> photos taken from my TV station (around 9pm) and then later in the streets down the block (around 11pm).

deeply touched, happy, amazed, inspired, admiring. Those were the few emotions I went through yesterday night.
Obama made history and I feel so priviledged to have been able to 'live' this here in America, this amazing nation.
Yes, we can.

> photos taken 15 minutes ago on the block in front of my building.

Today is THE BIG DAY.
Apart from finally getting an answer to the question 'is America ready to elect a black President?' (confirming, at the same time, that Hollywood writers of TV serie '24' were indeed visionary), we're gonna know whether McCain will remain known as a (fairly good) frozen fries brand or if it will get a new, different meaning in the collective memory.
Yes, the suspense is tremendous indeed...

HELLO!!! I'm back online after some crazy crazy days where I've been sewing like never before, from 9am to 7pm non-stop. So once again, I unfortunately had to put the blog on the side for a while - sorry!

I just wanted to thank all of you who sent me your feedback regarding the great article on ETSY's website last week, I've been so overwhelmed by all your comments and support, I wouldn't have thought so many people would have been touched by my story. It such a cool opportunity to be able to share one's experience about 'how-to-quit-your-day-job', being able to inspire others to do the same. I had a blast answering Mary's questions and I love the result of the interview. Thanks again Mary :)

Before going back to my Husqvarna Viking (my sewing machine), I just wanted to share with you my recent discovery on ETSY. An AMAZING Japanese pattern book. Breathtaking, eye-candy patterns, I'm completely addicted. Photos are beautifully taken and oh so inspiring, here are some of the GORGEOUS patterns photos showcased in this book sold by Pomadour. Definitely something that will be integrated in some ways to future Rose La Biche collections... Now I just need to learn to read and speak Japanese...

... is here, on this interview of the 'QUIT YOUR DAY JOB' column on ETSY's website. Wow, so weird to see photos of myself on the 'spotlight' page! (but oh boy yeah, it feels good ;)

I couldn't happier! thanks to all of you who sent me emails, convos through Etsy, a few sentences on Facebook or orders from the new collection, you DEFINITELY made my day!!

I honestly couldn't ask for more to celebrate Rose La Biche's 2d birthday :) I hope you enjoy the new fall/winter collection!!

illustration by Soledad

In case you're French is perfectly fluent, I can only encourage you to read the great article __'I start my own business!'__ published by Emilie Poyard on the blog of French Elle Magazine.

It a very interesting and inspiring article about how more and more women in France tend to start their own business - in a country where enterpreneurship is not as developped and encouraged as it is here in the US. I loved it and it makes me feel good about how women can be empowered to follow their dreams to be truly independant while developping their own professional vision and get to manage their time the way they really want. A must read!

oh la la!!! 2 years already!!... time is flying my friends....

I'm truly very happy to celebrate Rose La Biche's 2nd birthday today, yep absolutely :))

This second year was so very important, oh boy. It was really about getting the confirmation that my business was going to expand and that my brand was going to get firmier. It was a key year and last october, at this time, I was anxious to see how 2008 was going to work. Result? Well, I honestly couldn't be happier.

Rose La Biche's collection kept on getting stronger and stronger over the last few months especially since the launch of the very popular hoodie collection in February. My friend-model for this collection - beautiful Taiwan-born Jennifer - definitely helped in making this collection such a chic and inspiring one (merci Jennifer!!). And since then, Rose La Biche didn't stop selling. The biggest difference with 2007 is probably that Rose La Biche is now definitely getting cosmopolitan with shipments flying nearly every week over to Australia, Canada, England and Singapor. European countries also added up to the group this last few months : Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Netherlands. What a treat for me who is such a 'globe-trotteur'! I honestly couldn't be happier. And next monday, I'll get one of the best gift I could ever think of for this 2nd birthday : an amazing interview by Mary from ETSY that will be published in their QUIT YOUR DAY-JOB serie!!! yeah!! so don't forget to log onto ETSY next monday ladies, you'll learn everything-you-always-wanted-to-know about me ;)

All these efforts and love I put into my company are giving wonderful results and I would like to thank you all for your support : Rose La Biche couldn't exist without you obvisouly. So THANK YOU ALL, ROSE LA BICHE WOMEN :))) My best gift to you : THE LAUNCH OF THE GORGEOUS 2008 FALL/WINTER COLLECTION NEXT MONDAY!! oh yes, you'll be blown away, I promise.

MERCI A TOUTES ET BONNE JOURNEE!!!

Yes, ladies, because you're worth it, I've decided today (while having a sewing break between 2 tees) to give you a sneak peek into the fall/winter hoodie collection. This gorgeous ruffled unhooded hoodie is one of the greatest new addition to the Rose La Biche HOODIE collection. Sleek yet totally edgy with its perfect light grey shade. The question is : are you going to be able to wait until mid-october to get your very own one??...

Be patient, I promise, you won't be disappointed with the launch of the new fall/winter collection :)
In case you're not receiving the newsletter yet, I encourage you do do so now right here in order to be informed when the collection comes out - a nice little surprise awaits all subscribers... oh oui!

Hey everybody!! I'm FINALLY back home in San Francisco after an exceptionally long break in France. It was probably the best break I ever had in my entire life! Spent some quality time with my family in the South of France and rested with my 19 months old son : good food, nice wine, rides in the vineyards, swiming in the nearby Atlantic ocean. That's what I call a good break. I come back with all my batteries fully charged, ready to rock and roll my sewing machine again!!

Also had time for a shooting in Paris : some GORGEOUS new hoodies shot in the streets of the French capital JUST FOR YOU!! yep, because you're worth it ladies :)

I really wanted to THANK all of you who placed order while I was away and to apologize for the additional delay (due to some passeports issues unfortunately). I'll be working on your apparel for the whole week and will inform you as soon as your order ships out of my design studio.

OH AND! I also had the great pleasure to answer some questions from Mary, a member of the ETSY team, who wanted to know more about Rose La Biche Designs : how come I decided to take the plunge and become a full time ETSY seller!! the answer anytime soon on the ETSY website in their 'QUIT YOUR DAYJOB' column : yeah!!

oh yes, it's good to be back :)

-> this post is written by Jennifer Chang.

Le Uyen and Alex is an amazing talented, creative, and powerhouse artist couple living in San Francisco. Uyen is a Children’s Book illustrator, who has illustrated numerous beautiful books, such as, “ Can you Do this, Old Badger?”, “Piggies in a Polka”, …and “Big Sister, Little Sister”. She is from Vietnam, originally, and came to the states when she was two. Alex is a Visual Development Artist at PDI, Dreamworks, who has worked on several animated film, such as Prince of Egypt, Shrek… and Madagascar, and on his free time, he also makes comics at the side. He came from France 11 years ago.

