How to Make a Resolution That Sticks

With 2011 left with only 3 days left, we thought it would be timely for today's post to be about resolutions.

Often we hear of New Year's resolutions in the context of something that will be broken.  We hear about avoiding the gym in January as they'll be overcrowded, but in a month or so they'll be back to normal.  Part of this failure to commit to the New Year's resolutions is that we either tend to set goals either not thinking about what it'll take to get there, or we make a resolution that is too broad.  As we've said time and time again, it's all about specificity and prioritization.

In order to make a resolution sticky, you want to make sure that A) it's something that you honestly believe you can achieve, and B)you have a plan for.  

We always believe that people can do amazing things, but in order for people to achieve greatness, they also have to believe in themselves.  If you'd love to be an artist that works for a movie studio but don't really believe you could get a job at a movie studio, chances are, you're not going to work for a movie studio since you won't make working for a studio your priority. 

Sticking with our example, if you want to land that job at Dreamworks in the new year but fear that you aren't good enough to make it to Dreamworks, your resolutions shouldn't be to land a job there.  Your resolution should be to paint every day, or to do a sketch every morning or every day after you come home from work.  Maybe it's to take a few art classes or to download conceptart.org workshops.  It could also be to go to a counselor, or to read a book on self-confidence every month.  Either way, your focus should be on making a resolution that you can stick with.  Anyone can go to the library and get a book, or spend some time in a bookstore doing intense browsing through art books and magazines.  If you are reading this, chances are you have a pen or pencil to do a drawing daily, even if it's on grocery bags or the inside of envelopes.  Got junk mail or bills in the mail?  Then you've got something to draw on.  

If you have a large art goal as your resolution, think about breaking that large goal down into steps.  Instead of saying "I resolve to make $5,200 this year off selling my new comic," maybe think about saying "I'm going to make $100 per week off my comic sales," or "I'm going to submit my comics to a new comic store every week" or "I'm going to do one event every month that will bring in $434 in comic book sales."  

Figuring out what the actual goals needed to complete a resolution can also be very sobering, so don't be afraid to adjust your resolution.  If you hit your goal early, you can always ramp it up later in the year.  The key is to make sure that it's something that you honestly believe in your heart of hearts that you can do.  

The other part of sticking to a resolution is about making a plan.  Even if your resolution is something that you believe you can do like a resolution to sketch every day, you still need to  make a plan.  By providing yourself with a detailed plan of how you're going to achieve your goal, you'll make it easier to finish it all the way through.  

Even if you don't make a detailed plan, you should still think about your resolution to see if it really fits.  If not, revise your resolution to make sure it does.  Make a resolution to paint every day?  What about when you're flying to that wedding for a weekend?  Are you going to bring your oils on the flight?  Are you going to have time to do them on holidays?  Figure out the rules to your resolution - if you do two drawings a day, can you skip one?  What about seven, do you get to skip a week?  

Our point is not to drag you down with the nitty-gritty, but you do have to think about your resolution to make sure that not only is it feasible, but also easy.  If you only draw once a month and you want to go up to once a day, every day, for a full year (or beyond), is that something that you even have time for?  What are you going to change to make that happen?  

Maybe you could make sure that you go to sleep 15 minutes later to get that last sketch in before you go to bed.  If so, then what about also keeping a sketchbook and a pencil on your bedstand?  If you're only painting once a month, then instead of going for a daily painting, what about making a resolution to paint once a week?  Or if you want that daily thing, what about just making at least one brush stroke per day?  In that case, you want your painting to get set-up where you can easily access it, and you want to make sure that you have your paints and brushes and everything right where you'd need them to be in order to do your daily work.  

Part of making a plan can also involve getting someone to hold you accountable to your resolution.  Have a friend check up with you weekly - every time you miss your mark, you owe them $20.  Sign a contract to make it legally binding.  While this punishment principle might not work for everyone, it is a potential plan you can make if having the hordes nipping at your heels inspires you to get things done.  Alternatively, you could also give your resolution buddy a sum of money, or some rewards in advance, to give you every time they check in and you're on track.  If you need that Pavlonian training, we say go for it.  

So if you're looking to make a resolution (or ten) for 2012, make sure it's something you believe you can do and make sure you have a plan.  Knowledge is power, kids, and now that you know how to make some killer resolutions for next year, what are they going to be?

Celebrate All Success!!

Monkey here once again.

Here at Monkey + Seal, we often talk about chasing your dreams and setting goals - lots of long-term type stuff. But more often or not, the reason why lots of people give up on their dreams and settle for something less is not about the long-term motivation - everyone wants to follow their dreams. However, the biggest barrier is the short term blocks, and today, I want to talk about not rewarding yourself enough.

