The Undiscovered: New World / The Secret of Deadbrook

Hey everyone! We haven't had time to write up a full new post this week, because we have been busily painting our behinds off for our upcoming split show!

This is going to be our first feature show and we're really excited about it. Seal is preparing a whole new slew of amazing other-worldly landscape paintings, and Monkey is preparing an interactive narrative to accompany his paintings. It should be a really fun evening!

The show opens on Friday, June 3rd from 8pm-11pm at Oz Gallery, located at 3224 1/2 22nd Street (between Bartlett and Mission). We're super excited and we hope to see you there!

The Undiscovered is a two-person show made up of two parts: "New World", a collection of new paintings by Eve Skylar, and "The Secret of Deadbrook," new paintings by Rick Kitagawa that weave an interactive tale of the macabre.

"New World' will explore a journey into the uncharted territory of the fantastic landscapes that inhabit Eve Skylar's mind. From steampunk junkyard swamps to soaring new heights and forgotten robots, come explore the realm of the New World.

"The Secret of Deadbrook" is an interactive horror murder mystery told through paintings and their accompanying narratives. Children have been disappearing in the town of Deadbrook, and when a witness comes forward concerning the most recent disappearance, it's up to you to unearth the sinister secrets of Deadbrook. All you will need to solve the mystery will be at your fingertips - can you figure out who is killing the children before it's too late? If you can, enter your guess and you'll have a chance to win original art!

Building Up Your Dream Team / Thank You!

Don't fight by yourself!

Being an artist can often seem like a solitary profession. Even when working as a team to say, produce a game or animate a short, a lot of time is spent by oneself actually producing the art.

We often tend to think that we're forging ahead alone, a lone commando typing away at our computer or painting in our studio. Especially if you work a dayjob, it's often work at the office, then come home and create by yourself.

However, as you begin to look to create more opportunities for yourself, there is a huge revelation that you must come upon if you hope to ever "make it" as a professional artist:

You cannot do it alone.

Plain and simple, no matter how skilled you are, if you forsake all help, you're not going to go too far in life. Whether it was your teachers who taught you how to paint, or your friend who listens to you after a bad day at work, or your partner who helps out with rent while you pursue a more financially-risky dream, you are not alone.

Quite frankly, it's impossible to go it alone. Even if you build an internet empire from scratch, it's the word of mouth referrals and the help of your fans that will eventually build you up. No brand is without it's buyers, and no empire is an empire without people supporting it.

The easiest way to build up your own dream team of supporters, friends, allies, and other people who will help take you to the top is to help them to the top. While we don't advocate giving more than you really can (or making false promises), supporting others when you can and doing your best to help others reach their goals is by far the way to do things.

The rule of thumb is to just be a good person that helps out their friends and is a caring, supportive teammate, partner, friend, coworker, co-ninja, etc. etc. That way, you'll find that your own team is more supportive, caring, and generally awesome, and then your combined efforts synergistically evolve into crazy things that you wouldn't have been able to achieve on your own.

We also understand that not everyone is going to be right for your team. There are tons of people who you won't connect with, or are too self-absorbed to ever consider giving back. But if you keep putting yourself out there and being supportive to others, you'll find that you'll connect with other like-minded people and your tribe will grow.

Additionally, make sure that you don't take what people give you for granted. Just because you helped someone out doesn't mean they're ever obligated to help you out in return, and you shouldn't operate under the mentality that you're giving so people owe you. Understand that you're giving because you want to support other cool artists, and in turn you'll naturally find others who want to support you because people like helping other cool people. We believe that most people are generally good, and if you show them a little love they'll show it right back.

When you're in an appreciative mindset, you'll not only be creating a positive energy for others, but you'll be creating a positive space for you too. Gratitude is contagious, and nothing is more empowering or awesome to see than a whole group of people working together, happy and thankful for each other making awesome stuff happen.

On that note, we know that we appreciate everyone who reads our blogs, and reposts our tweets, and follows us on facebook, and who has either bought or recommended our art to a friend, or has introduced us to their artist friends, or have come out to our gallery shows. So while this post was supposed to be primarily about how to build up your own support team, we just wanted to take time out to say "Thank You" to everyone who has supported us all these years. Whether you've been with us back while we were still in art school or are just joining us now, Thank you. Whether you lurk about on our website or post on the blog, whether you say hi at craft fairs or send us letters, thanks a million. We wouldn't be where we are without you, and we hope that you feel like we've got your back as well.

