Saturday, December 12, 2009

Process Post: Skyace Wasteland and Thank you Plus Secret Event

Thank you everyone for supporting us at the Center for the Book's Holiday Craft Fair. It was cold and rainy, but still a fair good showing. Monkey sold some ties and met some awesome people while Seal was madly working on some tight deadlines for the painting below.

MonkeyandSeal are cooking up a soon-to-be announced secret event so please be on the lookout and keep your March open! Thank you.

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Seal's Process: Part II of the Tyger Tyger paintings

This illustration was painted in acrylics. I had in mind an old rundown power plant wasteland with a wooden railroad going through the mountain passage. I wanted to get the feel of "after a rain" so I tried to paint cool lighting without any direct sunshine. Below is the in-progress step-by-step painting process.


The relatively finished piece above. The thumbnail below. In the thumbnail, I mainly wanted to design the shapes and rhythm of the piece before any details. The plane wings point downward, with the vertical power plant columns on the right holding the main mass of the painting, and the railroad points upwards back towards the plane.
So below is my initial setup. I have my thumbnail on the corner of my in progress painting. A book of clouds above so I can reference color and shape. Each different storm cloud have different shapes. I still struggle with painting clouds, but they're fun.
I generally try to paint from background to foreground, meaning sky, ground, then whatever is in front. I do the biggest shapes first, the plane being the smallest is last. Although I broke my own rule by painting the hazmat sign first before the shape on the left. It was just too tempting. I like how old signs have rust color and peeling paint job. I actually lost the original shape of the mountain behind the powerplant. Something I am still trying to fix. Thank you for visiting!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Center for the Book's Holiday Craft Fair today!


Come check out Center for the Book's Holiday Craft Fair later this afternoon starting at 5:30pm-8:30pm at 300 De Haro St. (between 16th St. + 17th St.). Monkey+Seal have a booth showcasing and selling some of their newest prints and ties. Along with Panda Rage and Pandamonium, Monkey has a new limited edition serigraph of Sad Panda, featuring this sad panda in the rain with the text *sniff* It is handpulled on toned paper, and will never be printed again.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Ridiculously amazing mashup:Book arts and animation

In the spirit of us vending at the San Francisco Center for the Book's Holiday Fair (this Friday from 5:30-8:30pm), here is a pretty awesome book arts video. Check out this amazing mix of paper crafting, book arts, and animation. It's completely amazing (it is amazing whether or not you have the sound turned on, but we recommend the sound on).

Monday, December 7, 2009

Book Review: Shaun Tan's The Arrival



Seal is in love with this illustrated book titled The Arrival by Shaun Tan. The book depicts the collective immigrant experience through a visual diary. Seal likes that the main protagonist is non-descript, the everyday person. Also, the land he journeys through are imaginary, invented, yet nostalgic. There are no text throughout, but the story is clear. The illustrations are rendered with graphite in a realistic manner coupled by surrealistic elements. It is very inspiring to Seal and a must for her artistic library.

Here is an excerpt from the book.