Archive for the ‘art influences’ Category

new year new art goals

2009 was a very slow year for this blog. There was so much change in my personal life (new job, tons of freelance work, marriage, house remodeling, husband’s job change to full time freelance) that I needed more time to myself until I got back into a normal rhythm before seriously blogging again. (more…)

people like bees

My illustration portfolio TinaPoe.com was featured on CSS Illustrated!

what’s in a name

Now that I am married, I am also changing my name to Tina Poe. I went ahead and redirected my portfolio website TinaVaziri.com to TinaPoe.com. (more…)

Creative Bees Design Studio

A while ago I removed all of my design work from TinaVaziri.com, and I’m finally getting around to moving it over to Creative Bees Design Studio. (more…)

come up for some air

I’ve done away with the under-water scene for both my portfolio website and blog now. I’m still adding a few finishing touches to the blog, but I am enjoying the light and airy feel! So come on by and visit!

new bee portfolio on tinapoe.com

Yay! It’s finished! The new TinaPoe.com portfolio design is up. (more…)

new web design coming

It seems that I am constantly changing the design of my portfolio at TinaVaziri.com, but I do rest about six months in between! Many new changes are coming soon to TinaVaziri.com, I’m moving my design work out of the portfolio and into my new design business website that I have named Creative Bees, that website is currently being designed as well. TinaVaziri.com will only host my illustration portfolio, I’m excited about that because it will let me showcase it clearly. This blog will also receive a design update once the new TinaVaziri.com goes up. I have a little teaser preview for you guys here.

Leonard Cohen at the Long Center

Last night, David and I went to the Long Center, to watch Leonard Cohen kick off his U.S. tour in Austin on April 1st (no joke). His voice was, of course, incredible, and his energy at 75 years old, inspiring. His musicians and backup singers were also more than perfect. I’m so glad we got to see him last night, all I can say is “Hallelujah”.

always changing my look

I love updating the look of my portfolio site http://tinavaziri.com. Trying out new code always excites me. I have a whole new horizontal layout, which is a big trend right now. There are some really fun and easy to view qualities about horizontal scrolling websites, reducing the number of clicks it takes to get to the content you want to view is a big plus. I’ll keep it around for a while until I find the next look I will want to try. Be sure to drop by and take a look!

pixar in the bay area

One of my favorite parts of our trip to San Francisco was getting an otherwise impossible to obtain private tour of Pixar Animation Studios, it helps to have wonderful creative friends in high places.

All working artists!

Below is very important information regarding the two bills in Congress dubbed the “Orphan Works Bill” that will radically change Copyright protection, if passed.

This was originally posted on the (New) Member Forum by Jon Hecker:

Time to write! Please take action now! These proposed changes to the copyright law affect YOU! I just sent three letters to my two Senators and district Congressional Representative. I laid out the moving story of how this bill would affect our livelihood. As independent artists, we receive no pension and we view ownership of our copyrights as our primary job security. It is critical that we as artists battle this proposed legislation.

In case you’re not too familiar with the issues at stake here, this webcast interview with Brad Holland about the Orphan Works act bill, offers insight to the ramifications of this bill if it should pass. The mp3 webcast interview about the Orphan Works act bill can be heard at:
http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

The changes in the copyright laws proposed under the new “Orphan Works” bill have been released and it will affect your creative career!

Write your Reps and Senators.
Refer to Bill H.R. 5889 when writing a House Rep.
Refer to Bill S. 2913 when writing a Senator.
Same Orphan Works bill, different #’s for Senate and House.

Go to: capwiz.com/gag/dbq/officials to get the contact info for your state’s officials.

This affects all of us, painters, photographers and designers alike and is getting fast tracked to get through now.

Please take time to write! Fax or snail mail in addition to any emails you’d send too please.
A sample letters is below at the end of this email.

For more info on this matter go to: www.illustratorspartnership.org

This was posted by Stella on “The Art of Licensing” Yahoo group and sums up the consequences if this bill passes:

“If we do not stop BOTH Orphan Works Bills NOW-
It does not matter that you created it.
It does not matter that you have a copyright mark on it.
It does not matter that it is registered in the Library of Congress.
It does not matter that you signed it.
It does not matter that you put a big fat watermark across it.
It does not matter that you put digital signatures on it.
It does not matter if you get a lawyer- you will get a pittance determined by the offending company and no reimbursement for legal fees.
It does not matter even if you do as they demand and pay to register it in the new registries that they will form – there is no real punishment for using your work for profit.
It does not matter that you do not want your image used on a product or to promote an agenda.
They can even sell your prints and make money!”

