I have three illustrations at ©POP's "©POPpor2nity" this Saturday. Looks like I'll see Buckenberger there, too!
12/12/08
©POPpor2nity
I have three illustrations at ©POP's "©POPpor2nity" this Saturday. Looks like I'll see Buckenberger there, too!
11/24/08
Tequila
If you've ever wondered what your illustrations would like like as a 1800 Tequila label, you can now find out.
10/31/08
happy halloween
Here's a Halloween illustration, although it really wasn't supposed to be when I started it. Would it not look so Halloweeny if it weren't Halloween? Or did Halloween, grinning all along at the end of the month, slowly shape it in its image? Whatever the case, Happy Halloween.
Also, I have a profile up at CMYK now.
Also, I have a profile up at CMYK now.
9/29/08
Shadow Art Fair
This is my entry for Ypsilanti's biannual Shadow Art Fair poster contest. Limited with a two-color screen print, I thought it'd be fun to try an effect out. My idea is it would be have a coat of matte black with a glossy, slightly lighter black for the art over the top, my hope being that the result would be sort of subtle, kind of creep out at you. This is only a digital version, so I would like to try it out as a screen print regardless.
8/21/08
Kwame Antoinette
Marie Antoinette and Kwame Kilpatrick: what could the Queen of France and the mayor of Detroit possibly have in common? Both had reputations for being frivolous despite hard economic times– Antoinette gambled and bought an extravagant country house, while Kilpatrick splurged on a luxurious Lincoln Navigator and took a Californian vacation. Both are the subjects of biting urban legends, with Antoinette supposedly uttering "Let them eat cake" when faced with the plight of the poor and Kilpatrick hosting a party with strippers at the Manoogian Mansion. And both were put on trial to be ousted.Would the backlash against mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would be so bad if Detroit wasn't doing so poorly economically? Marie Antoinette was eventually executed at the hands of the Revolutionaries– and in a similar sense, to a certain extent at least, I feel Kilpatrick is being made a scapegoat by a struggling city and state.
So while we wait for the mayor to get ousted, here's an illustration of Kwame in French aristocratic garb awaiting his fate. The inspiration for the bright colors comes from Sofia Coppola's sympathy film Marie Antoinette, as do the blatant anachronisms like the cell phone (the movie's soundtrack had rock n' roll and a pair of Converse sneakers made an appearance as if to connect the story to our time).
7/25/08
Self-Portrait
Here's a self-portrait I've been working on in my spare time. I liked how Roy Lichtenstein drew from the style of early comics and made it something else, but what I realized was that the original tiny panels he was ripping off are marvelous on their own without needing to be elevated to fine art paintings! Check out Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein to see some gorgeous panels from mid 20th century comics blown up so you can really get a look at them and their printing process. There's just something about seeing the delicate and cheap balance of the halftones mixtures and registration in your face like that that makes me feel the same way I do about a great, sloppy punk band live- like it could all fall apart.
7/7/08
Appreciation: Queens of the Stone Age "Era Vulgaris"
It’s been a year since Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris came out, but I just got around to really listening to it this summer. It’s not fair how underrated it is.
To start, just look at the cover. The title is Latin for “The Common Era” and the art features a smoking cartoon lightbulb and a pirate cartoon lightbulb. Genius. The rest of the album’s art campaign- spanning 7’’ sleeves and posters- has more crazy cartoon characters and artwork along that retro-sleazy Grindhouse vein (check out the artists, Morning Breath). The “You Have Mono” phony-monophonic label makes it for me, though.
But what’s important is what’s inside- the music. I will admit that the first time I heard the songs nothing stood out, but repeated listens reveal by far the sexiest Queens of the Stone Age album in recent years. It is a much closer match to the band’s manifesto of making rock “heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls”, unlike the macho Songs for the Deaf and the snoozy Lullabies to Paralyze. A lot of the vocals are softer and falsetto, and every single song on Era Vulgaris is danceable as far as heavy rock goes and sounds perfect at 70 mph. And within those parameters, there’s a surprising diversity of sounds: it’s got southern-flavored psychedelic (“Turnin’ On The Screw”), heavy irony (“I’m Designer”), rhythm n’ blues (“Make It Wit Chu”), really spastic ("Sick Sick Sick") somber introspection (“Suture Up Your Future”), and what can only be described as car-chase ("3's and 7's"). I’m going to say that this is my favorite album so far, but I admit I haven't listened to the first two in a while. Any of the ones I mentioned are highly recommended, but everything is good. And while you're at it, check out the fantastically titled b-side "The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died".
