Happy Holidays - quick paint

Happy holidays, people!

Guh..progress on my life and photos of new art

Tired, but good.

NaNoWriMo - Going poorly. I think to complete this I'm going to have to do about 40,000 words in a day or so. I don't think I can possibly type that fast even if I wanted to.

Handmade Ho Down - The specter that haunts my life. Going super cool, but shit, we need more volunteers and more publicity.

Personal website - I finally got some photos taken (but there still needs to be some photoshop action to color correct, etc.) of my art work, but I gotta crop, resize, and redesign the site. Ug.

Graduation - Gotta schedule a portfolio meeting with the director. Should probably get a portfolio ready to do so.

Silkscreen - Book project coming along swimmingly. Another maybe 30 or so hours and it'll be done-done. Still gotta design the poster, map, and box. Sigh.

Quick Studies - Still flushing out the direction I want to move stylistically. We'll see.

The rest of my life is Eve, work, eating, and sleeping. Egads.

Unedited photos of new(er) work below.

NaNoWriMo

So as I slowly begin to write my novel for NaNoWriMo, I've decided that I might as well share the novel with people as it formulates itself. I make no guarantees that it will be good. It will be entertaining, filled with deus ex machinas and other looked-down-upon literary devices. Anyway, if you are interested, let me know (via comments or email or whatever) and I'll hook you up with the link to the read-only version of my in-progress novel (I'm writing it in google docs). So yeah, it'll be there if you want it.

Following the dream

So I tend to do things half-assed (at least in my opinion), and I'm sick of it.

The road to becoming a successful artist has been a difficult and long one. You could feasibly say that the road started when my mom enrolled me in summer art classes (which I LOVED, btw) in elementary school.

Eventually, I realized that society says that you need to go to college. Since my family was struggling financially, I realized that I needed good grades and tons of shit on my resume to get scholarships and grants and admission to a "good" school where I could make money and be happy, because, you know, if you grow up worrying about money, you think that money can buy happiness.

So, instead of pursuing art (I did enter a few little art events here and there, but not taking my work seriously), I did the academic route. Valedictorian, 1400+ SATs, blah blah blah. I got into UC Berkeley's prestigious College of Chemistry, and then proceeded to fail my first semester because I hated my classes so much.

But, instead of switching to art or theater, I ended up going the route of switching majors to Integrative Biology. Another half-assed move. I graduated Cal, then decided that I don't really want to do anything with biology (although doing biological illustrations might be sorta cool), and, thanks to Eve's support, enrolled in the Academy of Art.

When I first enrolled in art school, I started out in the Graphic Design department. After all, if you get a degree in graphic design, you can get hired into a firm as a junior designer and your career begins as an artist.

But fuck, I didn't want to kern type and mess with leading and all that crap (although I end up doing it when I design stuff anyway) - the fact is that I wanted to paint.

But, since painting is a hard profession (ever hear the term "starving artist?" I do...like every frickin' day of my life), I decided to go into Illustration. As I learned draftsmanship (yes, contrary to a lot of my work, I actually CAN draw if the need arises), I realized that I still wasn't happy. I didn't want to draw what other people tell me to - I want to draw and paint what I want to draw and paint. So after taking some fine art classes, I talked to my department chair (thanks, Chuck!) and switched my curriculum over to Fine Art.

Now that all my senior-level classes have been in the Fine Art department, I've realized that I still have this huge chip on my shoulder about technical art making. I still feel pressure to draw photo-realistically or to have super-tight registration in my prints, even if it's not what I want to do.

I want to make art that I want to make, on my terms, when, where, and how I want to do it. Yes, it's selfish, but if you aren't selfish, how are your dreams ever going to come true? My last two classes at the Academy are Quick Studies and Silkscreen 2.

Quick Studies is taught by the super fucking talented Craig Nelson and Tomutsu Takashima, and if I wanted to, could learn how to paint realistically quicker and more effectively. Watching them paint is awe-inspiring. Silkscreen 2 is taught by Carrie Ann Plank, the printmaking department chair whose critiques and feedback are amazing. I should be super, super happy to be in these classes.