Uyen and Alex met originally at Dreamworks Feature Animation, where they had both been employed straight from art school. They both worked in the Layout department. After three years, Uyen left to freelance as a children’s book illustrator full-time, and Alex moved up to San Francisco to work as a visual development artist for PDI, Dreamworks’ sister company. They met up with each other again in Paris in 2001, where Uyen was freelancing. Since then, Uyen moved to San Francisco. While they both just recently had the loveliest baby boy, Leo, and on top of everything else, they also had finished a collaborated graphic novel project together around the same time - __Prince of Persia__.

For a short period of time, Uyen was teaching at the Academy of Art University for advance illustration courses. And I studied in one of her class for 2 semesters in 2003. She was one of the great and encouraging teachers I’ve had in school, and from her, I opened my eyes from Illustration to the animation art world. Both Uyen and Alex’s passion and determination in art and life very much inspire me everyday.

And as always, great artists, great people are the busiest… like everyone I’ve interviewed this week. Uyen and Alex, kindly and warmly, let me ask them a few curious questions about them and their artwork.

Q: When and Why did you come to San Francisco? & How do you feel about this city in art and life?
Alex: I always wanted to live in this city. I first moved here in 1999. Out of all the cities in the west coast, San Francisco is the most European. I’m not too aware of San Francisco’s art scene, but I just really love living here.

Uyen: I came to San Francisco for love! Well, for Alex, to be exact. I moved here 2002 to be with Alex, and also for a change. I travel a lot, but San Francisco is always an amazing place to come home to. It’s a city that catches light in an amazing way, in a way no other American city can.

Q: Can you talk alittle bit about what you are working on at the moment or your most recent project?
Alex: Just finishing up working on Madagascar 2, which I’ve been working on for three years now. At home, I’m working with my wonderful wife on a project entitled Solomon’s Thievese, a graphic novel we’re collaborating on with Jordan Mechner. He’s the creator of the Prince of Persia video game among others, and is also a screenwriter. He had picked us to illustrate the graphic novel version of Prince of Persia, and we all enjoyed working together so much that he asked us to work on Solomon’s Thieves with him. We can’t say too much about it for confidentiality reasons, but we can say it’s a story about the Templar Knights in Paris , right about the time of their extinction.

Uyen: Besides Solomon’s Thieves, I’m also in the middle of finishing up a sequel to Julianne Moore’s picture book “Freckleface Strawberry “ . This one is called “Dodge that Ball”, and it’s about – tada! – dodgeball! A game I hated as a kid, so I’m happy to be able to illustrate it. I’m also finishing up a picture book called “Aunt Mary’s Rose” for Candlewick Books, as well as several young readers.

Q: Since you both have experienced working in animation…
For Uyen, how do you see the difference in story telling between Animation and Children’s book and comics? And how and why did you decide to go into Children’s book illustration or independent illustration field?
Uyen: Animation is such a team effort, you’re one tiny cog in a huge machine. Your contribution to the story telling is pretty minimal, and you do the best you can with the tiny seconds that you have on the screen to propel the story forward. For Children’s books, however, you own everything you do. It’s an amazing feeling to be the sole interpreter of a story, and I love finding creative ways to bring more to the story than what’s on the paper. I went into Children’s book for that reason, and because I feel like it’s truly one of the last fields in the world of illustration where you can really get your vision across, where you are hired for your own abilities at art and story telling, without much if any interference from art directors. I’m not a fan of art by committee – you end up with very safe and bland art that way.

For Alex, how do you see animation verses comics in terms of story telling, development, and design…?
Alex: Animation narration is closer to movie narration, and comics is more of a mix between literature, theatre, and movies. Comic books allow more genres to mix. It’s the cross road between the written word and the art. The development and design process for comics is much more connected to drawing, and is a solitary job. In our case, there are only two of us, so the approval system between the two of us is much quicker. In movies, that can drag on forever. Animation requires so many people and has to be translated from drawing to the screen, and because of that the design process is much longer.

Q: What inspires you? When illustrating a story for comics or children’s book or designing for animation that is written by others, what appeals or intrigues you to visualize the world?
Alex: Other people’s work. French comic artists like Christophe Blain, Gipi, Blutch http://lambiek.net/artists/b/blutch.htm , Joann Sfar. For comic books, I enjoy being able to do everything, being the director.
Uyen: Yup, Alex is a control nut.
Alex: Animation is about teamwork, whereas comics is your own vision.
Uyen: I usually don’t accept to do a story unless I’m inspired by it. When I receive a manuscript for consideration, I usually read it aloud first, and if on the first read I can immediately see the world the character’s inhabit, and enjoy it, then, I’ll take the story. I’ve had lots of cases where the story really just didn’t appeal to me, even if the writing was great. And sometimes, I’ve had stories that I really didn’t like, but the images they conjured were so amazing, that I still wanted to illustrate it. It’s nice to have the choice.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about writing and illustrating your own stories?
Uyen: It’s much more difficult on the one hand, mostly to get started. You start with an idea of something, and build it into something more substantial that others can relate with. The illustration part, though, is great. One of the more difficult parts of illustrating another person’s text is that you have to be extremely respectful of the written word. Often times, I wish I could change a line or switch a moment in the text, because of some condition I find in the illustration that makes it work better. But, I’m not allowed to do that. With my own story, however, I control everything!

Q: Congratulation on your collaborated work on the comics, “ Prince of Persia”! Was it the first time you two collaborate with each other on the same project? & How was it like working closely with each other?
Alex: It was horrible! (laughs)… No, it was actually kind of fun. It was great to learn from each other’s strengths, it made us better artists as a result.
Uyen: We’re both so good at very different things, and after doing this book together, I think it was like learning in school from a private tutor.
Alex: Also, the deadline they gave us was ridiculous, and there’s no way one of us could have gotten it done alone.
Uyen: It was our first professional collaboration, but we’ve done other smaller personal things together. We designed a wedding comic together that we gave to our guests at our wedding. And we did a couple smaller projects together, stuff that you can see on Alex's website . Working together was challenging at first, because we had to figure out each other’s spaces, and how to communicate our ideas to each other. So on Prince of Persia, there were a few arguments. But, I was pregnant while we worked on that, and somehow it helped to train us as parents. Now, with Solomon’s Thieves, things are much simpler, and we’re moving forward really quickly, because we have the routine down. In a way, it’s good to work together. With the baby and our separate jobs, it’s the way for us to spend lots of time together. Most couples don’t have that opportunity.
'' Q: Do you feel you’re influenced or inspired by each other much in art?''
Alex: YEAH!!! Very much so.
Uyen: Yup, he’s the final person I like to get approval from, either on a collaborative project or my own stuff.

''__Q: You both have amazing travel sketches wherever you go, what is the most unforgettable place or subject you’ve drawn in your sketchbook on your trips? & Where would you want to go next to draw?__''
Alex: The most unforgettable place, I couldn’t draw. It was too spectacular. I simply could not translate it. It was when I went to Istanbul, the Blue Mosque at sunset. It was too amazing for me to be able to do it justice at that moment.
Uyen: I’d say it was in Africa. There’s something about drawing while traveling that takes you out of being a tourist, and into something different. You get welcomed in a very different way than sporting a camera. In Africa, I visited the Ovahimba tribe, a nomadic group that few people ever see. We were told not to bring modern objects, as they were a primitive tribe. So I brought my sketchbook, and did a drawing of the chief’s wife. She was very pleased with it, as she didn’t have a mirror, and only had water’s reflection to tell her what she looked like. She kept the drawing, and exchanged me a water vessel she had made in return. It was amazing.

