Interview with: Rohan Eason

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art, artist as brand, artwork, digital media, drawing, illustrator, illustrators journal, innovation, social media, technology, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio

Rohan Eason Interview

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

My Parents are both artist, my grandad was a sign writer and my uncle was a Royal Academician, so there was certainly the seed of an idea, that art was something in- spiring and imaginative, something I could delve into even from a young age. I remember in primary school I was drawing fully formed figures and faces, while the other kids were still not joining the sky to the ground, and that was because I was so interested in looking and recreating what I saw. I remember my teachers at High School never knew what to do with me, which way to steer me.

Rohan Eason Illustration

They were brought in one day to the heads office, with my art teachers, and the discussion, was as to what i wanted to be, an artist or an illustrator. The idea I couldn’t be both didn’t make sense to me,  that there was even a difference didn’t seem something I would ever concern myself with. To      be an artist was my dream, it was the poetic journey through torment and discovery, love and hate, as an artist I could make illustrations or artworks, they were one of the same. Its an age old argument, and  I think I will always think of myself as an artist first, but the work I make professionally is illustration, and thats the difference.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I was born in the industrial city of Middlesborough, on the same road as the football stadium, Ayresome Park Road. It was a great community, every- one knew everyone, doors were open all day. Then we moved to a small town in Lincolnshire, and everyone said I talked funny. I got very quiet and introverted, and didn’t really enjoy the whole school thing. I think most kids are bullied, and i wasn’t any different, bullying comes in different forms, and I just happened to be the sensitive type that couldn’t really deal with the constant push and pull of friendship circles. My parents both worked so I would often not go into school, instead staying home and drawing or reading, anything to not face a school day.

But those days made me more interested in look- ing at life from a removed viewpoint, in a way there was no other way I could look at it, as I had removed myself. When i reached art school I had already decided that there were two ways to live your life, take part, or take notes, my artworks were my notes. A constant running dialogue, a description of what the other people did, but not what I did.

When I left University with an art degree, everything fell apart, life came flooding back in, and I couldn’t cope. The idea that I would go on just making art, came crashing down, when I couldn’t afford food or rent. Music got me through this time, companion- ship with my band mates helped me find a structure and drive again, and I was finally creating something that related to my life, while I took part in it.

From Rocker to Artist, how did that happen? And how did you progress?

It was around 2002, I was playing lead guitar in a band called Cyclones, having left University with a BA HONS in Fine Art, and having not really done much artistically for a while, other than I would sometimes do a quick sketch. The girlfriend of the lead singer, Rina, saw a drawing one day, and suggested I come see her boss, who owned a high end fashion boutique in Notting Hill. The owner Annette Olivieri, decided I had a little some- thing, and chucked me a bag in white kid leather, “tattoo that” she said. So I found pens that would work on leather, and I tattooed the bag. The draw- ing was black and white, and involved very detailedflowers and hair. Annette was impressed and gave me a leather jacket to do, so I did, this time with a horned girl, feather wings and flowers centre back. From there I went on to create fabric prints and artworks for Annette’s label for the next 2 years. I did private commissions, one was sent to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and later created my own glove collection, with the first pair of dress leather gloves going to Yoko Ono. Two shoe collections followed and a spattering of other commissions, but I believed my career lay in fashion. This didn’t last long, fashion is not the nicest industry to work in, and I quickly felt like I was back in school, the bitchy back stabbing, the creative theft, and the broken promises, left me a thoroughly broken man. The upside was the pens I used for the leather, Rotring Rapidograph became my pens of choice, and the style I developed in this period with it’s intricacies and magical detail, and obsessive qualities became my illustrative style. My first children’s book came soon after I quit fashion, a collaboration with the great writer Geoff Cox, and music mogul Stuart Souter, saw a wonderful return to children’s books of old. Dark and frightening, with a psychedelic undertone that resonated with the peers around me, Anna and the Witch’s Bottle was critically acclaimed, released through Black- maps Press, it was a beautiful cloth bound hard- back, and it finally brought me attention for my artwork.

