Artwork: Bruce Lee Quotation Shirt

Bruce Lee Shirt

Bruce Lee was not only a great cultural icon and martial artist, but a great thinker as well. I wanted to bring attention to his inspirational Jeet Kun Do philosophy through this shirt design: “Learn, Master, Achieve”. View larger.

Photo: Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait was part of an experiment with my new remote control (and tripod) for the XTi digital camera. It’s great to see instant results with the playback button, but it took about 40 frames to get something decent–with lots of running back and forth. There was major cropping and a little contrast adjustment.

Shephard Fairey and Copyright Lawsuit

Shephard Fairey Obama Image

The MotionGrapher website posed an interesting poll about Shephard Fairey’s infamous Obama poster and Milton Glaser’s critical review. Another critique of Fairey’s work is on artist Mark Vallen’s blog. Earlier, the New York Times published an article, indicating that Fairey’s suing the Associated Press to combat copyright infringement. “The suit asks the judge to declare that Mr. Fairey’s work is protected under fair-use exceptions to copyright law, which allow limited use of copyrighted materials for purposes like criticism or comment.”

I think it depends upon the intention of the artist, whether or not the work is a commentary (falling under fine arts arena) or promotion/advertisement (commercial arts). Public figures are subject to scrutiny and critique–political cartoons and satire are evidence of this–but money always complicates matters. Andy Warhol displayed familiar faces and icons in his work–it was a social commentary on popular culture, but if you look at his commercial work, it was original. With Fairey’s work, he started out in graffiti/street art. Much like the tattoo realm, street arts sometimes take artwork from their original context and places it into a different medium, with or without the original artist’s consent. It’s the nature of the beast and hard to control. From one point of view, it is plagiarism, but in another view, it’s imitation and sometimes viewed as flattery. For fine arts, there shouldn’t be a limitation on creation/expression as it’s personal and an expression of one’s self, but with commercial arts, there should be greater sensitivity to copyrights.

Inspiration: Coraline and Henry Selick

I’ve been a huge fan of Henry Selick without realizing it. He’s the man behind (one of my all-time favs) “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach.” His latest creation Coraline has been a three-year project shot entirely in 3-D stop-motion animation. Linking up with heavy-hitter Neil Gaiman (fantasy writer who’s film work includes Stardust and Beowolf), the film is as whimsical and endearing as his past work. It’s a beautiful piece of artistry, produced by Oregon-based Laika.

Here are some articles on Henry Selick:
Oregon Live
Digital Media FX
Film Monthly

Artwork: Valentine’s Cupid

Valentines Cupid

Happy Valentine’s Day, AKA Singles Awareness Day! I view it as a day of love and thoughtfulness, not necessarily about couples, so have fun!

This illustration was a creative refresh of a Cupid skin in Photoshop and Illustrator. View larger image here.