So while you're out there making friends and changing the world, we hope you aren't afraid to reach out to us for help along the way! Let's make our dreams come true together!

How Bad Do You Want to Succeed?

It's the Monkey here again:

First off, this was inspired by this article over at Muddy Colors, a pretty cool illustration blog. While I highly suggest you go take a look, I know some of you don't like clicking blog links (I know I'm usually guilty of that), so I'll summarize for you: Life as an artist is hard, it usually takes on average, 5 years after graduating from art school to really get a stable illustration career. Live inexpensively, and take all the work that you can get.

While this is very, very true and great advice, it sort of brings up the big question: How badly do you want to succeed at this whole "chasing your dream" thing? Because with all the awesomeness that comes along with being able to do what you love for a living, not everyone will be able to do that right out of college. Yes, there are definitely exceptions, and we know lots of illustrators who got picked up by game companies within 3-6 months of graduation. However, that's not going to be the case for everyone, and especially if you want to be a successful fine artist, the road could be even longer assuming the traditional gallery path.

So you have to ask yourself, and be totally honest - are you going to be able to do what you love right now and make a living off of it? Personally, I think that the advice to live inexpensively is great, but when you've got nearly $200,000 in student loans to pay back, living super frugally still doesn't cut it a lot of the time and it's not even living frugally, it's being broke-ass poor.

Now to be totally honest, this is a question that I've found myself asking myself more and more. I'm generally a super happy, go-get-'em type of guy, and this isn't some front that I put on to just try and encourage other artists to go after their dream. I'm not the type to sell you something that I don't believe in. However, we've talked about going through Hell before, and the reason we can talk about stuff like that is because we've gone through it, or in my case, are going through it when we write these posts.

While co-owning a gallery and running the Monkey + Seal shop and co-running a screen printing biz and teaching workshops and doing demos at Paper Source and painting for gallery shows might seem all super awesome and fun and magical, and don't get me wrong, it is most of the time, it's also really, really, really, really fucking hard.

I work, on average, between 50-70 hours a week. I don't usually get entire days off, and if I do, they come about once every three weeks or so. Now yes, some of that time is painting or making prints, or designing a new tie design, or writing blog posts, or updating FB, or whatever, but nevertheless, it is work. I also cannot stop because to be perfectly honest, I'm broke, and if my income comes from the art hustle, I gotta hustle.

There are times where rent is put into jeopardy, and times that I skip meals because I spent all my money on bills or on art supplies or table fees at craft fairs. On good nights I get 6 hours of sleep, on bad nights I get 3-4. I also have to go to my two community college classes twice a week in order to defer my student loan payments.

Don't get me wrong - I'm really happy most of the time as like I said, I get to paint and draw and illustrate and make cool stuff for people for a living. But the cost is that I can't currently afford to travel or take vacations, and I can't stop. I'm constantly worried about money, and that's why I hustle trying to simultaneously make Monkey + Seal, Lords of Print, and Big Umbrella work.

So while this may come off as a whine-fest, it doesn't intend to be one. At any time I could go and apply to office jobs that would pay me enough to get by, or I could do my best to manage a retail store or something like that. All very valid and perfectly okay decisions for some people, but just not me.

But thanks to Eve's tremendous emotional, psychological, and financial support, I'm able to keep on doing what I love, even if it means some great sacrifices at times. And that's why I can't give up. I can't squander everything the lovely Seal and lots of other people have given me. To me, art is (almost) everything.

And while you might think that I'm trying to convince you to give up everything to follow your dream (I'm not), an equally important thing you have to figure out is your limits. How long will you give yourself before you give up? 6 months? 2 years? A decade? Your entire life? What else are you willing to sacrifice to get it? Are you willing to give up the love of your life for your dream? Your friends? Will you leave everything behind and relocate? Personally, I've decided that art is the most important thing in my life - besides Eve. We don't talk about our personal lives a lot on the blog. So while there are a lot of things I'm willing to give up for my art- vacations, eating at fancy restaurants, etc., I'm not willing to give up the little (seal) lady. But whether or not you are in a relationship, figuring out what you're willing to give up is crucial, if only so you know what not to give up.

There is no right or wrong answer to this. Everyone is different, and everyone needs to make up their own boundaries for themselves. The most important part is that you stick to them! Once you break a boundary, it's a slippery slope downhill. Just watch Requiem for a Dream and you'll see what I'm talking about.

