Research Artist #15: M.C. Escher

Who hasn't heard of M.C. Escher? Anyway, I've always admired the fine detail he puts in things, and the shading is beautiful. His grasp of linear perspective has always impressed me, as someone who still struggles with it. I hate drawing buildings, and the way he could draw architecture so well always made me green with envy. Whenever I try to draw buildings in a scene, Escher's work comes to mind, but I can never make it look nearly as good. I enjoy his testellations, as well.

Research Artist #14: Kazuya Minekura

Another manga series I read is called Saiyuki, written and illustrated by Kazuya Minekura. It is roughly based on a myth about a monk who travels to the west, accompanied by the monkey king, Son Wukong in Chinese and Son Goku in Japanese. The artwork is highly detailed and realistic, but is still definitely manga-style. The characters and dialogue are a lot of fun, and the action scenes flow clearly. The coloring for covers and colored images is gorgeous. The language is strong, and there is a fair amount of nudity and gore, but it is worth checking out if you like serious manga. Otherwise, a Google search brings up a lot of good images. The orginal Saiyuki series is nine volumes long, and I have no idea how long the second series, Saiyuki Reload, is. After a point, I had troubles locating the next books. Anyway, here are some samples of Minekura's Saiyuki artwork:

Research Artist #13: Shilin Huang

I just discovered this person's work. It blows my mind. Shilin is writing an online manga called Carciphona, and she has gotten volume 1 and an artbook published. Her fine detail is amazing, I love the outfits she designs for her characters, the anatomy is great, and the action scenes are dizzyingly superb. Her personal site is here: http://blackbird.ashen-ray.com/. She also has a deviantART account: http://shilin.deviantart.com/. Here are some of her colored pictures:

Research Artist #12: Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo writes and illustrates the international smash-hit manga, Bleach. His drawing style has changed a lot since the start of the series, and it is definitely for the better. His anatomy is great; a lot of the characters are muscular men, and the muscles are drawn well without looking over-the-top. I really admire how Kubo creates so many characters but can make them each look unique. He uses many body types: from tall, broad to short and slender males, and from buxom ladies with wide hips to slender women without substantial busts or hips. The facial feature are diverse, too. Kubo also prefers not to draw backgrounds, which I sympathize with (I hate drawing them). Somehow, his art manages to look great with very little in the way of backgrounds. I still like Bleach and Kubo's art, but I feel that the plot is practically gone and that the story has come down to endless brawls without time to relax in between. It's hard to find actual work from Kubo in a Google search, since he's so popular. There's a lot of fanart and pictures from the TV adaptation, but here are a few from his comic, and as before, comic pages read right to left:

Research Artist #11: CLAMP

CLAMP is actually a team of four women in Japan who create manga. Ageha Okawa writes most of the stories, and the other three, Mokona, Satsuki Igarashi, and Tsubaki Nekoi, shift roles for each project. They've tackled many different genres and different audience levels with overwhelming success. I prefer their earlier works, Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth, projects in which Mokona was the main artist. I really love the long, flowing, sweeping lines she used for those projects. The hair and outfits were intricate and absolutely beautiful. The colors in colored pictures were stunning, too (and they still are). While I don't find their recent manga as appealing, I can't deny the influence they've had on me. CLAMP is one of the factors that got me into manga/anime in the first place.
This is art from CCS and MKR:

And this is some of their more recent stuff:

Don't get me wrong, I think the art is still great! I just don't like their current stories.

Research Artist #10: Deamond89

Yet another artist I follow on deviantart.com. Often referred to by the nickname Dea, this young woman lives in Germany and is studying to be a dentist. Lately, she's been creating a lot of characters for role-playing groups and activities, but I was drawn to her because of her comic, Essence of Time. It's characters and story are very interesting, but she hasn't created a new page in quite a while. I love her rich colors and the amount of detail she puts into everything is insane. She creates her own backgrounds, some of which look like something out of a High Renaissance painting. She has a few tutorials on using digital programs for drawing and coloring, some of which I have used and found helpful. Unfortunately, Dea doesn't allow downloading of her images, so I can only provide the link to her page: http://deamond89.deviantart.com/.

Research Artist #9: Hayao Miyazaki

Often referred to as "the Walt Disney of Japan", Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant movie writer and director. In 1985, he cofounded Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata. Miyazaki has created many films that are a visual delight and very thought-invoking. His films often have themes of man's relationship with nature, pacifism, feminism, and flight. I really like how almost all his films feature a strong female protagonist, and they manage to avoid being cliche or stereotypical. I find Miyazaki's films to be incredibly inspiring. My favorite Miyazaki film is Princess Mononoke. I know it's not a credible font of knowledge, but wikipedia has a very thorough article on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki.

Research Artist #8: Daisuke Moriyama

My favorite manga series is Chrono Crusade, written and illustrated by Daisuke Moriyama. I love the story, the characters, and Moriyama's art style. I love how he draws hair, eyes, and hands. The details in backgrounds are great, and I love his character designs, too. The dramatic poses he draws people in at times are wonderful, too. And when Chrono Crusade hits a very emotional, pivotal scene, he knows how to use fine detail and negative space to create a bigger impact. The story and the artwork go hand-in-hand, and this manga made me cry more times than I can count, because Moriyama captures the intensity of a single moment very well. Again, comic pages read right to left.

Research Artist #7: Yuichi Kumakura

I read a fair amount of manga. One of my favorite parts is seeing how an artist's style changes throughout the story. King of Bandits: Jing, written and illustrated by Yuichi Kumakura, has the most dramatic change of styles in all the series that I've read. In the first volume of the first Jing series, the style is very goofy and cartoonish. It makes you very much aware that you are reading about a young boy and his wacky adventures. However, by the time the second series, Twilight Tales, rolls around, the style is incredibly realistic, detailed, and filled with dramatic contrasts. Each series is 7 volumes long, for a total of 14 manga books. It's a lot of fun just leafing through them and seeing how much Kumakura changed his art style.Sometimes it's hard to believe it was all done by one person! By the way, the comic pages read right to left.

BEFORE:

AFTER:



Research Artist #6: Norman Rockwell

Yeah, I like him. Who doesn't? I went to an exhibition of his work in D.C. when I was little. I was drawn in by his attention to detail, his sense of humor, his colors, his compostion, basically everything in his pictures. Before heading home, my mom bought a little book with hundreds of his images. I would spend hours leafing through it, and I still do, sometimes. I think it was when I was at that exhibition that I truly knew that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Research Artist #5: doubleleaf

This is another artist I follow on deviantart.com. doubleleaf is very private and I know next to nothing about her (I'm pretty certain doubleleaf is a woman). She has superb understanding of anatomy and perspective, and her sense of humor is pretty fun, too. She seems to really like action movies and videogames, and she does a lot of fanart relating to them, as well as fanart for Marvel and DC comic characters. doubleleaf draws a fair amount of sensual pictures, though some of them can be a bit risque (but hardly ever goes past PG-13). You can check her out here: http://doubleleaf.deviantart.com/. Oh, and here's something I just noticed. On her profile page is an FAQ, and she says she never went to art school and is mostly self-taught. My mind just exploded.

Research Artist #4: Team Drowtales

I read many webcomics, and the one with the best artwork is Drowtales: Moonless Age. The website hosts several comics, but Moonless Age is the main story. The story is written by Yan "Kern" Gagne, who also does the lineart and leads the team. I really admire his blending of anime and realistic styles. Mary "Kite" Garren is the main colorist, and the coloring for Moonless Age is amazing, too. Everyone on the team is a huge contribution to giving fans a fantastic reading experience. The information on the team is here: http://wiki.drowtales.com/index.php/Staff_of_Studio_Drowtales. The main site is here: http://drowtales.com/. There aren't a lot of single images I can download, so here is the cover for the current chapter.

Research Artist #3: Tetsuya Nomura

Okay, so I like video games. My favorites are Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) in which you can explore a vast world, meet well written and developed characters, and usually wind up saving the world. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a grand ol' adventure. Tetsuya Nomura is a video game director and character designer for one of the biggest video game companies out there, Square Enix. He is most well known for his work in the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series. He is often mocked (lovingly and not-so-lovingly) for drawing characters with any of the following traits:

• Ridiculously spiky hair
• Adrogenous features on males
• An absurd amount of zippers, belts, and/or other forms of accessories in outfits
• Oversized weaponry, or weird kinds of weapons that wouldn't even function in the real world

Still, the characters he created have helped bring some of my favorite games to life, and there is something in his style that appeals to me. I briefly considered a career like his, designing characters for video games, but I don't think that's likely to happen. Anyway, here are some examples of his work (feel free to laugh at some of the absurdity and play "Guess Which One of These is a Guy). I don't have a link to a personal website or an online gallery this time, though.

Artist Bio

This is still the first version, which I wrote earlier this semester, except I left out the contact info since I don't want crazy stalkers showing up on my doorstep. I really don't know how to write a bio when I have so few experiences...

Maggie Campbell

(Insert Contact Info Here)

Selected Solo Exhibitions: No Solo Exhibitions

Selected Group Exhibitions: St Edward’s University, “Senior Exhibition 2012”, Austin, 2012.

Selected Publications and Reviews: No Publications/Reviews

Grants and Awards: No Grants/Awards

Education: Bachelor of Arts, St. Edward’s University, 2012.

Born: December 18, 1990

 Represented by: No Representatives

Research Artist #2: Paul Kidby

I'm a fan of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series. Paul Kidby is an artist who does a lot of artwork for it. I love the rich colors he uses, and while the style is somewhat realistic, it is also very cartoonish. When I first saw his work in The Art of Discworld, I was amazed because he portrayed a lot of the characters close to how I imagined they would look. I also found Kidby more humorous once I started Art History courses and saw some famous paintings he was parodying. His website is here: http://www.paulkidby.net/Index.html. And for some of his work...

Research Artist: Rueme

There's this website, deviantART. Artists all over the world can post their work on it. I'm a member, and one of the artists I follo.w goes by the screen-name Rueme. I don't know much about her, as she tends to be a private person, but she lives in New Zealand and is studying to get a degree in graphic design. She does a fair amount of fanart for things she likes, but she has been doing a lot of work on original concepts and characters lately. I really love her drawing and coloring style, and I find a lot of her art inspiring. You can check her out here: http://rueme.deviantart.com/. Here are a few samples of her art.

Artist Statement.

This is not the one I wrote at the beginning of the semester; changes have been made.

When I was a child, I would listen to my father read me bedtime stories before falling asleep and I fell in love with the art of storytelling. I was fascinated by how a simple story can stay with a person for a lifetime, and how characters bring their tales to life. As I got older, I read for myself and grew interested in more complicated stories and characters. I had my own stories to tell, and wanted to do so with my drawings.

            I prefer a mechanical pencil for basic doodling, but will alternate between regular graphite, ebony, and charcoal pencils for my serious drawings. I also use conte crayons and have experimented with chalk pastels. For my cartoon drawings, I prefer sketching with pencil, then using black ink for lines and using markers for color. However, I have recently acquired a computer tablet and am experimenting with drawing and coloring on a computer, as well. I use the photo manipulation/digital coloring program GIMP.

Ch 1 Artist Assignment

So, for this assignment, I read Chapter 1 of the Taking the Leap textbook. There's a section of artists with interesting approaches and funny stories of how they got started. They're all pretty cool, but I don't feel I relate much to them. I don't have a funny story about how my career as an artist got started, and I don't have any "outlandish" projects. I'm pretty mundane. The closest thread I have is with the Guerrilla Girls, because I am a woman and an artist who is concerned with racial and sexual discrimination.

Senior Show Proposal

I'd like to draw realistic potraits of characters for a comic I want to create someday. Placed near those portraits would be full-body images in my cartoonish drawing style. I guess it's a kind of conceptual art thing, as well as compare-and-contrast.

5 Year Plan

1 year from now: last semester at St Ed.'s. Work hard! Graduate!
2 years from now: have some kind of job. Hopefully have enough to move out of my parents' place, try and save up for a car. Work on my art on the side.
3 years from now: hopefully I bought a car (used, of course). Start looking for jobs in artistic field. Still working on art.
4 years from now: maybe looking into companies to publish my comic, if I feel confident enough about it.
5 years from now: really hoping to have something published at that point. If not, there's always the webcomic route. I'm also hoping to have a doggy companion by this point.

5 places that might show my art

*St Edward's University: Well, I'm a student there. It'll be my alma mater. Why wouldn't it show my stuff?
*Arthouse at the Jones Center: It exhibits contemporary art, and it's free.
*Women & Their Work: They promote women artists from Texas and other places. They show many different art styles and disciplines.
*grayDUCK Gallery: They like to show contemporary and mostly unknown Austin artists. I'd fit the bill, once I graduate!
*Haven Gallery: Another gallery that features up-and-coming local artists! Austin is great for this sort of thing!