Mark McDonnell = uber

We recently stumbled upon this video of Mark McDonnell, one of Disney's badass artists, going over how to warm up for gesture drawings. His blog is also very informative with links to great sites, other videos, and everything he has to say is pretty spot on.

As intimidating as his gesture drawings are (you KNOW this dude has studied how to do pirate footwear), it is also reassuring to know that the professionals have to keep their game sharp as well. Like my instructors always told me at the Academy - the major difference between a professional and a student is the mileage (ie hours spent on art). Thus - keep on drawing!

Also, Monkey + Seal will be heading off to a wedding this weekend, so no Saturday post this week! Sorry!

The World of Jasper Morello

Tonight, Monkey re-watched "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello." This animated short was a 2005 Academy Award Nominee for best Animated Short. I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance, as the animation is simply stunning.

An interesting stylistic mix of rendered 3D mixed with paper-cut-out-like silhouettes, the first time Monkey watched this, he was hooked. He recently visited the Jasper Morello site and was pleased to find out that there (in theory) are more shorts slated to be produced.

All in all, Monkey freely admits that this film was a huge inspiration for his book arts project of his silkscreen portfolio class last Fall. After a lengthly lack of posting, hopefully he will put scans of the project up very soon. In the meantime, if you can get your hands on the 2005 Academy Awards shorts program, do so now! Most of the shorts are great!

AAU Print exchange

Monkey is taking part in the Academy of Art University's 2010 Print Exchange! He is very excited to receive prints from 29 other artists in exchange for his humble 3-color serigraph that he's made. To honor the fact that we completely forgot to do a process post yesterday, Monkey wanted to share a bit about the way that the prints tend to change from concept to actual execution. He's pretty sure that's not what's "supposed" to happen, but he doesn't care and likes that bit of uncertainty anyway. Take it away, Monkey!

So here's the original illustration, done by scanning in the background paper, and using photoshop to do the coloring:
And here's the final print (although the top green tape needs to be trimmed off):
As you can see, a lot can happen between the master sketch to the actual print. One thing I realized is that because I was printing on lokta paper, the pink vegetable dye actually seeped into my white paint, thus the stripes still show through. This gives it a sorta ghostly effect, which at first I wasn't into, but I think it reinforces the concept of being jailed by the expectations and fantasies via pornography (which is why I chose the striped paper in the first place...pink jail bars anyone?).

Also, I added a lot of line work, as when I was making the screens, I ended up wanting to sculpt the form of the woman's face a bit more. The pale blue made a good shadow, but I still wasn't happy, and after sketching out a new version with the linework, I decided it should stay for the actual print.

Finally, when I started printing, I wasn't 100% sure that I knew what I wanted the woman to be thinking. After talking it over with Eve and Carrie-Ann (who also was working on her print exchange print), I decided to go with the "*yawn*" as it makes the print more open-ended than I originally I was thinking of making it, and it also makes it funnier.

I hate it when people say "the new caption was better than what I thought originally" but never tell you what they were thinking, so here are the other possible captions:

-"I'm faking it for all my fans out there"
-"I'm faking it all for you, baby"
-"I wonder what's on tv"
-"to all my fans: I'm actually faking it"

If you disagree and would have rather seen a different caption: too bad!