Alex: I’d love to go to Japan next. I’ve always wanted to go. Plenty of great sketching opportunities. Russia, too.
Uyen: I’d still love to go to South America. It’s the last continent I have to visit.

Q: What are the next projects for you? Do you have another collaboration project at the moment or anytime soon?
Alex: Solomon’s Thieves is actually a three-book deal. We’ll be working on it for the next year and a half. After that, we’re not sure yet.
Uyen: Yeah, we can’t even see past next month, much less that far off! For me, I’ve got loads of picture books signed up for, through the next three years, so I’ll stay busy as always.

Q: Who are your top 3 heroes in art? ( or inspirations ? )
Alex: LeUyen Pham, LeUyen Pham, and LeUyen Pham.
Uyen: Let’s see, Alex Puvilland. And Alex Puvilland. And have you heard of Alex Puvilland?

**********************************************************
Voilà! That's all for my time on Rose La Biche!

I hope you've enjoy reading the interviews, meeting the artists. And especially, I hope this would bring up your curiosity and come visit S.F. Bay Area sometime in your life.

and a Big THANK YOU ! to all the wonderful artists for taking your time patiently answer my questions. I sure have learned a lot from you and through out the whole process.

and Merci Beaucoup Lucy !! again, for inviting me on board! and I can't wait to read about your trips and new work !
and By the way, for anyone who will be in S.F. during September 20, 2008 through February 8, 2009. There will be an exhibition at the Cartoon Art Museum that you can not miss. It's a exhibition of 200 pieces done and donated for the Totoro Forest Project fund raising auction that held on Sep. 6 in the goal to save the Sayama Forest in Tokyo. It'll be an amazing show that includes artists cross from illustration, animation, comics, to fine art, and from all over the world (including Uyen, Alex, Jay, and me !) Cheers !

-> this post is written by Jennifer Chang.

Jay Shuster is a senior sketch artist at Pixar, who has worked on and in depth involved in designing characters and sets of the recent film, Wall-E, as well as Cars. He also worked in the prestigious Sky Walker Ranch art department for Star War Episode 1 & 2 from 1996 to 2000. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, and grew up in the industrial and motor city of Detroit area, Jay went to school at CCS (College for Creative Studies), and graduated in 1993 attaining a Industrial Design degree.

Jay is one of the most amazing great artists friends I've met at Pixar, who has a super natural talent and sensibility of design, but he’s also one of the most humble and kind persons. Not only He can draw a clean and clear pen line drawing in a lightening speed, his thoroughly thinking process and concepts also completely translate and show through. It's always eye opening for me to see any of his drawings from sketch to finish.
As always, he cooly and generously let me interview him and share some of his experiences and thoughts about him and his work.

Q: When and Why did you move to S.F.?
J: I saw Star War in 1977 and from that point on I wanted to work on a Star Wars film. Who's to know there were to be three new films in the franchise perfectly paced with my arrival in California in 1994. My motivation to move was based on a vague knowledge of George's age-old, fragmented screenplay and an alarmingly whimsical sense of purpose. It was an incredible alignment of the planets that put me on a short-list of artists-for-hire Doug Chiang (Design Director at the Sky Walker Ranch art dept.) assembled in the early days of 1996. Much to my glee I'd start at Skywalker the following April but it was the short two years prior, maneuvering between various video game, commercial and feature film projects, that would put the Star Wars gig within my reach.

I worked on Ep.2 until late 2000. I was discouraged and ready to throw in the dishtowel on the movie thing. My exceptionally talented buddy Dave Gordon encouraged me to submit a portfolio to Pixar. Two interviews and a year and a half later I hired into the CARS art dept. I completed work on my second Pixar film, Wall-E, in mid 2007. I am currently on a project for 2010. Pixar salvaged my faith in movie making and my job remains fresh to this day, six years on.

Q: Do you remember how you got into art?
J: It was early on- Kindergarten…'77 is when it all changed. I was 6 when I saw A New Hope. I verbally battled my sister in the back of the station wagon on the way to one of the multiple viewings of Star Wars that summer: I cursed her for calling the Storm Troopers the 'bad guys'. Anyone with armor THAT cool HAD to be good guys. I immersed myself in all things Star Wars. I was in love with the design of it.. the lush production-designed gritty reality of it. To me this stuff WAS real. That unfinished homework collecting dust under my bed? yeah- that was fiction.
Then, It was through my dad's design job at GM that I grasped the relationship between design and manufacture. I remember being particularly blown away at an open house/ family day at the GM Tech Center in 1978 when a few guys in the model shop put together a full-size replica of R2-D2 …I remember attempting to visually de-construct the model in my head, studying the fit and finish of the surfaces... what materials they layered to achieve the depth of R2's eye lens. I was most impressed with the modeler's resourceful use of hot wheels epoxied to the underside of R2's dome, set into grooved tracks on the body enabling his head to spin...

Also, growing up in a household whose core was art and design. But it wasn't the glass house with precious things 'levitating' on glass shelves around the room.. it was an Charles and Ray Eames variety of objects du jour: (of course) trains, planes, automobiles, GE console stereos from the 60's, turn of the century farming implements, shaker and Adirondack furniture sharing space with a Persian area rug…I had a running start: mom and dad, early and often, encouraged us kids to pick up the pencil. Growing up a designer's offspring and getting this kind of encouragement as a kid guaranteed my taking up creative work. There wasn't anything else competing for my attention- except, perhaps, for the desire to be a Forest Ranger or Locomotive Engineer: very anti-social jobs. Therapy stemmed those aspirations! But then, I can't discount the benefit of my isolationist tendencies as a kid. I was living in the Detroit area- where the summers and winters drove you indoors and cultivated the powerful concept that can be basement culture. My dedication to the imaginary crystallized during this period of life.

Q: How do you think your father may have influenced you in your early age to be interested in art?
J: My dad had a major hand in any additions to the footprint of the family home…he'd build foam core mock-ups of various designs. The concept and importance of hand craft was established early and often in my youth. I'm not sure where he got his graphic sense, but, man- once you learn or inherit that: you've got THE tool for visualizing every other design exploit there is. I'm not talking just drawing or illustrating- I'm talking about basic concepts of balance and weight in the composition of…anything! His awareness and appreciation of typography was especially inspiring.

