T-Shirts? Why not.

Through MySoti, t-shirts are now available featuring the vector illustration of my favorite SEA MONSTER:


And for the tea snobs like me out there, declare your love with your choice of Green Tea:


Herbal Tea:


or Black Tea:

Monster

Got slammed by a flu or cold this weekend, which I'm still woozy and recovering from. I did see that Coop of A Patchwork of Flesh received my submission to his online blog gallery of Frankenstein's monster.



I assume from my portfolio work, people don't see me drawing dark pieces but I do like to make them. I just like to make the dark aspects subtle. With Frankenstein's monster, the surgical procedure of the creation is the part that intrigues me the most, even though I feel ill when looking at real surgery photos. The bolts and nuts have become a quintessential physical aspect of the monster, and in this case, I envisioned how they could be incorporated without putting them in the flesh as a part of a restraining device.

In the meantime, after reading the original description of the monster, I did a piece heavily influenced by Jenny Saville. The only problem is that it does not evoke what has become the popular assumption of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's monster at all. Still, it was fun to draw and intriguing in how the second drawing begins to take on a more sinister aspect, even though that was unintended.



The request for work for A Patchwork of Flesh was a fun expendature of time and creativity. It was also a great excuse to explore new materials and their effects. For everyone who wants to submit, no matter what the level of artistic training may be, visit the blog for more information. All submissions welcomed and encouraged! Thank you, Coop!

Swag

While in NYC to attend the Society of Illustrators Student show, I picked up a few items of note. Postcards from the Met are great to use when determining colors in a composition. They had a gorgeous exhibit on 19th and 20th century painters: Vuillard, Mucha, Sargent, Lautrec, Van Gogh, ect. I was very pleasantly surprised and awed by the touches of perfect color in the Degas pastels.

I finally found a watercolor travel kit I like, a Pentel Aquash set from Kinokuniya, which I removed the provided colors from and filled with my favorite colors instead (naples yellow, permanent red, perm alizarin crimson, venetian red, permanet violet, lavendar, antwerp blue, turquoise blue, davy's grey & payne's grey: a very earthy palette).

At the Strand, I picked up a Moleskin storyboard sketchbook, Strand tote and Lemony Snickett's The Composer is Dead, featuring music by Nathaniel Stookey and illustrations by Carson Ellis, an inspirational culmination of story, sound and visuals. When I can afford to, I'm picking up Neil Gaiman's new children's book The Dangerous Alphabet and Meomi's first Octonauts book out of sheer love.

The disassembled book on the bottom is friend's copy of Oliver Twist, which I will be re-binding sometime after the 22nd as a bookbinding demo for friends. If you're in the area and you want to know how to stitch & bind signatures as well as make a hardbound cover, let me know.



I also ended up making a set of three small hardbound portfolios: illustration, painting and black & white illustration. The pages are removable and they fit neatly into an envelope I made to protect them for carrying them easily in my purse.

Plenty of plans coming up for the summer, including teaching figure drawing, working, as well as a few secret projects. Keep up on my interests and updates on Twitter.

That new product smell.

New tinasweep.com re-design!

My simple website re-design and update has just been finalized and launched, due to the not-so-simple coding efforts of my sister, Cas, who is a website developer and designer for Absolute Marketing Group.

CSS and I are still on rocky terms, but my sister coded everything to meet the key goals for the design as follows:
1) Employing CSS instead of iframes to make the site more search friendly with cross-browser usability
2) Using html-text to avoid excessive use of image-text
3) Allowing for easy illustration updates in the code and design through cut and paste tactics
4) No pop-ups, flash, or extra buttons to complicate the design and site interaction

Eventually I intend to separate my oil paintings from the illustrative work, probably through the use of a subdomain.

Overall, I enjoy the pattern and repetition created by the thumbnail gallery and how well the site works across different browsers within the limitations of the design concept: simple, effective and immediate.

Thank you for your hard work, Cas!

Go North

Looking back on the 50s and 60s, ads told a story to sell the product through text and illustration. Plenty of the ad stories and illustrations were irreverent to what the product actually did, rather more like fairy tales than ads and at times not even showing the product itself. In this image I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek ad for an AARP article, illustrated as a dreamy fairy tale inspired by those ads as well as the work of Lisbeth Zwerger.