For More…

 

Interview with: Jack Foster

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artist as brand, artwork, cartoon, cartoons, digital painting, drawing, illustration, illustrator, illustrators journal, innovation, Levinland studio, painting, pen and ink

Interview with Jack Foster

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

When I was in first grade, the teacher, Sister Rose, asked the class to draw a self-portrait. I drew myself walking home from school. At a parent teacher conference, Sr. Rose showed the picture to my mom and told her that she thought I had artistic talent because in the picture, I was leaning forward as I walked against the wind and my tie (yes, we wore ties to school back then), was blowing over my shoulder. Sr. Rose told my mom that knowing how to draw was just a small part of art. Perception was the rest. So my mom hung my self-portrait on the fridge and told me what Sr. Rose said. I knew that I liked to draw, but the encouragement I received from my mom and Sr. Rose ignited a passion in me that has never died down. My dad on the other hand was a hard working sheet metal worker and tried to discourage my art and pushed me to focus on a trade where I could make money.

To this day, I’m not sure if the motivation to succeed as an artist came from trying to prove my mom right, or trying to prove my dad wrong.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I was a very quiet kid, the eldest of seven. We were raised just northwest of Chicago. I loved baseball. Every day during the summer, we would walk around the neighborhood with our bats, balls and mitts, gathering the “regulars” together for a game. In grammar school, I was a bit above average, but excelled in art and would volunteer to do posters for library events. In the evenings, my family would gather around the TV. I would take the Sunday paper comics, which I guard- ed with my life all week, lay them out across the kitchen table and trace them or draw them freehand. Drawing a daily comic strip for the newspapers was my dream. So naturally

some comic strip artists became a big influence in my art, which is still obvious in my work. Mort Walker was my biggest influence in my early days. He drew a strip called Beetle Bailey and another called Hi and Lois in which he teamed up with Dik Browne. The strip is still going today being produced by his sons Brian and Greg along with Browne’s son, Chance.Of course Walt Disney was a huge influence. I read his biography at a young age and wasfascinated by him. And the fact that he grew up in Chicago was even more of a “draw”. When I was about 13 years old, the Muppets came on the scene. I loved how Jim Henson could get his puppets to show facial expressions with just eyebrows and a mouth. Jim Henson has really influenced the large eyes, bright colors and char- acter design in my work. 

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

Throughout the years of submitting  to the newspaper syndicates, my  style changed drastically. I would  send outpacket of 30 strips every other week, and when they would be rejected and returned, I would redo the strips, altering my style a bit. Some rejection letters would be the standard “No, thanks. Good luck.”  But once in a while an art director would give me some advice. One director pointed out that my characters were “too cute” for the   comics. So of course, I tried to ugly them up a bit, but they kept coming out cute and kept getting rejected. I submitted for 25 years, so you could imagine the metamorphosis my style went through. Ultimately I landed on my own style which was the most comfortable for me to draw, made the most sense to me and was easily recognizable.

There isn’t any of your political artwork on your site. Why is that? What inspired the change in the direction of your work?

Yes, you are right. In my pursuit to be a comic strip artist, I took a job as a political cartoonist. It didn’t pay much, but I thought it was a foot in the door. I did it for a few years, how- ever, even though I have a good sense of humor, satire didn’t really suit me. I have filed away all my political cartoons. Maybe one day I will revisit them. Even though my politi- cal cartooning stint didn’t open any comic strip doors for me, working for/with an editor did give me valuable experience in the publishing world, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything

For more of this interview

Interview Excerpts: Drew Bardana

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art, artist as brand, artwork, digital media, illustration, illustrator, illustrators journal, innovation, social media

Interview Excerpts: Drew Bardana

“I’d love to be able to support myself fully with illustration sometime in the near future. That’s the ultimate goal. It takes time to make a presence and build a client base. Patience has been key. I’m having fun with my illustration journey and learning lots along the way.”

