Artist of the week: Matte Stephens

do-nothing owl
Originally uploaded by matte stephens

I stumbled upon this artist by chance just browsing through grain edit one day. I must say this is great stuff! A wonderful palette and whimsical creatures and people abound. Yes, it makes me think of Ben Shahn and Paul Klee! These paintings are so much fun.

commission bear monster painting
Originally uploaded by matte stephens

I love what he does with word balloons, and his shapes are so pleasing. Need I say more? You can check out the work of Matte Stephens at the following places >>

Matte Stephens on Etsy ~ Interview with Matte on grain edit ~ Shop at Velocity ~ Matte's web site.

Fobbed

Once upon a time, I was going to begin a new comic strip about a robot and then unexpectedly my house was robbed, so I did not begin this new creative endeavor. I was mad, then I was sad, then I thought about how in the world I can hope to replace all that stuff! It was overwhelming. Now after a fun filled weekend, I have come to the conclusion that ~ it's only stuff. It's not important compared to the well being of my family. It sucks, yeah. But there you go.

Artist of the Week: Mary Blair

I have become recently smitten with the work of Mary Blair. I am a new fan, and have just discovered just how amazing her art is. I recently acquired an old library copy of The Up and Down Book, and was blown away. Mary Blair rocks!


Mary Blair (October 21, 1911 - July 26, 1978), born Mary Robinson, was an American artist best remembered today for work done for The Walt Disney Company. Blair produced striking concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Her style also lives on through the character designs for the Disney attraction It's a Small World, as well as an enormous mosaic inside Disney's Contemporary Resort. Several of her illustrated children's books from the 1950s have never been out of print, such as I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss. Blair was honored as a Disney Legend in 1991.

So you'd like to learn more out more about Mary Blair, well Wikipedia is a good place to start. You can also check out some more of her work at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive and at Cartoon Modern.

In which a robot is named...

M bot! This is my alter ego turned upside down and shipped ten thousand years into the future. Beginning this friday, I will post one comic strip a week featuring the wordless adventures of M bot. This might be a story for children, or all of humanity, its hard to speculate at this point. In the graphic below we see M bot as he was for over 1,000 years, just standing still in sleep mode on the moon. What woke him up? And how did he find his way among the stars? Stay tuned for the prelude on Friday, Sept. 27th.

Shiver me timbers!

Ahoy, me Hearties & Shiver me timbers! It's TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY! Avast ye scurvy dogs, & batten down the hatches, it's only once a year ya bilge rats!

Don't ask me how it all started, I don't know ... but it's on my Matt Groening Life in Hell Calendar and that's good enough for me.

Remembering Raves

This is not a post about crazy dance parties from the 90s, but rather a post about my old web site, Platypus Pranks that was online from 1996 - 2001. I found an old cd with some of my files from the olden days of html. I thought I would put them back online for history's sake, but these things have a way of falling apart so I am attempting to fix all the graphic links to the correct places and rename files and make it work but it's getting late ... so check it out, For AMUSEMENT ONLY ~ Raves > Retrofitted Enthusiasm.

Artist of the Week: Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935)
Female Portrait, c. 1928
oil on plywood, 58 x 49 cm.
Leningrad: State Russian Museum

Something about this painting struck me as simply profound at first glance. I found this print at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, about a year ago when they got a ton of prints from the UC Berkeley History of Art dept. They had scanned all their images for archiving, and no longer needed the prints apparently. I was just rummaging through hundreds of images and selecting a few that I liked for display at home.

Here is what I found out about the artist, Kazimir Malevich...
(Excerpt taken from the Web Museum Paris) Born near Kiev; trained at Kiev School of Art and Moscow Academy of Fine Arts; 1913 began creating abstract geometric patterns in style he called suprematism; taught painting in Moscow and Leningrad 1919-21; published book, The Nonobjective World (1926), on his theory; first to exhibit abstract geometric paintings; strove to produce pure, cerebral compositions; famous painting White on White (1918) carries suprematist theories to absolute conclusion; Soviet politics turned against modern art, and he died in poverty and oblivion.

Pencil Fever!

