in good company (a few upcoming projects)

Two things:

1) The kickstarter for Uncanny Magazine just went live with announcments about who some of the cover artists will be:

Cover art! @juliedillon @galendara @matthewdowsmith Carrie Ann Baade and Tran Nguyen! https://t.co/BBivE9I9LA
— Uncanny Magazine (@UncannyMagazine) July 29, 2014

2) I'll be joining a great lineup to do some internal art for Shadows Over Main Street, a forthcoming Lovecraftian anthology:

Galen Dara @galendara, Vincent Chong and Paul Carrick add their artistic talents to the #mainstreetshadows. http://t.co/MTDnBZlx1l
— Doug Murano (@muranofiction) July 22, 2014

VERY COOL STUFF with VERY COOL CREATORS.
 

OMG a World Fantasy Award Nomination

Last night social media informed me that something was astir... It sounded like this:

I am breaking my Twitter exile to greet the ff congrats http://t.co/DMh76Xputv @galendara @JohnPicacio @JohnJosephAdams @IreneGallo
— Charles Tan (@charlesatan) July 10, 2014

and

FUCK YEAH GALEN DARA WORLD FANTASY AWARD NOMINEEEEEEEEEEEEEE @galendara
— Christie Yant (@christieyant) July 10, 2014

Lo, the World Fantasy Awards nominations had been announced and OMG I'M ON THE BALLOT. Along with  OMG AMAZING artists Zelda Devon,  Julie Dillon, John Picacio, and Charles Vess!

I'm still kind of speechless about it, so here: Since the award is a bust of H. P. Lovecraft, some hopeful tentacles from me:

illustration for A City On It's Tentacles, for Lackington Magazine

And here, a glimpse at the other artists on the ballot; clockwise from the top left: Zelda Devon, Julie Dillon, John Picacio, and Charles Vess:

And now I need to see if  a trip to Washington D. C. is in the works for me.  Hugs and Kisses!

awesome IMC insecurity, inspiration and such and such

The other day, Jon Schindehette wrote a post about art envy, insecurity, and comparisons.  An excerpt:

"About half way through the the Drink & Draw I had a really authentic conversation with one of the better artists at the event…and guess what he was worried about - folks looking at his sketches and judging him for it. That suddenly put my entire life in perspective. I realized that it didn’t matter how good I got, how secure I was in the knowledge of my skills - I would always look at artists that I admire and compare myself to them....

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do better things - to be a better person, but it is an issue when we are comparing our insides with someone else’s outsides." ~read more 

 It feels fitting to lead off talking about Illustration Masters Class 2014 with that, because, dammit, feeling insecure about my work that was the story of my life for the whole week. And you know what made it a tad bit more bearable?  Hearing Mike Mignola mention his own insecurities as an artist. So, Yes, thank you to all the incredible artists there at IMC (both faculty and students) for being BRILLIANT and supportive, and also for being vunlerable.

Now here's a few pictures :)


My preliminary sketch; this week I wanted to take something I had worked out digitally, and try my hand at traditional mediums: Here's my preliminary digital sketch (was calling this my attempt at the "fairy warrior" assignment)

So it begins:

day 1 crit session. Iain McCaig, Rebecca Guay, Scott Fischer, Mike Mignola, Greg Manchess, and Irene Gallo

my station, before the paint was poured

Meanwhile... some of who did what where:

Greg Ruth demo's mad sumi ink skills

James Gurney captures Allen Williams in action

Donato Giancola being brilliant

Mike Mignola breaks down storyboarding

Scott Fischer explains his analog photoshop process

Rebecca Guay demo (watercolor and gold leaf ink)

Then, back to what I'm attempting:

wherein I transfer my drawing and begin splashing stuff on it.

After multiple variations and methods and experimentation (and frustrations with trying to revive old paint handling muscle memory) here's what came of it.

"blood faerie"... finished. Watercolor, pencil, ink, and acrylic paint.