To start, just look at the cover. The title is Latin for “The Common Era” and the art features a smoking cartoon lightbulb and a pirate cartoon lightbulb. Genius. The rest of the album’s art campaign- spanning 7’’ sleeves and posters- has more crazy cartoon characters and artwork along that retro-sleazy Grindhouse vein (check out the artists, Morning Breath). The “You Have Mono” phony-monophonic label makes it for me, though.
But what’s important is what’s inside- the music. I will admit that the first time I heard the songs nothing stood out, but repeated listens reveal by far the sexiest Queens of the Stone Age album in recent years. It is a much closer match to the band’s manifesto of making rock “heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls”, unlike the macho Songs for the Deaf and the snoozy Lullabies to Paralyze. A lot of the vocals are softer and falsetto, and every single song on Era Vulgaris is danceable as far as heavy rock goes and sounds perfect at 70 mph. And within those parameters, there’s a surprising diversity of sounds: it’s got southern-flavored psychedelic (“Turnin’ On The Screw”), heavy irony (“I’m Designer”), rhythm n’ blues (“Make It Wit Chu”), really spastic ("Sick Sick Sick") somber introspection (“Suture Up Your Future”), and what can only be described as car-chase ("3's and 7's"). I’m going to say that this is my favorite album so far, but I admit I haven't listened to the first two in a while. Any of the ones I mentioned are highly recommended, but everything is good. And while you're at it, check out the fantastically titled b-side "The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died".
6/27/08
La Fea
6/20/08
Von Bondies
The Von Bondies were supposed to be the next big thing out of Detroit, but they haven't released anything in four years, which is an eternity for a band their size. They do have a new record coming out soon, Love, Hate, and Then There's You, so they're poised to get back on the map.
They have a new lineup, but it's still two guys and two girls, which is what inspired the colors on this illustration. I've been reading Batman and Superman comics lately and got the idea that I wanted to try and do something with the old screentone look.
...and the band liked it enough to post it on their MySpace page! Thanks, guys and girls!
They have a new lineup, but it's still two guys and two girls, which is what inspired the colors on this illustration. I've been reading Batman and Superman comics lately and got the idea that I wanted to try and do something with the old screentone look.
...and the band liked it enough to post it on their MySpace page! Thanks, guys and girls!
6/13/08
Art Review: Centrifugal Force
Wrote a quick review for TheDetroiter on a show called Centrifugal Force put on by some Cranbrook students at the Russell.
5/28/08
Car Trouble
My first extracurricular illustration. I tried another Threadless submission. Check it out through the link below, and if you like it, vote for it!
5/12/08
the artist
I walk away with my illustration degree from CCS on Thursday.
It's finally hitting me how hard the work has been these past four years, and I'm proud of myself for getting through it. But I got all the validation I needed when I greeted my girlfriend's niece at the door and she said, "Hey, it's the artist!", remembering some doodles I did in her High School Musical 2 notebook.
For what it's worth, congratulations to all the graduating seniors!
4/30/08
Mr. Alligator
This was originally supposed to be based on the lyrics to David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream" ("I'm an alligator...") but somewhere during the thumbnailing stage I lost track of that and went instead along the lines of the worst boss ever.
4/16/08
4/1/08
Yuko Shimizu interview
Found this article while doing some spring cleaning on my computer. Back in 2006, when I was but a wee sophomore, I had to conduct an interview for my History of American Illustration class. I figured finding a cool illustrator to agree to it would a bit of a scattershot, so that's why I was surprised when my first choice, New York-based Yuko Shimizu, said she would do it. I was so geeked. Based on my questions, Yuko said, "If I were your teacher, you will receive A+ for this project." I think I did.
“I Am Certainly Not Trying To Ride The Wave”: An Interview with Yuko Shimizu
Yuko Shimizu’s Society of Illustrators Award-winning piece “Panda Bear Girl— The First Asian American Super Heroine” does a pretty good job of giving you an idea of what Yuko Shimizu is about. Our heroine is clad in a combination of Superman’s red cape and the black and white markings of a panda, bounding over the Mt. Fuji-dominated skyline of Tokyo as she draws her samurai sword. Her hair is tied up in two buns, and her legs are covered in thigh-high stockings. It’s sexy and funky— the perfect combination of American sass and Japanese tradition.
That’s Yuko Shimizu for you.
It’s no surprise those are Shimizu’s esthetics, as she grew up in the center metropolises of both Japan and the United States. “The similarities are that they are both big cities, and big capitalism cities,” Yuko Shimizu says when asked to compare her new home in New York, New York to her hometown of Tokyo, Japan. Everything else is different. If they were similar, I would not have moved, I don’t think. Tokyo is the center of Japan. NY is the center of the world, where everyone in every field who has ambitions comes.”
Yuko Shimizu made the journey across the Pacific in 1999, when she decided to leave her job as a businesswoman and pursue a career as an artist. She did public relations for illustrators for a number of years before she realized that she didn’t want to help artists sell their illustrations; she wanted to make illustrations of her own. But art was always something that she was interested in.
As a preteen, Shimizu was a fan of manga, Japanese comics. Not only did her childhood love of manga teach her how to draw, but it also gave her an appreciation for the artist’s work ethic. One of Japan’s best-known manga-ka is Leiji Matsumoto, who left a lasting impression on young Shimizu. “[What I love about Matsumoto is] that he stuck with his gun,” Shimizu says of the artist, who persistently wrote space operas and drew in an unconventionally crude style. “He had long years of not being successful, but he never changed to accommodate others, he kept working on what he loved till the audience realized how good he was in what he did. It is a basic philosophy as a true artist.”
It is also Shimizu’s philosophy, and it was the key to launching her career as an editorial illustrator. After graduating from New York’s School of the Visual Arts in 2003, Shimizu brought her portfolio to the New York Times and presented the art director with a book she made called “Letters of Desire”. The book, whose pages consisted of erotic alphabet-themed images ranging from “Anesthetized Adolescent ” to “Zip Up” and “Zip Down”, was turned down by the art director because it was too risqué for the New York Times to use. Shimizu left the interview jobless, but the art director called her back the same day and hired her anyway after he saw the (PG-13 rated) illustrations on her website, www.yukoart.com.
It’s hard to tell whether the alphabet book landed her the job or not in the end, but it certainly got her noticed, which is half of the battle. “Definitely [show] the samples of what you love to do and what you do best. That is how you get work,” she says. “General samples won’t stick to people’s mind. If your work don’t stand out, you will never be noticed.” Shimizu adds, “Be a good business person, not so much as a person who does good business, but as a person who's responsible, organized, polite, respect others... just like anything else you do.”
Since landing that job, Shimizu’s career took off at a rapid rate. In 2005, I first saw Yuko Shimizu’s work from an illustration she did for Rolling Stone Magazine’s review of the latest album by rock n’ roll super group Garbage. The image of the band’s redheaded songstress, clad in a melting candy cane-striped dress, stuck in my mind as a very striking illustration. “I didn't know anything about the band,” Shimizu admits, “but when they called and told me it fits how I work, I trusted their intuition. I did tons of research, and I really like the look of the band. I only did one sketch, and one revision before final. It was quite an easy, but really exciting and fun job. They pretty much let me do what I wanted.”
The piece was since accepted into the Society’s of Illustrators, along with an illustration she did for PLAYBOY for which she was awarded a gold medal. Clients of Shimzu’s this past year range from all over the world and all across the board, including SPIN, Readers Digest, Cosmo Girl!, and The New Yorker. She also had work published in many books, including Illustration Now!, It’s a Matter of Illustration, and Handmade.
When looking at Shimizu’s body of work, a number of recurring elements are prevalent. Aside from the aforementioned synthesis of East and West, Shimizu has her own repertoire of esthetic choices that turn up in her work, including striped clothing and gooey, oily slicks of liquid. However, these recurring elements aren’t conscious trademarks of Shimizu.