I'm irrepressible when reminiscing about the good old days. Er, wait, that's not right.

I really really do.

So much so that I had my squid printed on a t-shirt. The squids in my sketchbook were the results of stress relief from coding my website in CSS. Style Sheets and I are not on friendly terms, unfortunately.

And then there's the little pieces I meant to post ages ago. E&M is a situational piece about relationships and showing interaction without explaining the interaction. Also, fun with patterns.



I need to do many more Soyer mastercopies to study his ability to stand back and let the piece be. It's my life's goal to get to that point.

Um, what?

I'm a bit in shock right now. Just now I found out that one of my pieces made it into the 2009 Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship competition, so this will be my third and final year in the student show.

It also means come May 6th through June 6th there will be a large empty space on my wall where this painting used to be:


In all, 34 Ringling students' pieces were selected by the jury. I'm especially excited to see my friends work in the show. To McLean, Schin, Nick, Francis, Gail, Adam, Sarah, Arrolynn, Lara and Ben, congratulations!

To my instructor Regan Dunnick, thank you!

Home

To my shame the moving in stage of moving in was delayed for a while.

While I enjoy my two office rooms, my whistling radiators, my teeny tiny kitchen, the local overly cautious SUV-drivers, the stark winter colors, my eerily quiet neighbors, the relative difference of 65 versus 67 degrees and a thousand other aspects to my new town and apartment, it has not been a smooth transition. My homes have always been built around friends and family. The new connections I have made here along with many long-distance calls have helped, but, obviously, the numbers of connections has changed greatly from what I was familiar with.

It takes a long time to move into a place if you're not sure it's really where you want to be.

In the end, this is the right thing, so during the holidays I spent plenty of time making my apartment into a home rather than just a place where I sleep, eat, doodle and teach fashion students figure drawing.

It's back to taking my thyroid vitamins and making prioritizing lists, starting with the four or five or ten projects I've managed to attempt working on at the same time, some as adjustments to existing pieces and plenty of new works. They always keep me up far longer than I initially expect, too. I also have plenty of pieces that I need to catch up on posting.

"A Lid for Every Pot" was a commission that allowed me the opportunity to get back to using the kitchen as artistic subject matter, much to my own enjoyment.



After four years of art boot camp, I've had time to refamiliarize myself with those bulky things called books. Between the Gil Evgren calendars, the debut of Patrick Rothfuss's epic fantasy and Mo Willems children's books, I spotted an enjoyable little book by author and artist Vivian Swift.



It's the book that every visual artist secretly or not-so secretly wants to publish, combining personal sketches, facts and observations into one place for no other reason than to share everything with the viewers. When Wanderers Cease to Roam is catered to the creator herself, containing paintings and information of nature, life and the change of seasons in a year as an homage to her quiet experiences. I would not choose to draw the subject matter that she has in my own sketchbook but to view the work is a lasting inspiration.

Layers

The weather's turned, the leaves are all manner of gorgeous colors and I've been able to dress in layers, all simple events that are miraculous after four years in Sarasota.



I've moved into an apartment in a building that might have been a hotel, where I can keep my gesso brush in the fridge. This gives me no end of happiness on both accounts.

While the website design and update is developing, I have a part-time job for a bookstore, I've sold prints and paintings directly to a few buyers and I'm teaching figure drawing for an online course that found me. On my own time, I have two rooms and a closet of studio space that I work in, although my paintings still need to be hung.

At the beginning of this month, I participated in my first group art show in the area for Rude and Bold Women of 2008. I was unsure of the reception that my work would receive but everyone was friendly and helpful and they really enjoyed my pieces.



Within the week, Shawn Tan's Canadian release of Tales from Outer Suburbia will be out. I'm awaiting my pre-ordered copy, as well as a copy of Gary Kelley's new book, Dark Fiddler.

From Mom with Love II

When you combine baking and painting pictures, the best part is is eating the results. The baked goods, not the painting.

Ticket & Anticipation

Recently, I ordered and received a signed copy of Cory Godbey's 28-page paperback illustrated book Ticket.

"Ticket is a story in pictures and a collection of all things Cory loves to draw. From windmills flying above grassy hills to massive birds landing in Grecian vineyards, Ticket follows the story of a girl, her hat, and the curious events which transpire."

Reminiscent of Shaun Tan's The Arrival, the adventurous story is told through visual art without any text. Perhaps what I enjoyed best was knowing the journey of how it came to be, from thumbnails up to the final compilation process, through Cory's blog. Holding the final product in your hands after you've been partial witness to how it came together is always special and awe-inspiring.

Ticket can be purchased from the Studio Portland store for a mere $12.

Speaking of Shaun Tan, I'm very excited for the release of Tales from Outer Suburbia, available October 28th in Canada from McClelland & Stewart or February 1st in the US from Levine. I'm not sure who to trust on this but I can't not be ecstatic about a new Shaun Tan book.



Edit: Visit the links below for two interviews with Shaun Tan, thanks to Drawn.

Shaun Tan and Inspiration from 12/2008.
An interview with Shaun Tan from 1/2009 about the conception and creation of Tales from Outer Suburbia.

Rewind

To make a post after a long absence is always a challenge. But it becomes easier after that, or so I hope.

I have some work from Printmaking and Illustration left over that I want to get caught up on before anything else.

"The Beautiful Things" is a series of 20+ chine colle prints, using the same etching on a multitude of different postcard backgrounds. The postcards actually came from a sheet of decorative paper with rows of old postcards printed on it. I cut the paper apart according to the postcards and used them as the background to a radio aquatint etching. The pattern I printed on thin Japanese paper via solvent transfer and then glued to the postcard as I printed each piece.



This radio print was made, because I love dry-point etching and to use as stationary for my thesis proposal that I framed and set up with my thesis presentation. I really love the tone that occurs when plates are wiped unevenly or sparingly.



"Over the Land" is another deep copperplate etching in the style of my other train print. This one shows a greater understanding of how to use china marker, Sharpie, and lithocrayon, I think. On the advice from Chris of Stakenborg Fine Art in Sarasota, I've been admiring Joseph Pennell in conjunction to these prints.

Florida to New York (and then over to Minnesota)

I was waiting to post until I had better news than 'I'm coping with living out of boxes', but no. At least there are plans in motion that should resolve the big box debacle of 2008 relatively soon.

Good thing I do have brief highlights of the long road trip I took in May with my mom that I can post.

It started with a last visit to Publix for a Publix veggie sub and a bottle of flavored tea. I will greatly miss those subs and the simple and effective packaging design on Publix brand name products. We also picked up a bag of the Publix Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips because Publix has amazing food products.



We stopped at South of Reality--I mean, South of the Border. The billboards every few miles though South Carolina really sold us on visiting fake Mexico and its bounty of random creature statues.



Sometime during Day 2, Virginia welcomed us. At least I think it was Day 2.



Then we spent a lot of time driving somewhere, at some point. Probably not a good thing, since I was the one driving to get us to NY.



In Chadd's Ford, PA, I bought a bunch of lovely art books and we took many pictures of the gorgeous scenery. Of course, I was most enamored with a small rusty door.



Then, because we were close, New York, New York. For Mom, the food and attractions were good, but the noise and constant motion was not good. I'm glad it's all good for me.



As we only had a day to spend in the city, we took a trip on the Staten Island Ferry. I will be returning specifically to visit Ellis Island for as many hours as possible.



Of course, we stopped over at the Society of Illustrators, where my Basic Needs illustration was on display as a part of the student show. I picked up the 49th Annual and the 2008 Student Competition Catalog, both which feature my work!





(In mentioning the Society books, my illustration was used for this year's Art Directors Club National Scholarship poster!)



After unpacking the car, I needed to drive Mom back to Minnesota. On the way we had to visit the Field Museum. Two words: Tsavo lions.



During the road trip, my nephew was born, so we hurried home to see him for the first time. To be honest, I'm not a baby person. They're far too delicate and unresponsive for me to want to touch. But I'm really looking forward to buying him children's book and comics by Shaun Tan and my friends when he's old enough.



In the end, I made my way back to the beautiful ivy-covered brick house where I'm staying. Or at least until I move again.

Graduation and Help Support Artist's Rights

Tuesday, April 29th was the last day of classes for the year at Ringling, and on Friday the qualifying seniors walked across the stage to receive their diploma cases. (The real diplomas are in the mail.) As my name was called, I was elated and deeply gratified to hear my friends, faculty, administration, and family cheering and clapping for me. In the final hour, it still felt more like everyone was just leaving for the summer, and we'd all be back in the fall. But no, not this time around, and I'm happy to walk away with connections to an amazing group of people whom I will support and who will support me.

The photo is of me and my parents, Dave and Deb, in the big purple building known as the Van Wezel, with my new diploma case.


After officially becoming a working professional, my fellow artists and I are now faced with a challenge to the intellectual copyrights of our work. Two bills about U.S. Orphan Works have been introduced to the Senate and the House. From the Illustrators' Partnership of America, "The Orphan Works Act will affect all images from professional paintings to family snapshots. This includes any image, whether published or unpublished - or any that resides or ever resided on the internet. It will force [the artist] to register every image [made] with privately-held commercial registries. All unregistered works will be exposed as potential orphans for commercial infringement."

The bills infringe on current individual creator rights and laws which are necessary for visual artists to successfully maintain their businesses and protect their work. At this time, the moment an artist creates a piece, that piece is under the copyright of the artist. The artist is then protected from others stealing their work without having to register the piece with the U.S. Copyright Office and paying the incurring fees. The wording and definitions of the Orphan Works Bills are too broad, and if passed, individual, self-employed artists would suffer in their attempts to protect the copyright of their own work through fees and actions that are unreasonable to sustain. The IPA provides information about the bills and makes it easy to fight against them.

Please take two minutes and help protect artist rights by filling out an email take action form to your Senator in opposition to S.2913, and an email take action form to your Congressman in opposition to H.R.5889.

So far, through the IPA over 68,000 email messages have been sent. I have sent my letters, and, for good or for bad, I have received the responses as follow.

"Dear Ms. Sweep:

Thank you for contacting me regarding copyright protection issues and the development of digital media.

As you know, many bills introduced in the 110th Congress address legal issues surrounding licensing, digital reproduction, and distribution of artistic works. As a pro-consumer Senator, I believe it is important that our laws adapt to new technologies, with the aim of increasing consumers' access to the widest possible range of digital media. At the same time, I support efforts to stop the illegal piracy of copyrighted materials and ensure that copyright holders are compensated fairly.

I appreciate hearing your views and will keep them in mind as this issue is debated before the Senate. If you have any additional concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me in the future.

Senator Bill Nelson"

"Dear Ms. Sweep:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Orphan Works Act. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

Patent rights and the protection of intellectual property are the fundamental building blocks of commerce and innovation in our country. I believe that artists and innovators should be fairly compensated for their work, and that reasonable efforts to find and reward these individuals should be made before allowing works to be used or copied by others.

On April 24, 2008, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S.2913). An orphan work is a copyrighted work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder. The establishment of the Orphan Works Act would provide restrictions and limitations to the remedies that could be awarded to those involved in copyright infringement that entail orphan works. This bill would require that the infringer takes diligent effort to locate the author of the infringed copy before using the work and require a Notice of Use to be filed with the Register of Copyrights before the work was used.

The bill specifies that monetary relief may not be made for damages, costs and attorney's fees, however reasonable monetary compensation can be made to the owner of the patent or copyright. Other limitations include that compensation may not be collected if the infringer is a non-profit educational institution, museum, library, archives, or public broadcasting entity. S.2913 was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Although I do not serve on this Committee, I can assure you I will keep your comments in mind as we proceed in the 110th Congress.

Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced similar legislation (H.R. 5889) in the U.S. House of Representatives. H.R.5889 was referred to the House Committee on Judiciary, where it awaits further approval.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. If you have any additional questions or comments, please do not hesitate to let me know. In addition, for more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator"

The 2008 Senior Thesis with Crown Molding

The last month and more as a senior at Ringling College was a non-stop run of activities here, there and everywhere. Senior thesis and the senior illustration show opening reception preceded the final two days of classes and events, packing and family time, graduation, and finally, moving and sight-seeing. These occurrences sound so benign and casual when listed out, but they were jammed on top of each other, followed by a week spent in the car driving around the country and sometimes getting lost. For now, I'm answering my emails and such, and just trying to recover a little.

After the show opening at Foley's Fine Art gallery, I rushed to finish my thesis project for the last day of Advanced Illustration on April 22nd. The show then needed to be hung by the 101 participants before the afternoon of April 25th. I was able to sleep plenty during the final crush, but I'm glad bruises heal and skin grows back when you slice a bit off with an exacto blade.

Despite some initial doubts and worries, everything came together and the illustration class of 2008 put on a truly fantastic show. That night, it showed that everyone involved, including the faculty, administration, family members and friends, were extremely proud of the work that had been accomplished through this singularly driven group of young artists and illustrators.









As you may be able to tell from my statement of intent, my thesis project was a self-promotion campaign. To attain this, I completed new illustrations to supplement my existing work, and I made a new brand/identity system for myself. I designed and bound multiples of five unique handmade portfolios to display and promote my work in. I applied the new brand system to these books, as well as standard promotional items such as my business card, letterhead, and postcards. From the display side of things, I pulled everything together in the presentation with an "office" theme.

For the professional artist, their portfolio is the equivalent of a resume. I designed my portfolios to be not only functional showcases for my work, but to also directly reflect my style and aesthetics. A portfolio typically contains ten to fifteen pieces of the artist’s best work. A freelance artist will constantly update their portfolio with current work, so my portfolios are designed to allow me to remove and add pages so that I may update them when necessary.



My primary portfolio is a softbound book. It contains a broad showcase of my artwork executed in a variety of artistic media and styles.





My monochromatic portfolio is a hardbound book. It contains editorial illustrations that are intended to be reproduced in black and white publications, opposite the excerpts of articles that inspired them.





My gallery portfolio is also hardbound, but designed differently. It contains the paintings and etchings that I will promote to private gallery owners.







My secondary portfolio is a hardbound folder. It contains images displayed on separate pieces of matte board.







My mailer portfolio is softbound, and fits into a plastic envelope. It contains select postcards of my work that I can mail as a mini-portfolio. The postcard fit into glued tabs, so they can be removed and changed.





In addition to these books, I have my business cards, postcards, letterhead, greeting cards, and I am re-designing my website and blog. I'm pretty sure I've got everything covered, unless anyone has any suggestions, please.

April 5th

The opening reception for the show was fantastic! Thank you everyone, new friends and old friends, who made it to Foley's Fine Art for a little food, wine, chatting, and art last night. It was a grand, successful night, and because of your encouragement, I am setting my goals for the future now even higher than I had imagined a month ago. I greatly appreciate the comments and advice everyone gave me.

I need to post some photos of the event later.

And for the third year, my pieces have been accepted into the Best of Ringling Annual Juried Student Show. The opening reception will be on the 18th, and the show will run through May 2nd. The two pieces that I got in are my little sketchbook full of drawings and process work, and my portrait of the soft side of Sarah Watts.

"Picasso Meets the Future"

This coming Friday, April 4th, Jane Radstrom and I will be showing at a local gallery opposite a collection of Pablo Picasso's prints and drawings. The opening reception will be from 6 to 9PM at Foley's Fine Art, on Main Street. If you are in the area, please consider stopping by to support us.

A huge amount of thanks goes out to all of the people who made this possible for us. Thank you, Thiel and Christian!

The 2008 Senior Illustration Show

The brochure and postcard invitations for the Ringling College of Art and Design 2008 Senior Illustration Show are currently being printed. Poster image and title text by Erin McGuire, building diagrams by Andrew Wright, and design by Tina Sweep.

Off, Music & Voice.

I'm preparing for a little re-design. I love shoes, especially brown Mudd shoes with chunky heels or Skechers flats with embroidered red and blue and yellow and purple goldfish. But I might love antique AM radios even more.

From Mom with Love

My mom had originally given me this recipe, and it's a great one to share. For my Friday critique and bake group, you guys make all the difference.