Target Will Recycle Old Ads, Literally

By Stuart Elliott

There’s a lot of talk in the advertising business about how the same ideas get used over and over again for ads. The discount retailer Target is taking that chatter seriously for a promotion planned to start on Times Square on Sunday.

The nine-faced billboard on Times Square Tower, at 7 Times Square, which Target has rented for many years, will be turned into six art pieces that salute New York City and the Target bull’s-eye logo.

The arty ads (or addy art) will be created by four collage artists from New York: Michael Anderson, Josh Goldstein, Laurie Rosenwald and Charles Wilkin.

read more...

"Super Brothers!"
Eric and Tom.
9" x 12" work on paper

This is the most recent commissioned portrait that I have completed.
More works like this one and more information about the commissioned portraits may be seen on the website.
http://www.littlewildthings.com/

"The streets of the city are a non-stop parade of humanity. It’s a kind of grand, unchoreographed ballet of human locomotion. One of the great pleasures and measures of being urban is losing yourself in the crowd, with your feet and mind wandering, alone in your head but elbow to elbow with an inexhaustible supply of strangers."

I found this in the New York Times, it was created and posted by artist Jeff Scher.
He has a fresh approach by integrating painting, collage and animation.

Click here to see the animation in the New York Times.

Manga Manga Manga.
I've started teaching kids drawing. The class started with 5 girls and ended up with 4. Drawing is joyful and is like discovering a new world that exists within and around oneself. The goal was to get them up to speed with a short amount of time. We began with drawing from observation (still life of various objects), basic shading, seeing and drawing negative space around and through an object, acknowledging surface quality and dynamic composition. Well okay, I'm glad it went over as well as it did. They also got some perspective lessons. You know the eye level, what is above the eye level and what is below, vanishing points, ... and so on. It was a lot to cover in 4 classes. I didn't want to be a joy-killer about drawing but it is a discipline and I need attentive students. 9 year old kids have a lot of energy, a little challenging to focus. If you want to get their attention, you need to tune into what they are interested in (and repeat yourself a lot).

It turns out that they loved the idea to use Manga as a starting point for figure drawing.
The next 8 classes were focused on Manga styled characters. Manga is a comic book in Japan and may be characterized by big-eyed characters with big heads, small mouths and long bodies. It is a unified style that is familiar and followed a certain formula of proportions and technique. This was our vehicle to learn anatomy/figure drawing. This is exciting because it creates a foundation for visual storytelling and compliments the need for creative expression. Everyone has the ability, yet it needs to be practiced. Its true that some students assimilate direction better than others.
We spent 4 weeks drawing manga characters, starting with heads, hair, hands, facial expressions, full figures, and dynamic poses.

The next round of classes focused on the making of a sculpture of a figure in the Manga Style.
The first class of this series we created a large scale drawing of our character, we defined the age, the costume and name. This was going to be our reference for our sculpture. We determined that the sculptures were to be 18 inches tall. So, the next class we started the sculptures with a 8 feet piece of wire. I determined the size and shape of its circular head and the height of the character by making a fold at the feet. I told them to think of the wire as the "line gesture" that continues through figure-form. In art school we spent weeks drawing gestures and figures. I'll never forget Burne Hogarth's evangelical hollering and passion for figure drawing, but that's another story.Where was I?
So, they bent the wire into the shape of the figures that were drawn previously. I helped them to look at the figure from all angles and emphasized the desire for something "dynamic".
The wire sculptures were mounted on wooden bases so that we could proceed bulking up the figures with aluminum foil, paper and tape. Plastered gauze was put on as the exterior shell that would solidify our sculpture. This provided a great foundation for our paint. Seeing these characters come to life was really great. From the beginning of the drawing (the idea) to the wire (3D drawing), the muscular form, surface and detail of paint. Nothing was lost in the translation. These are uniquely their design and responsibly Manga in style.
Teaching this small group has been thoroughly fun. To see more pictures of the evolution on this project please visit my photo album called Art Kids.

Illustrator James jean's art for the poster NYC bicycle film festival poster and the original moleskine sketch.

Also, check out the trailers for the past years bff on the link below.
BFF will be in LA later this summer.

http://www.bicyclefilmfestival.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpubbAzKSY

trailer for one of the films being presented at the bff
Directed by Benny Zenga & Brian Vernor. Four months on a bicycle between Cairo, Egypt and Cape Town South Africa is not your typical African safari. En route with the Tour d' Afrique

f
--
whitelock-design

The lost birds have returned.
Cut from plywood and layered with pieces of paper and paint using acrylic gel medium. Raffia wrapped wire has been used for the feet and are free-standing sculptures. These birds are at home on a coffee table, next to plants, on a bookshelf, or by the computer.
Now available on Etsy.com