However, I don't want to paint realistically. I don't want to work on my book arts project. I want to paint monsters and people saying "your mom." I want to print pandas and monsters and clowns saying "go eff yourself." Is it a waste of my money (the $11k loan I took out?) to stay in these classes if I'm not going to take advantage of all the instruction and the critiques? Perhaps. But my little artist heart can't fucking take it anymore. My priorities have shifted.

I'm too busy running a craft fair and trying to make my own art that appeals to my little inner artistic child. Fear (of failure, bad grades, teacher disapproval, of not selling my art) has mucked things up long enough. No more half-assed following my dreams.

I'm going to stop caring whether or not people think I can't paint or print. I'm going to stop caring about whether or not my instructors think I'm wasting my talent or my money or whatever. I'm going to paint what I want, I'm going to print what I want, and that's that.

I have a sign on my desk that says "What would you do, if you weren't afraid?" It's time to actually do what I would do if I wasn't afraid and stop caring about my grades. Yes, I'm fine with failing my last two senior classes at the Academy. I'm not going to graduate anyway, so what do I really have to lose? Not much.

sketches

just sayin'

really really quick sketch

~15 min, all photoshop.

I watched The Dark Knight a few weeks ago (again), and besides me walking around annoying Eve with the "wHy So sERIouS??" line all the time, I've also been working on some logo prelims for a sketch comedy troupe. Thus, besides the craft fair I'm putting on, my brain has been all about clowns.

Anyway, I slept early (~12:45ish) and am now feeling overloaded with things to do before I go to work at 12:30. So, I wanted to throw up a sketch and get back to work.

Also, I taught the Japanese Stab Binding class last night at Paper Source, and although we didn't get through as many stitches as I wanted to, I think everyone took away a good deal of basic stab binding knowledge and hopefully they can apply it to many more books.

NY ice cream can't be beat

So my friends in NY have started up their own little company that sells artisian ice cream via delivery service. How fucking cool is that? So besides being completely jealous of them coming up with such an amazing idea, I am also super inspired to hurry and get my shit together and get some of my projects up and out into the world.

Anyway, you seriously need to check them out, and if you are in NY, you are a FOOL to not sign up...there's only 50 spots so hop on that shit ASAP.

Quick Studies, first of many

So in a pretty unbelievable stroke of luck, my Quick Studies class is not only taught by Craig Nelson, but also my Tomotsu Takashima. Holy frickin' crap, this class is awesome.

Anyhoo, I just figured I'd post a 60-minute study I did today. Yay for posting new work! Yay for a awesome semester! Now I just have to get all my crap together for my silkscreen class tomorrow!


Acrylic on canvas board, 60 minute pose.

Lameness with lack of travel

It saddens me a bit to think that I'm practically the only one out of my group of friends from college that hasn't visited any of my other friends who have been sprinkled throughout (although a bit generously in New York) around the country.

I'm also one of the few friends (Eve being the other) that hasn't made it out to visit my old roommate who is now living in Shanghai.

Granted, we're probably the only ones in school who are still working retail to barely pay for rent, food, and art supplies, but it does raise the question of where my priorities in life are.

I have been incredibly lucky to have a group of friends who understand how hard it is for me to find time to get out and visit/hang out (especially when it involves a trip that lasts more than a few hours). Whether I was running a theater group or going to school/working 7 days a week, they've understood that I don't have the luxury of taking a few days off and flying out someplace.

I'm trying to start up a business (multiple businesses, actually) and it sucks, but it seems to take up all my time. So, basically, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who is still my friend even after the years (holy crap!) of not seeing each other, or me not hanging out with people even in the Bay for months on end.

It does make me wonder if I'll ever really "have time" though. If it's not acting, then it's art, or writing, or organizing a craft fair, or working on a design project, or illustrating, or redesigning a website or (eventually) having book signings and gallery openings. I guess I just have to make time, then.


Anyway, on a bit more cheerful note, I finally picked up Issue 18 of Hyphen, where my illustration stands happily (if not totally proudly) on page 16. Woo!!!

100th post! Illustration Friday - Wrapped

It's a wrap for the wrapped rapper.

So this is about 5 days late, but with all the craziness last week getting ready for the SF Zine Fest, I think I have a valid excuse for waiting on this one.

Anyhoo, E and I have decided to really step up our game after all the great feedback we got from the Zine Fest. I think that if people had come to the zine fest really expecting to spend money (like people going to APE or Renegade do) we would have done even better.

Eve even sold one of her Illustration 1 paintings! Seriously, how many students sell the VERY FIRST assignment of Illustration 1 done in gouache? Not many, I'd expect. Anyway, I sold a painting, a few prints, and Eve made up some nice digital reproductions of her paintings. We ended up doing fairly well, and we're weighing our options about attending APE as an exhibitor this year. We shall see if the budget allows.

It was really great to see people that I haven't seen in a while, and it was awesome meeting tons of great new peeps! I managed some sweet trades (esp. Cough zine #6 and Sean Logic's Myspace Swindle zine - both highly recommended and done by cool-ass people) and our bookbinding workshop was an overwhelming success.

Anyway, we've been overhauling our Monkey + Seal site, so go check it out, as I'll probably be blogging over there much more than over here. Updates go up there MWF. Peace!

Woo!

See this painting? It (among others) is now SOLD, baby!

So tonight Eve and I met with a couple who just moved into a new place and wanted some wall candy. Through friend of a friend, the guy heard about us and wanted to buy some art...and he did!

As embarrassingly noobish as this may sound, it's nice to finally have someone buy your art who doesn't already know you.

Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere, right?

So last night I had a dream about working at Paper Source and having someone buy a shit-ton of ribbon and gift cards, and I was struggling to find the right gift cards under the heaps of ribbon. What a fucking nightmare that was. I've been thinking, is PS the new TR for me? I hope not, for my sanity's sake.

Also: I will still be posting here, but I'll be posting at least Monday, Wednesday, and Friday over at the new blog: www.blog.monkeyandseal.com. Eve and I are getting seriously about this art biz, for reals.

Now, off to sleep. Work day 5 of 6 (in a row) incoming.

Illustration Friday - Modify

The damage they would do, they realized far too late, would be thoroughly irreversible and would be the cause of their own demise.

Quick sketch (1 hr or so) in Photoshop CS3. Much to work on, yet it's almost 3am so I'm off to sleep.

This is like the best thing ever

My recipe (Yelp style) for Miso-marinated Eggplant

Enough people wanted this recipe, so here it is.

Miso-soaked eggplant over rice

Anyway, you need (for 1 big eater and 1 small eater):
-1 medium/large eggplant
-enough white miso to coat chopped up eggplant (~3/4 cup or so, the more the saltier)
-sugar (enough to do a good coat of the eggplant twice, so like maybe 4-5 tablespoons?)
-sake (about 1/2 cup)
-soy sauce (see instructions)
-3 large cloves garlic
-1 large onion
-1 package tofu
-1-2 green onions (not necessary, but I like it for the slightly different flavor than the onions, plus it gives it some color)
-some cooking oil
-rice

Directions:
So you COULD do the whole pressing-the-eggplant-between-paper-towel etc. to get the bitterness out. I say "fuck it." Just chop that bad boy up into about ~1/2" squares.

Throw eggplant into bowl/tray/container. Dump the miso onto the eggplant, then pour just enough soy sauce to sort of lube up the miso so that it spreads easier. Toss the eggplant, then add the sake to further dilute the miso. You're basically making a sake/soy sauce/miso soup, but you don't want it too liquidy. The consistency of melted ice cream should be good. Sprinkle enough sugar to coat the entire surface area of the top layer of eggplant. Mix, then cover and let sit.

Wash/soak your rice, put it in the rice cooker. Don't worry about the eggplant.

Start cutting your onions/garlic. Dice the garlic, chop up the onions however you like. I do the green onions sorta big so they stand out a bit (but I really like green onions).

When your veggies are chopped, stir the eggplant up. At this point I'd probably do another sprinkling of sugar over the eggplant. I just thought that maybe brown sugar might be good?

Anyhoo, I went and worked on my website for a while, so I'd just let everything sit for another 15 minutes or so. Alternatively, you could probably do the 15 minutes first, then chop the veggies if it weirds you out to have chopped onions and garlic sitting on your cutting board.