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

It was in high school when I started taking art seriously and considering it as a career option. An advisor at a portfolio reviewsuggested illustration as a focus for my work. I took the advice and pursued illustration at Pacific Northwest College of Art. My family was very supportive in the decision.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I grew up outside of Portland, Oregon. I was creative as a kid, always drawing and making things. Like most 90’s kids, I was very inspired by Pokemon and began drawing all of the characters.

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

My style has naturally developed over the past 5 years of working as a freelance illustrator. I’ve put effort into keeping the way I draw and create digital illustrations consistent. This allows my work to be recognizable and ensures clients that I can produce different kinds of images with the same look and feel.

Illustrator Drew Bardana

You do a lot of actively colorful art work. How did that happen?

It’s a stylistic choice, for sure. When I first started right out of school, my color sense was super dark and overly saturated. I was working for some weekly newspapers and magazines and noticed that my illustrations were printing too dark. I then started using brighter colors and liked the results much better.

Has the computer affected your work? Do you work traditionally and digitally?

I work in both traditional and digital media. Right now I’m working more digitally than traditionally. It’s much faster when trying to meet deadlines! That being said, I’ve created digital brushes using my own art marks. I’ve also created a large collection of drawn and painted shapes and textures to drop into my digital work. This allows me to work digitally, but keep the hand drawn elements, too. It’s fun to take a day and make a mess of traditional media and then scan it all in to use for later.

For the entire interview follow this link

Interview Excerpts: Chuck Pyle “Master Illustrator”

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artist as brand, artwork, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation, painter, painting

Interview with Illustrator Chuck Pyle

Charles Pyle was born in Orange County, Ca., and spent most of his growing up years in Bakersfield. He always drew as a kid, for himself and friends. He did illustrations for his high school yearbook and cartoons for the spirit posters. His art heroes were in comics and especially political cartoonists, which he hoped to become.

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

It has always been a calling. You get picked by the muse in that it sets you apart from everybody else in class. It was what I was good at, though I did not assign much value to that for a long time.

Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

A Mixed bag. Dad? No. Mom? Sort of. Teachers? Some worried about me, some encouraged me, but let me draw and paint. In junior college, my art teacher, Ray Salmon, said that I should go to art school and suggested that I visit the ones in San Francisco.

What kind of kid were you?

Painfully shy, goofball.

Where did you grow up?

Bakersfield, Ca.

What were your influences?

Mad, comics, sort of National Geographic Tom Lovell stuff, lots of books.

Your style is very uniquely classical. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

It came out of discovering Norman Rockwell and Dean Cornwell at the end of art school. Prior to that I tried many approaches to being an illustrator, which was my major. Art should feed you was my attitude.

You’ve worked in a couple different styles. One traditional and one that is more caricature. How did that evolve and was that an asset for you or a problem for art directors?

Caricature was first. I wanted to be a political cartoonist like Thomas Nast, or Pat Oliphant. I want- ed to bring Richard Nixon down. In art school, my teacher, Barbara Bradley suggested that I ‘try illus- tration’ and then spent three years broadening my horizons. The caricature side yet lives, though.

I notice you do a lot of life drawing studies. Do you do that on a regular basis?

Life drawing is key, keeping a sketchbook of the world around you is key to developing a way to process the world around you into what it needs to become in your pictures.