Q: How does your training in Industrial Design affect your daily work now in a film production?
J: Let me start by saying: I think the best thing that ever happened to George Lucas was Ralph McQuarries and Joe Johnston : two super talented industrial designers. I cite Ralph's work at Boeing : (or his brief stint at the Eames Venice Beach studio !) I tend to think it was all of his practical design-for-production experience that gave his Star Wars work the incredible impact and gravitas it had: solid, constructed functional forms that made sense. There was very little fat in those films, either shot-wise or in its visual elements. You see this concept reflected in the designs down to the very last detail: ships showing their skeletal chassis's, panels missing or modified, a logical lay-out of mechanical components.. all these details anchored in an alternate reality- yet, still our reality. Learning the inner-workings of things, the manufacturing processes and properties of materials is information I use on a daily basis. Every subsequent film I work on is progressively richer in detail, the models we build heavier with a genuine reality. The thing I find most irritating about the new Entertainment Design curriculums schools are pushing is the students get so little of this real world knowledge.

Q: Can you talk about how you approach developing a drawing?
J: I do much of the designing in my brain before the pen touches the paper. This is an experiential thing that comes with years of practice…it also relies heavily on a good, working knowledge of your subject and a vast form vocabulary to match. Research and collecting reference is a standard practice on any project- Anyone designing anything does this. (They're lying to you if they say nothing inspired them!) This gives you a solid reality from which to base-jump into your exploration. When I say form vocabulary, I'm referring to ones life-long compiled photographic memory of… everything. This is your personal reference cache…the stuff that falls off the tip of the pen when you're free-sketching, the objects you know and love the most. For me, these would be automobile forms, the body lines and details of aircraft and the heavy-weight and intricate mechanisms of locomotives. And every other machine, architectural motif and sci-fi design reference in between. My brain is a repository for this stuff. Keep it up there and it'll end up in one of your drawings at a later date- guaranteed.

I'm impatient when it comes to starting or completing a drawing. I don't like to overlay drawings or draw the same thing two or three times. When I start a sketch I expect it to be the final sketch I pin to the wall. In order to enable this kind of follow-through, I put much effort into the pre-planning phase I mentioned above. The more exercised your photographic memory is, the faster you can blow through sketches. This, in turn, empowers your brain-storming brain and your editing mechanisms that can distill all the visual background noise in your brain into manageable, useable parts. Basically, the more you know- the less you'll need. I like to let the line work show-through in my drawings. I'm reluctant to paint overtop a line drawing as it would dismiss all the planned-out under pinnings of the sketch! It's like building in 2-D. this doesn't work for every sketch of course…and it evolves with what's in your cache or how well you know your subject. Leave a couple stray lines to establish perspective.. it helps ground the sketch in space, an anchor on the page. I use tone sparingly. The sketches I execute for film have one primary purpose: to communicate the absolute function of whatever this thing may be to the director in the clearest form possible. This is where that pre-design comes in- by the time the pen starts working you've done the hard part of figuring out what the director wants to see. I work in grey scale for my concept work. This may be a throw-back to only buying cool grey marker sets in school. Working in a limited palette reduces the complexity of the drawing so the concept of the drawing, the idea- jumps off the page. Color can muddle the message in one sketch.. or enhance it in another. I use it sparingly as I never really learned how to use it…and, for the most part, I'm plowing pretty quickly through as many concepts as possible between reviews. Time is short…and there are other people in the art dept. whose job it is to paint and ponder color.

Q: How do you recharge and stay fresh and creative? and Where do you find inspiration ?
J: Because my day is dominated with drawing I tend to channel my after hours energy building in three dimensions. It's a much needed break from constantly working in the virtual; a character or environment design will evolve over multiple, month-long iterations before a final build happens (cycles can last years for a single asset). So it comes highly recommended to have projects in ones non-work life to keep a personal momentum…where you conceive, organize and execute designs of your own. Really, it maintains ones sanity! The benefit is cyclical- your work at work is at the mercy of so many different arms of the production (story, production design, technical, budget, scheduling etc.) On the other hand you get home and, in a couple days, you dream-up and scratch build a modified floatplane that's been haunting your sleeping hours. You have a finished product that fills your personal cache- it makes going to work and dealing with the start/ stop nature of production much easier. The design/ craft work you do in a less restricted environment will (in some form, at some time) infiltrate and inform your work at work.

I find most of my inspiration in the solid, substantial stuff found at the scrap yard. During Ep.1 a few of us from the art dept. used our 'credentials' to gain access to a small, family-owned ex-NAVY supply depot across from the Oakland airport in the East Bay. Some of the internal volumes of this two-warehouse complex resembled that last shot in the first Indiana Jones film- where the arc is boxed up and buried deep among vast terrains of concealed, countless booty. The parts prized from the containers at the depot were beautifully preserved jewels of fifty-year-old aeronautic engineering. It was a feast for the eye, for the camera and for an insatiable appetite of precious, formed, cast, stamped and welded metals. The mechanisms that make any plane work are experiments in lunacy: elegantly blunt, heavy aluminum armatures actuated by intricate, dedicated systems of pulleys, struts or a ridiculous muddle of hydraulic pumps and plumbing. Just holding one of these milled, polished…perhaps anodized parts in your hand satisfies and provides real, lasting sustenance for a design brain.

Buying truck loads of this stuff from the airplane scrap yard, I've built various pieces of furniture over the years: a dining table using the rear horizontal stabilizer wing tips off of a Lockheed Constellation prop-liner from the 40's. A day bed consisting of two radar dishes and landing gear parts, a variety of smaller storage unit pieces…all absolutely functional and used around the house. The conceit behind this furniture is: honor the design/ craft of the part and build simply. I strive to combine these parts meant for different planes and applications into what looks and works like a piece of true aircraft engineering from a parallel universe. I don't garnish the pieces with lame wood trim or spend my time polishing the aluminum to a mirrored finish…all this distracts from the absolute-utilitarian nature of the parts.

I also like to work in miniature and revisit my childhood, model-making roots. I've got an inventory of plastic kits that won't see the daylight for years to come. Or perhaps I'll have a reason to tear into multiple kits (the less expensive ones) and combine/ kit-bash these into something crazed, genuine and, oh, so gratifying.

I'm storing energy to get back into comics too. From late kindergarten into early college I drew strips using a series of characters my brother and I dreamt up in childhood. Pixar's a great place to get this kind of thing launched again…there are hordes of people who pump out amazing graphic novels, publish them and make the journey to comic con every year in San Diego. I suppose the thing holding-off the comics, currently and oddly enough, is my writing. My mom was a skilled writer and encouraged us kids to pick it up- I fought her on that for years during school and, then, finally in college I realized how effective good writing is. Writing's like constructing an image from spare parts- and then it's a matter of editing the form down to its essence. At times it's much easier than having to draw or indicate the details. And it leaves the door wide open to interpretation.

Q: Do you have any recent or on-going top 3 artists or persons that inspire you?
J: I consider Ralph McQuarrie to be the god father of Star Wars design. It was his and Joe Johnston industrial design-inspired work on the original SW trilogy that were the earliest and greatest influences on me. Ken Dallison is a Canadian Illustrator whose ink and watercolor sketches also made a profound impact on me as a kid. The draftsmanship, design and graphic sensibilities of these three continue to inspire...