Once we're up and running and chasing after that dream, then what? Yes, we know it's a long and tough road, but are we just supposed to suffer through this long (sometimes even a lifetime) journey? If your goal is to become a famous painter (you should probably be more specific, but continuing on..) there's a lot that's going to happen on your way there.

You're going to finish paintings, put on gallery shows, submit to curators, sell pieces, have friends show up at your events, maybe you'll do some teaching, get a residency someplace - my point is that there are a lot of little (and big) things that will continue to occur until you're famous enough that museums are asking for solo shows and paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars for your art.

Often times, dream-chasers can be so focused on the goal that you're missing the bigger picture: you have to enjoy the ride.

Seriously. Like we've said before, if your goal is to be famous, it's easy. Go assassinate someone famous, blow up a city, give into the casting couch, run on television and shoot yourself in the face or something (please don't). if you want to be famous for doing something you love, that's the hard part, but it's also the enjoyable part as well. The big difference that when you say you want to be famous, you want to be famous by doing something you love and doing it well.

When you're doing something you love, it should be fun. Yes, it can be tiring or difficult at times (especially when you're shaking and trying to hang paintings because you're running on 2 hours of sleep), but at the end of the day, you're painting or dancing or singing or acting or writing or doing whatever it is that you love to do. It's awesome - so acknowledge that and be happy!

I personally often put down my own accomplishments because it's not received with some gigantic fanfare and the like, or it's not up to my 130% uber-expectations. However, if you don't celebrate these little achievements, what's the point? Every time you finish a painting, you should think "wow, I created something," not "ugg, this turned out shitty." It's probably not nearly as bad as you think, and if you hate it so much, then it's probably not finished and you need to do more work.

Celebrate everything, even your failures, and you'll find that the ride is becoming much more enjoyable and you'll be a lot happier. Complaining is fine, and acknowledging your weaknesses and flaws is fine, but just don't let them overshadow all that is going right with your life. Didn't sell any paintings at your recent show? That sucks, but YOU JUST HAD A SHOW! Lots of artists don't get shows. Finished a really great painting but didn't get into a show you submitted to? That sucks, but YOU JUST FINISHED A GREAT PAINTING! Lots of people couldn't paint to save their lives!

Everyone has good and bad days, successes and failures. Whether or not you're happy is all about your mindset. Enjoy the journey and the little success, and you'll find that you'll be a lot happier and the road to your goals will be much smoother.

Does Your Art Say What You Want It To?

Seal here:

This past weekend, I went to see the "King's Speech" with a friend. On the surface, it is a film about a would-be King who struggles to overcome his speech impediment in order for his country to trust him as a "sound" leader. As an visual and performing artist, the "quality of your voice" becomes the deciding factor in being able to deliver your intentions; the pictures in your head needs to be communicated clearly to the public in order to be received and understood.

When you draw and paint, do you strike the canvas boldly? Do you layer the watercolor softly? Do you ink your comic with conviction? or fear? or dread? Does your canvas stutter? soothe? or shout? Or is it more like a quiet boldness? What is the quality of your voice in your art? What is the adjective of how you deliver your art?

When I was a theater director at UC Berkeley, I was exposed to the many different kinds of delivery. Anger in a play could be portrayed in so many different ways: in a bubbling explosion, in a seething whisper, in a self-destructive combustion, in a look, in a glare, in the small corner of the mouth. It was very fascinating that the voice and actor's body had so much range. It was a given that in order to stretch that range and broaden their ability to deliver all kinds of sounds, emotions, and gestures, the actors needed to rehearse their voices and their bodies: they did exercises to stretch their vocal chords, they enlarged and snapped their diaphragms, they expanded and contracted their bodies into different shapes and sizes.

So too, must we, the visual artists: the painter, the writer, the crafts-maker, practice our quality of voice by practicing and stretching our capacity. We must 1) expand our skills in our chosen subject, medium, and the way we see the world. We must also 2) contract and filter what it is we eventually want to say, so that the final delivery of our art is done with intention, some element of surprising impulse, but always with a heart-full conviction.

All great art is a visual form of [song].

~ Sister Wendy Beckett

Process: Painting "Alone in the Dark"

Monkey here today, for a quick run-down of my process while painting a very recent piece, which I call "Alone in the Dark." In the photo above, the weird blue light coming diagonally across the upper left is just a lens flare.

So for a figurative piece where I want to really convey a specific emotion, I shoot reference. While others might be masters of expressions without reference, I am not, so I got our digital camera, a little work lamp, a sheet of blue acetate, some masking tape, a black cloth, and asked for the assistance of an awesome model, Seal.

