Happy Birthday to me

Today I turn 39. One last gasp before I hit the big 4-0. I'm not scurrred, nosiree. Bring it on! I don't feel 39 and, really? That's all that matters. I feel at least 6 years younger. (But I still should get out and run some, just for insurance.)

39 and lovin' it. What a better way to start off my birthday than by getting a present for myself? Because I deserve it, right? So... I saddled over to my Amazon Wish List and bought me something that I've been pining for a very very VERY long time. Didn't tell Andrea. She knew that I was going to get it, but didn't know exactly when to expect it.

On Monday, she calls me to tell me that there's this huge box from Amazon in our living room. The FedEx guy struggled with it while going up the steps to our front door she says. Really? I reply. Hmmmm. I'll be home right away.


Ava takes the big Amazon box out for a spin. What's inside? Besides my daughter?


Inside the Amazon box was this big, beautifully detailed cardboard box.


Ta DAH! Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life, by Todd Oldham. It's an incredible book. Massive. Humongous. Amazing.


Yes, it's that big.


Beautiful endpages upon opening up this massive book. The artwork just knocks you off your feet, it does.


The Harper Family of Cincinnati. That's Edie, Brett, and Charley. Wife, son, artist. Both Edie and Brett are artists in their own rights. Runs in the family. You can see the contents of the book on the right there.


Todd Oldham conducts an interview near the front of the book. Haven't read it all, but from what little I've read, it's inspiring.


Each chapter is layed out like this. Big, bold, beautiful. Oldham did a fantastic job in the overall layout and design for this book. The Neutra font by House Industries is perfectly used throughout the entire book. Nice.


One last one before we go. This is the back cover. Good to the last drop.

My thoughts on this book? I'm speechless. Charley's work was amazing by itself, but Todd Oldham did an amazing job in presenting it here in a large format, with thick paper. I swear I could probably tear each of the pages out of this book and have them framed. The quality here is that good. Two hundred bucks is a mighty steep price to pay for a book, but Charley's work is totally worth it. If you're willing to splurge this Christmas, go for it. You'll be glad you did. I am.

Previously: RIP: Charley Harper.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving from the Jenkins Family. This is the first time ever in our lives where we are not spending this holiday with our extended families. Missing everyone back east, but having the best time creating new traditions here in our new home. We had a wonderful day today. How was yours?

And, to my Canadian brethren, how was your regular Thursday?

Image taken from Man On The Land, a 15 minute short film by the legendary UPA studio in 1951. I had a still from the same film with a pilgrim family at a table, but they weren't eating, so I opted not to use it here. Plus, the dad looked kinda mad. I did some color correction on this image, although I'm sure that it's still not even close to what the original looked like.

A breast from my past

Okay, that's a lame title there. Sorry. Well, my past has come to haunt me. My old pal from high school, Brad, sent me an email with two scanned images of drawings that I did from back in the day. 1985, to be exact. Funny that I would draw Madonna, since we were so into that new thing called rap, as well as classic rock (although it wasn't called "classic" at the time, just "rock"), Zeppelin, Floyd, The Stones, Billy Idol, U2, etc.

Ah, but I think Madonna's cleavage did us in. Darn you, Boy Toy! With your sleazy outfits, exposed midriff, bangles and bracelets, and permed side-swiped hair!

A note about the drawing: I don't remember drawing this, but one thing I was adamant about back then: I didn't trace. I did this while looking at the album cover. I never traced -- tracing was taboo to me, a big "no-no". I considered it "cheating." Little did I know that it would take me being a professional animator to actually use tracing as a helpful tool. (And I'm okay with that.)

The Human Body

Found this incredibly colorful and wildly imaginative science book several years ago in a booth at an antique mall, I believe just outside of Chattanooga, TN. The place was a regular stop for Andrea and I whenever we'd take the trip up I-75 to Illinois to visit her parents. Sigh. Guess it'll be some time until we visit that place again. The booth I bought this book from was filled with wonderful old books, with a healthy section on textbooks and readers. Bought many a book from that seller.

Anyway, the illustrations in this 1959 book were all done by one guy: Cornelius De Witt. Nothing much comes up on the guy -- I did find this page on him. He was able to live to the ripe ol' age of 90. It would've been great to meet the guy and ask him about how he worked. I mean, just look at his work featured throughout this amazing book (click on each to view larger):


The endpages.


The nine systems of the human body. I put this image together from three different pages. Just got rid of the text. Looks nice to see all the illustrations together.


Just look at how unafraid De Witt was with his use of color: purple with bright green. And it works somehow.




What De Witt does perfectly is simplify the various organs and allows us to focus on what we need to look at without compromising the integrity of the subject matter.






The colors clash, but not too much. Just enough to pique our interest.


Definitely view this larger. There's some interesting things going on here.