-> this post is written by Jennifer Chang.

Paul Madonna is an artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Mellon University, and once interned at MAD Magazine as the "First art intern". After graduating in 1994, he moved to San Francisco. In 2003, he created All Over Coffee and posted it weekly on his website. All over coffee is a comic like strip, usually composed with a paragraph of text about moments and details of everyday life, layered on top of a monochromatic ink drawing of landscape that provides the clues to the story setting and completes the mood. The strip was picked up by the S.F. Chronicle running 4 days a week in 2004. In 2007, City Light Books published a collection of All Over Coffee strips in a hardcover edition. Most of the strips in the book were set in San Francisco. Now the strip runs every Sunday in the Chronicle, and on SF Gate.

I met Paul briefly at an art group show 2 years ago, and was fascinated with his style of story telling and drawings of S.F in the strips, which, for me, captured the subtle little details of this city very much. This time for Rose La Biche, I thought he'd be one of the great artists to learn about in the S.F. Bay Area . With honor and Paul's cool generosity, I had the privilege to visit him at his home studio in S.F.

His working place was situated in 2 connected rooms in a Victorian apartment. To my surprise, it was a very neatly organized studio - piles of green Arches watercolor blocks in different sizes on the shelf; pre-mixed different values black ink in glass jars, and each labeled with dates and shades; notebooks neatly arranged by sizes and dates, and each book's chapter contents were clearly labeled on each cover… it was a place charged with creativity and efficiency.

We began our conversations about “All Over Coffee” and his work.

Q: Why did you moved to S.F?
P: I moved to San Francisco for a mix of reasons. I wanted to be in a major city, and also wanted out of Eastern weather, so that eliminated New York. San Francisco had been home to the comics of the 60's and 70's and a place of social change. It was also a small big city and had a vibrant cafe culture.

Q: How do you approach drawings for "All Over Coffee"?
P: When I first started doing the strips on site, I would bring little jam jars of inks with me in this wooden box I made myself that hold them, and some travel sable brushes. So I can bring the box around and have the entire set with me. Materials make all the difference. You've got know how to render and you choose your materials accordingly. For me there are 3 basic elements here, a pad of paper, pens, and inks. I can also bring a little folding stool, and I put all of them in my bag and just go out and draw. It's that immediacy that's very important for me. I love having a studio, it's necessary to come back here and be able to have all the tools here to finish things. But ultimately, I like to know that if it's just me and the bag, I can make something.

So, at a certain point, after I started doing ink washes on site, I realized it takes some time to dry, and you can't work over them really and get the effects you want immediately. I can only get one layer down on site. Also, I'd choose a site and a time of day I want to render, and by the time I sit down and did the line work, the light has completely changed. So I can't begin with the wash till I did the line work. It became a necessity to document (in photographs) and then finish the washes in the studio. It also became kinda stickler about the hour of the day. I may like that scene for the composition, if I see it at this hour, I might come back tomorrow morning, then the afternoon, then the evening, and see what light is best on here. And sometimes, I'll take a photograph and come back the next day or another day to draw it with that memory in mind.

Q: Do you do sketches before you start on a drawing?
P: No, I don't. I do Sketch, but I don't do very much for the strip. All the drawings are done straight to ink. Some pieces that I started in New York this simmer, and since I was traveling and wasn't there for very long, I basically did the minimum that I felt needed to do on site in order to finish them back here in the studio.

Q: Do you keep a Sketchbook then?
P: Whenever I go to draw, I want to make a final piece reflecting the same energy that would go into my sketchbook, so I have no need to keep a sketchbook. My actual sketchbook is more like a notebook; it's about writing the ideas down and formulating them as it goes.
I think when we make sketchbook, we'd think "this is just for practice, and if it looks bad, well, I’m doing it as an exercise, and nobody has to see it." but I found I was making my best drawings in my sketchbook. So I just want to take that and work on a nicer paper with nicer materials, but with the same attitude. Once you can get over with the fear of making the "best drawing" in you sketchbook, then you can run with it, I don't want to do things again, it's not laziness, I think there is something about the moment of discovery, while you're making the piece that is genuine, that you can't recreate. If I would sketch it first, I feel like in some way I'm following a guideline.
I want to find something organic while doing them. The only way to do that is just go straight to the page, and just start drawing, so it can be fun!

Q: I noticed in many of your recent pieces have a nice balance of space and complexity. Especially, the negative space that seems to give the reader a nice breathing room... is it something intentional?
P: I think my focus has shifter a little bit; I'm interested in the sky space. For a while, I've been paying attention mostly to the balance of shadow and light. Say there is the composition of the buildings and the scenes; but there is also a composition of light and shadows that come in. And the sky space becomes the shape in itself. It's like there are several pieces going on inside of one.

• This is a piece that I did in Paris, it's totally about the shapes, which is a wonderful shape that I felt indicative of Paris in general. You can get this really dramatic " lighting bolt " shapes. In N.Y., you can get them, but they're wide. Here I left the sky just the white negative shape, which wouldn't value the real sky would take on this time of day, it would be darker than the buildings. But it would have taken away the emphasis that was trying to make, which was really bring your focus to this negative space. There are 3 things going here, which are the powerful white negative shape, the odd gray architecture shapes popping out into the sky, and this dark and consistent shadows. And that's just the visual element of it. There is the emotional element that comes with the text.
  

Q: When you start to do a drawing, do you right away find the graphic shapes that are attracting you and decide those are what you gonna do?
P: I generally go to a site because of the beauty that I see is in the light or the composition or in the negative space. I very rarely say, "That's a pretty building I want to render that building".

Q: Does the story come when you're drawing?
P: Most of the time the story comes first. I'm always working on pieces of writing, and often I'll go out with a little story in my notebook, and say today, I'm drawing for this. Often times when I write something, I sort of know what I'm going for. I want the drawing and the text exist in harmony, other time to be contradicted. And I tend not to be too literal with my text, I don't like my drawings to be illustrations, because, personally, I feel illustration takes a back seat, it's almost arbitrary.

Q: Do you think about how to compose the text and the drawings together when you first have the ideas? When you go on location do you think about that?
P: Not for the later ones. For the earlier works, I laid things over and rearranged them like a collage, and post them digitally. Versus the more recent works, I leave the space for the text on the drawing, and make the composition, it's a very different approach, and that's just the evolution over the course of years, it stopped being about the frame.

Q: What do you think that evolution is? Why loosing using multi panels?
P: Part of it is because I wanted to spend more time on each individual image, and focus on the power of one, as suppose to a sequence. I'm just trying to create moments. I think comics is a lot about time, creates beats and passage of time ... But I felt like the AOC strip was about capturing a timeless moment. It was also about making the finish drawing as the final. I felt that I had multiple images before, and they were separated like the unfinished elements, and then it became the publication would be the finish piece. I guess I just want the strips to exist on their own - a solitary piece. And if I want to do comics, then go them differently. So now, I can just make these pieces and go publish them as they are without alterations. All the pieces after the AOC book are without borders now.