If you don't have someone else you can ask to model, you can always do it yourself. I must admit, it is much easier to work with someone else. If you can't afford to pay someone, ask other artists if they might need a model of their own, and do a trade-sie.


So the above photo is primarily the one I worked off of. I like the hand positions in this photo, but I wasn't completely sold on her head position. I skimmed through some other photos I had snapped in our little 10-minute photo shoot, and after doing some Photoshop work, adjusting the levels, adding a very transparent gradient of aqua, I ended up with this:

With this as my reference, I started to paint. I paint with acrylics, and I like using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics. For this painting, I used my usual palette set-up, which consists of:

titanium white, unbleached titanium (lazy painter's warm white), mars black, yellow oxide, cadmium yellow light hue, burnt umber, cadmium red medium hue, alizarin crimson hue permanent, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue (green shade), veridian hue permanent, and dioxazine purple. I will sometimes add extra colors to the palette if I need a large quantity of a certain color that I don't want to mix (I also keep a tube of magenta and an aqua handy), but usually I just stick with these colors and mix everything.

I also got a tube of ivory black to warm up the black since I was doing a cool light, but you can just as well mix some alizarin into your black to warm it up a bit if you stick with mars black.

I did a direct drawing onto the canvas using watered-down burnt umber. I mainly went for general proportions and gesture at this point. So you can see, I didn't quite hit that target on my first go, but since acrylics dry fast and you can paint over stuff, I decided to fix it later and just start painting.

I laid in a dark black for the shadowy background and mixed up a nice green to really push the creepy atmosphere and emphasize the unearthly lighting situation (which is also coming from below, which you don't see very often and adds to the creep-factor).

I also laid in a green underpainting where the flesh would be. Why? Because I like the effect of laying down a blue-green in my portraits and then layering fleshtones on top, especially if you're putting them in green light.

I then blocked in the lights and darks of the shirt, using a thin black wash to fill in the shirt, as I didn't want to lose the form of the shirt too early, while I was still figuring out the folds and construction and form. If I was a crazier painter, I could probably have gone with some opaque black, but I didn't want to push it, so I took it easy. I hit the light parts with green, since that's the color of the light.

The next step was to paint over the green with some unbleached titanium mixed with a bit of cad red light and yellow oxide. I also added the shadows on the skin, and took a bit of time to carve out the shape of the hand.


So the above photo is taken after about 3 hours of work. I paint fairly fast, thanks to a Quick Studies class I took at Academy, but I had to slow down a bit since I hadn't attempted to do anything even remotely realistic in a while, and sort of forgot what I had learned.

Tthis next photo was taken after about another 3 hours of work. What did I do in these three hours to go from weird chalk-lady to a decent approximation of a scared Eve?


Well, I spent a good two hours or so really studying the folds and buttons on her shirt. For some reason, I get a kick out of painting collared shirts on people, so I ended up devoting a bit too much time to the clothing, but it turned out pretty swell.

I also slowly painted, and repainted, and repainted again Eve's face, working to smoothly blend and capture all the subtle colors that are in her face in the reference photo. I also had a bunch of facial proportions all wrong, so I repainted her nose about three times. The first time it was too small, then it was too low and big, and then it was too high, and then I figured it wasn't worth it to go for a perfect likeness and decided that the nose looked proportional and real to the painting and that was that.

I also took time to start painting the hands. I then realized, while painting, that something seemed funny, and somehow during the painting process I stopped using the photo reference, and fudged the hands quite a bit. After carving a bit away, repositioning some fingers, and generally undoing a lot of the preliminary mistakes I had made, I repainted the fingers.

And after another hour or two, I decided I was finished. During those last few hours, I pulled out some highlights on her hair, softened a lot of the cast shadows on her face, sculpted the eyes a bit more, rendered the lips, added a bit of detail to the hands, and repainted her neck so that the anatomy worked a bit better.



Ta-da! So after about 50 minutes of reference shooting and prep work, and about 9-11 hours of painting, the finished product is here. I saw the painting starting to take a pulp-horror paperback book look early on, and decided that I would try to keep it in that vein as opposed to going for ultra-realism (which I find I just don't have the patience for).

Oh yeah! By the way, I also use Golden brand Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin) to thin my paints if I want to sort of glaze over dried paint to smooth transitions or tint parts certain colors. I used a lot of medium while painting the hands and face, due to the high concentration of blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Due to the green light literally going through the skin, hitting the red blood, and bouncing back, you get this weird mixture of cool pinks and warm greens, with strange transitions in-between.