In the middle of the book, there's this fold-out that opens up into four pages. This is the entire spread. Brilliant. Just brilliant. View larger to fully appreciate the work.

All of Cornelius De Witt's work on this book exemplified the notion of communication -- to take what the doctors and specialists were saying in the text and visualize in easy to read and understand images. Because he was trying to make a mundane subject more intriguing, he experimented with color choices, often going far beyond the typical notion of what real organs and muscles should look like. Good thing the editors allowed De Witt to go to town with this project. I doubt that any illustrator today would have the luxury of depicting the innards of the human body the way that De Witt does here in this book. There were so many pages to choose from, I couldn't possibly scan them all. If I have more time, I'll try and scan some more later on.

The Day of the Dead Show

Andrea took this one.

Hi, folks. Got some photos to share for ya. I would've posted them sooner but this past week was a little wonky for me. Got sick on Monday and still going through some of the yuckiness as I type this out. No fun. But last week's trip to Astoria to check out the Icons: The Day of the Dead group show opening was definitely fun! This time, Andrea went with me and the kids -- we didn't have as much time to hang out as I did with the kids the previous weekend when I dropped off the painting, but that's okay. It was just enough time to do some exploring around the small town and especially to check out the show itself.



We didn't get an early start, so by the time we got into Astoria, it was about 5:15pm -- basically dusk, thanks to the shorter days and the recent changing of the clocks. There was a great deal of activity on Commercial Ave., where Lunar Boy Gallery was located. Found out that there was an art walk happening, with various galleries in the downtown Astoria area open later in the evening. I thought it was cool that the people at Lunar Boy worked it out that the Icons show would open on the same night. It brought some extra foot traffic into the gallery.

We checked out the entire show, chatted with a few people (not many, though), but then headed out quickly with the kids to go eat.





After an hour and a half, we came back to the gallery and saw that it was more busy than before. Lots more people, and this time, some people that I recognized from LAIKA.


My piece with its neighbors. That's Tony Merrithew's piece on the right, with the skeleton holding the woman's face mask.


Ben Burch did the two paintings on the left there.


I like these ceramic skulls. They were painted by several artists.


Dick Daniels did the painting with the white background on wood. When I drove up to Astoria the previous weekend to drop off my painting, the gallery owner had just received in the mail those dolls over on the right there. I was very curious to see just how she was going to present them in the show.


I didn't know who that woman was with Ben Burch and Ben Adams, the two Bens who organized the show, but then found out that it was Ben Adams' mom. She created those ceramic skulls you see behind them. (She painted the colored ones, too!)


Me and the 2 Bens. We weren't trying to look like gangstas, it just came out like that. Ben A's got the power guitar stance going on.


Andrea took this one.


That's the back of Andrea's head there, buying something at the cash register.

So, yes, the opening was a blast -- the kids had a great time, nothing was broken, no one got hurt or sick -- a success for us! OH, and this gave us the perfect opportunity for us to take our brand new Nikon D40 out for its first stroll. Whee! To see more photos from our evening, check out the entire set HERE.



Hope you enjoyed the photos! Looking forward to doing some more painting, now. We'll see.

Illustrator Wanted

Here ye! Here ye! The Great & Mighty King of Jingaling is looking for an illustrator to create some nice, Christmas-y cover art for his annual ADVENTure in Carols collection. Let's hear it from the King's own mouth (er...keyboard):

I'm looking for an artist to do the cover for this year's ADVENTure in Carols collection over at FaLaLaLaLa.com.

This will be the fourth annual collection of Christmas music goodness. I did the cover for the first collection. But the past two years have seen the beautiful work of Steve Mack and Ward Jenkins, who have added their immeasurable talents to the projects.

This is not a paid job. It's a labor of Christmas love. So if you have a flair for retro holiday style, pass me an email or message.

I can't wait to see the great cover that will grace this year's collection.

Thanks,

Brad
King of Jingaling

I've mentioned FaLaLaLaLa.com before on this post. I talked about making my cover HERE. I really enjoyed doing it. I know that the pro bono thing doesn't sit too well with some of you out there in illustration-land, but Brad's not making a penny off the ADVENTure series anyway. I did it, and I don't regret it at all. A great guy, Brad just does this because he loves sharing his massive collection of Christmas song oddities. Contact Brad here if you're interested. Looking forward to see what this year's ADVENTure cover looks like!

Inside UPA

I wrote the following review for Drawn!, but decided to post it here, with a few added words because I think the book's worth it. Amid and Tee's hard work should not go unnoticed.



"When I die, I don't want to go to Heaven, I want to go to UPA." –Warner Bros. director Friz Freleng

Inside UPA is the brainchild of Amid Amidi, who's amazing Cartoon Modern (previously) was a triumph, earning the Theatre Library Association's award for 2006 Best Book about Film, Television and Radio. That's quite an honor. With his new book, Amid approaches the subject matter in an entirely different manner. Whereas "Cartoon Modern" was all about the art of animation in the 50's, "Inside UPA" is completely devoid of art. It's all photographs. Ah, but what a goldmine these photographs have proven to be.