“I have no intention of putting a stamp onto my work. I never do things just because it is cool. Everything I put in has to either have certain meanings, or visually work,” she says. “I started drawing stripes because I like just drawing black and white… and stripes make it easier for me to add three dimensionality to black and white work. I needed more different patterns, so I started drawing polka dots; I usually use it to add texture to water. I am kind of over it, although I still love to draw them.” So for Shimizu, these are more characteristics of a period of her art than they are characteristics of her as an artist as a whole. “I despise repetition (doing things over because you know it works), and I felt I was doing too much of them for a while. It is actually meditative to draw dots and stripes, but I decided I had to take break before people start thinking I can only make images work with dots and stripes.”
Shimizu just doesn’t want to get pigeonholed for her artistic sensibilities; she doesn’t want to get pigeonholed thematically, either. Like the craze for Japanese prints of the Nineteenth Century, Shimizu’s career comes during another period a West obsessed with Japan. All things Japanese are enjoying a level of popularity in the West like never before. Walk into any bookstore chain in America and increasingly larger sections are reserved for translated manga; flip on the television and you’ll find a steady market for animé, or Japanese cartoons. Coincidentally, the surge of Japanese culture in all levels of the U.S. came at around the same time that Shimizu landed in New York, when animé like the groundbreaking Cowboy Bebop aired on American TVs and kids were clamoring for Pokémon.
“I don't read manga, and I hate Japanese anime, so it has nothing to do with me really,” Shimizu says at the mention of a fad. “People love to make connections just because my work reminds them of traditional Japanese art or animé, but I really don't care for that.” It is hard not to make such a connection, however. Several of Shimizu’s illustrations make a reference to the poster child of the first Japanese boom, Katsushika Hokusai and his seminal print “In the Hollow of a Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa”. In one, a woman decked out in a rising sun bikini and geisha hairstyle sips a cool drink while Hokusai’s wave crashes behind her. In another, nude figures are swallowed by what looks like a living creature in the shape of the tsunami.
Furthermore, Shimizu’s artistic process references the prints of Hokusai’s era as well. She inks her drawings with Japanese calligraphy brushes, which add a line quality to her work that is at once imperfect and elegant, and distinctly Eastern. She then infuses Twenty-first Century technology by scanning her art into Photoshop for coloring. With the aid of a computer, Shimizu is able to make her illustrations as new or old looking as she likes. Some of her illustrations could easily pass for woodcut prints, with layers of color that look faded with a grain like texture.
Are these allusions tongue-in-cheek?
“I am certainly not trying to ride the wave,” Shimizu says, pun possibly intended. “I am too old to think of jumping onto the trend. I lived too long and experienced too much to think of those short-term things that won't last. I just do what I love to do, and keep changing, experimenting and taking risks so my life is always going to be fun and exciting. If I get attention because of Japanese boom, I really can do without that attention.”
Shimizu is experimenting and branching out as an artist, and isn’t just limiting her career as an editorial illustrator. “I am an illustrator right now, but I do not categorize myself or don't limit, or draw lines between what people categorizes,” Shimizu asserts. “We are a type of people who always want to try something new. It will be the end of the world if we get bored of what we are doing. So, I don't think I will stick to just illustration.
“I just finished working on my first products. They are being manufactured in Australia. It is a very small company, but run by great people, so I wanted to try it out,” she says. The company, called NookArt, will be producing wallets, journals, and greetings cards emblazoned with Shimizu’s art. Another application of her art was a Silver Medal she won for SPECTRUM, a science fiction/ fantasy annual. “My work is not Sci-Fi fantasy, but I wanted to prove that something different can be applied to that old-fashioned field. I was a fantasy Sci-Fi geek as a child, so I would love to go back to my roots if they allow me to.”
Science Fiction conventions? The backs of wallets? What else is left for Yuko Shimizu to put her art on? At this point, Yuko Shimizu is a lot like her creation, Panda Bear Girl. There’s no stopping her.