So I came back, washed my hands, and popped a frying pan on the stove. I set it up for medium-high heat. Oil goes into pan, along with garlic and onions. When they start to get a little cooked, stir up that eggplant mix and dump it in the pan. Proceed to stir. I got lazy, so after the eggplant was partially cooked, I added the green onions and tofu in, mixed it up a bit, covered it and turned it down to medium-low heat and ate some cookies.

Bam. 5 or so minutes went by and I went back and taste-tested the dealy. It seemed almost done (you don't want to overcook the eggplant too much, otherwise it gets really mush-like, which is cool if you're into mush like I am, but for others, maybe not so much) so I turned off the heat and while I set up the streaming TV show to watch with dinner, I let the eggplant cook a bit more. Serve it over rice, but be warned, this sucker is salty as fuck. I mean, miso + soy sauce? Get some water, pronto.

Anyway, I hope this inane recipe works for you, and I apologize if it doesn't. I really need to start measuring shit out.

Special in the Etsy store

So I updated www.monkeyandseal.com and started up the blog at www.blog.monkeyandseal.com.
Updates will be happening at least 3 days a week (as opposed to the sporadic posting here).

Also, the Jackalope print (3-color serigraph, edition of 26) is being sold for the next few days at a super-reduced price of $5 (even shipping got discounted a bit). Hurry up and buy these things!

In another slightly un-related topic, I got a promotion at work! Woo!

On the subject of style

So the idea of style (I think I've written about this before) is still one that I can't wrap my head around. I feel like every so often I pick up a new medium, or a new format, or a new style of illustration/painting/design, etc., and I get really into it for a while. Then, I just get tired of it and want to do something else.

I don't know if this has some sort of strange block going on, or some primal defense mechanism about success or failure, but it can get really frustrating sometimes. I know the road to success-it's shit loads of hard work and following your dream. But what if you don't know what you want?

I want to be a well-known artist that can live off his art. Cool, main goal set. But I feel that's such a broad goal. Realism? Art Brute? Lowbrow? Comics? Graphic Design? Wtf.

I know that "a style will find me," and I've only been doing this whole art thing seriously for two and a half years, but damn, it's frustrating.

I wish I had the motivation/drive like Gue to sit down and hammer something out for 2 weeks straight. If you check out his piece, that shit is dope. I've had a class with that dude, he's awesome and he works hard. I feel like I'm waaaaay too distracted these days to even attempt a painting that takes more than 6 hours to finish.

I feel like a lot of the cognative dissonance that is going on in my head right now stems from the fact that I know that if I paint/draw/create in a manner that I love, I'll make it. But I feel like I don't even want a certain style at all. I like having the freedom to do a series of paintings that are super loose, stupid, and are painted really quickly like this one:

but then I also sometimes enjoy sitting down, taking a bit more of time, using reference and thumbs and color comps and all that stuff and coming out with something more refined like this:

which admittedly is not the best example of a more finished piece of work, but the point should be clear enough. And then, I got all into screen printing last semester and did stuff like this:

which I guess isn't too unlike the way I currently do my pen/digital coloring illustrations, such as this example:

And then, of course, there's also my more abstract, visceral, stuff I've done:

which is to say, different from anything else I've done. Sigh. I guess I'll just keep painting/drawing/crafting/illustrating/creating and hope that some day I'll find something that fits.

Perhaps an added anxiety is the fear of not making it. I think if maybe one style became more commercially successful than the others, I would stick with that, but then again I wouldn't want to do something just because it paid well.

I don't know of any artists that "make it" with four or five different styles - they all get really good at one and do that. Perhaps I'll just try and remake the ideal of the renaissance artist, who does varying jobs just to keep things interesting. Guh. Well, I guess I still have 50+ years or so of makin' art, so hopefully I'll find "my style" sooner rather than later.

Illustration Friday - Idle

The tangerine sat there, motionless and waiting, its fate inevitably sealed.

Push Up Challenge

So I've decided to take this one hundred push up challenge and just took my test today. I'm sorta weaksauce after the long lapse in physical activity, so I managed 17 before my arms failed. Since I started in the middle of the week, my workout days are going to end up being something like Thursday, Saturday, Monday. Weird.

Anyway, I also finally got some of my new mat board paintings up on the skagawa (skylar-kitagawa) website which is currently acting as Eve's fundraiser site. It's not nearly like anything I was doing before at the Academy, but that's the way things seem to be going these days.

I also made some stationery sets tonight (pirate stationery, to be exact) but I still need to photograph it and get it up on our Etsy site. It will be on sale at the SF Zine Fest (which, by the way, still has tables, so sign up now!)

Illustration Friday - Tango

Although filled with heat and passion, the tango, for some, is known as the Dance of the Dead.



Marginally finished on time, I wanted to for something that was moody, yet captured the energy of the tango. So, I made vampires (although you can't really tell) doing the tango so fast the lady vampire's shoe is sparking due to the friction.

New work

So while I've been working on a complete update/overhaul/redesign of www.rickkitagawa.com, I've been changing up my painting style. Long gone (for the most part) is the pursuit of classical realism.

Now, I'm painting 100% for myself, which means quicker, dirtier, more visceral, and with shitloads of poorly painted words that (in theory) add to the piece in ways that a pure image would lack. I've always been a fan of words and art (hello comics and graphic novels) and I think they can be used to tell stories that either just art or just words can tell (although in my case, I'm not sure if I'm achieving this lofty goal all the time, or just being obnoxious...either way is fine).

So I'll shut up now and just show some of the art. They're painted with acrylic paint on black mat board ~3"x4".

Illustration Friday - Hollow

Quick and dirty sketch - I think a lot of the mark making and the roughness of it sort of adds to the piece though, so I kept it in.

The small girl and her magical charm is the only hope for the hollow being that has been following her and plaguing her classmates, feeding off their fear and insecurities.

Illustration Friday - Shaky

Ug, drew this two weeks ago, didn't get a chance to scan and color until today. Anyway, everything seems a bit Shaky about this one, from the support beams to the precarious situation the acrobat is in. Looks like the cat has her routine down, but she seems pretty upset that her show partner doesn't.

Art school for us?

So Eve and I aren't 100% sure if we're going to be able to go to art school next semester. I think I might be able to take just 2 more classes before I have to drop out. Sooo, I came up with some creative solutions, and decided to peddle my art, my talent, my crap, and my labor (for a certain price). Anyhoo, check out this little site I made to help fund Eve's last year of art school. She's worked so hard to get where she is, it would kill me to have her put off her last year when she's so close to getting the final few classes she needs.

Me on the other hand, well, I've been doing this little very non-traditional paintings (as in, very poor draftsmanship...my inner illustrator/Academy voice speaking) that I LOVE and I'm sort of okay with not taking any more classes. I definitely still want to take a few more, but I'm pretty good. Anyhoo, you can read more on the site. Check it out and buy some stuff!

Illustration Friday - Drifting

After her escape, her heart was finally at rest. She smiled until the very end...

A Three-toed sloth

A three-toed sloth, as per requested by Kipps. Enjoy the sloth madness.

In other notes, I'm nearly done with my illustration for Hyphen magazine. I'll post the final once it's published (and I make sure it's cool with the magazine).

I hope to have my Illustration Friday illustration done by tomorrow, as well as some updates to the website, and maybe a painting or two up on Etsy. We shall see, however, if all this pans out.

Privilege - an analogy

So I was over on Feministing Community reading this post about privilege, and I came across this in the comments. Despite a few typos and such, this is such an awesome analogy about privilege that I had to blog about it myself. Pretty awesome stuff.

I am a fan of the starting line/road race analogy to explain privilege to those who use the "free will pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument.

Imagine the starting line of a race with runners representing different groups in society lined up and a finish line in the distance.
Your boyfriend would say 1.) That everyone starts at the same line because the only that matters is whether you don't call yourself a victim and perservere and 2.)Anyone who just keeps running and doesn't give up will finish the race.

The race starts.

The white, heterosexual cis-man can just run towards the finish line and he'll get there based on who he is: how in shape he is, how long he feels like stopping, whether he runs or walks or jogs. There will be relatively few obstacles outside of his own ability.

Other groups however, have hurdles to jump over, and people yelling on the sidelines that they shouldn't be running or that their technique is flawed or that their uniforms are inappropriate. Some of them are not allowed to stop running even if they are too tired to continue and some of them can't afford water to stay hydrated or proper shoes to run in.

Still others were pushed back starting line farther away from the first one because they didn't "qualify" to run in the original race with everybody else.

None of the runners gives up or complains because they are "choosing" to "overcome their circumstances and not be victims" but does that make the race fair or all the runners equally privileged/disadvantaged?

Choosing not to be a victim of circumstance is a character trait, not having to face any circumstances that could make you a victim is privilege.

Hope that helps!

-by ferocita72

Illustration Friday - Unfold

What story will unfold for our intrepid heroes as they speed along the narrow ice bridge to the Castle of Frozen Doom? (cue brooding atmospheric music).

Old, old, old Illustration Friday topic

Contagious...cuz it's a zombie yawning...like, contagious as in viral infection, as well as how yawns are contagious??!?!?! Get it? Sigh.

*edit - btw, sorry Ill Friday people. I didn't realize that the Ill.Fri. doesn't categorize all the posts, so even though I went to the correct topic, it still shows up the the most recent topic area. Whoops.

Illustration Friday - Cracked

Yeah, I missed the deadline for this, but I'm illustrating it anyway. Pretty self-explanatory.

Illustration Friday - Craving

Somebody's craving some good ol' fashioned organic brains, fresh from the source...

SF Zine fest, Lavel

So Eve and I have been on the job hunt recently...anyone know of anything of interest? We'd especially love to be paid to draw or paint, but any art-related jobs would be swell.

The SF Zine Fest is coming, and I'm in charge of registration, so get over to www.sfzinefest.com and register! We're got an awesome special guest coming, but I'm not sure if it's been released to the public yet, but you'll definitely want to make it out if you're into awesome comics with social messeges.

Also, I'm working on beefing up my portfolio and I've written out a rough outline for my first narrative comic. It'll hopefully be at least the length of a normal comic book, and I'm thinking might be in that size format as well. I'm also working on the script for a second narrative, and perhaps if I get ambitious I'll be able to get them both published at the same time.

For some reason, I've been taken to Googling weird phrases that are generally only relevant to me and Eve, as they are done in silly couple-language. I did figure, however, that if I post them on my blog, and eventually enough people stumble upon it, when I google them in the future, I will find this entry and be happy.

Thus, my self-indulgent post begins:
"I Lavel you!"
"I lavel you panda bear"

Anyway, that is now on the internet and I will let google's spiders do their thing.

New prints are up/congrats Eve!

Above are the thumbnails for the piece below, titled "Bullies." Tons of crappy compositional studies, then some character development to get the right look. There's 2 more pages of character studies, but they are even more lame than these, so I'll spare you. Anyway, the finish is a 27-run (even though you can't tell) Edition Varie' of 5. I think I ended up only spending ~45 hours on this one.

Finish: "Bullies" 30" x 19.5" 27-color serigraph on Rives BFK.



This lovely 1-color print, inspired by the old-skool Dave Chappelle Rick James skit (I can't believe that was like 3+ years ago!) . Anyway, fornicate your couch with this print and buy it today!
Here's a 3-color serigraph, cleverly titled as "Squid." I'm still not sure if I like doing one giant print with a massive number of runs, or many smaller prints with fewer colors. I guess I have to sort that out before I start silkscreen 2 next semester. Anyway, the squid is on sale here.

So Eve's parents were up over the weekend, and we played some Settler of Catan, cooked, and checked out Eve's illustration and puppet which made it into the Spring Show. Her puppet won an Honorable Mention (which is sort of interesting, as there was a 1st place for puppets, but no 2nd or 3rd place to be found...) . Anyway, it was nice to see the future in-laws again and congrats to everyone who got something into the show!
Eve's stopmotion puppet (it can move!), about 1'x4'. Note the fancy ribbon in front! Woot!

New wedding invites up!

