JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Here is a panoramic photo taken at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney. I spent a very pleasant few days catching up with two of my dearest childhood friends, Peter Lawlor and John Dillon, as we all stayed at a beautiful property just a few minutes walk from where this picture was taken.

A five week trip to Australia seemed like more than enough time at the planning stage, but it was not nearly enough to do all that I had wanted. I had a very full social schedule in my home town; catching up with my family, comparing bald-patches and love-handles with old school-friends, attending family weddings and birthdays, a trip to the coast with all my siblings and of course all the stuff associated with a home-town Christmas and New Years.

All of that meant that I didn’t have much time left when I went to Sydney, where I also have many friends to see… There was a threatened Airline strike that would have delayed my outbound flight and I found myself hoping that it WOULD happen so I could get a few more days. But that was not the case, my flight left on time and I wasn’t able to visit some Sydney animation Studios, and do a bit of touristy travel stuff as I had originally intended.

My trips back to Australia are always primarily to see my friends and family, and consequently take me back to my old haunts. NEXT time I go to Australia I want to set aside some time to visit parts of the country that I have not yet seen. I am very well-travelled when it comes to other countries but my experience of Australia is mostly limited to the area between Sydney and my home-town.

Anyway, it was a great holiday, where I didn’t think of anything other than what was going on each day. I wasn’t able to access the internet for long periods, hence the lack of blog-posts over the last few months. Those will pick-up in frequency presently, though I don’t have any sketches of my trip to share. I didn’t do a lick of drawing the whole time I was away.

Happy New Year everyone. Let’s hope that 2008 is a good one.

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.

Here are the three new original pieces that I did for the latest Maverix Art Auction, which was held last night. In addition to these ink drawings I also submitted three signed and framed prints from my Dad’s Elephant Book.

Over this past week I had rented and watched the original three Star Wars movies, and as I had already been doodling the characters, I decided to tidy up a few and submit them to the show, when I couldn’t think of any better ideas. The LEIA was won by Mike Murnane, The YODA by Hop Matsuo, and the LUKE by Bosco Ng.

I am happy to say that I won some GREAT pieces myself and I will have a full report on the Auction in a few days, when the all numbers are tallied up and the photographs come in…
So Stay tuned!

Next week, Maverix Studios is hosting yet ANOTHER AUCTION. After raising money for many international charities, this time the Maverix crew decided to help a charitable organization in the Bay Area community, Glide Memorial Church. The proceeds from this particular art auction will support Glide’s Children’s Creative Arts Media Center. Past Maverix Auctions have typically raised $9,000-$12,0000 and it is hoped that a donation of such a size will make a huge difference to a small local charity.

The evening will include food, drink and music and, of course, artwork from local artists will be up for bid in a silent auction, with the evening culminating in a live auction for the most sought after pieces! This is a great opportunity to get an early start on holiday shopping while supporting a wonderful organization working with and for the under served children of our fair city. The theme of the show is INSPIRE: GIFTS THAT GIVE TWICE.

I have a busy week ahead, as I try to tie up a lot of loose-ends before I head off to Australia in December, but I will absolutely make time to do a few art pieces to donate to the cause. Then I hope to pick up some artwork at the show to give to family and friends for Christmas.

Check the MAVERIX BLOG over the next week for updates on donations as they come in. The fun all goes down on Sunday December 2nd from 6PM to 10PM. I hope to see you all there!

I’m still in scanning and archiving mode. Here are some of my very rare life-drawings, done on a cold winter’s day at Tokyo’s UENO ZOO. The apes had gone inside to escape the cold, though they couldn’t escape prying eyes, as we human beings could observe them in their little shelter, from behind super-thick plexi-glass. The observation room was relatively warm and a good place to do some sketching. As other visitors came and went, I got to really study the gorilla as he sat in a very relaxed pose apparently not even noticing the crowd. Suddenly, he sprang into a classic SILVER-BACK pose and banged his fists on the glass so hard that the plexi-glass pane went BOOM!