From Illustrators Partnership and posted on the Art of Licensing Yahoo Group by Stella too:

Here is a sample letter you can edit and send to your local and/or state representatives and Senators. These letters work best when you make your point clear, do not curse, and make them aware that you live in their district or state and can vote for or against them.

Feel free to make this personal with your story on how the Orphan Works legislation will harm your income. Stories are incredibly powerful.

Faxes work better than e-mails, as e-mails are too easy to delete.

Congressman/Congresswoman/Senator (their name)
(their contact info)
Fax: (their fax number)

Re: The Orphan Works legislation Bill # (either H.R. 5889 or S. 2913 depending who you’re writing)

Dear (their name),

My name is (your name) and I live in (your city, state). After reading about the Orphan Works bill, I am shocked and outraged that this could happen in our country.

This Orphan Works legislation, if passed, will severely impact my income and life as an artist. Not only will it give license for others to legally steal and use my work for free, it will be virtually impossible for me to afford the time and money to register my creations in all the potential new registries.

(your personal story if you wish. It should show hardship under the new bill)

I strongly urge you to vote AGAINST the Orphan Works bill and protect my rights, my copyrights, to all that I have and will create.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

(your name)
(your address)

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERY ARTIST YOU KNOW! THANKS!!!

Thank you for joining with other creative image makers to get your voice heard!

Jon Hecker

And check this out www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

hanging out with middle schoolers

In the spring semester, each 7th grade student at Dahlstrom Middle School writes and illustrates an original book to give to students in Uganda through the Books of Hope program. To help with the illustration process, the middle school asked me to come in for an all day school visit. I was able to walk the students through the process of illustration starting from simple thumbnail sketches to finished pieces of work.

It was a lot of fun to see their interests grow in illustration and sketching!

I told them of the importance of drawing daily to improve their skills and afterwards found out that several of the students had started carrying around sketchbooks since my visit. It was so much fun and such a satisfying experience.

monsters

Quick concepts for 13 illustrations I’m doing for work. The quick flat color was not approved, thankfully, for lack of time to really flesh it out this way. Would have been nice though to experiment more with flat color on these characters as I was recently inspired by http://mojizu.com. These will be detailed B/W finished drawings.

scuba bee contest winner

The Scuba Bee art contest is now over and the winner is Froggy! The entries were judged by David and Froggy’s entry was the most playful and fun, congrats Froggy!

The prize for this contest is an 11″x17″ acrylic and color pencil painting on bristol board.

Stay tuned for the next art contest going up soon, with a brand new prize!

beautiful characters

Watching Grandma knit

I have many secret inspirational influences that I keep hidden away and only share with my most trusted confidants. But my amazingly talented friend Adam Osgood turned me onto this one, so I can’t claim it and keep it hidden like the others: The Sartorialist is filled with captivating photographs of real people wearing beautiful clothing in day to day life. The images have a magic of their own, a little different form the usual magic that I dream about and incorporate into my work, this is real life. The images are truly breathtaking.

I want to take many of these characters and place them into my paintings, but until then, you must see the gorgeous work Adam has already done with this inspiration.

hands bees and cats

Three coincidences:

• David and I love talking about religious history. We were discussing the story of Lilith, and her lack of mention from the Bible. Several hours later in the day we turn on the History channel and see a show on stories omitted from the Bible, with the first story being about Lilith.
• On the same show, there was also a story about Aseneth. She was seeking purification when an angel sent a swarm of bees to surround her and to build a honeycomb around her mouth. The story was beautiful and similar to the sketch I had finished a week ago, before learning about Aseneth.
• I was admiring the album cover artwork for The Bedlam in Goliath by Mars Volta and asked David if he knew who the artist was, he didn’t. The next day a friend of mine sent me a story about a very dark painting and how stupid people thought it was haunted. David and I looked up the artist and found out it was the same man who painted the Mars Volta album cover.

I’m going to do a painting for Aseneth.

working portrait, water girl

David and I have been working on a new portrait together. I love collaborating with David because he has strengths that I could never posses, and with our powers combined, we are Captain Planet! Or just really freakin’ awesome at arting. I have been sketching in my new moleskin book recently and I’ll be posting more artwork to bypass my bloggers-block.

By the way, those of you who wanted to participate in my scuba bee contest, you are breaking my heart. I’ll keep the contest going for a while longer to give you guys time, how about a month. I would really love to give my old paintings away, they do no good gathering dust in my garage.

Now for some art: My initial sketch for the portrait.

David’s perfect interpretation of my sketch into a flawless line drawing.

My coloring work, this is the part of a painting that makes my heart swell and sets everything right in the world.

soft launch of tinavaziri.com

The redesign of tinavaziri.com is not complete, the flash version of the site is not live yet, BUT I uploaded the HTML version so that you guys can wet your pallets on its delicious flavors.

The HTML version will be accessible to anyone even when the Flash goes up, and is made for those who don’t have Flash capabilities, are on mobile devices (the iPhone and iTouch don’t have Flash yet, boo!), or just want the simpler version.

http://tinavaziri.com

Check out the new work in the portfolio!

unfinished

• I’ll be judging the High School VASE art competition again this year, on Saturday. It’s fun to be on the judging side of the competition after having participated all four years of my High School education. It will be nice talk to some up and coming young artists.
• In handbag news, I decided on a feminine laptop bag that will keep my baby nice and secure while still looking stylish.
  
• And there are funny blogs on the internet that are good to laugh at. Like this one about white people, which made me realize that even though I’m not technically white. I am REALLY REALLY WHITE.

birthday week ramble

I’ll admit it, I’m a little scared of driving in the rain, and a little scared of driving at night, and a lot scared of driving in the rain at night. But I braved it last Friday night and went out to the movies with David and his coworkers. It would be the start of a very long and wonderful weekend. Saturday morning I woke up early, went in for a trim, and the stylist put some cute 50’s style waves in my hair. Off to brunch with David, we sat outside under heaters (hey, 60 degrees is cold for Texas), ate slowly, talked. We then went to this small art gallery to see a piece by one of my favorite illustrator-turned-fine-artist, James Jean. The piece wasn’t that impressive to me, but it felt wonderful being around real artwork. I had missed it. In high school and college we were surrounded by all kinds of work every single day, we’d go to galleries often and soak it all in. Get inspired. I can’t believe we’d let it slip by and not noticed what we had been missing.

We walked around the giant Whole Foods downtown before going home, where I passed up ALL of the free tasty samples being shoved in my face. I felt so energized that I worked on my website redesign for a few hours without needing to rest. I’m really excited about the shiny new tinavaziri.com, keep your eyes peeled, I’ll let you know when it goes up. We went out to dinner with my dad + family, then. We ate tasty bbq, had drinks, and birthday cake, and presents. Mmm nice and sleepy after drinks, and food, and cake, but we still went out to a bar that night with David’s coworkers. Came home smelling like smoke, ew, and ended Saturday.

Sunday we got up early and super cleaned house because my mom and grandparents were coming over for lunch. We went to this restaurant that had a super long wait, damn, and the bitchiest waitress that ever walked the earth, double damn. Bitcho tried to ruin our lunch but my mom set her straight, yay for moms. After my mom and grandparents took off, David and I walked around the bookstore. My favorite part of the store is the young adult/independent readers section, where I like to walk around and examine the book covers and day dream about a time when I will see some of my illustrations on these same shelves. David bought me a moleskin sketchbook and another young adult box set series, since I love collecting the ones with great covers and great stories. It was nice not being home much for the whole weekend, we didn’t want it to end.

Monday came and I started to feel sick, maybe allergies I thought, but no I had chills and pain and fever by the time I got home. I caught a cold virus, great, sick on my actual birthday too, which is never fun. The doctor couldn’t give me anything since it was a virus of course, just gotta wait it out. I’m starting to feel a bit better now, good enough to write a huge post about nothing for you guys, and to get back to reading and commenting on your blogs. Have a great weekend!

the art of modern designed cat furniture

It should come as no surprise that I love well designed modern furniture. In fact, I love anything that is well designed. I have a lot of respect for industrial designers, because that is something that I could never do. My designer brain does not work in three dimensions.

I discovered something recently that nearly gave me a heart attack, because it is so perfect. Fantastic modern furniture designs for cats!