I hope you learned something from this process post, and feel free to ask any specific questions in the comments. While this isn't the style I'm currently working in, it is nice to bust out a creepy painting that flexes some of my classical realism training that I got in school, and also balances my work so it's also more fun to bust out and do my regular sweaty monsters. Woo!

Keeping Things Fresh

In-progress painting, ~5 hours

Before we get on with our usual blog fare, we just wanted to remind you about some of the many events coming up in the next week or so.

This Friday, Feb. 11th, both Monkey + Seal will be in Wonderland SF's group show "Just Because.." along with 16 other talented artists. The opening night reception is from 6-10pm at Wonderland SF in the Mission, 2929 24th Street to be exact.

This weekend at Big Umbrella Studios, we'll be having a super duper trunk show! There will be vegan fare and baked goods, along with other awesome vendors on Sunday, from 12-5pm at 906.5 Divisadero St (x McAllister). You should also stop on by on Saturday to see an entirely different slate of vendors and show your support. Same time, same place, different food options.

Monkey here.

I recently started taking classes at City College of San Francisco (CCSF, for those in the know). As you probably know, I already have a (expensive) degree from Academy of Art University. Why would I go back to school?

Three reasons. The first, which is NOT what this post is about, is so that my student loans might be deferred just a little bit longer.

The second, more interesting reason (but still not what this post is about) is that I wanted to get back into printmaking (other than silkscreen), and by taking printmaking classes I'd have access to some presses.

The third, most important reason is that I wanted to keep things fresh. While at the Academy, because I was pressured to paint in the style of classical realism (ie realistic paintings, rendering form, strong light sources, etc.), I ended up feeling confined and frustrated and that's how I ended up going into my current style of looser, outlined, messy-background paintings that I do now, even going so far as to sometimes including text.

However, after painting in this loose manner for the past year, I started to get a bit bored with my current style. Fortunately I had been changing up subject matter over the past year or so, but I still saw things getting a bit stale. Because I had been fortunate to have a fairly filled schedule of shows, most paintings were paintings done under a deadline, and I didn't have a lot of time to experiment.

By taking painting classes at CCSF, I've given myself the permission (and time) to paint in other styles. Instead of drawing sketches on canvas with pencil (or completely making something out of random brush strokes) like I usually do for my current body of work, I've gone back to my Academy training of painting from reference, doing quick underpaintings with paint, and (albeit stylistically) rending form instead of using line to create the image.

Painting in this way helps me to keep my speed up and is just a great way of practicing my skill set. Regardless of the finished product, I'm practicing more, which is one of the keys to success. After all, practice makes perfect with art, and it's really all about mileage. While it might not be obvious how painting in different styles helps, there are a lot of things that I can practice regardless of the style. How to get my paint to the consistency I want. Brush control. Color mixing. No matter the task, creating with paint on a daily basis is super helpful if you want to improve your craft.

All in all, I think that it is really important to keep things fresh here and there, in order to make sure that you're not getting tired of the same thing. Experimentation and trying new (or older) styles or themes can be really helpful as even if you don't learn something new that directly applies to your current style, you'll be rehearsing the basics, which will just make you stronger.

Whether taking classes at a community college or going to art school (if you haven't yet), by changing stuff up and making time for a change of pace, you'll be able to keep things fresh and, most importantly, keep art fun. After all, when art stops being fun, then it's just a job.

Monkey + Seal in a show tonight!

Hi hi everyone! Tonight (Friday, January 21 if you're reading this some other day than when we're writing this), Monkey + Seal are going to be in another gallery show!

We're both participating in the "A House of Cards" show opening from 7-11pm tonight at Big Umbrella Studios, located at 906 1/2 Divisadero St (at McAllister), SF, 94115. If you google it, make sure you look for 906 Divis, as the .5 sends you off someplace else.

If you're local, bus lines 24 and 5 are literally about twenty steps or less away, so we recommend coming via public transportation (because street parking can get sort of tough).

Anyway, Monkey just hung the show last night, and he is pleased with the awesomeness and variety of styles that will be showing. Both of us will have new work, and Monkey will have some suuuuper old pieces up that no one has ever seen before!

There is also going to be poker, a tarot card reader, and three different food carts. It'll be a spectacular evening, so we hope to see you there!

Psst - we won't be able to be there until 8pm, so if you'd like to meet us, wait til then! Yay!

PS - If you'd like to see some behind the scenes photos of the gallery getting ready for the show at our last Wednesday Nite Artgasm, check them out here!

Defining Success

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! While we still have to work on paintings and such today, we'll be taking extra time to contemplate the awesomeness of this great Civil Rights leader who kicked tons of butt and really fought for the changes he wanted made in the world. We hope you will too! Anyway, on to the talk about success:

When we think of success, we generally think of people who are well known, rich, famous, or leaders in their fields. We think about great contributions to humanity, or ground-breaking innovations, or work of cultural significance.

