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.

Art on sale, finals madness

So I finally put some paintings and prints up on our Etsy site at www.monkeyandseal.com. Huzzah! I'll be posting some more affordable art up very soon, as I just did a large 3-color edition of a jackalope and some quick monster paintings on paper that will go up as soon as they're scanned/photographed.

Anyway, I just had a 22-hour day yesterday, 15 of those either screenprinting or painting, then another 8 of those doing an illustration and a wedding invitation design. When these roughs are finalized, I'll post more.

So this swine flu thing is just stupid, btw. People die of the regular flu everyday. No biggie, and when you can report the individual cases on a daily basis, IT IS NOT A PANDEMIC!

I want to start coughing on the bus and then muttering "..hmm, that chorizo I just ate isn't sitting well..."

Anyway, time to do some painting, then I have a meeting with a wedding client. Yosh!