Danny Gregory's drawing journey

http://illustrationfriday.com/blog/2007/03/16/illustration-friday-interview-danny-gregory/
I love the way he just started having fun drawing and didn't worry about how good he was at it. And started putting his work up on the internet. And publications like Print or NYT started hiring him to do illustrations. His style's still fun and messy and artsy... and his technical ability really really has grown.

Time for a website.

Gold leaf in paintings.

Fred Wessel is mad skilled.
http://www.artistdaily.com/blogs/othermedia/archive/2007/03/16/using-egg-tempera-amp-gold-leaf-to-achieve-renaissance-luminocity.aspx

Brad Kunkle uses oils and gold with a dreamlike feel.
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/oil-paintings-embellished-with

And Scott Rhea is an underwater photography hero. (Yes, one of these things is not like the other. I should change the title to "Dreamlike art".)
http://xaxor.com/photography/29667-scott-rhea-underwater-photos.html

Design Revolution

http://designigniteschange.org/

Betty Turbo

(Etsy store owner)
Illustrations feature fantasticness such as Hulk Hogan battling Mumm Ra in the kitchen.

Liam Brazier

It's a mind-blowing website.
The guy's got incredible style. (Illustration)
http://www.liambrazier.com/

...Becca Levy

http://www.caring.com/interviews/interview-with-becca-levy-about-her-study-of-television-exposure

Becca Levy speaks about the demoralizing effects of belittling speech and pedantic treatment specifically in elderly populations. The way elderly people are viewed in our culture affects the way elderly people view themselves, which affects their self-esteem, feelings of competence, mental decline and lifespan.

I imagine belittling behavior affects all age groups the same way, though--to different extents.

Becca rocks not only because she thought to study and publicize this problem... but also because of her positive, solution-oriented way of talking about it and her own honestly about her past experience in elder care. She focuses on finding ways to empower people, and offers solutions for people who still want to use "sweetie" and other potentially belittling terms of endearment.

Good heart.

Henri Nouwen

“For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must... reclaim your identity as a free self.”

Seymour Chwast's style. He knows how to play.

http://www.aiga.org/medalist-seymourchwast/

His strength is not in rendering, like so many of the “sentimentalists” before him, but in concept and design. A beguiling sense of humor underpins his illustration, and a keen understanding of traditional design governs his method. Chwast and his Push Pin colleagues helped reintroduce the long divorced principles of illustration and design. Moreover, he helped formulate a new graphic lexicon based on knowledge, appreciation and reapplication of past styles and forms—one that has had long term effects on graphic design.

Born in 1931 in The Bronx, New York, Chwast began drawing in earnest at the age of seven, and soon attended WPA-sponsored art classes. He became profoundly aware of the difference between museum and street art and seemed to instinctively prefer the allure of billboards and advertisements to Picassos and Mondrians. Influenced by Walt Disney, the Sunday funnies and serial movies, he gave life to his own cartoon heroes, including “Jim Lightning” and “Lucky Day.” His family moved to Coney Island, where he was enrolled in Abraham Lincoln High School. On the outside this was an ordinary New York City public school, but inside it was a hotbed of graphic design education.

Okay, so carrying on the theme of grieving widowers...

I have massive new respect for Marc Chagall. His writer wife was his principal muse, and after her death, he spent years illustrating her journals in his grief. For some reason I don't expect a famous artist to be in love with his own wife. It's desperately romantic.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8514208/Unseen-works-by-Marc-Chagall-reveal-artists-enduring-love-affair.html

Someday I shall virtually sculpt WORLDS. And stories. Epic ones.

http://www.maxon.net/en/home.html

Reading the scripts of favorite movies.

This particular one is for The Princess Bride... but there's plenty more where it came from. :D

http://fringe.davesource.com/Fringe/Entertainment/Scripts/The_Princess_Bride.html

An odd portfolio!

http://phineasxjones.com/illustration/screenprint.php

Phineas really seems to like tentacles. I love his samurai octopus. And the octophant.

A fabulous blogger's fun tribute to Ed Emberley.

http://davidbarneswork.posterous.com/?page=3

Weird Cuteness

Reuters' hand-hugging baby sloth...