This terrified everyone, and sent them running and yelling out into the cold, clearing the observation room, only to slowly fill up again with a new group of people who were unaware of how much jeopardy their underpants were about to be in, because over the course of about 40 minutes, I saw the gorilla pull this move about once every 7 minutes or so. After the first time, it was pretty funny to watch him affecting this “I’m not watching you guys” attitude but then, with a little tell-tale glance at the crowd (just to make sure that the observation room had filled up) he would again unload a KING KONG moment, which was guaranteed to scare the ramen-noodles out of everyone– me included.

These are some of the illustrations for an English Language text book for Japanese readers. I drew them many years ago while I was working and living in Japan.

In the early months, my income was mainly from Teaching English, so freelance illustration jobs were a welcome distraction from my limitations as an English Language teacher…. I didn’t teach at a school (if you can call what I was doing “teaching” at all) instead, I put on a tie and an ill-fitting suit (bought from a shady tailor in Bangkok) and went to teach on-site at several businesses around Tokyo (including National Electronics and Toshiba) that had conversational English classes as part of the training program for their employees. I spent a lot of time travelling around Tokyo by train, going from job to job. Using Google Earth and WikiMapia I was recently able to figure out where some of my old teaching posts were.

This was part of a long period in my life where I rarely participated in a fluent conversation. In the evenings, my students mangled my own language (under my earnest direction) and the for the rest of the day I mangled theirs, as I tried to learn Japanese. Though I was a language-teacher at night, in the mornings I was a language-student myself, attending Japanese language classes. I am sad to say that I never got very fluent, despite my very best efforts (a Japanese friend tells me that I speak Japanese like a little girl) but I managed to pick up enough “survival” Japanese to get around, order food and have limited conversations with anyone patient enough to listen to me shred the verb conjugations of their language.

Thankfully, both for me and the well-being of my English-language students, I soon found a job that I was better qualified for; working in animation (at TOEI Studios, on a Superman TV series) and so I quit being an English teacher. Though the full-time job meant that I unfortunately had to give up my morning Japanese classes, it was a relief to be able to take off the baggy suit and neck-tie and draw all day. I continued to do freelance illustration jobs, in addition to the animation work, right up until I left Japan.

Often, when I buy a big hard-cover sketchbook, I’m intimidated to even draw in it at all. Instead, I do most of my drawing on scraps of paper, and glue these into the sketchbook, using it more like a scrap book. I buy sketchbooks with the intention of drawing from life but instead I mostly fill them with doodles, things drawn from out of my head.

When it comes to drawing realism, I have always admired people I have worked with who can pull plausible images out of their minds without resorting to reference. Even when the subject matter isn’t some fantasy-land or goof-ball cartoon, I enjoy seeing a personal stylisation that informs drawings of the “real” world. I think that has made me want to be capable of the same. But I realise that part of the reason that people can draw from memory or imagination is that is that they have spent the time puting images INTO their heads first.

I can be sloppy about using reference too… Though not always out of pure laziness. I have learned that I draw better caricatures from memory than I do from looking at a photograph directly. Memory seems to record a shorthand record of a person’s dominant features and attitudes; a good place to start in doing a caricature. Seeing myself as a cartoonist rather than an artist gives me a bit more licence to exaggerate and fudge the details…

I suppose that the reason I started drawing in the first place was that it was a form of escapism. It wasn’t about representing reality but coming up with an alternative. Anyway, as much as I enjoy doodling from my imagination, I have been thinking that I need to more often feed it it with some reality; life drawing or sketching from life, or even copying images from books and magazines, is something that I need to do more of… in order to find that balance of personal style and plausiblity.

Looking for something fun to do in the San Francisco area on Halloween night without getting get shot? Then why not attend the MONSTER MOSH at the 12 GALAXIES night club?

This ghoulish extravaganza will be brought to life by the electrifying folks from B-MINUS COMICS (fearsome flyer artwork by B-Minus’ invincible Aaron Farmer) and and co-sponsored by both THE ONION (everyone’s favourite newspaper), and also by THE ISOTOPE (San Francisco’s best comics shop). Mix-music grooves will be spun by Dj SAM SUPA and there will be a rocking live set by TRIPLE COBRA . The hottest zombie sex-symbol in town, the ever glamorous Ms MONSTER (who is currently starring in “The search for the NEXT ELVIRA” on the FOX reality network) Will be hosting the MidNight costume contest. See you there!

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.