For the entire interview go to The Illustrators Journal 2020 Spring Edition

Interview with Illustrator Coulter Young

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art, artist as brand, artwork, drawing, illustration, innovation, sketching

The Best of The Illustrators Journal 2019: Interview with Coulter Young

Here are some excerpts from the colorful interview we had with Coulter in our Holiday issue in 2018. Our entire interview with him can be found here

 

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

I was always drawing as a kid but did not consider art as a career option until I went to college. In high school I was on the ski team and I raced slalom. My motivation at that time was to go to college in Vermont, ski and study Recreational Management. I arrived at Green Mountain College in July to meet with the Dean of the school and take a aptitude placement test to find out my interests. I placed 95% in the arts and 5% in Management. The Dean advised me to become a Fine Arts major for the first semester and go from there. With my parents blessing that was how I was directed down the path of the arts.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I have been told that I was a laid back kid that you could bring anywhere. Just as long as I had a case of hot wheels with me I was good. I grew up in Mahopac, N.Y. a small town in Putnam County about an hour north of NYC. My extended fam- ily lived in Westfield N.J. were I spent time there during the holidays and my summer was spent down at the Jersey shore. My influences when I was young were 1970’s superheroes, matchbox, Hot Wheels and Kiss.

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

As a student of Illustration we were all encouraged to come up with our own style to set us apart from another. I did develop a style in my early days and as I recall I wanted to incorporate the elements of water, wind and fire into my artwork. If you look at my earliest portraits you will see a lot of swirling colors and organic shapes.

I’m curious about how you choose what to work on. I imagine your process takes a long time to finish so it’s an important deci- sion to decide what to work on. What’s does your process entail?

Start to finish. Can you give us a short step-by-step? Outside the realm of Illustration were the subject is chosen for you I take on a different process. I am inspired by music. I will choose a musician that has a look that intrigues me and sketch them with pencil and paper for a few days. Once I have a sketch that I like I will create a large painting of the sketch and then start making decision in my head about the color scheme. Once I have that part done I will paint until the painting is done. I like to paint for about 4 or 5 hours at a time.

What do you do to promote yourself and get work?

I try to have at least 2 shows a year to keep my work in the public eye. Other than that I just promote my website http://www.coulteryoung. com

 

 

Animated Personality: Aglaia Mortecheva

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animation, artwork, cartoonist, digital painting, illustration, innovation

Animated Personality: Aglaia Mortcheva

 

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

I always loved drawing, but remember deciding to become an artist at age seven. I had just started school andhated it. Mostly hated getting up so early! I was under the impression that artists don’t have to wake up early or go to school.I was sorely mistaken! My family always supported me. My parents are artists and very bohemian. They hardly noticed what I was doing, but were supportive to a fault. Still are.

 

 

What kind of kid were you? What were your influences?

I was very independent kid and quite wild. I grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was a communist country back then, very closed off and repressed. But as kids none of it affected us too much.My parents made sure to shield us from a lot. My biggest influence was my dad’s amazing library of art books and literature. Nothing was off limits, there were no age restrictions and no censorship. Also, my grandmother Daphna’s crazy stories, very picturesque and saucy. She would embellish them daily, depending on her mood.

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

It came naturally, but I lost it along the way, especially during my years in art school. I went to art school in Bulgaria. It was very rigid – Socialist Realism all the way, as you can imagine. My weird creatures and playful color pallet were not appreciated.

It took me awhile to get the confidence to bring my natural style back. Illustrating children’s books and working in animation as a character designer helped a to free me and get back to what I love.

You work in a few different areas like children’s books,
animation, magazine illustration, etc. How did that happen?

Mostly it all happens by accident and also very naturally… 

I am  a very curious person and I can’t say no to work. I say yes to all kinds of projects. Often I will take any little job that comes my way, at least half of the time it leads me somewhere interesting and brings more opportunities, and more contacts with great people.

I just think of artistic challenges as adventures. Some people jump off cliffs and swim with sharks, I face a blank canvas and it thrills me.

How has the advent of the computer affected your work? Do you work traditionally and digitally?

I work both ways. I love the new technology. More fun tools to play with and it keeps me learning new stuff. Also, I have become a bit of a clean freak and minimalist in my old age, so when I work
digitally I like how clean my studio is! Also it keeps my toddlers from eating the paints and drinking the solvents…which is very useful! 

 

For More of this interview go to https://issuu.com/lonfellow/docs/ij.best_of_2018_v2

ARe wE craZy enOUgh Yet?