A great place to find a nice collection of modern cat furniture from all around the world is the blog, moderncat.net.

It would be so fun to work at a company like that. To be surrounded by well designed cuteness every day, and omg, to test products on cute kitties! I used to work for a jewelry and gifts company designing necklaces, earrings, brooches, as well as greeting cards, ornaments, picture frames, and a ton of other items. Along side the jewelry and gift design, I created trade show graphics, mailers, and other marketing material for them. The latter is not as fun, but definitely a more desirable skill set to have, career wise.

Here is one last little gem for you guys.

the art of wallpaper

I love wallpaper. I wish it would hurry up and become socially acceptable again, so that more people will start using it in their homes. I would use it in my bedroom, in the dining room, and probably on every other wall as well.

Some of my favorites make bold statements, like this one from Surrealien:

And this from Jocelyn Warner:

And one of my all time favorites, this dark forest scene from a retail store called Walnut Wallpaper:

Another great wallpaper designer is Palace Papers.

the art of Onion Head

Today is a truly beautiful day. I woke up later than usual, the sun was shining, and I felt wonderful. As I stepped outside to start my day by heading to work, I felt the wonderful 55° F temperatures that told me winter was coming. (ok, even though it is going to be around 90° F for the high today, I have to remember that I live in Texas) Today my heart is filled with happiness and love, unlike most days when it is filled with a black coal hatred so deep no light can escape it.

Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked, the happiness reminded me of these crazy little Chinese animated icons, that I adore, called Onion Head. I use them for my messenger, and proceed to crack up with each use.

I wish I could read their website, because I’d love to learn more about how they started with the series. These little animated characters evoke a wide range of emotion (and unbridled cuteness) that is far more advanced than other animated icons I have seen.

Onion Head works really well at displaying my emotions on my blackest-black-heart days as well.

All Onion Head images courtesy of The Onion Club at blog.roodo.com.

design growth

Recently I joined the AIGA Austin chapter to become more involved in the design community and to push myself to grow in the communication design field. Working as an in house designer has placed me in a slump of one sided thinking when it comes to design. Since I mostly work with one look and feel for my company I feel my creativity has slowly taken a backseat in my career.

I could be practicing and exercising my creative design skills in my free time, but seriously, who has any free time now days to do extra work. Have you guys joined the AIGA? How do you deal with design stagnation in your work?

the art of Fuco Ueda

Fuco Ueda, a Japanese surrealist painter, uses acrylics to create intensely saturated colors in a world of female fantasy surrounded by bees, birds, and other creatures.

Her use of extraordinary skin tone colors remind me of my own work, while the liquid movements remind me of another one of my favorite artists, James Jean. Ueda’s paintings tell such vividly strong stories. They draw me in and make me want to lose myself in their dreamscapes.

Can someone who speaks Japanese, please contact Fuco Ueda and propose to her a website redesign. Even give it to her for free if you have to, because her Geocities site is atrocious.

my filmmaker man

UPDATE: David’s film won “Best Script” at the 2007 San Antonio 48hr Film Project

David and some friends participated in San Antonio’s first annual 48 hour Film Project this month. Their comedy was received beautifully, everyone in the theater was laughing. I was so proud!

The 48 Hour Film Project is a challenge where teams have 48 hours to produce a short film (4-7 minutes). All creative work—writing, shooting, editing, scoring—must be done within these two days. Each team draws a different genre from a hat and incorporates certain necessary elements into the film to ensure the validity of their deadline.

I hope you enjoy David’s film as much as I did.

Blinding

the stroke face

Maybe I am not at that MTV age anymore, not hip, nor in the know about all things cool and awesome, but what the hell is going on with the stroke face expression? I see it in everyone’s (girl’s) photos, mostly on myspace (my only passage to the hip world). Now I don’t want to make fun of specific people, or post their photos here without their permission, but I was lucky enough, a few months ago, to have Rosie Sullivan depict this phenomenon on a painting of me.

I had started noticing this last winter and freaked out about it then, but after a while I wrote it off as a passing fad. Then, today, browsing through a friend of a friend’s myspace photos I came upon it again! Why?! Why do they take pictures of themselves making pouty faces and pursing their lips to the side as if one side of their face has gone limp from a stoke? Oh, poor stroke faced girls. It’s an epidemic.

Has anyone else seen this ridiculousness?