So over at the little yeti cave, some new(ish) wedding invitation designs are finally up! Yay actual pictures to sell!

Other than that, hopefully I'll be posting some of the paintings/prints I finally got around to photographing recently. However, the cleaning of the apartment (in past days known as hosing down the pigsty) takes priority, as the Eve's parents are staying with us on Friday. Eep! Time to clean!

Kelly Tsai is awesome

So I totally haven't done anything related to poetry in like a million years, but I recently found out that Kelly Tsai, an AMAZING Asian Am spoken word artist is on twitter, and she tweets haiku daily. I started following her, and two days ago she laid this one down:

vampires enter /
only when invited in /
recognize your worth

Damn. Anyway, check her stuff out, she's super dope!

In other news, Little Yeti/Rick is also on twitter, and you can find me here!

Also, in yet more news, I'm finally done with the semester! I'm going to hit up the SFAI MFA program's show tonight, then head out to Lake Pardee for the weekend relaxation and to celebrate my mom's birthday. Hopefully I'll do some watercolor landscapes, take some photos, and just chill out by the lake.

New print, no show for me

So this little cuties is available on my site's store here (aka www.monkeyandseal.com) for a whopping $13. Not too bad for a 3-color serigraph on cardstock.

Two new prints will be hitting the store soon, a 3-color squid, and a 1-color "fornicate your couch" homage to Dave Chappelle.

In other, more lame-ass news, I didn't get into the Spring Show, period. It does make me feel a little bit better that the rumor is that since they're so limited on space, they were really biased against large pieces (while most of the pieces that might have gotten in were pretty large). Even so, I just have to keep on doing what I'm doing, and even though I won't be in the Spring Show, such is the life of an artist.

On the other hand, Eve did get accepted into the Spring Show for Illustration! She submitted 4 pieces, and we're not sure how many will get hung, but even though I'm bummed about my own situation, I'm super excited that her stuff will be in the show! Woot!

Anyhoo, even though I have class tomorrow and Friday, I don't have any finals due (I finished them early to submit to the show). Well, even though I didn't make it, at least now I'm pretty much done with the semester. So now I'm taking a nice break and playing some Settler of Catan online. My handle is Little Yeti, so if you see me, join up on a game!

Drama hog

So for kicks I decided to go and randomly re-read an old blog post from my other, now dead to the world blog.

I won't say what I wrote, nor when it was, but I can say this : god damn I am such a dramatic stage-hog. I can say that I have (I hope) most definitely grown up a lot in the past 4 years since writing that post. Who knew so much could happen?

New portfolio site! In other news, epic fail.

Self-portrait: Pastel

Seascape - Oil on canvas - 16" x 20"

So the good news is that thanks to the awesomeness of "monkeyboy" from the Airtight interactive forums, I managed to work out most of the kinks from my personal site and it's up and running. Now it's just some design issues (uh, the header a bit big, anyone?) but at least it's functional.

www.rickkitagawa.com. Come check it out!

In other, lamer news, I submitted 5 pieces to the Spring Show for fine art and got a total of 0 of them in. Sigh. I was most disappointed that none of my silkscreen pieces got in, but I have to admit they're more pizazz rather than super technical printing, so if that's what I'm being judged on, then so it goes. It just means I have to get better at printing while keeping the looseness that I like. Anyhoo, I'll try and photograph all my submissions this weekend and get 'em up here and in my store soon.

Judging for the Illustration portion of the show is today and this weekend, so it's my last shot to getting in this year. Cross your fingers.

So I thought about it this morning, and as much as it eats shit that I didn't get in this year, I realized that in the end, it's not about the Spring Show. I asked myself "would you still go to art school even if they didn't have a show? Would you still go to art school if you knew you weren't going to get in next year?" I would, and even though I still damn well want to get into the show next year, it's really about learning. I have the rest of my life to get into shows and craps (it would be nice if it happened right away), so I should just focus on getting better.

I'm still going to try and sell the crap out of my artwork, but such is life.

Also, so I fell short of the $600 in 10 days goal, but I did manage to get a graphic design gig that made about half of that. So who knows, maybe this whole "setting goals" thing works.