Issue 162

Hello!

First thing: The Fall Original Art Sale is currently underway, with pieces selling left and right. This is the perfect time to pick up a piece for yourself, or that someone who has everything.

A bunch have already sol, and I am extremely grateful. This is just one revenue stream I have, but I do count on it each year to help out with bills and and building an emergency buffer. So THANK YOU to everyone who has bought art this week and in the past.

Other than the sale this week, I've been doing the grind like usual. Happy to have gotten a moody rainy day that dropped the temperature here in AZ, and made it feel like a place with seasons. Heavy clouds just make me want to cozy up to the art desk and draw.

LATEST

I do all kinds of stuff that never end up in the newsletter, so this spot in the header here is just a quick run down of what I've done this week that I didn't want to devote an entire segment to:

• Latest Podcast Episode: How To AI-Proof Your Art Career​
• Latest Youtube Video: 20 Minutes of Inspirational Quotes and Motivation for Artists​
• Latest Discord Discussion: Social Media and Mastodon​
• Latest Patreon Post: Space Fairies Process​

Alright, here's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend.

Enjoy!

1) Space Fairies

From the Drawings Unit

Exploring the idea of what sci-fi fairies might look like. I want to sneak these guys into red Shift Renegades some how.

I'll be starting work on issue 2 in December. Picking up right where issue 1 left off.

PATREON: Join now and see how I made these illustrations from start to finish. Every week I show patrons the process of at least one drawing. At the end of the month some patrons get all my working files to learn from and pick apart. Sign up here: LINK​

2) Retro Video Phones

From the Cultural Archives Concern

I found a bunch of cool retro video phone designs from the previous century while researching industrial design styles for Red Shift Renegades. Thought I'd share them with you here.

What I love about these is how tactile and touchable they are. This is the future I imagined I'd be living in when I daydreamed in school about me being a 45 year old in the far flung year of Two Thousand and Twenty Two.

Who would have thought we'd all be just scrolling on a single universal rectangle of glass and metal. That's it's own kind of cool I guess, but I do love knobs, buttons, and big screens.

3) The patchwork floating sculptures of Lee Bontecou

From the Arts and Culture Unit

I don't follow the fine art world too closely, and upset that I'm only now discovering the work of Lee Bontecou after her passing this week thanks to the rush of interest to remember her and her work.

There is a nice write up about here in the NYTimes here: LINK​

Blurring the line between what is a painting and what is a sculpture, there's an industrial beauty to her sculptures. They remind me of the organic shapes machines and factories can sometimes exhibit as they try to accomplish processes that were born in nature.

She really was a nexus of universes, using her art to show us something only she knew about.

See more of her work here:

Moma page: LINK​

Artnet.com: LINK​

4) Calpan: The Fantasy World of Claud Z

From the Illustrators Division

I found Chinese artist Claud Z on Artstation and I'm like...can you stop being so good for FIVE minutes so the rest of us can catch up??

I love this world they're creating. The colors, the characters, the atmosphere. It's really somethin.

More here: LINK​

5) On what's real

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

From that article on Bontecou in the NY times I learned that at the height of her fame she left the New York art scene, disappeared from the art world, and moved to Pennsylvania to raise her daughter while making art in private.

I loved this bit towards the end of the piece:

It is a reminder to me to check myself and see which art world I inhabit. Is the real art world I'm in the one of social media, portfolio sites, and online shops? Or is it the one at home and in the studio where life and creation are in harmony with each other?

Because the art you make is a product of the world you inhabit.

That's all for this week. Thank you for reading this newsletter and hope you have a great weekend!

-Jake

My sponsor for this newsletter is…me. It's me, because I'm not accepting sponsors for my email list, and don't plan to any time soon. Really, I'd just like people to buy stuff from my shop. If you like this newsletter, you can support it a few ways:

​Order something from the shop (Best)

​Back a kickstarter when I launch one (Also Best)

​Support me on Patreon (Second Best)

​Share the newsletter with a friend (Third best)

​Shop for art supplies using my affiliate links* (Fourth best)

Mention it on social media (Fifth best)

I'd appreciate any of these when you can. Thanks!

>>Any amazon link I post is an affiliate link<<