And a cat-bus-ified car.
http://greenridgechronicles.blogspot.com/2010/02/next-stop-little-sister.html

To be inspired by interesting illustrations!

My ever-changing list of inspiration:

I've loved Gama-Go's style for 7 or 8 years... loads of fun. www.gama-go.com


Things to explore:
(interesting illustration) http://apeonthemoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/1005.jpg
(design blog) http://imprint.printmag.com/

Love me some Matt Ottsdal typography fun!

http://www.behance.net/jeksel/Frame

Have fun exploring this fun designer's work; he obviously has fun with it. And he may just get your creative juices going (or make you laugh) with some of it!

More fabulous inspiration:
Ignacio Macri's logos. http://www.ignaciomacri.com.ar/
A treasure trove of logo art: www.logopond.com
More free fonts, very art deco inspired: http://www.fontfreak.com/authors/nick_curtis.htm

(Gigantic hug)

Lisa

Reliving an 80's childhood

http://notian.net/litebrite/

Yes, you can re-live the 80's and create lite brite art online.

Neural Connections.

Okay,

So I'm only partway through this article, but brainsssss are amazing. How our neurons make connections with each other: pretty exciting stuff!

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/39/25/31709587.pdf

Although I disagree with the author on something: I do not believe we are at the mercy of our circumstances. We are not powerless. It is not merely the things that happen to us that determine our neural connections or our brain chemistry. The Cognitive Therapy exercises and experiments in an awesome book called "Brain Lock" support me in disagreeing. I haven't read "Learned Optimism" all the way yet, but I suspect it also agrees. Thoughts I run through my head continually are going to affect the neural connections I make... and activities I choose, what I dwell on, repeating truths that help, stuff like that. Believing what my Maker tells me about myself. I am transparent about my emotions because of my wiring... argh... but other people must face similar demons sometimes, too.

Tip: Stuart Brown, M.D. teaches that playing, trying new things, and doing your favorite kinds of recreation are some of the best ways to connect those neurons in new, exciting ways.

Bringing Pixar To Work

How do you create an office like Pixar? Fun fosters better work, and greater creativity... one of the most valuable elements in many first world country businesses today. It in no way means a workplace that doesn't work hard; Pixar's workers certainly put in long hours. But they obviously love what they do and where they work; it shows.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993864,00.html

Welcome to my first post!

Welcome to the more presentable parts of my innards: the things I love.

I will start you out with one of the most beautiful books I've ever read: "A Grief Observed" (Clive Staples Lewis).

When his wife died, Lewis used a journal to work through his grief process. He never intended to publish it until a friend convinced him it may help other grieving people. He eventually published it under a pen name.

I'd far rather read brutally honest theology written by someone who's desperate for answers than armchair theology. And I often feel irritated by limiting, flat stereotypes of femininity. His descriptions of "H." include some of my favorite gender quotes.

"For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more. If we had never fallen in love we should have none the less been always together, and created scandal. That’s what I meant when once I praised her for her ‘masculine virtues.’ But she soon put a stop to that by asking how I’d like to be praised for my feminine ones. It was a good riposte, dear. Yet there was something of the Amazon, something of Penthesileia and Camilla....

It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tendernesss 'feminine.' But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human."

One of the best literary experiences I've ever had was finally finishing "A Grief Observed" and then starting "Till We Have Faces". He wrote them around the same time, at the end of his writing career, even though he'd come up with the idea for "Faces" as a college student.

So many of the passionate emotions in his grief journal show up in Orual, the main character of "Faces". What a passionate intellectual C.S. Lewis was... a little pessimistic, though. Incredibly authentic, honest. And I can't get over the way he viewed his wife.

http://www.montreat.edu/dking/lewis/AGOasFreeVerse.htm

"His figurative language about Joy is rich though brief. She had a mind like a leopard, “lithe and quick and muscular . . . [able to scent] the first whiff of cant or slush; then [it] sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening” (8).... The most striking simile he uses about Joy occurs when he writes she was “a splendid thing; a soul straight, bright, and tempered like a sword” (35).