“I Am Certainly Not Trying To Ride The Wave”: An Interview with Yuko Shimizu
Yuko Shimizu’s Society of Illustrators Award-winning piece “Panda Bear Girl— The First Asian American Super Heroine” does a pretty good job of giving you an idea of what Yuko Shimizu is about. Our heroine is clad in a combination of Superman’s red cape and the black and white markings of a panda, bounding over the Mt. Fuji-dominated skyline of Tokyo as she draws her samurai sword. Her hair is tied up in two buns, and her legs are covered in thigh-high stockings. It’s sexy and funky— the perfect combination of American sass and Japanese tradition.
That’s Yuko Shimizu for you.
It’s no surprise those are Shimizu’s esthetics, as she grew up in the center metropolises of both Japan and the United States. “The similarities are that they are both big cities, and big capitalism cities,” Yuko Shimizu says when asked to compare her new home in New York, New York to her hometown of Tokyo, Japan. Everything else is different. If they were similar, I would not have moved, I don’t think. Tokyo is the center of Japan. NY is the center of the world, where everyone in every field who has ambitions comes.”
Yuko Shimizu made the journey across the Pacific in 1999, when she decided to leave her job as a businesswoman and pursue a career as an artist. She did public relations for illustrators for a number of years before she realized that she didn’t want to help artists sell their illustrations; she wanted to make illustrations of her own. But art was always something that she was interested in.
As a preteen, Shimizu was a fan of manga, Japanese comics. Not only did her childhood love of manga teach her how to draw, but it also gave her an appreciation for the artist’s work ethic. One of Japan’s best-known manga-ka is Leiji Matsumoto, who left a lasting impression on young Shimizu. “[What I love about Matsumoto is] that he stuck with his gun,” Shimizu says of the artist, who persistently wrote space operas and drew in an unconventionally crude style. “He had long years of not being successful, but he never changed to accommodate others, he kept working on what he loved till the audience realized how good he was in what he did. It is a basic philosophy as a true artist.”
It is also Shimizu’s philosophy, and it was the key to launching her career as an editorial illustrator. After graduating from New York’s School of the Visual Arts in 2003, Shimizu brought her portfolio to the New York Times and presented the art director with a book she made called “Letters of Desire”. The book, whose pages consisted of erotic alphabet-themed images ranging from “Anesthetized Adolescent ” to “Zip Up” and “Zip Down”, was turned down by the art director because it was too risqué for the New York Times to use. Shimizu left the interview jobless, but the art director called her back the same day and hired her anyway after he saw the (PG-13 rated) illustrations on her website, www.yukoart.com.
It’s hard to tell whether the alphabet book landed her the job or not in the end, but it certainly got her noticed, which is half of the battle. “Definitely [show] the samples of what you love to do and what you do best. That is how you get work,” she says. “General samples won’t stick to people’s mind. If your work don’t stand out, you will never be noticed.” Shimizu adds, “Be a good business person, not so much as a person who does good business, but as a person who's responsible, organized, polite, respect others... just like anything else you do.”
Since landing that job, Shimizu’s career took off at a rapid rate. In 2005, I first saw Yuko Shimizu’s work from an illustration she did for Rolling Stone Magazine’s review of the latest album by rock n’ roll super group Garbage. The image of the band’s redheaded songstress, clad in a melting candy cane-striped dress, stuck in my mind as a very striking illustration. “I didn't know anything about the band,” Shimizu admits, “but when they called and told me it fits how I work, I trusted their intuition. I did tons of research, and I really like the look of the band. I only did one sketch, and one revision before final. It was quite an easy, but really exciting and fun job. They pretty much let me do what I wanted.”
The piece was since accepted into the Society’s of Illustrators, along with an illustration she did for PLAYBOY for which she was awarded a gold medal. Clients of Shimzu’s this past year range from all over the world and all across the board, including SPIN, Readers Digest, Cosmo Girl!, and The New Yorker. She also had work published in many books, including Illustration Now!, It’s a Matter of Illustration, and Handmade.
When looking at Shimizu’s body of work, a number of recurring elements are prevalent. Aside from the aforementioned synthesis of East and West, Shimizu has her own repertoire of esthetic choices that turn up in her work, including striped clothing and gooey, oily slicks of liquid. However, these recurring elements aren’t conscious trademarks of Shimizu.
