ConTEXT

Oh yeah! So the reason for this insane deadline is because Joseph and I are the featured artists for April at the Upstate Artists Guild.

Friday will be awesome, can't wait to see everybody!

UAG presents ConTEXT, a national show of work containing text.
April 2nd through April 23rd
Opening Reception April 2nd 6-9pm
Location:
UAG Gallery
247 Lark Street
Albany NY 12210

12 Week Challenge

I signed up so there's no turning back. That's how I roll people. Starting April 5th I will start getting assignments in this 12 week challenge - http://zero2illo.com/category/12-week-challenge/ I can't imagine being as busy as I was for the Philo & Sophy project I just finished (YES just FINISHED... like 30 minutes ago), but I hope I can push myself again and see things happen.

I'll keep you posted.

I look forward to meeting a bunch of cool people and making lots of art.

Philo & Sophy lettering

The day after my birthday I finished all 14 paintings. Now on to lettering. So, they really weren't finished before, now they are getting there. I agonized over the fact I would have to paint over my paintings with words but as I started to put the text in, everything came together.

To lay out the text, I had to keep in mind the bleeds and margins according to lulu. The paintings are 12x18 to give a little wiggle room for this. I had to leave a little over an inch in the middle for the gutter, 5/8" on the sides, and 7/8" on the top and bottom. A while back, I figured out where the text would go using Illustrator. Now that the paintings are ready for lettering, I used tracing paper to hand draw all the text the way I wanted. I didn't want it to look like font, and it was fun to freehand it. But man did I underestimate how long this step would take. I think it took me a week without a lot of late nights to figure this out.

Philo & Sophy painting progress

I love talking with other artists about what its like when you're forcing yourself to create something. It SUCKS. We all love making art, but when you're not feelin it, it is probably better for everyone to just sleep. I had a schedule at this point to finish 2 paintings a week. I had made it through the store opening and the holidays. It was now the end of January. 2 paintings a week turned out to be more like, 5-8 paintings started, 0 finished. I didn't start finishing paintings until March.

It was easier to work on all the paintings that had the girl in them at once. All the paintings with dogs in them at the same time, etc. I almost can't imagine working on just one piece at a time.

More in-progress work here.

Looking back

I'm so glad I documented this since its neat to see how the drawings and ideas changed. A lot changed once I figured out I wanted 8.5x11 pages. Then, layouts were changing to make the whole sequence of images more cohesive or to fit the text considering all the bleeds and margins. The little changes happened when I got my hands on some reference.

Some of the layouts were adjusted at this stage while I learned a lot about how people read books. Thankfully I had some friends who knew much more about this than I did.

This one read a lot better flipped! That was an easy revision...

Philo & Sophy sketches

After I got back from a super awesome trip to Italy with some of the most amazing people in the whole wide world... I started seriously working on this project. This was about the end of September 2009. Funny because at the same time I decided to open a second store in Troy. While I was not scouring craigslist and driving Jorge's truck all around here and there picking up crap, I was finalizing the drawings for Philo & Sophy.

From here they got transferred to the Gessobords.

But not until after I spent about a week or two planning my color schemes in Photoshop.

You can see more of these preliminary sketches here.

Philo & Sophy thumbnails

I really can't remember when this started, maybe a year ago now, but I decided to work on some illustrations for a story for a friend. Joseph Ulrich is the author and you can learn more about him at http://www.josephulrich.com

I'm adding this post now that I've already finished the 14 paintings, and have begun lettering but I'm gonna pretend I'm just starting out so I can make this a little more interesting.

I started with Joe's story and some thumbnails. Here are some of the final thumbs I went on from the beginning.