When we think of success, we generally think of all the people we admire, people who have what we (think we) want, who everyone else is heralding as being successful.

But what does success really mean for you?

This is a very important question that can help align (or realign) what your goals and hopes are. If you want to be successful, the first step, before taking any action whatsoever, is figuring out the answer to that question.

Does success mean money? If so, then would you be successful if you just worked your way up a Fortune 500 and made a boatload of money? What about if you managed to pull off an armored truck robbery?

Does success mean fame? If so, would you be successful if you were famous as a Hollywood actor? What about if you were famous for blowing up a city?

Our point is that when we think of success, we generally think in really broad terms. Money, power, fame, etc. But, what we really need to do to achieve that level of success is to break it down into concrete terms.

Success is really a personal, subjective idea. What if you were rich and famous and powerful, but you hated yourself and your job and no one loved you? Would you be successful then? If so, would it be worth it?

To answer that question, be specific. Very specific. By being suuuuper specific you can then figure out individual goals and the steps to achieve that success. This way, you'll have a concrete path that you can stay on to make sure you make it all the way through ON YOUR TERMS.

Becoming successful on your terms (and no one else's) is quite important, as this is probably the only way that you'll make it and still be happy with yourself. If success is just an end goal, and that's all you care about, then you'll make sacrifices and choices that might get you to that goal, but you won't be happy.

Have a conversation with yourself. Ask yourself "What does it mean for you to consider yourself successful?" If you answer "To be a professional artist that makes a living off of their art," then you could follow up with "Well then how about being a sculptor that makes toilet bowls for a living? You'd be living off your art."

We imagine your reply to then be "No, I want to paint for a living."

"What about painting portraits."
"No, I want to paint dogs."

"Well, what about painting a series of chihuahuas?"

"No, I only like Pomeranians."

"So what about painting portraits of people's Pomeranians?"

"No, I don't want to paint what other people want me to paint. I want to be my own art director."

"So then you want to be a fine artist who paints Pomeranians?"

"Yes, but I want to paint them with coffee."

"Okay, so you want to be a fine artist who paints Pomeranians with coffee."

"And I want to sell a lot of paintings."

"Like 30 of them?"

"Hmm, enough to make a living off of them."

There. Now you know you're a fine art painter who paints pomeranians with coffee, and your measure of success is to be able to live off your sales of pomeranian coffee paintings. Your goals are much clearer, and now that you have a concrete goal, you can now start making the steps to reach that goal. Market research. Actually making the paintings. Putting together press kits and an online portfolio. Photographing the paintings. Etc. etc .etc. (Although to be perfectly honest, you could probably keep on going with that conversation and you could be even more specific, but you get the idea).

While you might not be into Pomeranian coffee paintings, you are probably into something else. Whether it's being a creative writer who ghostwrites for Stephen King, or a comedian who is featured in a major, top-grossing motion picture, or an illustrator who makes $80k a year and has a client list that includes the New Yorker and Wired, it's up to you. But define your own personal measure of success. It's the first step to being successful.

Now it's time to ask yourself: How do you define success?

Paper Hat Productions Features: Jonas Madden-Connor and Xiau-Fong

4 Days left until the Art Riot Extravaganza!


Jonas Madden-Connor

Today we're having a double-header of epic proportions! Paper Hat Production featured artists Jonas Madden-Connor and Xiau-Fong Wee!

Jonas Madden-Connor

Jonas Madden-Connor is an award-winning illustrator and comic artist who is the creator of the 2008 Isotope Award-winning comic Ochre Ellipse. Original pages from Ochre Ellipse #3, one of the best comics Monkey + Seal have the privilege to own, will be on display as part of the Out of Place show this Friday. Also, some awesome watercolors will also be on display and for sale.

Xiau-Fong Wee

Xiau-Fong Wee is an emerging painter whose dark, yet inviting work are masterful examples of classic training mixed with a creepy reimagination of the world. Along with her paintings, she'll also be selling some silkscreen prints during the Art Riot Extravaganza!

Xiau-Fong Wee

Paper Hat Productions Features: Francois Vigneault

Today's Paper Hat Productions' spotlight shines on the witty, ever-talented Francois Vigneault. One of the lead organizers of the San Francisco Zine Fest, this zine-producing, comic-creating, illustrator will be showing a series of illustrations painted on book covers, offering new takes on classic works of literature. Check out more of his awesome work over at his publishing company Family Style or at www.tourdefrancois.com.

