, TX. Yes, Austin lives in Austin. I’m still looking for a town named Tom to move to. I know of a Tomball, Texas. I’ve been called Tombo and Tomo, never Tomball though.

They are both quick reads, one book took about half an hour to read, the other about an hour. “Steal like an Artist” basically says that there are no original ideas – everyone steals from each other. Truth be told, I have a couple of comic strips that I like, mostly the drawing styles, and I try to emulate them while designing and creating my new comic strip. I didn’t look at is as stealing, I see it more like inspiration.

In the book, Austin says, “”First you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it.”

But isn’t Lana Del Rey having this issue with Radiohead and the “Creep” song? One of my favorites by Radiohead. Lana is being sued by Radiohead for similarities in Lana’s “Get Free” song.

Anyway, I love the Steal book, it has a lot of useful information for artists and creative people. William Ralph Inge said, “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

I’m not for this plagiarism, I am more about getting ideas and studying those who inspire you.

The second book, “Show Your Work!” is all about that – sharing your work – not just the completed piece, but show how it is created, show your concept along the way. Don’t be stingy, reach out to your fans – interact. There’s a lot in the book about social media and how it influences people and puts people together. Austin is keen on Twitter Meetups, I didn’t know that was thing anymore, but I do remember going to a few in the early days.

Austin says that a good idea is to immerse yourself into someone or that inspires you. If it is an artist, learn about them, learn everything. Then find three people that this person loved and learn about them, and so on and so on. I love this idea.

The book gives quite lot of good info on how to get your work out there and how to interact with people and fans who will move you along your way and up the ladder to success. But the object is not to dwell on money or success, that will come with time if you Show Your Work!