JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

It has been a while since I posted any pictures from my Dad’s elephant limerick book. This one illustrates a news story (and accompanying limerick) about the Thai Elephant Orchestra. Elsewhere in Thailand, there are also elephants who can paint pictures, (the elephant book features a limerick about them too, see this earlier post for the illustration). The pachyderm artists live in a refuge for rescued elephants called the Maesa Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai, and recently, I saw an amazing YouTube Video of one of those brush-wielding elephants in action, painting a self-portrait. Even though the elephant was trained to paint this image, it is still pretty amazing to watch an elephant holding a brush with its trunk.

My blog-posting will be a bit spotty while I am travelling; I am not always able to get to the internet and when I do I am not always able to use my own laptop to upload new images.

This is a portrait of PLINY THE ELDER, used to illustrate a quote from his famous Naturalis Historia, which was part of the introduction to my Dad’s Elephant limerick book. (The pencil sketch for this illustration was posted earlier, HERE.) Nobody knows for sure what Pliny the Elder actually looked like, so my version of him was modelled on another classical scholar; my own Dad, who was, of course, the author of the limericks in our collaboration.

I gave my Dad’s new wife, WENDY, a framed 11×14 Giclee print of this image as a Christmas present. It went over very well with her because, unlike Dad, she understood that it was a caricature of him immediately. She wasn’t the only person that I gave artwork to; using my new Epson printer, I printed out a LOT of Giclee prints of my artwork and brought them home to Australia as easy-to-carry Christmas presents to give to my Family this year…

My family doesn’t get many opportunities to gather, now that we live at all points on the compass, but when we do manage to wrangle a family get-together, it is always a lot of fun, and this year’s Christmas was no exception. I had a wonderful time.

I hope that that all of you had a Happy Christmas, as well!

This is an illustration from my Dad’s Elephant book, for a limerick about a dual Elephant Wedding held at a Thai Elephant preserve.

My Father got married today in my home town, and I was his Best Man. For a laugh, I gave my speech entirely in Limerick. When HE finds the time to illustrate MY limericks, we’ll have our second collaboration ready to go. Despite the stresses of public speaking and the behind-the-scenes logistics of Wedding planning, it was a very happy day with lots of family and friends that I had not seen in years.

Another pic from the Elephant book. This one illustrates the case of an elephant who strayed into the streets of Nairobi, only to be darted and then carted back to the bush. The text was placed over the blank spaces in the composition, on the building and the sky.

This particular illustration was done in a looser style than most of the others, as part of a final push to add some EXTRA art to the book. After I had completed the initial commitment of illustrations, the editor and book designer both felt that there was an imbalance of text to images, as some page-spreads were still lacking illustrations. So, I agreed to do more, but I couldn’t have as much time as I’d devoted to the illustrations already done.

Thankfully, the book already displayed a variety of styles, so a few more done in a faster, looser style wouldn’t stand out too much. I found some of the thumbnails and preparatory sketches I had done early in the project and slapped colour and textures on them to bang out 16 new illustrations in the last few weeks before the printing deadline. I amazed myself at how many I was able to do in that short time, while having fun doing them.

All in all, I did around 60 illustrations for the book, although some were not much more than decorative wall-paper to go under text. Even though they aren’t all “winners” I learned something in doing each of them, and I am actually very happy with quite a few.

I have submitted 5 of my favourite illustrations from Elephants in the News to the Society of Illustrators 50th Annual Show, in the BOOK category. It is the first time I have entered anything like this. The best illustrators in the world will be in competition, so I don’t seriously expect to win anything, but I do hope that at least ONE of my illustrations might be selected for the show in March 2008, which would be an excellent excuse to visit New York.

I haven’t posted any pictures from my Dad’s elephant book in a while. This is the title page illustration for the chapter on Elephants in Science.

In contrast to the image in the previous post, the photo textures in this illustration were applied in Photoshop, and it took almost as long, if not longer, to do it with all the latest software. The sky and ground use textures taken from photos and the elephant uses a photo of actual elephant skin. Can anyone guess the source texture for the boom of the CRANE in this image? This image is from the elephant book and illustrates the story of a Zoo elephant that fell in a ditch and the efforts to get him back out.

My own efforts, for the next two weeks, will be focussed on last minute preparations for COMIC CON. I have about 100 copies of the elepant book left and they will all be on sale in San Diego. I will be making some prints of the illustrations from the Elephant Book just as soon as my tasty new Epson 1800 printer shows up. In the meantime, I am preparing the art and finishing off the mini comic. Apart from elephant stuff, I will be selling the new Mini comic and all the left-overs from previous years; sketchbooks, comics and so forth.

I’ve been having some trouble with my mental focus these past few weeks. This a common problem when working on my own projects but it rarely comes up when working for “the man.” I am very productive when working for for someone else but when working for myself, I guess I just don’t respect the boss.

When I need some creative Viagra, I usually just look at great artwork on the internet but that backfired on me this time. There is so much fabulous work out there that it leaves me feeling strangely inadequate! Inspiration can be a double-edged sword when it makes me want to throw out everything I’ve done.

Mind you, I am quite capable of chasing my tail without any outside distractions. My personal form of mental blockage is usually a case of having a lot of ideas and not knowing which one to use. I’ve heard this called “analysis paralysis” but I prefer the term “IDEA-rhea”. Too many ideas is as bad as none, sometimes.