So if you're already living the dream, congratulations. If you're not there yet, ask yourself: How bad do you want it, and what are you willing to give up (or: what aren't you willing to give up) to get it?

Why Your Competition Will Crush You

Dark Wizards are both competitive, nosy neighbors, and general sapphire-loving jerks.

Don't be a Dark Wizard.

That's right, your competition will crush you.

Not because you aren't wonderful and talented and amazing, because you are all those things whether you're willing to admit it or not. Not because your competition is better, stronger, faster, whatever. The reason your competition will kick your butt is because when we say "your competition," we don't mean other people/organizations/things that are competing with you. We mean "the competition that you're taking part in."

Especially now that we're completely over-saturated with media (thanks internet!), we can often find examples that prove our own internal head-demons right. With not much searching, we can find that famous person who started out homeless and a drug addict and then became a noble-prize winning scholar (or some crazy story like that). We can find examples of people who were in our own situations and then became wildly successful (seemingly overnight, as per the flash and bang of most stories like these). After hearing about something like that, how can we not compare ourselves?

So like we said in our title, your competition will crush you. It is much harder fighting the good fight when it seems like you've already lost to someone else. When we constantly compare ourselves to others, we never get a chance to really compare ourselves to our true potential, which is what really matters in the end. In that sense, the battle is lost before it's fought. So how do you win the fight with yourself?

The best way to overcome this potentially debilitating self-criticism is to not compare yourself to other people at all. While we're not advocating sticking your head in the mud and ignoring the world, what really is the use of comparing yourself to other people? Is there any point to compare ourselves to outliers that aren't representative of the population as a whole? To make yourself feel worse about yourself? Really? Seriously, what's the point? We'll answer that for you - there is none.

There's no reason to fuel your own self-doubt. Other people will be more successful and less successful (by your standards - make sure you have already defined success for yourself), so get over it. You have something amazing locked up inside of you (don't try to deny it!), it's just your job to figure out what your gift to the world is and to go and nourish it and help it grow.

Everyone should tend to their own gardens without looking at your neighbor's as if their grass is greener. Everyone has the capacity and seed and raw potential to grow their own unique beautiful garden, but too much time is wasted on envying others' growth spurt. It's wasted time and energy. While you are busy focused on other people, you may have just missed your own tiny budding potential peeking its way from underground. Don't miss that chance and see for yourself how awesome you are and really embrace all your raw potential that you have as a human being.

Honor the seeds you have planted. Nurture it and be your own number fan. Only after you have loved yourself, will the world come to see you as you see yourself. Your competition can't crush you if it doesn't exist, so grab your water bucket and start growing something worthwhile. Remember, you can have it all (and more!) if you really want it, so drop the competition and be the greatest success you can be!

How to Handle Rejection

Bottom of the 9th, down by 3, 2 outs, bases loaded, 2 strikes . . . you can still make a one-hit winning comeback.

Monkey here:

If you've ever experienced rejection for your art, you know how much it can suck. As an artist, you put so much of yourself into your work that, especially in a subjective field, rejection can really sting. Whether it's not getting called back after an audition, or getting a negative portfolio review, or being rejected from an illustration annual, rejection is never fun.

So how do you bounce back? How do you get over the fact that the person judging your art deems it wasn't right for whatever opportunity you're looking for? Well for starters, realize that rejection is just an opportunity to try again. But I realize that's easier said than done, and I hate to answer a question with another question, but most of the good answers in life are like this, so I'm doing it anyway. To figure out how to move on, you have to ask yourself "Why do I want this in the first place?"

Why do you want that gallery show? Why do you want that part? Is the answer recognition? Fame? Money? Or something more intangible? If you really just wanted recognition, you could always go back to school and try really hard in your classes and study and get A's and then show off your 4.0 GPA - it's a tangible, objective achievement that people can be proud of. If it's fame, you can always be a serial killer - no one really forgets them. If it's money, there's always thievery or prostitution, or simply some 9-5 job that you can take.

Yes, I know these are all extreme examples of ways to get recognition or fame or money, but really I bet your answer is a bit more nuanced than any of these. I bet that you're actually looking for recognition as an artist and to be able to live off your art. After all, that's the dream, right? To be able to do what you love and get paid for it.

So then, if you're chasing the dream to do what you love and get paid for it, isn't it painful when you face setbacks and rejection? Oh most definitely. So how do you get over it?