Well, and also, I was able to grab Rebecca Guay, Julie Bell, Irene Gallo, Zoe Robinson, and Lauren Panepinto and host a spontaneous recorded discussion. It was a brilliant brain trust and the conversation was amazing. More coming about that soon. (Hint: WOMEN DESTROY FANTASY. Hell yes.)

Rebecca Guay, Julie Bell, Irene Gallo, Zoe Robinson, Lauren Panepinto, and I. WDF roudntable

Women Destroy Science Fiction, in my hands.

What was waiting for me when I got back from the Illustration Masters Class:

women destroy!

It's a hefty tome of awesome and you can get it in paperback here, or ebook here.

It happens to include the work of four other artists who it was my delight to work with. Li Grabensetter, Elizabeth Leggett, Christine Mitzuk, and Hillary Pearlman.

Now, an excerpt from my interview with them:

"...it feels timely, and personally fitting, that this would be the summer Lightspeed dedicates an entire issue to the enormously talented and fantastically imaginative women working in the field of speculative fiction. The opportunity for me to invite other artists to be a part of the project was nothing short of breathtaking. Li Grabensetter with her beautiful handling of inks and watercolors, Elizabeth Leggett with her brilliant digital renderings, Christine Mitzuk’s rich painterly style, and Hillary Pearlman’s fantastical tinkering bring the fiction in this issue depth and texture. It was a pleasure to work with these gifted and passionate artists who are deeply involved in the speculative fiction community. My favorite part of working on this issue was sitting back and watching their amazing art come in. My second favorite part was getting to know these fantastic creators just a little bit better. I hope you enjoy this spotlight on why each of them does what they do. Which, apparently, is to destroy Science Fiction." ~read more 

And here, a sampling of what they did for this issue of Lightspeed:

Li Grabensetter's illustration for Each to Each, written by Seanan McGuire:

Elizabeth Leggett's illustration for Salvage, written by Carrie Vaughn:

Christine Mitzuk's illustration for The Case of the Passionless Bees, written by Rhonda Eikamp :

And Hillary Pearlman's illustration for Walking Awake, by N.K. Jemisin:

It was a pleasure to be involved with this project, many thanks to Christie Yant for her hard work in bringing this epic volume to life.   Stay Tuned, more exciting things coming with Women Destroy Fantasy and Women Destroy Horror.

(squeeee!)

SFALing 2014 (NSFW)

Well, Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 3 was just the thing. No booth for me this time, I wanted the freedom to wander about about, absorbing the awesome. Which meant I came home with a lot more art this time (heheh, /WINCE). From right to left, top to bottom: Rebecca Yanovskaya, Garrett Johnson, Cynthia Sheppard, Annie Stegg (twice), Steve Argyle, Sara Richard (twice) and Wendy Martin:

SFAL 2014 art haul

Also I came home with sketchbooks from John Picacio and Bill Carmen (!!!) with WIP glimpses, notes and a little insight into all the crazy stuff that happens inside an aritst head. I'll be spending the next weeks swimming through those.

Speaking of.. here's some of what I sketched while inflight between Tucson and Kansas City:

sketchbooky pages, © galen dara 2014

Oh and late night life drawing happened, of course, (NSFW)

SFAL3 late night life drawing. © galen dara

It was just all incredibly... fantastic. Three more artists I have to make note of: Shelby Nichols with her lovely creepy darkness, Britt Snyder with his lush, buttery brush strokes, and Dan Chudzinski for his OMFG brain and bone-filled cabinet of curiosities.

One last thing: Chavant clay. Because they were handing out samples in the 3d area (where all the demo sculptors were making awesome with it). And I spent the whole flight home mushing and molding it. I need to get me some more of that.

making clay stuff on my airplane tray table. woooooo.

Making It, Locus Awards, plus other stuff

Heading off to Spectrum Fantastic Art Live this weekend and I'm really really looking forward to so many things, one of them being the Documentary Making It, about, well, making it as an illustrator. 

Then they posted their promo photo and here's what Irene Gallo noticed about it:

Post by Irene Gallo.

(A lot of really great comments on that FB thread, including mention of a lot of great women and people of color who are "making it" as successful illustrators.)