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artist as brand, artwork, childrens books, digital media, digital painting, illustration, levinland, this week in digital media on blogtalk radio

Getting work as an illustrator is an art in itself. I read this article today “Majority of illustrators don’t earn enough to live from, new survey shows” http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/creative-business/majority-of-illustrators-dont-earn-enough-live-from-new-survey-shows/

I realized this fact for myself back in the early 80’s when I made the switch to being an art director, all the while creating art for my job and my own pleasure. This went on for 2 decades until I left my job as Senior Creative Director and art department head at Warner Bros Syndicated TV. I banked enough money to pursue my goal of being an illustrator. However it still is not an easy task. I continue to struggle with this daily. Along the way I bought, renovated and sold homes in Los Angeles which ultimately led to becoming a real estate agent…albeit a creative one which now supports my artistic endeavors and frees me up to explore art and illustration deeply.

What I’ve come to terms with is there are very few illustrators who can support themselves on art alone, and there’s nothing bad about that. In fact it may even help them become more rounded as a business person and more social.

 

Artist Renaldo Kuhler: An Imaginative Master

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artist as brand, artwork, drawing, illustration, innovation, sketching

The land of Rocaterrania imagined by artist Renaldo Kuhler over 60 years revealed for the first time in print

This story is reprinted from “Its Nice That”

Every now and then trolling about the Internet you come across something truly illuminating. This is one such story and artwork. – Editor

Words by Brett Ingram, Tuesday 05 December 2017

Over the course of 60 years, Renaldo Kuhler (1931-2013) created the imaginary land of Rocaterrania. The artist imagined and drew every facet of a fictional society and country. Aside from Kuhler’s day job as a scientific illustrator at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, he created a world of his own, going so far as to invent a religion, language, alphabet and even an independent movie commission. Brett Ingram created a feature-length documentary in 2009, Rocaterrania, and now, for the first time an extensive book featuring 430 illustrations has been published by Blast books. Here, with kind permission, we show some of Kuhler’s drawings and publish Ingram’s introduction.

One wet autumn day in 1994, my car broke down and I had to take the city bus to get to my studio in downtown Raleigh. Several stops along the way, a flamboyant giant who eventually would alter the course of my life boarded the bus.

He perched on the front seat by the door and with a booming voice commenced an impassioned monologue extolling the virtues, joys, and privileges of public transportation. The automobile had made a pigsty of America’s paradise! Public transportation preserved natural resources and reduced air pollution. Travelling by bus was more sociable than riding alone in a car. He spoke to no one in particular, and that seemed just as well with the driver and fellow passengers who looked away uncomfortably, occasionally stealing a voyeuristic glance.

Six-foot-four and stout, with a bushy white beard and ponytail, he wore a custom-tailored uniform of indeterminate origin: a sleeveless Kelly green suit jacket with wide, black, notched lapels, epaulets, and brass buttons, a matching suit vest, yellow flannel dress shirt, a fleur-de-lis Boy Scout neckerchief, and tight-fitting knee-length shorts (“cotton-blend lederhosen”). His epaulets and neckerchief slide appeared to be hand-carved and bore matching insignia, a singular design integrating arrows, stars of David, and geometric Navajo patterns. White knee socks with Scottish garter flashes, black wingtips, gold wire-rim spectacles, and a plain black baseball cap completed his ensemble.

Beulis (left) and Eutie, roommates, two of the sexiest neutants who ever lived

Kahn family and guests relaxing at home. Clockwise from lower left: Ajax Gombardo; Kahn’s sister Mrs Harris; Kahn’s sister-in-law; Kahn’s half brother, Gorghendus Tse-Tsung; Kahn; Janet Lingart; and Kahn’s youngest niece, Lotsen Tse-Tung

His accent was nearly as inscrutable as his outfit. Was he German? British? A New Yorker? His diction was old-worldly, formal, and bursting with boyish enthusiasm for the seemingly mundane. It was as if he had just dropped in from another planet and was enthralled with everything he encountered on Earth. Indeed, he was from another place. But where?

At a stop near the capitol, with a wave and a cheerful “Good to see you fine people,” he disembarked. I felt compelled to follow him, but it was cold and drizzling, and I had work to get to a few stops farther away. Who was that guy? Would I ever see him again?

Two years later, I was hired to develop media for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. On my first day, my supervisor took me and two other new employees on a tour of the place. Coming to a small annex building filled with taxidermy, mammal skeletons, and jars of preserved specimens, he announced, “And here is our scientific illustrator, Renaldo Kuhler,” and he opened the door to a cluttered office the size of a walk-in closet. Turning to look up from the microscope at which he had been studying the skull of a pygmy shrew was the man from the bus!

Renaldo was entirely self-taught in scientific illustration, he said, and he attributed his draftsmanship to his ability to see the world in detail. “Most people look, but they don’t see,” he said. As Renaldo continued, explaining the craft of subtly depicting in ink on paper those defining qualities of a specimen that a photograph cannot capture, my eyes were drawn to a number of illustrations thumbtacked about his office.

Rendered with a clinical precision bordering on the obsessive were drawings of androgynous humanoids in form-fitting uniforms, like Renaldo’s attire, of indeterminate origin. Labeled with the names “Eutie,” “Beulis,” and “Peekle,” notated with anatomical dimensions and dates of revision, combined with handwritten bus schedules, grocery lists, and important phone numbers, these drawings clearly originated outside the purview of Renaldo’s job description.

My co-workers seemed uncomfortable in Renaldo’s presence, much like the bus passengers two years earlier, and they seemed not to notice or care about the peculiar illustrations that had riveted my attention. Renaldo brushed off my question when I asked what they were. “Oh, they’re nothing, really. Just doodles. They’re actually neutants, that’s what they are. They’re neither men nor women. I just wanted to see how well I could draw human anatomy.” Human anatomy? No, I thought, there’s more behind those drawings than that. Much more.

The language of Rocaterria is a composition of three languages: Spanish, German and Yiddish

Rocaterria’s nine provinces and major landmarks

Conversing with Renaldo required a great deal of patience. Repetition, digression, non sequiturs, neologisms, and inside jokes shared only with himself pervaded his rapid speech. Direct eye contact was rare, and he had difficulty deciphering figurative speech or reading subtle facial expressions. Sarcasm escaped him entirely. He took people literally at their word, as if he were reading a transcript of their speech. He frequently referred to himself using the royal “we” and “us” because “it’s comforting, like maybe someone else is there,” he explained, and he talked aloud to himself because he “once read in Reader’s Digest that people who do have greater success working out their problems.”

He affectionately nicknamed friends and co-workers with monikers such as “The Churchillian,” “The Frontiersman,” “The Colorado Gold Miner,” “Banana Pie,” “Civil War Girl,” “The Kovacsian,” “Rocket Ship,” “Chuck Wagon Girl,” and “Tough Backyard Boy.” Mine was “Paste” for a couple of years, then “Spike” ever after, for reasons never made clear.

In turn, Renaldo was often characterised as “eccentric,” the catchall descriptor for behaviour deemed outside the norm. The truth is that Renaldo was unabashedly, unapologetically, incorrigibly himself as a moral imperative, an expression of the purest form of honesty. Artifice or guile seemed beyond him, and he was largely incapable of detecting it in others. His was a life in which, at every turn, he had fearlessly chosen to be himself, letting the chips fall where they may—and without hurting anyone else in the process. No small feat.

Kahn family and guests at Ciudella. Clockwise from lower left: rabbi; Josef Kalienko; Janet Lingart; Kahn; Gombardo; Kahn’s wife, Viola; and children of one of the cooks at the Ciudella. Kahn liked to distil homemade vodka and smoke mullein from a hookah.

