Milton Glaser: new retrospectives and documentaries

Milton Glaser’s Seeing Things is an exhibition of his drawings, watercolors, prints, giclées, and sketchbooks, and a collection of arts-related posters, all created over a span of 50 years. From May 2 through Sept. 12, 2009 in the Avram Gallery (Stony Brook University.)

Meanwhile, The Drawing is Thinking exhibition presenting 180 selected drawings compiled from Milton’s most recent book of the same title has just closed in Gelerija Vzigalica (The Gallery of the City Museum of Ljubljana, Slovenia). It was open from May 26 through June 19, 2009. The drawings span over fifty years of work, and are varied in subject matter as well as style. The show is meant to be experienced sequentially, like a melodic line – with each drawing reflecting on what has passed in anticipation of what is to come.

And, even better, there is an upcoming documentary calle To Inform & Delight which will be screened this summer in different venues:

• June 27: Albuquerque / Guild Cinema
• July 2: Boston / Mfa Boston
• July 7: Westhampton / Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center
• Aug 12: Austin / Alamo Drafthouse, Aiga Austin
• Aug 27: Orange County / Orange County Museum Of Art
• Aug 27: Atlanta / Aiga Atlanta

The film closed in NYC on June 11, after a three week extension at Cinema Village.

Directed and produced by Wendy Keys; released by Art House Films. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes. Here is a review in the Tiny mix tape blog.

While you wait your opportunity to watch the documentary, here is a short Youtube video with Glaser and some of his work, called Window inspiration, in which some of the world's leading designers, architects and fine artists are asked for an interpretation of their dream window.

And here is an older lecture on TED (from 1998), called Using design to make ideas new, in which Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by breaking down an idea and making it new. You can watch a higher resolution video on the linked page.

Online gallery with my paintings

This is a correction of a previous post—the link was no longer correct.

You can visit an online gallery with my paintings and works on paper from the nineties.

Most of the works displayed are acrylics on canvas or paper. The paintings are partly abstract, partly depictions of places and interiors.

Matisse in Madrid

Again in Madrid, another art highlight for the summer season. The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection presents an anthology of Matisse after his first fauvist period, encompassing his move to Nice in 1917 until the outbreak of WWII.

“a beautiful and intense journey through paintings and sculptures, halfway between the introspection and experimentalism, contemplating with lucid serenity the convulse Europe of the first half of the 20th century.”

Matisse created very appealing art with his personal combination of classicism and a modern approach to colour and composition.

More information here and at the Thyssen museum website and El País special coverage. The exhibition will be open from june 9 until september 20.

La cuarta página de Enrique Flores

Compiles his witty and nice illustrations for El País newspaper, on the Libros de Blur website, which was commented here before.

David Hockney and his iPhone

English painter David Hockney has always been an enthusiast of new media and using imaging technologies. He never hesitates to experiment and introduce new ways of picturing and showing his work.

He already did it in the eighties with his peculiar copy-art and fax works, and now he's doing it again with his most recent exhibition in London (until July 11), called Drawing In a Printing Machine (Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery).

What strikes more of this new one-man show is the introduction not just of digital work —created with different tools such as tablets and stylus— but a series of portrait, still life and landscapes drawn and painted with his iPhone, using Brushes.

Brushes, helped by the shoutout of a New Yorker cover illustrated by Jorge Colombo with his iPhone, has sold online more than 40.000 licences, so far! At 5$, it's a very affordable program.

Hockney admits that he's hooked on the iPhone. He bought his gadget just a few months ago, but since then he's been drawing and painting with it all the time. Very often, he sends pictures like flowers, freshly drawn, to his friends and family. He also uses the iPhone to send via email his peculiar theories on art history, and his discoveries of painting (in the style of his book Secret Knowledge, I suppose.)

Another use Hockney makes of his iPhone is to send his illustrated art lectures, while he comfortably rests in bed. His main tip to draw with the iPhone: “touch the screen very gently.”

If you already are an iPhone (or iPod touch) user, you can download Brushes for under 5$. if you want to read the product guide before, here it is in PDF format. good luck!!

Kevin Dart: interview and process

Kevin Dart retro-inspired illustration is irresistible. I have just devoured a long interview and process discussion in the very recommended Grain edit blog.

Joaquín Sorolla

If you have to visit Madrid between this June and September 6th, you shouldn't miss the big retrospective of Joaquín Sorolla, the great master of the mediterranean light in painting.

The exhibition in the Museo del Prado opens from 9:00 to 20:00h, tuesday to sunday (including holidays). Closed on monday. The entry fee is 10€, or 9€ if you book it online.

Sketchbook, Spring 2009

Mhm. I haven’t posted anything for a while! This is a sketchbook that I wanted to use very regularly. However, there are quite a few gaps.

Some of the drawings have made their way to my Flickr page or to this blog.
The missing days produced other artwork in different pads, notebooks, calendar and sheets.
It has many ink drawings, most of them are imaginary rather than sketches from actual people or objects.

Rockin’ doodles

This is a bunch of imaginary sketches that has been lying around for a while. I usually doodle this stuff when I’m listening music, sometimes when I’m organizing my music collection, or related activities.

The poses are very typical and some even a caricature of some musician. The last one is a bit unrelated because it was made for a web design project (a jazz-blues café).

Click to see a bigger version of each picture!

I scanned them because I planned to do a more polished version (inked, vectorized...?) like those in the Feedback dingbat from the Typephases Project.

Anyway. Even if they keep on gathering dust in the studio, I like this kind of very rough and spontaneous sketch.

If I finally do something with this gang or weirdos I’ll let you know here.

The simplest puppets

This is part of a design for a theatre event. One of the challenges I enjoy in graphic design is taking a minimal element and trying out different variations. In this case I took a very simple figure from a set of cardboard puppets shown elsewhere. Those puppets were, in turn, made with very simple rules: using a cardboard tissue roll and cutting out the eyes, mouth, nose... then gluing the removed parts as ears, noses...

So all variants start from the same model. And if I had also rotated the nose the number of permutations would be much bigger:

In this same publication we also find some photos of the cylinderfigurines:


A funny project, and yet another way of doing different things.

Art, not ad

Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with curated art images, something like the simulation shown here. Of course, it’s a bunch of art pictures what you get, not those red rectangles!

The art shows are updated every two weeks and feature contemporary artists and curators. The project website provides detailed instructions and a screencast.



The logo is a homage to the old Sherwin-Williams brand paint.

Libros de Blur

Blur is a spanish publisher specialised in illustrated books. A related blog, called Libros de Blur showcases some of their editions, with the permission of the authors.

The handsome books are shown in detail through an online Issuu version. It’s full of delicious illustration and design gems. An especially recommended link!

“The books released in this blog are displayed by agreement with the authors. Whenever possible, we offer an online version of the whole edition, trying to make the business viability and the right of accessing culture compatible.
You can link to the ebooks from your blog or website, as long as no fee is charged, and you can also print a personal copy, for example in countries where these editions are hard to get. But you are not allowed to duplicate or resell any digital or printed copy. The texts and images remain copyrighted by the respective authors.”

Subtracting

A micro-tale: She turned back all the pictures and put them facing the wall. She opened the window and the fresh breeze entered the rooms. Looking through the window, very soon the only picture she'd see was the future ahead.

This comes from my current sketchbook. It’s ideal for ink drawings, I’m doing full-page drawings in most pages. Later on I’ll probably show the whole thing in a short movie here.

Browsing 1000 Heads

Here’s how the real thing looks:

Find out more about the book here!

Pirates on my fingers

Living legendary adventures with finger puppets is great fun.