I'm still looking forward to seeing the documentary. But just, yeah.

Anyhooo... Then a few hours later the Locus Awards Finalists were announced and Congrats to all the nominees! It's a wonderful line up.

But there is this:

Dear Locus Award nominators: It’s been nine years since a female human was in the top five for Best Artist. This is, you know, nuts.
— P Nielsen Hayden (@pnh) May 8, 2014

Which led Julie Dillon to spontaneously tweet a list of 14 amazing women who happen to be illustrators (she did, after all, dedicate a tumbler to the issue.)

Actually... just for my own purposes (and since it's been quite the topic today), here's Julie's tweeted list, with links:

Kirsti Wakelin
Fiona Staples
Ursula Vernon
Terese Nielsen
Lauren Bifano
Rebecca Mock
Becky Cloonan
Karla Ortiz
Victo Ngai
Tran Nguyen
Winona Nelson
Cynthia Sheppard
Audrey Benjaminsen
Lindsey Look

(And that's just scratching the surface. Just today at Tor.com new fiction went up with an illustration by Anna & Elena Balbusso. I love it when that happens. )

It's hard to know how to make note of this all and not have it come off as seeming negative about the incredible artists that are in that promo photo line-up for Making It (Andrew Bawidamann, Brian Ewing, Eric Fortune,Woodrow J. Hinton III, etc)  and nominated for the Locus Awards (Bob Eggleton, John Picacio, Shaun Tan, Charles Vess, and Michael Whelan.) They are brilliant amazing artists. It's just one of those things. That's all.

Well, I'll leave it at that. Except that I'm happy because issue 13 of Fireside Fiction went up today, including the illustration I did for Jonas David's 'Repossession', and because next week a new story by Sofia Samatar is going live over at Lackingtons, which I also got to illustrate.

illustration for Repossession, © galen dara 2014

grist in the artistic mill

Over at Tor there's a lovely write up of what artist Dave McKean has been doing lately: Science, Belief, and an Origami Crab. (via his panel at the SDCC titled: Dave McKean: My Two Years with Dawkins, Christ, and a Small Crab Called Eric:)

So many reasons to like this artist, but this excerpt in particular caught my heart: 

“I’m not a scientist and I’m not a believer, but I’m fascinated by belief.” For [Dave McKean], it’s all grist for the artistic mill."

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my own grinding process, too.

And now, here, a lovely ink piece by Dave:

winged, by Dave McKean

Harry Clarke illustrations for E.A. Poe

Harry Clarke (March 17, 1889 – January 6, 1931). 

Irish stained glass artist and book illustrator. 

One of those books was Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe.  

See all 24 black and white illustration at 50watts.  

(Thank you Wendy, for sharing this with me!) 

Harry Clarke, illustrating E.A. Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination"

 See More...

a job you will love

Erika tweeted this one to me the other day. Most awesome.
Thank you Gavin Aung Than for nailing it so well.
(click on the image for a larger view)

Art Nerd book review: Weirdo Noir

(now posted to the Functional Nerds)

A few years ago, Matt Dukes Jordan compiled Wierdo Deluxe to showcase today's leading lowbrow and pop surrealist artists. With Weirdo Noir, he crawls into the cracks of the lowbrow genre to harvest some of the darker Gothic* works contained therein.

Jordan's introductory essay is a glimpse into the human obsession with what goes bump in the night, and earlier art movements that precursor today's noir creatives. His timeline of dark imagery through the ages is a real treat and he takes pains to place lowbrow art into the context of today's culture, contrasting it with the kitschy and commercial imagery it appropriates.... (read more)

books, sharp objects and Brian Dettmer.

Just found a new art crush: Brian Dettmer.

A book surgeon, carefully carving away pieces of pages, until an insanely amazing discovery is left behind.

"My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception"
~Brian

More Here, here, here, and here.

*wow*

Keith Thompson (::shuddering::)

Featured today in io9: a shuddering glimpse into the work of Kieth Thompson.

"Thompson's crafted a nightmare fuel gallery of necrotic creatures with pedigrees in both science fiction and fantasy."