Bird’s-eye view, sewage treatment plant outside of Felsenbad, with railroad access to haul sludge

I left the museum in 1997 to pursue documentary filmmaking. Between other projects, I followed Renaldo around with a camera, not knowing where it would lead but trusting his story would be as compelling to others as it was to me.

His studio apartment reflected a deficiency in housekeeping, to put it kindly. His living/bedroom was a repository for everything he’d accumulated since moving there in 1969, all of it smelling of pipe tobacco; his kitchen was a veritable museum of the history of canned food. His television was always tuned to Turner Classic Movies, the volume so loud it could be heard from the street.

His obsession with neutants was even more apparent at home than at work. Illustrations were taped to his walls, plastered throughout his diaries, and adorned the cover pages of tax preparation booklets addressed to his accountant. A mannequin stood in one corner, remodeled with paint and laminated paper into a life-size rendering of Peekle, Renaldo’s favorite neutant.
When I asked about a small, faded painting on his mantel, he picked it up and said, “We call this Janet Lingart. She’s a famous dancer in Rocaterrania.”

I’m no geographer, but I was pretty sure there was no Rocaterrania on any world map, not even prior to the dissolution of the USSR. The neutants, it turned out, were also from Rocaterrania, and Renaldo’s curious uniform, one of dozens like it hanging in his closet, was the official dress of the Rocaterranian Conservation Corps.

The gate had cracked open. Once inside, I would discover a strange and beautiful garden that had existed in secrecy all along, right under the noses of his family, friends, and co-workers, the roots of which lay in his teenage years in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Trapped on the rustic KZ Ranch in a small valley 9,000 feet above sea level, with bickering parents who’d never understood him in the first place, a young Renaldo sought escape from his isolation by inventing an imaginary country. He named this rocky terrain Rocaterrania, after his boyhood home of Rockland County—and he’d been illustrating its history ever since.

The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler by Brett Ingram is published by Blast Books. Text and images courtesy of Blast Books.

Prince Alberto de Leon, the first premier of the Provisional Republic and President Albert Mikolinksi

Tahoe Activist Artists Fight Back

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Art Activism, artist as brand, artists, artwork, digital painting, drawing, illustrators journal, innovation

I had the pleasure of talking to Shelley Zentner yesterday, a fine artist whose work is clearly steeped into the classic form as embodied by DaVinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and others.

Shelley and other artists living in Northern California’s winter paradise, Lake Tahoe, CA have banded together to show their resistance artistically to the current government’s policies as personified by Donald Trump. The Illustrators Journal’s Gregg Masters was at a recent meeting of the creative group and was inspired and encouraged by this tiny faction of brilliant people who are taking on the powers that be they only way they know how to do it. Through their ART.

Both Gregg and I are looking forward to working with Shelley and the group and look for our up coming coverage of Shelley and the Tahoe Activists Artist Group in the Winter Edition of the Illustrators Journal

Give Up? No Way!!

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artwork, illustrators journal, levinland, Maya Angelou, Obama, perseverance, Sisyphus, Thomas Carlyle

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvirəns/

noun

1. steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

   “his perseverance with the technique illustrates his single-mindedness”

   synonyms:

   persistence, tenacity, determination, staying power, indefatigability, steadfastness, purposefulness;

   The word for the day is Perseverance. Who said this would be easy? It’s not. I’ve talked to enough successful illustrators and artists to know they too have their trials and tribulations.

   What they do have that you may not is the will to continue despite all odds. They know that success, however you see it, is obtained by contsnace and vigil work habits. No matter what the outcome. If you have a goal and you focus and work towards that goal you will get there.

   Here are some great quotes from successful people who know what it’s like to persevere

   Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

   Thomas Carlyle

   You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

   Maya Angelou

   Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

   Calvin Coolidge

   Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

   Jacob A. Riis

   It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

   Albert Einstein

   I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

   Og Mandino

   Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

   Barack Obama

   When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

   Harriet Beecher Stowe