The answer to that should be really obvious at this point.

What are you going to do, are you going to stop doing what you love? So life has pushed you around a bit. You haven't heard from the galleries you sent your portfolio to. Your photos aren't selling. You lost money on the last few craft shows. What are you going to do, just stop?

Really, life can be painful sometimes. But is it going to be more painful doing what you love and not getting outside approval of your work, or is it going to be more painful not doing what you love and losing part of your soul? Honestly, if you're willing to just give up on your dream, then you have to ask yourself is that all your dream ever amounted to? Was it really your true passion to begin with?

I used to always think that my dream was to get into a huge gallery and sell my paintings for thousands of dollars. That's still my goal, but I've realized that if that never happens, it won't be the end of the world because I realize that in a way, I'm currently living the dream. I get to paint - and the act of creating art is what is really enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, I love getting into gallery shows and selling art and figuring out how to make money off my art, but when I don't hear back from a gallery I've sent my portfolio to, I keep asking myself "what are you going to do, quit? Am I going to stop doing what I love just because a gallery doesn't drop everything to curate me into the next available show?"

You never know why you didn't get into a show, or an annual, or get that lead role, or whatever. Things like that aren't a reflection of your worth as an artist. Maybe your price point was too low, or too high. Maybe the gatekeeper (forget about them and rush the gates already!) already had someone else in mind. Maybe you're a really fucking amazing artist, but they just liked someone else's submission a little bit better. Maybe your style just wasn't their thing, or they only like paintings with ducks and flowers (or alternatively, demons and skulls). Who knows?

The point is that you can't give up. Don't let the thing that you love to do slip away. No matter how many years it takes, or to what level of commercial success you'll ever make it to, you can't stop doing what you love. Don't let external forces tell you how to live your life. In the end, all those people don't matter -you're the final arbiter of how successful your life is.

I honestly hope that art comes easy for you and that people compliment your work as soon as they see it, and all your magical dreams of being a world-renowned artist comes true (or whatever your dreams are). Do what you love, and if you chase that dream wholeheartedly, the other stuff (commercial success, external acclaim, etc. etc.) will come along (if you so desire). Now get out there and do your thing. After all, are you just going to quit, or are you going to keep on keeping on?

Vote Monkey + Seal in 2011!

Hey everyone! We (and some of our friends) could really use your help!

So SF Weekly's Best of the Bay is going on right now, and they have a form that you can submit over and over again to vote for your favorite stuff! Even better, it's focus is DIY, which we are all about!!

We're trying to win in two categories: #1 Best Blog (www.blog.monkeyandseal.com), and #12 Best Artist (either Eve Skylar or Rick Kitagawa). You can vote here!

You can also help out our friends and other enterprises by voting for #8 Best Film Festival (Asian American International Film Festival), #10 Best Theater Company (Asian American Theater Company), #13 - Best Art Gallery (Big Umbrella Studios),and #98 Best Boutique (Urban Bazaar).

Please feel free to vote for other venues you think deserve the win too!

Note: You can vote as many times as you'd like, and also if you just want to vote for us quickly and be done (our category is on the first page!), you can just hit next over and over until you get to the "submit" page. You don't actually have to register or anything, nor do you have to fill everything out as long as you go all the way through the submit button (although if you want to, you should!)

To vote again once you've submitted your vote, just copy the URL from your browser and paste it back in where it was and hit enter.

Thanks so so much, and we really appreciate your time, votes, and support! You're truly the best!

How to Make Art Into A Sport and WIN

When you're actually watching a sporting event or a film/show about sports (like Rocky, or the Japanese drama Rookies that we highly recommend), it's easy to get swept up in the emotional whirlwind that surrounds sports. People fighting, pushing themselves to be their best, determined to win. Players sweat, grit their teeth, destroy their bodies and fight past their physical limits in order to be the champion, to win the cup, to vanquish their opponent.

It's all pretty amazing to watch, and after getting swept up in World Cup fever and having played sports ourselves, we understand the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (let's not talk about Monkey's high school water polo team...ugh). I mean, how can you not get a little excited over the Giant's win of the World Series last season?

In art, how can we capture some of that excitement? It's hard to feel the thrill of victory when you're staring at a blank canvas or would rather be playing Facebook games on your tablet rather than painting with one. With sports, the most enjoyable part (at least for Monkey) was always the games. Practice was a necessary evil, but the real fun is when you're playing a game (that's why in films it's always a training montage, not hours of them training). To figure out how to get pumped about painting, we have to figure out why games are more exciting then practice.