On Wednesday, I began to notice how nice it is to write and draw with a pencil as opposed to a pen. Then I decided to shout out on my daily dally, the following ~

Lately, I am really enjoying the simple pleasures of pencils! I know it sounds completely daft, or obvious, but just go ahead and sharpen that Dixon Ticonderoga or your Mirado Black Warrior, and just start doodling with abandon on a piece of crisp white paper. This is your day's mission, to enjoy one of life's simple pleasures and find the joy within doing so. Go on then, hop to it! You'll be glad you did.

This morning I wrote some more on the subject:

Still on the pencil tip. The question is, what is the world's best pencil? Now this being completely subjective, I thought I would check the inter-web for opinions and test out some of the pencils deemed worthy of such praise. This is my quest and my journey to find the best pencil ... I have always been fond of the Dixon Ticonderoga, but I am eager to try some others for comparison. First on my list is the Mirado Black Warrior, followed by California Republic's Palomino pencil. I have also heard great things about the Faber-Castell Grip 2001, and talk of the legendary, no longer made, Eberhard Blackwing #602 is just fanatical. This will be fun, now it's off to my favorite local stationary store!

Well it's 4 pm, and I have a whole new collection of pencils to play with now. The stationary store only sold 1 brand of pencil, the Ticonderoga of course. So I went to SUPER LONGS and got some Mirado Black Warriors and then went to Dick Blick and got myself a Faber-Castell Grip 2001 set complete with eraser and pencil sharpener. I must say I was wary of the Triangular shape and the size of this pencil is a bit on the large side. But it is an amazing pencil! I am also enjoying the Mirado Black Warriors as well, they are awesome. WOW, that's a lot of words about pencils ... Enough already ~ it's friday, time for fun!

Pondering the Panda Party

It's time once again, to behold some incredible art by Sally. This picture is very festive and colorful. This is a fun image, a party under the moon! Just for fun, I shall now attempt to interpret what is happening here ~ it looks like the bird, the cat, the dragon, and the panda are all lined up in front of some sort of booth or gate where a fellow with big hair is standing. I particularly like the festive lanterns or piñatas that are hanging above the animals in this drawing. The artist took time and used fine lines to create them. Feel free to comment below, and tell us your ideas about what's going on in this picture. And after school, I will interview the artist and get the inside story of the panda party. So stay tuned for more fun later today!

4:20 pm Update:

According to the artist, this is a picture of a Dragon parade at night. The cat is jumping on a trampoline, notice the black action lines under the cat's legs. The animals are watching the parade as the dragon passes by. The "fellow" is actually her brother Xander getting water from a well. His hair is a mess because he went to bed and then woke up at night.

Well there you have it.

Riding the happy horse to freedom!

On Sunday, I went to the Alameda Antique fair with my friend Jason. My mission was to take photos with my digital camera, get through the day without losing Jason (which always seems to happen because of our different interests) and refrain from buying anything besides lunch. It was beautiful day and I took a ton of great photos, and I only bought 1 item, a Cool Cat Pepsi glass on sale for $5. I have just added the photos to flickr ~ so take a look-see!

Alien Invasion

As much as I have wondered about life in a distant galaxy, and the possibility of communicating with aliens, there's the thought that we're just not ready for them, creeping into these ponderings. Having just re-read Watchmen for the third time, in anticipation of the new film coming next year, I can't help but wonder, if life on other planets would change our behavior as humans. At any rate, I thought I would share this new graphic of my little alien friend, let's call him Udu, as a glimpse into what my new web site is going to look like. I am coding up a storm of html and css and having a blast trying to bend that code to my will. Well enough web design rambling, instead let us discuss more cool movies like City of Ember and Burn After Reading.

Improving Ice Bat's Army

Over the Labor Day weekend, the kids and I decided to finally fix up the clubhouse. We've talked about it for a long time, but now Summer is all but going and gone now. So I went and bought some Myhtic paint at Scout Hardware, Celestial Sky Blue by the way. Then we emptied out the place, and got to work. It looks so much better now! And if need be, the kids can even "camp out" and sleep in there. Plus we added the Ice Bat mural, because the club is called Ice Bat's Army, which Xander named after Dumbledore's Army from the Harry Potter series. And combined it with Ice Bat, his favorite Ugly Doll character of all time! Perhaps some day we will add more murals. Or perhaps have a special Ice Bat Army Open house party ... Who knows? We have a lot of ideas!

Check out the Flickr set for all the images and more. Our new flickr home is http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtxs/