Illustration Arts Forum Week is HERE!

We are very proud to be bringing in two superstars in the Illustration world this week for our annual Arts Forum event; Helen Dardik and Jon Foster. They come from two very different areas of illustration, and will bring an interesting and broad range of experiences to the forum.

They will each be speaking and showing their work on Thursday, Feb. 11th at 5:00pm at the Digital Media Center, in the 3rd floor auditorium space; take the elevator to the 3rd floor and look for the round structure clad in rusted sheet metal.

Friday, Feb. 12th is Demo Day: Room 374 in the Illustration area.
10am to noon: Helen will be doing a digital pattern demo and workshop. If you are interested in vector art, children's imagery, pattern design and licensing, this workshop is for you. There is limited space for participating in the workshop, so sign up for it on the sheet on office door 381 (Prof. Lovell and Mueller-Brown's office). There will be extra seating for those who just wish to watch the demo.
2pm to 4pm: Jon will be doing a digital painting demo and possibly a workshop, so if you want to participate in it, please sign up for it on the sheet on office door 381 (Prof. Lovell and Mueller-Brown's office). Bring your Wacom pens! There will be extra seating for those who just wish to watch the demo.

The lecture on Thursday is required for all ILLU majors and will serve as a field trip; there will be a sign-in sheet at the door to the auditorium.

Book Illustrator Micheal Austin visits SCAD

Last Wednesday, Jan 27th, Atlanta based Illustrator Michael Austin was kind enough to come visit Jay Montgomery's Book Illustration class. Micheal has illustrated for Highlights, Spider and Cricket magazines. His illustrations hang in Children's Museums and has even made an appearance on the GCPSTV television program, The Author in You. As an Author, Illustrator and full-time Art Director he has seen the many sides of the Illustration market. He currently has 8 children's books and has received several Society of Illustrator awards and countless book publishing awards. He is a truly busy man! I first learned about Michael through our friends over at Peachtree Publishers. He has illustrated a few books working with Art Director, Loraine Joyner.

He brought in several large originals mainly created with acrylics and a tad bit of airbrush and colored pencils, but he does what ever it takes to make right. A set of well organized and clean tight pencil sketches on tracing paper gave the students a clear understanding of what a tight pencil should look like. He was very insightful about the publishing industry and had some great stories about working with Art Directors and illustrating a whole picture book in 18 days!

As you can see he was gracious enough to do a quick demo in acrylics. He works mainly on Strathmore illustration board with thin washes of color. Michael showed us how he would create an old wooden fence. He masks off certain foreground and background areas with frisket film being very careful not to put very wet acrylics right up to the edge of the film. Using a fine round brush he paints in the open spaces between the wood with a dark brown.

Then applied thin washes of oranges and grays for the tone of the wood using acrylic glazing liquid and water. He tested his colors on top of the frisket before applying the paint.

Added texture with a natural sponge. Then with a fan brush he quickly and almost effortlessly created all the wood grain. In about 30 minutes he had a realistic wooden fence.

He got the see some of the students work and to quote an e-mail I got from him: "You have some gifted people in your class who appear to be on the path to very successful illustration careers! I was sincerely impressed and inspired."

Many thanks Micheal for an exceptional and informative visit to SCAD!

Vote for SCAD students!

Right now a few of our students have shirt designs on threadless.com for the big 10k design competition (grand prize = 10 thousand bucks!). Check out their entries here:

- Patrick Kennedy's Duck Crossing


- Renee Rivas' Clumsy Space Octopus


- Renee Rivas' Made of butterflies



- Amber Gardner's Packin Heat



And Grad student, Julia Berman, is one of the finalists for the Strathmore student art contest. Be sure to vote for her entry here:

Remembering Asia (the show)

This week's exhibition at StudioPlex by Solongo Mellecker and Sojung Yu is an astounding show. These two Illustration MFA candidates filled up the entire gallery with beautiful work that celebrates their Asian heritage (Solongo is from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and Sojung is from South Korea), as well as their places in the modern world and the influence that their time in America has had on them. It is a wonderful mix of old and new, of traditional and digital, and of East meets West. If you haven't been by to see it, try to before the show closes on Saturday, the 30th of January.
Here are a few shots from the opening...


Shannon, Duncan, Nazanine and Julie all approve.




(add your own caption here)


So proud.


Sojung's wonderful dimensional book for the Teatrio competition.


The student schooling the master.


Solongo met some new friends from Mongolia.


Some folks dress up a bit for gallery openings, others, not so much.


Peace, out.

Kudos for Archer Artists!

The numbers are in, and "Archer", FX's new animated series, is a hit!
"Archer is an animated, half-hour comedy set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other."

According to TV By The Numbers, Archer's premier this Thursday was...

FX’s Highest-Rated Comedy Premiere Among Adults 18-34

Congrats to Rod Ben, (ILLU MFA candidate), Katie Stockton (BFA '09) and Dan Murdoch (current ANIM student who is minoring in ILLU), who all had a hand in creating this very successful, and absolutely hilarious new series. If you haven't yet seen it, it's a hoot!

Remembering Asia

Two of our shining stars, Solongo Mellecker and Sojung Yu are having a show at StudioPlex this January. The official opening reception is Monday, January 25 from 6 to 9pm. The show will be up for the Art Walk on Friday the 22nd if you want to stop by then.

Congratulations SI-LA Winners!

A big, fat, WELL-DONE goes out to several of SCAD-Atlanta's finest for being accepted into the VERY competitive Society of Illustrators Los Angeles 2009 Annual Competition. All are Illustration MFA candidates.

They are Solongo Mellecker, Sojung Yu , Fernando Vazquez and Heather Elder. Way to go, guys!

Solongo Mellecker

Solongo Mellecker

Solongo Mellecker

Sojung Yu


Fernando Vazquez

Heather Elder