Viewed here on the left is Lili, who caught my eye for several reasons, one of them being that it resonated with my own proclivity for truncated limbs, distorted proportions, and multiple mammaries.

More at Kieth Thompson's gallery.

Process. (and things I learned from Jo and Joyce)

I just did a guest post for SF Signal spotlighting Jo Chen and Joyce Farmers (they are both amazing, go read the post).

Something I didn't touch on too much in that post but which is HIGHLY applicable to me: Their working process as artists.

Jo works very much the way I do right now: initial sketches with pencil on paper, then scanning it in and creating the rest of the piece digitally. In her panel at SDCC she talked about what that means when it comes to selling art, when the 'original' is just a sketch and the 'finished' piece is a digital file. That's something I've been coming to terms with as more and more the only physical manifestations of my art are throw-away sketches laying around my studio.

And another thing: See here, on Jo's deviant art page.. look down under the image, at her description... That absolutely amazing cover she did for Marvel's Girl Comics no.3 last year... she did it using CS2. I use CS3 and in the back of my mind I occasionally think "I need to get the most current version... then I'll be a real artist." Um, yah. apparetly, latest versions of software aren't required.


Which brings me to Joyce. Joyce created every page of Special Exits with old fashioned pen and ink, using whiteout to make corrections. The pages were never touched by a computer. Very similar to what I was doing last year when I did illustrations for Rigor Amortis and Cthulhurotica. Oh... and also, she was losing her vision. She developed macular degeneration and to combat the effects she had to wear an eye patch and work with her face about 6 to 8 inches from the page. Um, yah... the things I gripe about...




My own working process changed dramatically when a generous friend gave me his old used intuos2 wacom tablet. Whoa, whole new worlds of possibility were created with that gift. The recent cover I created for Fish was done almost entirely in the computer using that tablet. And right now I am hard at work using that tablet to finish the comic Traitors and Tyrants for Monsters and Mormons (a joint project with writer John Nakamura Remy).

Anyhooo... I keep thinking "if I lose my tablet or my laptop, I am toast" But then, I remember Joyce, with her old fashioned pens, and her eye patch. Never say die. (But also, shit, I had better take good care of this tablet and laptop!)

Meanwhile, here's sneak peak at work in progress for Traitors and Tyrants:

Ernesto Neto

I think I have mentioned before that I like organic internal-organ-like type stuff. So of course, Ernesto Neto's installations have a very special place in my heart.

From this article:
"...his materials are gossamer-thin, light,
stretchable fabrics in nylon or cotton. like fine membranes fixed to the ceiling by stretched threads his works hang down into the room and create shapes that are almost organic. sometimes they are filled with scented spices and hang in tear-shaped forms like gigantic mushrooms or huge stockings,sometimes he creates peculiar soft sculptures which the visitor is allowed to feel through small openings in the surface.... Neto’s art is an experience which creates associations with the body and with something organic. he describes his works as an exploration and a representation of the body’s landscape from within."

His work reminds me a bit of Louise Bourgeuois's work. Also that of Magdalena Abakanowicz (w0w, I can't believe I haven't done a post dedicated to her yet. ) And reminds me how much I used to love hanging things from strings, making installations, etc...

For more images of Neto's work, see here, here, and here.

Daniel Dos Santos (and Silvia Moreno-Garcia too)

The current issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine has a great article on artist Daniel Dos Santos who specializes in painting tough girls. Well, I like tough girls too. And the whole article had some great bits about his process, his inspirations, his evolution as an artist, his book covers, etc. For purposes of brevity though, I just wanted to mention his thoughts on the push-pull between digital art vs hand skills, because it's something I've been grappling with myself:

"It's this constant inner battle, and skills versus digital. I think that the love affair with digital is a fad. In twenty years time people are going to miss analog skills. The're going to want to see painting."

Dos Santos uses photoshop for prelim sketches etc.. but for the final product, it's traditional oils that are his medium of choice. I am still in the experimental part of finding the right balance between my hand- crafted works and my digital works. It was interesting to get his opinion on the subject.