"Inside UPA" offers us a rare peek inside one of the most innovative animation studios of all time. Holding the book in my hands, I couldn't help but sense a connection between the book and the studio itself. Just like the studio, "Inside UPA" is diminutive in size (64 pages, measuring 7.5" x 8.7" with a soft cover with French flaps) but what it provides the reader is monumental. Within the walls of UPA a legacy was formed that shook the foundation of traditional animation thinking at the time. Here, within the pages of "Inside UPA", we are able to look upon the faces that formed that legacy.

I've seen a great deal of photos taken at studios at that time and practically all of them were for publicity sake, with animators posed and staged as if they were part of the decor. Most of the photos presented here in "Inside UPA" eschew such pretentiousness. It was obvious to me that in some of the photos the subjects were very aware of the photographer, but even in some of those shots, the director, animator or background artist seemed comfortable with the environment. Amid tells us that there was a sense of great pride working at the studio, and you can tell after thumbing through this book. The artists are shown working, creating, thinking, discussing, all within the cleanly designed walls of the studio, a perfect specimen of midcentury modern architecture at the time (now razed), designed by architect John Lautner.

UPA has been such an enigma for me because practically all the names that are usually associated with the studio (Bobe Cannon, Zach Schwartz, David Hilberman, Steven Bostustow, John Hubley, to name a few) were just that: names. Here, Amid, along with the help of Tee Bostustow and others, finally gives us a chance to place faces with the names. There are a great deal of pages that show the employees of UPA hard at work, but I also enjoyed the ones where they were shown unwinding and just hanging out. We get to see Steven Bostustow go over a Paul Julian background from "Tell Tale Heart" with director Ted Parmelee. We see director Pete Burness share a laugh with Mr. Magoo voice Jim Backus. We peek in on designer Charleen Peterson and background painter/designer Sam Clayberger as they are knee-deep in work. And in one of my favorite shots, we see director John Hubley sketching dancer Olga Lunick for reference on "Rooty Toot Toot." The book provides us the opportunity to sit in on story and staff meetings, impromptu discussions, even parties and dinners.

Right at the heart of the book, there is a full page shot of the entire staff, circa 1950. The opposite page is blank, save for this quote by background painter and production manager Herb Kynn:

"Everyone [at UPA in the early years] had respect for the other person. Everyone was relaxed, and free to contribute, and there was a great warmth and compatibility, which generated this enthusiasm, which ended up on the screen."

"Inside UPA" gives us a chance to see that enthusiasm up close and personal.

All proceeds of the book go to production of the feature documentary, UPA: Magoo, McBoing Boing & Modern Art. The book is published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Fifty of these copies come with a bookplate signed by UPA veterans who are still alive. It also includes a six-page filmography compiled by UPA biographer, Adam Abraham, which lists not only UPA's theatricals and TV shows, but also industrials and commercials.

More links:
Inside UPA on Cartoon Brew (with a couple of spreads from the book)
UPA exhibit at MoMA 1955

Here it is

This is my painting for the upcoming ICONS: A Day of the Dead Group Show at Lunar Boy Gallery.

I don't know what to call it. It's mixed media with gouache, india ink, a couple of cut up vintage magazine ads, an illustration from an old pamphlet on how to throw a successful party, gel medium and oil sticks all on some old print of a landscape that was in the frame I bought at a thrift store.

I'm not expecting to sell it. I mean, if it doesn't get sold, I don't mind. I'm just glad I got it done and that I participated in the show. Looking forward to seeing what everyone else did!

Hope to see you there on Saturday. If you can't make it to Astoria, don't worry. We'll still talk bad about you.

Abundant Linkage

It's been a while since the last Abundant Linkage, huh? Well, here goes:



Oh. Yes. Being a late 70's runner, this warms the cockles of my heart like nothing else: Nike Vintage. To quote the site:

...We've revisited our original styles and crafted them to look 30 years old–fresh out of the box. And it's all there, almost to the stitch. 1970s-grade nylon. Weird Swooshes. Aged laces. Weathered foam. And, of course, that velvety suede-like suede.

I'm partial to the Daybreak, since my Dad had a pair. The color choices presented here are new–they only had one look back in the day as far as I remember: tan with a bright orange swoosh (which, incidentally, I don't see available on the site...weird). Now I know what I want for my birthday. (It's coming up, in case you want to know...*hint hint*...)

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I'll talk more about this book soon.

