Next con: NecronomiCon 2011 in Florida.
Not attending in person, but I got art in the art show, so if you are there, come see!

Sketches: Ceci n'est pas une femme

A practice sketch. Fooling around with suggesting things using wrong kinds of objects. (Also drawing robots and tipping my nonexistent hat to Magritte.)

The face of this robot is not really a face; it is just some eyes and lips painted on its blank faceplate. Creepy, isn't it?

Also here: http://chiseledrocks.com/main/galleries/sketches/topics/notawoman

Art Picks: Big Bad Bunny Eater

"Big Bad Bunny Eater" by Bobby Chiu (imaginism)

What makes this picture work
This picture is a great example of intelligent humor.

Mimicry like this actually occurs in nature. The sort where the whole creature imitates another whole creature is more frequent, but creatures with "drawings" or "sculptures" made of a part of their body do exist. So we have believability; but the picture's real impact is hilarity. The realistic handling of textures and lighting gets combined with extremely stylized bunnies. Whimsical but entirely plausible details like the monster's fur mimicking a patch of grass or its ears getting co-opted into representing the fake "bunny"'s ones are next to the comically evil expression on its face. And then there is the whole premise of a huge monster pretending to be something tiny.

If the bunnies were realistic, we wouldn't believe that they could be fooled by the Eater's disguise. But if the whole picture were stylized, we wouldn't really see how bad the disguise really is. It's a perfect case of the realistic finish and well-grounded tidbits adding a lot of credibility to a very unrealistic and far-fetched situation, but it also makes the combination a major source of the humor, and that is rare.

What could be improved
The fur texture on the Eater's tail is a bit mechanical, and the regular clumping on it is out of place; I'd expect such clumping to happen under the throat or some other place where skin gets a lot of stretching.The greens could use more variety. The leaves on the forest floor are so bright that they suggest autumn, but all leaves still on the trees are green, and the vegetation seems tropical. All these things are technicalities and do not really detract anything big from the picture, though.



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The Dark Art of Pricing

In a very rare example of a professional illustrator explaining the pricing process, Jessica Hische, who gave us shouldiworkforfree.com, discusses The Dark Art of Pricing.

She explains why the hourly rate pricing can be detrimental, and discusses pricing for lease of rights (something which, in my experience, a lot of smaller employers aren't versed in — not just illustrators.) She also gives a compelling argument against speculative work, and mentions the "presentation only" pricing (which is another thing that smaller clients and illustrators often are unaware of).

Required reading for any up-and-coming freelance illustrator.

http://www.jessicahische.is/obsessedwiththeinternet/andhelpingyougetpaid/the-dark-art-of-pricing

“Tell it your way”

“What is that?” - “It’s a unicorn.” - “Never seen one up close before.” - “Beautiful.” - “Get away, get away!” - “I’m sorry.”

“Tell it your way” was a cinema contest in which the competitors were to make a short film using only the six lines of dialogue above.

Nothing else could say it better that cinema is so much more than just the story.

The winning film: