Issue 174

Hello!

First month of summer is in the books. What a month. Kids are home from school now so the house is noisy and alive except for a couple hours in the middle of the day when they all go off to swim team.

I spent some time with the family on a short trip to Utah going on hikes, visiting museums, and just hangin out with friends. The time off was nice. Got back and set up a new computer station, which was good, because the old mac was from 2017 and starting to act up a bunch. A few Photoshop files were corrupted in the last project I worked on. Luckily Dropbox saved the day with back up versions.

And I'm starting on a couple new and exciting projects that I can't talk about just yet.

Here's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend.

Enjoy!

LATEST

I do all kinds of things 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 recently that I didn't want to devote an entire segment to:

• I'll have a table at LIGHTBOX in October: LINK​
• My big "A-HA" moment with inking: LINK​
• My Super simple coloring technique: LINK​
• Podcast Episode 163: Is The AI Art Collapse Imminent?​
• Podcast Episode 164: Artistic Resilience with Nathan Fowkes​
• Patreon: Getting A book Deal Series: Part 8​
• Patreon: My Next Big Project: LINK​

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1) Pterotech Fly Rider

From the Drawings Unit

I took the week off last week to visit Utah and spend some time outside. It was EXACTLY the thing I needed. I came back refreshed and had a bunch of great new ideas.

One thing I learned from the trip was that watching my son Tate fill spare minutes with drawing made me realize I don't actually draw that much, and hardly ever for practice or exploration these days.

I decided that when I got back home I'd devote at least an hour a day to fun/exploration drawing.

And this is what I made yesterday and today:

Thought I go back to my roots and design a robot rider.

Might have to do a few more of these and make it a small series.

Here's a couple more robots from the sketchbook:

PATREON: I'm doing a series of posts on getting a book deal. This isn't a case study of a book deal I've landed in the past. This is a week by week, play by play of me currently trying to land a deal with one of the major New York publishers.

I'm sharing my strategies, my email interactions, notes I'm getting from my agent, missteps, and rejections. Patrons are seeing concept art, the gnarly stuff that's discarded, but also the polished stuff I'm sharing with publishers. We are in part 8 this week of a multi-part series that will end when the book get's published!

Sign up now: LINK​

The amount of support on my Patreon ebbs and flows, but always hovers around 125-130 people. I'd like to get that up to 140 this month. If you sign up this month I'll give you any of my digital artbooks of your choice. Just DM after sign up and I'll send you a download link.

You also get a 15% discount in my shop, and at the end of the month some patrons get all my working files to learn from and pick apart. Sign up here: LINK​

2) The Sky Chapel of Ethiopia​
​From the Arts and Culture Unit

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I think this place is amazing and full of story potential: A thousand feet above the Ethiopian desert sits a church carved into the side of a massive rock mountain. It's called Abuna Yemata Guh and it's over 1500 years old.

The ascent to reach the chapel involves a strenuous hike , crossing a rock bridge, a a vertical rock wall climb, then a narrow path with a 300 meter sheer drop on one side.

If you're afraid of heights, this isn't the pilgrimage for you...or maybe it's a way to over come the phobia?

However, once inside the chapel there's beautiful well preserved fresco paintings of old testament prophets and new testament apostles.

Oh, and one more cool thing, there's an old monk who lives there. Not sure if he makes the ascent every day or if he just hangs out up there 24/7...but I'm getting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade vibes from this.

Watch this incredible video here: LINK​

3) Jean-Frédéric Waldeck's 19th Century Illustrations of Mesoamerica are phenominal

From the Illustrators Division

I found some nice clean scans of an 1866 tome filled with illustrations by 19th century French artist Jean-Frédéric Waldeck.

I believe these are lithographs, which is a brilliant solution for mass producing art before their was photography and scanners. The Met has a nice breakdown on their website of how this was done here: LINK​

In my mid twenties my wife bought me a year pass to the Dallas Museum of Art and a few days a week I would go there on my lunch break and draw artifacts in my sketchbook.

I loved doing that so much that this kind of illustration always makes me stop and daydream about what it would've been like to travel to the jungles of central america and just fill sketchbooks with artifact and architecture drawings like these.

You can see more of Waldeck's illustrations from "Palenqué et autres ruines de l'ancienne civilisation du Mexique" here: LINK​

4) The Stormtrooper Mechs of nohkunho

From the Office of Robots

Who knew Stormtroopers and Gundams would mix so well? Like peanut butter and chocolate these two things just seem to compliment and enhance each other.

Japanese model maker nohkunho does some incredible work. He sticks to the Gundam genre mostly, but remixes them with other iconic figures. There's a ton more to see on his Twitter account: LINK​

and Website: LINK​

5) On labels

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

A friend of mine pointed me to this incredible (and best of all short) NC State commencement speech by recent graduate Kelsey O'Connor.

You can watch it here: LINK

The central message is that external identities aren't the most accurate way to see other people, or yourself. After her life was shattered by a traumatic head injury she couldn't be the things she always thought she was, and instead had to rebuild her identity. Instead of focusing on what she was alway doing, she instead focused on what she was being. Once she did that for herself, she started looking at others the same way. It completely changed her life. In her words:

and also:

This was summed up nicely by another friend of mine:

This tracks with my life experience. When I stopped focusing on what I did (drawings and illustrations) and started focusing on what I am (a problem solver, a knowledge sharer, and a storyteller) my whole world opened up and I realized I was much more capable to take on things that I never thought an "artist" could do...like start a business, self publish, or do youtube videos.

Take a minute and think about your labels and if they're actually serving you or are just a liability you can't let go of.

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

-Jake

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