Btw, want to see him in action at his easel? Wow. And he puts out one of these every two weeks:

"It takes me two weeks to do a painting, including reading the manuscript, model shoots, and so on. I wish I had three weeks for each painting, but I don't. I have to paint two a month to make a living."

Yes, I have envy. And awe.


Now, random, but speaking of tough girls, I just listened to a wonderfully intense and raw short story, Jaguar Woman, (not for the faint of heart) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I will definitely be looking out for more of her work.

(image source)

Big Bang Big Boom (by Blu)

just.. wow. Have I mentioned I like stop-motion animation? And street art? Here both are used to make "a short [9 min] unscientific story about evolution and it's consequences" (see website)

Keith Haring, Cecily Brown, and Wombat pOrn

Here's two of my favorite artists: Keith Haring and Cecily Brown. You don't get much different than them, Keith having a strong graphic, pop-art comic style, and Cecily displaying amazing painterly expressionism.

I guess this pretty much sums up my own pull between the two styles (sometimes swinging towards the graphic, sometimes swinging towards the painterly). It probably also sums up my own proclivity towards explicit subject matter: Here's Keith's Bathroom, and Here's Cecily's Hard Fast and Beautiful. (WARNING, Explicit!)

I was thinking of both these artists when I drew up this quick sketch on a dare: Wombat p0rn (WARNING, Explicit!)

It isn't a very good tribute to either of them, but at least it put them back to the front of my mind again.

Two things:
1) work to reconcile my 'style'
2)work to uncover the reasons behind my proclivity towards the explicit, so that it's not just a shock-and-awe gimmick.

One more thing: tonight I spent an hour or so painting, and it was wonderful.

RIP louise Bourgeouis (who died yesterday at age 98)

“I have a religious temperament, I have not been educated to use it. I’m afraid of power. It makes me nervous. In real life, I identify with the victim. That’s why I went into art.”
~Louise Borgeois (a professed atheist)

to quote directly from the NYTimes eulogy: "it was her images of the body itself, sensual but grotesque, fragmented, often sexually ambiguous, that proved especially memorable.... Fragility and fierceness were, in fact, the twin poles of Ms. Bourgeois’s art."

some glimpses of her art:
-a ginormous spider
-a whole room full of her drawings and sulptures (LOVE her fabric creations)
-a bed full of..? (more about that show here)
-the ever graphic fillette (and the mapplethorpe portrait of her carrying it under her arm)
-matching parts for parts w/ fillette, Janus Fleuri, also hanging by a wire.

And here's a video: Louise Bourgeouis, The Spider, the Mistress, and The Tangerine.

James Jean

A friend of mine tipped me off to James Jean and while there's a lot I should say about how much I love his extensive and diverse body of work, I simply must post his tree of life, because... wow...

pods and critters and things that come from inside us

We come into this world sticky and squishy, squeezed through a tiny orifice located extremely close to the orifices intended for sewage elimination. Weird, huh? I love it. So, since it's on my mind, here's a few artists and artworks that touch upon these slippery slopes in delightful ways.

~Tom Karlsson's dark comic Tell Me About The Mountain in From the Shadow of the Northern Lights, a disturbingly twisted pregnancy narration by a true mad genius. (I was too lazy to scan in a page from the book and also not entirely sure of copyright laws concerning that, however you can see some of Tom's work here).

~Eraserhead, 1970's surrealist-horror film with all things embryonic and fetal becoming the stuff of nightmares. (here's the chicken dinner scene for a brief sampling.)

~On the not so disturbing just simply amazing side, a wordless comic by Tyler Stafford; Trees and Mountains , bodies plopping from seedpods, re-birth, new life... Love it!

~And, Just because, the 1970's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, plus cameo by Kevin McCarthy, Awesome!)

Muwahahahah!!!
Makes me want to revisit my vulva drawings, or my egg shell pieces. Or just pull out one of my anatomy books and do some studies of internal organs.
Anyhow, for your viewing pleasure, my latest sketchbook entry (brains, wombs, fingers...)