Q: Some says visuals in comics could limit the imagination from reading text, what do you think about that?
P: I think we read aesthetic, we feel aesthetic before our conscious mind. our feelings tell us what to think in regard of aesthetic, in my opinion. I've been reading Ivan Brunnetti, who is my favorite cartoonist. Ivan's work is big, his comic goes to simplicity and creates these very flat scenes and these very basic characters. Without reading his comic, we know the aesthetic of it without going into it. We can almost ignore it. I think that's the wonderful things about cartoons. There is a consistency of it, and once we continue with the consistency, we never have to read them in that regard. We may watch what the characters and their little expressions are doing, but we really reading the text as if we're reading a book. And the aesthetic is underneath it all. For my strip, I sort of have a set of rules that I defined.
It took me 300 pieces probably, before I knew the rule of this strip that I created. In one way the rules made creating them easier, and made me start to explore different types of drawings and writing. Now there is not as much exploration in the strip. For the first couple of years, I was still figuring it out, and that was really fun and was the bulk of all my work, because everyday was like " what new can I do with this? How can I take this?" I have certain parameter that I knew the type of drawings, I knew the aesthetic of writing I want to do, but how I would put them together...?

Q: I found you're a very organized person?
P: I'm process oriented. It's about how I get to the final stage, not just the final stage. It looks like what it looks like because of every step I have taken along the way to get there. In general, I think the aesthetic is the result of every choice I made for tools, or how I set up the space. That's the part that no body sees, but without it, the drawings wouldn't look the way they do. How I live is a part of that process, and how I think about time and approach my day is a part of the aspects of my work.
When graduated in 1994, I had some friends I was in contact with, all had stopped making art for one reason or the. I thought they were blaming something else. If you want to do it, and you’ll find a way to do it. I only wanted to use materials that can be fitted in my backpack. And in a way, I’m still working off that idea. Though now I have fairly large studio, and I love it and I'll miss it if I don't have it, but if I lost it, it won't prevent me from making things. So I just began with whatever that can fit in my bag. and Over time, it grew to," well, how beautiful and finished can I make something with little materials ?" that's why I like to limit what I use. you learn about your materials, and you know how the result is gonna look like, so you know what tools I'll go to.

Q: I read somewhere that you have a note taking habit for your stories, can you talk about that a little bit?
P: I do, I'm an obsessive note taker. It started when I was working as a carpenter. I used to make cut sheets, and I'd write down measurements onto them. I always got these ideas, and I'd write down them on to the cut sheet. At the end of the week, I'd take this pile of cut sheets, and transcribe, edit them into a notebook. I'd find most of them terrible and one decent... and eventually, I'd just bring a notebook with me, and kept it at he end of my table. I came to find that we only have so much capacity to hold on these little ideas, and most of them are terrible. If 1 out of 10 ideas is worth pursuing; and 1 out of 10 of those actually goes somewhere. So it's like, 1 out of 100 is actually a decent idea. If you spend all day holding onto 1 idea, then you've got 100 days to come up with a good one. If you write it down, and forget about it and allow yourself to come up with another one, you might come up with 10 ideas per day, which means in 10 days you'll have a great idea! So I just created this habit that every time I come up with an idea, instead of judging it, I just write it down, and forget about it. When I come back to it and look at it, and I can say " oho! I can do something with that!" or I can't, and I'll just move on! That just the mental system I've developed organizing the ideas and see how I would work with them.

Q: Does any of the short stories ever inspire you to do a longer story of the same setting?
P: Since I begin with the stories most of the time, the images are chosen based on the story. Like the " Out of the Grape Vine" (published in Zyzzyva, Spring 2007) piece, when I wrote that it was only 10 sentences, it could have easily fit into the strip, but I knew forth that i wanted 10 pieces with it. Not trying to make 10 drawings into 1 panel, I image it to be something viewers can be engaged with one piece at a time, so you physically move through the space when looking at them. That's something I couldn't get publishing it in the newspaper that way. And the illumination of it comes from the texts and the story telling as well as through the images. As much as it's about what's not being shown, it's about what's being shown.

• A page from " Out of the Grape Vine"
  

Q: Though you wrote in your book that all stories are fictional, does any of them reflects how you felt at the time?
P: Of course it does, the idea of fiction is simply taking life and distorting it. We can argue about what a true story is anyway. Fiction for me is that, I see something and take an element of that and build on it as my inspiration. I think that’s the most creative aspect of it. The drawing is created in a craft way, but the writing is really about just being able to build and make something. That's why flash fiction is a very interesting idea for me. Something consumes very quickly, but you're involved in the story and out of it quickly.

Q: Are any writers or artists that you like and inspired at the moment?
P: I’m reading a lot of short story collections and flash fictions, not really about which writers, but more about genre. Artists at the moment are: Edward Hopper, who can create these beautiful moments, and is wonderful with light, and there is this richness and peacefulness; Wayne Thirbaud , the way he uses shape against shadows, and uses of colors, and plays with design over representations, he works over reality and distorts it; Raymond Pettibon , he works with blurring the lines between comics and art, and uses texts and image, and he also works with streams of conscious. I like his different uses of fonts, but you're not gonna come away with any stories. Versus, I want to tell a story, all my pieces are more clean, but I like that he'd just go off this way (rough brush strokes and shapes ), and it's all very immediate and the whole idea of working on site- you just pull out ideas and make something, and it's done !
In a way, I disguise my craft because of how much detail layering I do, versus Raymond is more spontaneously, that's the way I love about him.

tuesday, September 8th -> this post is written by Jennifer Chang.

Evah Fan and Brendan Monroe is a creative artist couple, they draw, paint, sculpt, and they have a very cute organic veggie/fruit garden. They live in Berkeley .

I’ve met Evah and Brendan at APE (Alternative Press Expo) last year. It is a once a year fair in San Francisco with mostly self-published and one of the kind, handmade books, comics and arts. Evah and Brendan had a very charming table displaying their hand made zines and artworks. I was fascinated by their incredible style of work, and the subtle humor behind.

Evah was born in Taiwan and grew up in LA. She went to the Pratt Institute, NY, studying Illustration. After graduating from Pratt, she came back to the West coast, LA, where she met Brendan. Brendan grew up in Southern California and went to the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, for Illustration. They met in their first group show after graduating from schools at the Giant Robot http://www.giantrobot.com. They are now living together and share a studio in Berkeley.

Interestingly, Evah often does paintings that are very small and super delicate, with very funny humorous themes; and Brendan often does large paintings or sculptures but about micro things inspired by nature and biology. In some sense, they are definitely a very interesting complimentary couple.

At the moment, they’re busy working on artwork for their October double solo show at Galerie L.J. Beaubourg in Paris. I had a rare privilege and thrill to visit them at their studio in Berkeley, and had a wonderful evening interviewing them about their work.

In their studio, there were 2 working tables that were made out of abandoned wooden doors sitting side by side. One was neatly arranged, with papers and jars of tiny paintbrushes on top; the other was creatively piled with sculpture parts, collected paint chips and materials. Next to the desks was a little closet size space covered with a clear plastic coat with a zipper opening in the front- it was a small dust free wooden shop with many tools on the wall and a sawing machine. Most of the furniture were made by Brendan or put together by them two. It’s a studio full of creative energy. We sat down at their work-in-progress living room table, and began our conversation.

Q: How did you get into art? & Why ?
E: Haha…that’s the one question when everybody says. “ I’ve started drawing since I was five !” but I have to admit, it’s probably just that one thing we do that we really enjoyed when we were kids. I just want to be a “grown up woman child”. I want to be a kid forever! I was just like a dream, when I was little. I was reading some artist’s biography, and felt I wanted be an artist, just kept drawing. But it’s not very easy to achieve and obtain and maintain. It’s one mini step we have so far.
B: For a long time, I didn’t think I’d be able to be an artist. I had to get a job and learn something else, then I could go home and do art if I wanted to. But then I saw graphic designers who made a living, and they look like they‘re doing well…and then there were illustrators and they looked they were doing ok. When I saw people doing that, I decided to go to Art Center, where it supposed to be a good school.

Q: When did you move up to Bay Area? and Why ?
B: 2005 summer. Because Evah moved up here.

E: 2004. I love the weather here. And I felt like it's the middle between LA and NY for me personally. New York is way crazy and LA is way chill, here is JUST right. Plus, all this green…and like, yah, I don't drive, and I can still get by here by Bart and by walking, bike.

Q: Beside gallery works, do you also do commission work?
E: Occasionally, I do commission work. Last year I worked with the Wire magazine, for a few illustrations. And right now I’m doing chapter illustrations on a book with Cathy Erway http://noteatingoutinny.com. She has a blog about not eating out in NY, it’s all about recipes. It’s very fun!

B: Usually, it’s our main project and main focuses on one show, and sometimes we get freelance projects. Last time I got this illustration job was to paint the abstract version of thoughts, and the article was about reading lies through brain waves of patients, criminals... Or some bands would use my paintings for their albums.

While Brendan was showing me his artwork, I asked him about his themes which a lot of time are about microscope of human body, cells, and skin layers…he told me that part of it was because his parents were in biology and medical field, since he was little, he was exposed to and interested by science. Now he makes artworks of the abstract interpretations of it.

Q: How do you choose your subjects for your artwork? Is the theme of biology something you've been exploring?
B: It's more like exploration leads to the other usually. For example, last year I did a show called,” Insight”. It was supposed to be paintings of things that could be inside of your body, which are not what people would ordinary think they are, but they could be. A lot of them were like little figures of people crawling around and maybe this is your digested track, or maybe that’s a version of you doing things inside of your body and make you think of a certain way…That’s my ideas of it at least. I’ve always been interested in anything nature and science related, kinda like the reasons of why things are or why things live. A lot of the images come out of a process of making the same strokes over and over again, redoing things. I do sketches but I don’t stick to them at all. I just paint it, I’ll throw some stuff on the paper, and glue things, play around with it…and see what happens

E: He is a lot like “Process Oriented“, like he’ll work through and then something coming through that process. So he’s more spontaneous sometimes. A lot of time I start with words. I just have little silly narratives running in my head, and I was thinking,” oho, I’m gonna paint that!” It’s like taking the light-hearted version of a serious thing. I’m actually very intrigued in word and phrases, a lot of titling of my work I have a lot of fun with. Say like a cliché, “Raining cats and dogs”, I’d have a completely different view, so sometimes I’d just do backwards style of what I’m gonna paint. I try to have fun out of the content that I’m painting, and I’ll laugh at it!

Q: it’s interesting to see your work are very different in style - Brendan’s paintings are in large scale, and Evah’s paintings are very tiny and detailed. But both of you seems to have this “Micro” interest. Can you talk a bit about it?
B: It’s funny, because for the title of the October Paris show, we are trying to tie that together.

E: We were coming up with the show title, “what is something between us?”, and it’s actually that. Because he exemplifies small things but in big scales, and I do it physically small.

B: So we kind of have that going, but then at the same time, for the show we have our own subjects. Evah is going to do a series about music, and I’m doing painting of small things!

Q: How do you choose your medium?
E: In school I did play with acrylics and other stuff…and it wasn’t until later I found this acrylic gouache. and “This is exactly what I needed, it’s so gangster ! “. The acrylic gouache can be transparent like watercolor but it also can be opaque like acrylics. Other than that, I like ink drawing a lot, too, like using sumi ink…

B: I like to use acrylics on paper, I used to paint a lot more with acrylics on wood, just because that it’d dry really fast, and I liked how the wood texture came through. But then I started on paper, and I like that it seems to be more absorbent, and I can seal it (the paint) off whenever I wanted to with the matte medium. I would have the combination of really soaked in stuff, plus the stuff that’s layered straight on top, so it has a lot of depth.

Besides painting, Brendan also makes sculptures in wood or with other materials like wire, papers, or fabrics. In wood especially, he makes some creature like characters that are very alive. He also makes interactive sculptures that are in a large scale. For the “Insight” show last year, he made a room like interactive sculpture, Borborrygmi, that’s appox. 15 x 10 x 6.5 ft. It was made out of fabrics and a tent. Its interior wall was made out of stuff animals that recorded sound of stomach noises. People can physically go inside to experience the space and squeeze the stuff animals on the interior walls.

Q: Do you collaborate with each other?
B: For us collaboration is much better that I do my part and then I give it to Evah, and then she does hers. Because I’m really rough and loose with everything, and Evah is very careful with everything.

E: But so far it’s been really fun to collaborate.

Q: Do you give opinions to each other’s work? And would you be influenced by each other?
E: I feel like we both have pretty stubborn personality when it comes to our work. We know what we want, even though we’d ask for opinions, and we’d always come back and decide it ourselves.

B: Well, we listen to each other half and half, but we need each other’s approval for sure.

Q: Who would be your recent top 3 heroes?
E: I like Marcel Duchamp , David Shrigley , and Joan Miro … Because the way I work is so tight, I’m really drawn to things that make me feel that I can break free, and works that are child like, and spontaneous, loose, and a lot of humor. I feel I’m not so much influenced by them, because a lot of the artists I like, their subject matters are pretty mundane. For example like David Shrigley, he does these very fast drawings but they are always so hilarious, like teenager’s drawings. It’s like taking things so lightly. They reminded me that doing art is and should be fun! I felt my work’s humor is more like a puzzle sometimes, people have to read in to get it, and their works are very immediate.

B: It’s always changing but someone I like recently is Olafur Eliasson who had a show at S.F. Moma. He does a lot of experienced, altering things. And Tim Hawkinson, his artwork is always about a result of a process he makes for himself. And Matthew Barney like his film “Drawing Restraint 9“, and “Cremaster Cycle“. Mainly is because they’ve created something that’s a new way of looking at things and show you something that you’ve never seen before.