Process: Designing and Finding Inspiration Everywhere

This is Monkey here, and today I'll be talking about the design of my personal business cards which led to a new diptych of paintings.

So first off, for whatever reason, whether it be the creepiness or the iconography or just weirdness, I've always associated myself with skulls. My old logo was something like this:
So it was natural that when I was designing ties, I came up with this:
So, I ended up designing the front of my business card to look like this:
Using a scan of the original tie design, I changed up the crossbones to be paintbrushes, added a splatter texture that I created a while back by soaking a brush in ink and just going at a large sheet of paper. After scanning and saving it, I now have a really awesome, natural-looking texture that I can whip out whenever I need that grunge look.

So then, I realized that I probably should put a photo of my painting on my business card, since a)that's what most artists do, and b)it makes sense to show off your work. However, I was torn as I really liked the pink and black design with the skulls and the "create or die" underneath it (a motto I plan to live by). Then, inspiration hit. Duh, why don't I just do a painting of the "create or die" dealy? (slaps forehead). Duh.

In my paintings (most of which are not up on my website yet -_- ) I deal with the exploration of the hierarchy between text and image, realism and graphic representation, order of words altering meanings, and the nuances of language. So, it came to me that by having the order of the words be "create" then "die," it gives the reader the idea that I'm advocating the creation over the dying. I thought it would be then interesting to use almost the same image but switching the words around. I also wanted to keep the numbers of letters the same in the first and second word, so then I did another painting that says "death or art."

Believe it or not, these are the same color..stupid weird lighting in my apartment..

The top photo is longer cuz I formatted it for business cards and had to get clever with the stamp tool in photoshop to extend the canvas border.

I then decided to use a contrasting color (well, not a perfect contrast, but you get the point) on the back. I brought in the original grunge text, added some hand-drawn elements, and here you've got the back of my card:
Anyway, I guess what the point of all this was to highlight how what seem like problems or setbacks can be the best (although unlikely) place to find inspiration. I ended up not having to compromise my original design and ended up with not only a business card design but also two new paintings. Often I get the biggest inspiration when I'm frustrated or completely at my wit's end when dealing with a problem.

Instead of trying to bash your way through problems (as tempting as that may be, especially for me), I find that staying fluid and constantly looking for new ways of viewing your problem can lead to unexpected and novel solutions. Also, I like to think across mediums. From what started as a tie design led to a new logo which led to a new business card which led to two new paintings. Think about some cool doodles you already have. Maybe that's your next painting or postcard design. Anyway, I hope this was informative and helpful!

Seal Process: Tyger Tyger series in acrylics

Above is Seal's most recent illustration. Normally she works in gouache or watercolor, but for the next couple of illustrations, she is trying out acrylics.

She is inspired and repulsed by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster of 1986. Although not a historical accurate presentation of Chernobyl, her piece is set in a similar imaginative setting. She wanted to feature a resilient resourceful young female protagonist, a survivor, who utilizes her art and imagination to navigate through the decimated world. Below is Seal's painting space. She has her inspiring artistic references close by when she is painting: 1) Cannabis Works by Tatsuyuki Tanaka and 2) Revelations of Chernobyl by Nakasuji Jun.


She recently noticed that she also keeps her coffee dangerously close to her paint water bucket. Which is probably a bad idea. Next to her painting on the right is her original thumbnail. Every 30 minutes she checks the thumbnail and adjusts her values as needed. Below: this is what her palette looks like after 4 hours of painting. She has two side by side so she doesn't have to change the palette as often. For the purpose of this painting, she wanted the colors to be muddy and muted. Ideally, it's a good idea to change the palette more often so you have "cleaner brighter colors."

Below is a zoomed shot of a corner of her illustration. She gives herself at least a .25" bleed all the way around and paints beyond the edge. It makes all the difference in cropping if you give yourself extra room for flexibility. All in all, she had fun painting old rusted pipes and the light coming in through the window.

Thanks for visiting!

Reminder + Process: Coloring in Photoshop

=
First off, as a reminder, our very talented Seal has been invited to showcase her artwork at the Saida Glide fundraiser event tonight at Sugar Cafe (679 Sutter St. at Taylor) in San Francisco. There is a fashion show at 9:30, but the event goes from 7pm til 2am. We'll be there from 7 til at least 11pm, networking, trying to sell our art, drinking, and doing some drawing.


Seal will be selling some fine art archival prints (giclees) for $25 of two of her newest work , as well as the original painting for the swamp house for $325 (or for $375 framed). Monkey might also go guerrilla-style (or is it gorilla style?) and sell some small prints and stuff for kicks (he'll have to wait and see how things are there).

Hopefully you'll stop on by and say hi!