Games are more exciting because games or tournaments or matches all have objective outcomes. Besides hockey and soccer and maybe a few other sports I'm not aware of, you don't tie. You either win or your lose. You score more or they do, you get knocked out or you do the knocking out . Say what you will about bad referee calls, sports generally have clear, definitive objective outcomes, and it's those outcomes that we get excited over.

With art, you don't have a point system to keep track of or a win-loss record to deal with. There are no shooting percentages or conversion rates, or a final buzzer that you're racing to beat. But this is where we can start to make art into a sport - through practice. Because to be great at sports, you have to train your butt off. But at the same time, it's way more boring - it's not as exciting to see someone punch a punching bag a thousand times compared to two fighters dancing around each other throwing uppercuts and jabs. Just the same, it's not as fun to work on your art everyday compared to having people look at your final painting and give you feedback on how awesome it is.

In sports, there are the countless hours of training and practice that we aren't privy to as spectators. We don't see the weight training, or the rehab after injuries, the lap running or the thousands of practice swings. We don't have television cameras to watch people shoot hundreds of free throws late at night, and we probably wouldn't watch it even if we did. Just the same, people don't see all that you've put into your art. They aren't up with you at 5am struggling to finish that illustration, and they aren't there to watch you pour over reference books to make sure that your lighting is right. They aren't there to watch you drink another cup of coffee at your way-too-early-morning anatomy class, nor are they there for all the times your silkscreen didn't burn correctly.

One of our instructors used to say that if anyone ever asked you how long it took you to finish a painting, reply "X years" (with "X" being the years since you had started painting) because even though it might have taken you a few hours to actually put all the paint on the canvas, it's taken you years of painting to be able to do it how you did it. Our instructor would say "It took me 20 years to draw this" when we just watch him hammer out a figure in 10 minutes. That's 20 years of training for 10 minutes of game time.

So even though art is more like a sport than one might think, what is missing most of the time is are those clear "game" objective outcomes. Art is generally thought of as subjective, since you'll never be able to tell who is going to end up liking or hating your creation. So if you're in a subjective field, looking for the excitement about objective victories, the only way to go about things is to create your own standards and game play: create your own World Cup.

You can't win a tournament if there isn't one, so make your own. The way to do that is: Goals. Not the kind that you get from hitting a puck into the back of the net, but the kind that you set for yourself. If your goal is large (and it should be for a Championship level match), then break it down into manageable bites. Create your own objective outcomes for you to work towards.

You creating is the preseason. Show up for your daily/weekly/hourly painting session? Score! Finish your painting? Score! Get the reference for your next one? Score! Once you've finished with this phase, get ready for the regular season.

Figure out some concrete goals? You've already won your first game by "showing up on the page." Set a deadline to design those promotional postcards. Score! Hit that deadline? Score! Did you send those to the printer and just get them back in the mail? Score! Get your list of people/companies/galleries to send those to? Score! Did you send the postcards? Score!

Then, as things heat up, realize that you'll move on to the playoffs, and before you know it, you'll be at your Championship match. Whether you have a long or short season, whether your Championship is getting a gallery show or being able to retire early off your art, take it one match at a time. Make sure that your games are ones you can win, as you want to keep that winner's high up as much as possible - it's much better to have a 1000 game season and win them all rather than have a 5 game season with everything riding on each game. Set yourself up for success, not failure. Ride the positive, winning vibe rather than focus on any setbacks because in art, your opponent is always going to be the toughest ever: yourself.

Yes yes, we all have art rivals, or people you want to prove yourself to, or those jerks that think being an artist isn't a profession or a "real job" (although we don't see why that's a bad thing anyway). But when it really comes down to it, you're really fighting against your fears, your doubts, and your insecurities, nothing else. Because if even your rivals or your haters or whomever actually fell off the face of the earth, it wouldn't put you a single step towards achieving your goals. It might make it easier or enjoyable, sure, but the truth of the matter is that unless you release the rhino and defeat your inner demons, you'll never win the games against yourself that really count.

So now that you know how to create a Tournament of Tournaments with your dreams as the grand price that you can win, all that's left is to go do it. Now go take your place in the arena of your choice and take to the field. We (and your dreams) are waiting.