Back to school and a work in progress

Hello! Monkey and Seal just started their fall semester at art school last week. Thanks to the many generous acts of kindness from friends, family, strangers, Martha, and Monkey, Seal is able to attend her much needed senior portfolio classes. She has been busy juggling daytime work, school, and nighttime art. She is very excited about this semester and is learning a lot. Seal is working hard to come up with new illustrations and paintings for APE (the Alternative Press Expo) in October. Although they are number 44 on the waitlist, both Monkey and Seal are very hopeful. They also recently bought a new Epson printer that can print archival large poster size!

On another news, Monkey is hard at work meeting with other artists in San Francisco to create more venues to showcase everyone's work. If you are an artist interested in selling your art, please contact Monkeyandseal@gmail.com.

Now it's back to art time! Here's a quick sneak peek at some of Seal's newest concept art!

The Art of Non-Conformity/9

So Monkey + Seal, through a series of random link exploration on twitter (btw, you should follow us: twitter/monkeyandseal - we have a twitter now, yay!), we stumbled upon a website titled "The Art of Nonconformity" run by Chris Guillebeau.

We highly recommend checking out his blog, as he has a lot of cool things to say about making your own path in life and being able to do what you want to do in life. Monkey read both his free manifestos (A Brief Guide to World Domination and 279 Days to Overnight Success) which you can easily download to your computer, and found a lot of really good information.

Anyhoo, we get his blog updates in our email, and so far, what the man has to say is pretty awesome. Go check it out today!

In other news, Monkey + Seal have started designing their new business cards and are kicking around the idea of getting some promotional postcards made. Any suggestions on items we should feature on the front? We're thinking of doing an old-fashion split card, with one Seal item and one Monkey item. We'd love for you to check out our shop and give us feedback as to your favorite item!

On a quick closing note, we're both really excited to check out 9, which opens in theaters today. When we saw the teaser trailer in the theater, we nearly got out of our seats to cheer, and we hope to get a chance to check out this film ASAP!

Zine Review: The Great Myspace Swindle

Note to readers: Monkey + Seal have been kicking around the idea of occasionally blogging in our own voices, not so much the standard "Monkey + Seal" voice that we usually write in. As a first sort of experiment in this, here's Monkey's zine review of the week:

First off, happy Labor Day! Congratulations to all those who don't have to work today (unfortunately both Eve and I do have work -_- ). Anyway, on to the actual review.

Though I seem to get hyped up about a lot of stuff these days (there's just hellsa good art/literature/general stuff out there!!!), I can honestly say that I'm a huge frickin' fan of Sean Logic's writing.

As the founder/editor of Ashcan magazine (as well as a contributor to the Bad Date Zine), I've been able to read a decent amount of Sean's writing. And believe me, this dude is solid.

In his latest zine The Great Myspace Swindle, he creates a faux profile on Myspace and lets the internet do its thing. The results are probably to be expected, but the zine itself is hilarious, sometimes a bit creepy, and thoroughly entertaining. The big unexpected surprise is Sean's closing remarks, in which his usual cool and funny style gives a bit to a thoughtful and meaningful commentary on society as a whole.

I can't recommend this enough. For reals. Email him to find out how to get a copy NOW: myspace_swindle [at] yahoo.com