**********
So today's Saturday process post is by Monkey. He'll be briefly explaining the basics of coloring in photoshop.

Hi everyone! So today I'll be explaining a bit how to do color a scanned line drawing in Adobe Photoshop. Examples of work I've done (and stuff that is suited for this sort of digital painting are things like:
and Notice both are really graphic with mainly solid linework and flat color mixed in. The way one does this is you start with a line drawing (I tend to do mine in a sketchbook or on paper as I don't really like to draw digitally if I can help it) that you scan in. After you scan it in, I usually clean up the half-erased marks and play with the levels to get my lines darker.

Here's my cleaned-up line drawing for the Handmade Ho Down poster and flyer.

You can see in the scan above that I actually didn't draw the flag logo yet...the logo was created the same way as I did the poster/flyer, but since it was already done I didn't want to redraw it, I left the top of the big flagpole off (I inserted it later digitally). Sometimes this is good if you already have an image that you're planning to work in - for me, leaving spots obviously blank is a good reminder that something needs to go there.

So here's where you start setting up PS to make coloring easier. Assuming all your lines are connected perfectly in your scanned drawing, you could just use the color bucket to paint large flat areas in your drawing. However, if you zoom in, you'll see that it'll eat into some of your linework, leaving it jagged at times. Thus, this is my preferred method. It's not quite as quick, but you'll get smoother lines.

What you do is first, right-click (or ctrl-click for mac mouse users) on the background layer (which should have your image in it if you opened it up in photoshop to start painting). Click on the "duplicate layer" and create a "background copy." Then, drag it on top of your background layer. Now, select your background layer and create a new layer between them. Select the background copy. In the photo below, it's labeled "Layer 1." Go to the little drop-down menu above the layers palette and change the layer property from "normal" to "multiply."
What multiply does is literally multiply the colors from that layer with the colors on the layer below it. Thus, any white space on your background copy will show pure color beneath it. Any blacks will show black. This allows you to paint on the sandwiched layer without affecting your original drawing. The only drawback to this is that you can't really use your paint bucket since this layer that you are coloring in is just an empty layer. However, like I said, it preserves your line quality, so it's almost like a coloring book where the black lines always stay on top of your coloring.

You could just create a multiply layer underneath the background layer, but I like to have a copy of the original drawing in case I need to make changes. This way, I can edit the drawing on my copied layer, and if I don't like it, I can always go back to my original background layer, make a new copy, and start from the original drawing.

In the screencap below, you can see which layer I'm painting on. Also, I felt it was prudent to point out the brush setting I use. Since I paint with a tablet (to be honest, I don't know how you can do digital art with a mouse), I have shape dynamics on, with size jitter at 0% and it being controlled by pen pressure. This way, the harder I press the fatter the line (to the max pixel size that my brush is set to), and the lighter I press the finer the line. This replicates brush control in real life - if you want to make a thinner line, you just use the tip of the brush. I also have the minimum diameter set to 0 so that I can use very very faint brushstrokes to make tiny, thin lines.
Also, note that I'm currently painting in RGB mode. This is great if you never plan to print out your illustration, but if you want to print it, BEFORE you start, change the mode to CMYK. Believe me, it'll make everyone happier.


So, after a lot of coloring and adding text and resizing things and moving things around, the little octopus guy turned out like this:
I ended up painting in the flag for the big logo, and replaced the hand-drawn SF Etsy flag with the actual logo. I also extended the pole and added the Etsy logo.

Anyway, that's it for now, and if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments and we'll get to them as soon as we can. Also, don't forget to show up to the Handmade Ho Down on December 3rd to meet us in person, check out our art, and see the grand premier of Monkey's new silkscreened ties! Thanks for reading!

Tetsuya Ishida

Monkey and Seal recently had the incredible pleasure of discovering the work of Tetsuya Ishida, a contemporary Japanese painter. The store that Seal works at recently started carrying a collection of his work and when she showed Monkey, he was literally speechless.

His work is hauntingly beautiful, commenting on modern Japanese life. His topics range from the life of a salaryman to consumption to alienation and loneliness. Each painting was a self-portrait of the artist in the thick of it. He recently died in April from a train accident which is suspected to be a suicide.


Truly a great talent that will be missed, Monkey feels like this collection of work by Tetsuya-san is super inspiring and invaluable to the Monkey and Seal library.

Tetsuya does what Monkey ultimately wants to do with his art. By combining social commentary, politics, creepiness, and magical realism, Tetsuya says something deeply profound that resonates with one's soul and stays with you.

While Monkey's work currently explores the same themes but with a more humorous bent while using the interplay between text and images, he wants to eventually create something as moving and powerful as Tetsuya.