I started up (yet) another Flickr group, Vintage Science (hmmm...I'm detecting a theme here). Mainly because I was trying to find some old science book-type stuff on Flickr and noticed that there wasn't one place to feature them all. Behold, another Flickr group! Taking a nod from fellow vintage-lover Paula Wirth's excellent group series (see Vintage Cookbooks, Vintage Advertising, and Vintage Drugstores, to name a few), I decided to start a group featuring all those oh-so-dated science books that we were forced to study and learn in grade school. Looking for 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's science books, as well as children's books that had a science theme to 'em (like space, astronomy, physics, anatomy, etc.). Join in on the fun!

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Inspiring artists:


I'm in love with the artwork of Matte Stephens. I mentioned him on Drawn! and I'll mention him here. He's that good. Go directly to his Etsy shop and buy one of his prints. You won't be sorry. Another reason to love Matte's work is that he's a big fan of midcentury modern design. He even started up a blog devoted to it: Modern Design 901. Love love.


Robert Hardgrave (aka Farmer Bob) paints with authority. His freeflowing landscapes are something to behold; I'm sure they're even more impressive up close and in person. Check his gallery and his Flickr.


Currently enjoying the work of Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli. Fun characters with nice linework. I'm glad to see that she's crossed the threshold from paper and/or computer screen into brick and mortar walls. She just recently finished her first wall! She collaborated with a friend and it looks great. Be sure to check her Flickr while you're at it.


Click to read. And laugh.

Hilarious. Do yourself a favor and go back and read 'em all. Drawn by Scott Campbell. Love his watercolor work combined with his use of irregular line and fun character designs. Recently featured in Geek Monthly.


Scott recently was one of the contributing artists to Hickee, an on-going comic series featuring indie comic artists, headed up by fellow LAIKA-ian, Graham Annable. If you're not familiar with Graham's work, you're in for a treat. The amount of personality he's able to get out of the subtlest of looks is amazing. Mostly in the eyes. (Check his Grickle Things blog.) I can see why Henry Selick grabbed him to work as storyboard artist on CORALINE. Wonderful stuff.

A big, fat post featuring LAIKA, PDX and NW artists is coming soon. To coincide with my updated blogroll. (Sorry it's taking me longer than expected. I keep finding new links! So sue me.)

ICONS: A show at Lunar Boy Gallery

Flyer artwork by Ben Adams. Ben is selling t-shirts for the show with this design. Contact him if you want one.

As mentioned previously, the reason for visiting Astoria was to drop off a painting for an upcoming show at Lunar Boy Gallery. This will be my very first official gallery showing! (My senior show back in '95 doesn't count.) Words cannot express how I feel about this. One of my goals since moving to Portland was to get back into painting and get involved with a show somehow. Luckily, fellow LAIKA-ian Ben Adams, along with his cohort Ben Burch, organized the show with a Dia De Los Muertos theme. Lots of LAIKA artists are representing the studio, along with many others. Here's all the info that you need to know:

ICONS: A Day of the DEAD Group Show
Saturday, November 10th
5 - 9 PM
Lunar Boy Gallery
1133 Commercial Street
Astoria, Oregon 97103
503.325.1566

From an email sent to me via the gallery:

This show will feature paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculpture, pottery and video works - all created especially for our Dia De Los Muertos theme.

The line up for the show includes artists from all over the country including a host of favorite Lunar Boy regulars in addition to a strong showing of new regional talent:

Ben Adams, Mark Atomos-Pilon, Mike Bell, Chris Bivins, Ben Burch, Tony Candelaria, Stef Choi, Robin Davey, Brian Demeter, Don Frank, Madoka Ito, Ward Jenkins, Edward Juan, Max Kauffman, Danielle Lamberti, Santino Lascano, Mike Lewis, Katherine Reka O'Connell, Brett Superstar, Wilson Swaim, Tim Tanner, Vicki Tanner , Jane Thanner, Thomas Webb, Ulana Zahajkewycz

I'm so excited I could just piddle in me chair. Hope to see you all there this Saturday! I promise I'll clean up after myself.

I might post a teaser of my painting before the event. How's that sound?

Three is the magic number.

Well, would you look at that....The Ward-O-Matic turned three yesterday. That's like, 37 in blog years. I think.



To celebrate, I took the kids to Astoria, OR, for the day. Well, actually, I had to drop off a painting for an upcoming show at the Lunar Boy Gallery, which is a pretty cool gallery in this pretty cool little marine town in the northwestern-most part of Oregon. Right at the mouth of the Columbia River. Quite an impressive village with some quaint old buildings and a massive bridge that spans the river over into Washington. I took Ava & Ezra because the wife has been incredibly sick for the past 5 days. She needed some more rest so I thought, hey, I'll just take the kids on a road trip. We had a blast. It was fun checking out a new town with some beautiful vistas. The kids are always up for an adventure.







Speaking of adventure, The Goonies was shot here! Had to visit the house, of course. You know you love it.


Check the Flickr for more Astoria pics.

More about the show coming up....