Thanks to everyone who participaed in Illustration Next last night at SVA. Very honored to be included in the Illustration Week festivities. We had about 370 outstanding works by the top artists in the world, many of whom showed up to add comments about process and execution. It came in at just under 2.5 hours but not tiring to me. Art and people like this create their own evergy. Most stuck it out till the bitter end; I think they were surfing on the power of the work too.
The discussion hinged mostly on a single concept: the artist as producer. We no longer wait for the call. We dream the project, make a presentation, make the calls, make the connections, sell, create . . . invoice. Then do it some more. If this is exciting to you, and to many of us, including me, it is, then this profession continues to work for us. That was my point made over and over by the brilliant work of my colleagues. Here are some videos from the talk. The first is the full Bo Jackson ESPN doc using illustrations by the amazing Mickey Duzyj.
Jonathan Rosen, providing the images for Christopher O’Riley, playing Debussey’s Jardins sous la pluie.
Kyle Webster is a brilliant entrepreneur, devising brushes for Photoshop. Here he sells them perfectly: Ultimate Drawing Set 2:
Simon Spilsbury’s Bath Project. He collaborates with poets in painting on walls in the town of Bath using projected images.
Yao Xiao’s and other young artists have found organizations like this, Imagelink, that provides live-art documentation for conferences and speeches.
Titmouse Studios employs some 300 artists. This and other businesses are always receiving applications from young artists. They, it turns out, give you a test. My suggestion: if you dig animation find out what the test is like, take it.
Seraph by Dash Shaw, who is a comic artist. He was given the chance to direct this honest and deeply human animation by David Cameron Mitchell.
Richard Borge’s animated ad for Rawporter:
Victor Kerlow, an illustrator who is a young creature of print, going all out, doing hundred of drawings, the old fashioned way, for a History Channel / KIA ad:
Hanoch Piven, our friend and wonderful collage artist, has done an incredibly beautiful project. Working with the Beit Hatfutsot Museum in Tell Aviv he has encouraged families to work on a family portrait done in Hanoch’s inimitable style: using found objects. Each piece was photographed and placed in a huge mosaic that tells the group story of Israeli families as well as each one individually. Here is the video he made to explain the idea to visitors to the museum.