Monkey and Seal both highly recommend checking out more of Tetsuya's work - it is a simply stunning collection that finds beauty in the horrors of contemporary Japanese life.

Process: Monkey and his acrylic paintings

So Monkey has recently come to terms that he does not like painting in the style of classical realism. While there are more musings on that on Monkey's personal blog, this post is about his process when coming up with one of his acrylic painting. So without further ado, take it away Monkey!

Hello! So, first off, I alway start up with some toned canvas or boards.
I like either strange colors (to give me a pre-existing color palette to work with), or a nice mid-tone gray. Working with a mid-tone gray is super helpful, as it allows you to see a better relationship between your darkest darks and your lightest lights. I find if you start with a blank, untoned canvas, I tend to paint my shadows too light, as I'm comparing them to the white of the canvas and not the local value of what I'm painting. More on toning canvas later.

Because so much of Monkey's work relies on the interplay between text and image, Monkey brainstorms a lot. Sometimes an idea will hit him while he's working his day job, and he'll jot it down on a sticky note and put it in his wallet for later use. Other times, when he has his paints ready, he'll start with an image and then use that as inspiration. In this instance, Monkey worked out a bunch of different concepts, and wrote them on an envelope as a guide for his painting session.
Because I hate wasting paint, a lot of times I'll tone some canvases with all my left-over paint that I have at the end of a painting session. I'll usually mix complementary colors to get rich mid-value browns to tone with, or, I'll go with analogous colors to get a nice rich background. If I do this, I'll usually save this canvas/board for a painting where the image will be the complement of the background. For example, if I paint a greenish background, I'll save the canvas for a painting that has orange-red hues for the majority of the painting.

Since I'm going to paint a barn, which has a lot of reddish-browns in it, I pulled out a greenish canvas I had been saving. I start by doing a quick sketch of the main contours of the image. This is mainly to get a sense of composition and scale of the piece.

Then, if I'm not doing a strong lighting statement, I'll mass in the local value. If I am working with strong lighting, I'll first mass in the shadows, then the lights, then I'll add the darkest shadows and the highlights last. Finally, I add the text. Notice that it's a bit different from the initial concept that's written down on the envelope. I wanted the barn to have a soul (as opposed to just being a "talking barn") as it adds some sort of moral implication to the barn's dialogue. Also, I wanted to make it a wee bit more obvious that Farmer Joe is getting nasty with someone/thing in the barn by using the text to really paint the picture in the viewer's mind about Farmer Joe's pants being on the floor.


And that's that. Thanks again for reading, and I hope it gives just a little bit of insight to my thought process when I'm painting. Maybe next time I'll do the process behind a more detailed piece, just for kicks.

Monkey's new work!

So Monkey has been working hard on some new paintings, as well as some new screen prints. Here's the sneak peek photos of a mere fraction of all the new stuff that will get up into the shop as soon as they're finished/better photos are taken.

Seasoning salt is the dark knight of spices...it easily adds tons of flavor to any dish, but is such a cop-out. You can just throw it in soup or whatever, and it's an immediate flavor explosion. I personally try not to use it and actually season my dishes with spices that aren't pre-mixed, but whatever. Actually, if Seasoning Salt is the dark knight, "Italian Herbs" is definitely the Joker. Wait, what?

Here are the preview for Monkey's small but bright line of screenprinted ties. He really likes the bright colors (the hazmat green is pretty awesome), but does anyone besides Monkey wear bright green/pink ties, or does everyone else wear sage greens, silvers, etc? Please comment with your opinions!

Post-modern Pomegranate. I guess the joke only really works if you a)think of PoMo as Post-Modern, and b)call Pomegranites "Pomos." Oh well.

Anyhoo, Seal will be taking a break from her Process Posts on Saturday, and Monkey will go over his method of conceptual painting. Monkey hopes you'll stop by again tomorrow!

Seal's Gouache In Progress

Seal has been hard at work sharpening her gouache skills to prep for her weekend-long demo at the SF Zine Fest. She's currently working on some smaller paintings to sell/make glicees from. She's still working on this one, but here's a sneak peek!


(from L to Right): Gouache work in progress, original pencil sketch, digital color over pencil sketch

Welcome!!

Thanks for visiting! We are Monkey + Seal, the collaboration between artists Eve Skylar and Ri.S.K. We publish our own mini-comics, zines, and paint, illustrate, and make stationery and such.

We sell our wares on the friendly Etsy site, as well as on our current site designed to keep Seal in art school. More of our paintings and artwork are on our personal site, but we're working on getting them up on Etsy.

Thanks again for stopping by and we hope to see you again and again!