Convincing myself that what I am making is even worth the effort can be a strange mental game. I’ll draw something I’m very happy with and then after a break for lunch, I come back and hate it. The reverse happens as well; I stumble upon some scribbles I did a day ago and have no idea why I threw them away. With me, that ridiculous internal chit chat can go ad infinitum… I know that all of this is a tempest in a tea cup but when the tea cup is my skull, the tempest can be exhausting none the less.

The artists who I really admire have, in addition to good drawing skills and original ideas, the ability to focus themselves and produce. Self-discipline is an invaluable quality in anyone but it really is essential for people creating things, especially when doing the creation solo…

OK, that’s enough of my whining; gotta go do some drawings. They don’t throw themselves away, you know!

After almost 7 years online, and 6 years doing this NEWS page, this is POST #200.

My first website launched in Late 2000, initially as part of the MAVERIX STUDIOS site (until I got my own domain and hosting in early 2002). This NEWS page began in August 2001 and I made the posts by hand in HTML until I discovered BLOGGER in August 2003.

The ease of the Blogger interface meant that the frequency of posts went up from one per month to roughly one per week, and the focus broadened from merely listing updates to my site, to posting general ramblings about this and that. In March 2006 I moved to WORDPRESS and I really like the flexibility and features of this platform.

Here are some stats from my administration dashboard: There are 200 POSTS and 703 VISITOR COMMENTS, the most commented post received 32 comments. A whopping 15,418 SPAM COMMENTS have been caught since I installed SPAM blocking software in March 2006. The real-comment/spam-comment imbalance is pretty intimidating…

Speaking of statistics, thanks to all of you who come by once in a while and create a HIT in my VISITOR STATS (I am ashamed to admit how obsessively I check them; it makes me strangely happy). EXTRA special thanks to those of you who occasionally take the time to post a comment and make this blogging process a dialogue instead of merely a monologue.

Having my own little outpost on the web has given me a lot of pleasure and I think that being part of a worldwide art-nerd community is a large part of the fun…

I will be making some GICLEE (which I think is French for “ink-Jet”) prints of the illustrations in the Elephant book to sell at Comic Con. It is a good excuse for me to buy a nice printer, which I have been meaning to do for some time.

There are 60 or so illustrations in the book, including those that are just wallpaper for the text to lay over, but there are maybe 10-15 contenders for prints. Some of the illustrations I was most happy with may not be the kind of picture that someone wants framed and hanging on their wall… People getting stomped and elephants getting shot at for example.

I am having a hard time picking which ones to make prints of… If any of you good people who bought the book have suggestions for illustrations you think might make nice prints, please let me know. For those of you who don’t have the book, you can see most of the pics online here.

And while I am in the market for advice, if anybody can steer me towards a good colour printer, or even give me hints on what features I should look, for then I am all ears.

Recently there were ELEPHANTS IN THE NEWS book launches in both hemispheres, North and South. Dad launched the Elephant book (plus another book he has just written) at the official book launch in my home-town in Australia. The photo here is courtesy of my Aunty Marg who was instrumental in getting the book published, as it was she who who introduced my Dad to the publisher. Without that introduction the book would have been self-published, Black and White, and a mere shadow of the beautifully printed book it eventually became. So thanks, Aunty Marg!

The Northern hemisphere “launch” took place two days later, when I sold the Elephant book to attendees of the APE convention here in San Francisco (photo by Jeff Pidgeon). By a funny quirk of fate, my neighbour-exhibitor was Ryan from ELEPHANT EATER PRESS so I made sure to stack my elephant books as far from his table as possible to prevent my stock from being eaten before I could sell it. I am happy to say that the stampede of Elephant sales made this particular APE my best yet, financially speaking. Sadly, I had no booth-buddy this year as Rhode was at a wedding. Last year he missed Wondercon to attend a wedding, so if the pattern persists, NEXT year he will miss Comic-Con because of a wedding…

It better be HIS wedding next time. I’m just sayin’…

Even though I was running the table solo, I was far from lonely. At one point on Saturday a fellow, who I had never even laid eyes on before, came up to my table earnestly chewing away at a bowl of candy. After a pause, to swallow whatever tasty treat was in the bowl, he demanded a FREE HUG. When I told him that there may be someplace at APE where he could get himself a hug, but my table certainly wasn’t the place, he went away, with a confused look on his face, still chewing on his candy. A few minutes later he gave ME something to chew on when he returned holding the official APE handbook, opened to the Exhibitors page, and pointed to the listing for our table. It said “Abismo/Nerve Bomb, events: FREE HUGS. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.” Well, this was news to me as I had not filled out the paperwork myself for this particular convention. Rhode and I take turns on that… and this year it was HIS turn.

Next year when it IS my turn I will get him back somehow for these double-punk cheeky shenanigans…. Any ideas for creative-payback? Please add comments below (The winning suggestion gets a FREE HUG).

Without a table-partner, I had to be strategic with my breaks and I didn’t have the chance to walk around and do any shopping. Thankfully, some great books were brought right to me as I sat there. Jennifer Chang and EunJu Lee were first time exhibitors at APE this year and both had made some SWEET mini-comics that I was lucky enough to get copies of. Jennifer’s book stars KITOSAN the food-obsessed little character who was in her AFTERWORKS piece, this time he is showing us how to make TEA.

Blair Kitchen hooked me up with the first two issues of his hilarious goofy-hero comic, THE POSSUM! He isn’t a parody of another hero, he is gifted with his OWN truly silly super power and the comedy comes from him making the best of it. If you like action-comedy comics then take a look at this book full of chuckles and beautifully kinetic action sequences.