“I have no intention of putting a stamp onto my work. I never do things just because it is cool. Everything I put in has to either have certain meanings, or visually work,” she says. “I started drawing stripes because I like just drawing black and white… and stripes make it easier for me to add three dimensionality to black and white work. I needed more different patterns, so I started drawing polka dots; I usually use it to add texture to water. I am kind of over it, although I still love to draw them.” So for Shimizu, these are more characteristics of a period of her art than they are characteristics of her as an artist as a whole. “I despise repetition (doing things over because you know it works), and I felt I was doing too much of them for a while. It is actually meditative to draw dots and stripes, but I decided I had to take break before people start thinking I can only make images work with dots and stripes.”
Shimizu just doesn’t want to get pigeonholed for her artistic sensibilities; she doesn’t want to get pigeonholed thematically, either. Like the craze for Japanese prints of the Nineteenth Century, Shimizu’s career comes during another period a West obsessed with Japan. All things Japanese are enjoying a level of popularity in the West like never before. Walk into any bookstore chain in America and increasingly larger sections are reserved for translated manga; flip on the television and you’ll find a steady market for animé, or Japanese cartoons. Coincidentally, the surge of Japanese culture in all levels of the U.S. came at around the same time that Shimizu landed in New York, when animé like the groundbreaking Cowboy Bebop aired on American TVs and kids were clamoring for Pokémon.
“I don't read manga, and I hate Japanese anime, so it has nothing to do with me really,” Shimizu says at the mention of a fad. “People love to make connections just because my work reminds them of traditional Japanese art or animé, but I really don't care for that.” It is hard not to make such a connection, however. Several of Shimizu’s illustrations make a reference to the poster child of the first Japanese boom, Katsushika Hokusai and his seminal print “In the Hollow of a Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa”. In one, a woman decked out in a rising sun bikini and geisha hairstyle sips a cool drink while Hokusai’s wave crashes behind her. In another, nude figures are swallowed by what looks like a living creature in the shape of the tsunami.
Furthermore, Shimizu’s artistic process references the prints of Hokusai’s era as well. She inks her drawings with Japanese calligraphy brushes, which add a line quality to her work that is at once imperfect and elegant, and distinctly Eastern. She then infuses Twenty-first Century technology by scanning her art into Photoshop for coloring. With the aid of a computer, Shimizu is able to make her illustrations as new or old looking as she likes. Some of her illustrations could easily pass for woodcut prints, with layers of color that look faded with a grain like texture.
Are these allusions tongue-in-cheek?
“I am certainly not trying to ride the wave,” Shimizu says, pun possibly intended. “I am too old to think of jumping onto the trend. I lived too long and experienced too much to think of those short-term things that won't last. I just do what I love to do, and keep changing, experimenting and taking risks so my life is always going to be fun and exciting. If I get attention because of Japanese boom, I really can do without that attention.”
Shimizu is experimenting and branching out as an artist, and isn’t just limiting her career as an editorial illustrator. “I am an illustrator right now, but I do not categorize myself or don't limit, or draw lines between what people categorizes,” Shimizu asserts. “We are a type of people who always want to try something new. It will be the end of the world if we get bored of what we are doing. So, I don't think I will stick to just illustration.
“I just finished working on my first products. They are being manufactured in Australia. It is a very small company, but run by great people, so I wanted to try it out,” she says. The company, called NookArt, will be producing wallets, journals, and greetings cards emblazoned with Shimizu’s art. Another application of her art was a Silver Medal she won for SPECTRUM, a science fiction/ fantasy annual. “My work is not Sci-Fi fantasy, but I wanted to prove that something different can be applied to that old-fashioned field. I was a fantasy Sci-Fi geek as a child, so I would love to go back to my roots if they allow me to.”
Science Fiction conventions? The backs of wallets? What else is left for Yuko Shimizu to put her art on? At this point, Yuko Shimizu is a lot like her creation, Panda Bear Girl. There’s no stopping her.
3/29/08
She has never seen the sunshine yet she's getting along just fine
I interviewed four of my classmates who have films in the Ann Arbor Film Festival for TheDetroiter.com.
Story is here.
...and the new Gnarls Barkley record totally made me cry.
Story is here.
...and the new Gnarls Barkley record totally made me cry.
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