The last Guest Blogger of this great one month adventure is Jennifer Chang. I met Jennifer a little more than a year ago through our common friend, Louis. I was amazed by how Jennifer, apart from working full time as a sketch artist in at Pixar Studios, was managing to develop different art projets of her own on the side. I especially loved the concept she created with some others friends of her, all artists of the San Francisco Bay Area, to wake up super early in the morning to paint before going to work - the outcome of their work is amazing. And because I knew Jennifer loved to get involved in artisitc projets, I invited her to be the new face of Rose La Biche for my last hoodie collection launched in February - the photos ended up being gorgeous and the collection works beautifully! So thank you again for much for being so supportive of Rose La Biche Jen ^-^ It's a true pleasure to have you on board today, thanks for accepting this new challenge!!

What a great pleasure and honor to be invited to “hijack” Rose la Biche for a week! I will take this rare opportunity to share with you the diverse art, life and people in San Francisco Bay Area.

Let me start by introducing who I am and what I do…
I am Jennifer Chang. I’m now working as a Sketch Artist in the art department of a 3D film animation studio, and I’ve worked on this. I work with several other artists designing the look, characters, environments, and props, following the art directors and the production designer’s lead, according to the need of the story for a film. My time is divided between moments, when we have the freedom to develop and explore the look of the film, we could push it as crazy and as far as possible; and, when we finally find the look and style of the film, we then have to make it happen, meaning, for my part, making Model Packets. In order to communicate with other departments on the film, like modeling, shading, animation…etc, a model packet needs to translate our ideas and sketchy designs into practical structural plans, it sometimes means to break down the design logic to rules, or explain in details the objects in scales and measurements.

I know this probably sounds quite abstract to you, so I often explain it like this: a Sketch artist’s job is like an Architect’s, developing concepts and ideas for a building (for example), and then making good clear drawings to communicate with the engineers or contractors to make it practical, and then the contractors and all needed people build the building according to the plans and designs the Architect made.

So yap, we still use pencils and papers to draw for a 3D animation. Computer is just another medium, and just like designing for the traditional animation or films, but with different design logic for different needs.

To learn more about designing for animation, you can find the making art of books for animation or film, like this or this ; or in the “Special Features” section of a DVD, like this or this .

I was born and raised in Taiwan and came to San Francisco in 1999 for art school studying in Illustration. I graduated in 2004 and began working in animation in 2005. During these 9 years, I’ve very fortunately met many incredible people in art and in life from all over the world (like, the incredible, Lucy!). This place opened my mind, and continuously surprises me with new things and people. San Francisco Bay Area is one of the rare places where very diverse people from all cultures live; it also creates an interesting mix and clash of arts. There are traditional classical artists, but also many young artists using the knowledge from the past to create new views of contemporary art. The diversity of art crosses from animation and film to comics, illustrations, and fine arts… It is a place blooming with creative energy, and it expresses it through main stream to underground galleries; city art fairs to alley walls; hardbound art books to self published comics and zines, or even leave behind free booklets… It’s a sunny (or maybe foggy, depends on where you are...). California city area that is a couple of hours away from nature, and few minutes away from creativities! These are probably few of the many reasons attracting people to come, and also why it is so hard to leave…

Well, beside what I do for work during the day, I love to sketch on trips, and make paintings in watercolor, gouache or pastel... and make short stories that both adults and kids could enjoy reading! I’m interested in the subtle details in people, and the subtle stories that happen in every day life. Sometimes I make little picture books like, wordless short stories that abstractly expressed my experiences or feelings of the time. They are often represented in some odd cat-like characters, like Kitosan….

“ Why using such a cliché method of animal characters? “ Well, I have to state that I’m not a “ Cat lady”… I’ve only had a short encounter with cats, but it made me realized that cat is such a domestic WILD animal that incredibly lives closely with people in everyday life! I was inspired to make the character “Kitosan” – a young but serious cat that thinks a lot and enjoys life.

I thought cat has the great quality of showing both human and animal like personality; and by using fatty animal characters to tell a story, it immediately takes away the realistic logic of a story. (I hope) People in all ages, if they’re attracted to the look of the character or the world, they’d be relaxed enough to openly read and follow the story. And when the story is presented without words and only with loose drawings, it gives time and space for readers to imagine and interpret in their own ways. Hopefully, the story could possibly cross culture, language, and age barrier.

Here you could find more about the first published Kitosan story, and a mini one here for the next year.

Below are 2 paintings I did along the line for a group show at Gallerie Arludik in Paris this past summer. And a few sketches from my recent sketchbook.

I hope you’d enjoy reading my first post, and for the next 4 days, I’ll introduce you many incredibly talented, hard working and productive artists I’ve met in San Francisco Bay Area. Please stay tuned!

-> this post is written by Veronique Brunel.

This is already our last day together and it’s time to get back to school here in France, all kids are getting prepared! And so aretheir parents…
I am a mother of a little boy and I tend to adapt my schedule to his - first things of all being that I have to wake up way much earlier! Another result of this adaptation phase is that I’m myself getting ready to get back to my dance classes and I have a lot of preparation work to do.

So before leaving, I just wanted to give you again the links to these 3 artists I talked to you about and whose work I love :
Luciano
Steeve
Propriete

It was a pleasure for me to be here this week and share a little bit of my own World with you.I hope you appreciated this in(ex)cursion!
Thanks a lot to Lucy for having me over and for doing all the translation (I promise, I’m gonna be working my English soon!!)

You probably can’t wait to meet the next Guest Blogger next week and so do I so as we say in French , I let you in very good hands !

À bientôt, Veronique.

-> this post is written by Veronique Brunel.

Hey everyone!
Today, I wanted to talk to you about some artists and art work I love as a way to share a little bit of my world as a dancer.

Sam Taylor-Wood is a British photographer and video director. I love her series of Self Portrait Suspended, Bram Stoker’s Chair and in a very different style, her Crying Men, a portrait series of well-known men crying.

Janfamily is an artistic action group from around the World created by two Danish artists Nina Jan Beier and Marie Jan Lund. Their photo book ‘Plans for other days’ inspired Luciano and I to create our video with the same name. These photos suggest a list of simple things to re-ppaopriate day-to-day life and question the way we relate to others and our place as an individual in a group.

Simple patterns, powerfull colors, rhythm : all these are specific to Marimekko, the famous Finish company. Specialized in textile design for home and decoration, Marrimekko carries a large range of marvelous design patterns. You probably know some designs from Maija Isola, one of the designer working for Marimekko. I’m in love with their interior design collection.

Still in textile industry, ‘La chemise du Sofa’. Their work is beautiful, chic and very emotional. Their website in being created at the moment but I highly encourage you to keep an eye on them. Luciano did an illustration clip for them recently on their CRU ‘weapons’.
Oh and they also make some gorgeous stickers that I love.

Hope you’ll like these artists as much as I do!