DamianJim.com

Good day to you citizens!!  My schedule continues to be filled with work and activities, but I wanted to update everyone on my output from the last few weeks.  This post features, stickers, and not 1, but 2 t-shirt designs!

First off, I created 3 new sticker designs that I will be dispersing at Santa Fe, however I can sell you a set of 3 for $5 (shipping and handling extra) while they last.  

Get them now while their still in stock!! (Send me and email to order these lovely stickers: me@damianjim.com)

Next I want to debut a new t-shirt design that I created for the Jobot retail store.  The printing for these shirts was through Think! design and printing.

The cost of this fiery phoenix is $20 and is available via Jobot Coffee on 5th St. and Roosevelt in downtown Phoenix.  You can also order via email (mobaction@gmail.com), and you can also choose between men/ladies cut/sleeves/tank top, size, and color (grey, light blue, tan, or cream).

Next we have the “Rez Deep” t-shirt that we’re going to sell during Santa Fe Indian Market.

We have small, medium, large, and x-large available and this shirt is only in men’s style.  The shirts are $20 (shipping and handling extra) each and will be available during the market, or send me an email at me@damianjim.com, and I can send one to you.

1spot gallery will be closed during the month of August, but we will debut brand new art by yours truly in September.  Thank you for your support and I want to wish all the artists who are travelling to Santa Fe for the Indian Market, prosperity and a safe trip!

The past week has been busier than usual with my work schedule, and I wasn’t able to create much art during this time.  I’ve been spending the last few weeks working on a conversion project at work that leaves me not wanting to look at another display until the next day.

In the meantime I’ve been tightening up some poetry that I’ve been working on, and I thought for this week’s update I would share this sample with you:

I watched the white devil cross the road tonight

He swung a guitar and danced a benevolent sway as his voice carried to and fro while playing a tune for the people in black

The eager masses that are clothed in darkness and scream a chorus as life continues without their consent

With revulsion I turned from his stare, and watched a shadow waltz with the hiss and hush of traffic, playing with blurred visions and fleeting glimpses of legs akimbo

A silent crash of interlude as he dances into my mind

Mocking my hungry eyes and spurning wandering ways with book pressed against flesh, as pages of society crumble into ash

I inscribe my hatred into the weathered hide of his mask and stuff feathers into his opal eyes, as the crowd surges forward to receive penitence

Overflowing with derision, he sways and moves with the rhythm of the music in the room of fragrant muses as a memory of stagnant butchered lambs hangs in the air, gently prodding me to reply

What have the people cried so long to hear?

Besides this little piece, I also finished up a design for another project, and I’m including this teaser for your eyes.  To another week and drop on by this Third Friday!

Working with complex systems often involves a lot of cross checking to ensure that everything goes smoothly.  Despite all this redundancy in creating a smooth process, there will always be a moment when a new process introduces in this case, PICNIC (“Problem In Chair Not In Computer”).

Such a moment occurred for me recently and I spent the weekend lamenting my woes to a select group of people in hopes for receiving condolences.  How you ask?  This ID-10-T Error occurred Friday morning, after a busy week of working on a new digital painting on my iPad.  If you ever heard the “Jesus Saves” joke concerning programming, the clue lies in the punch line.

I downloaded Art Studio early this year, and tried playing around with it; however the program always seemed too ambitious for the iPhone.  After losing 1 drawing to a program crash, and losing a fair amount of work on another drawing, I hung up my Art Studio overalls and decided to stick with Brushes.  I chalked up the crash to buggy software, and the lost work to an unintuitive UI.

After my last article reviewing the newest version of Brushes, Brushes 3, I quickly found out that exporting high quality images from Brushes 3 was deprecated for a fancy brush palette.  This, in my mind was the best feature of the original Brushes app.  It was this reason that I wanted to find an updated digital painting program which would satisfy my painting needs, while allowing me to export high quality images. And thus, I decided to load up Art Studio and see what updates I had been downloading that might change my experience. 

When a program tells me it is auto saving while I’m painting, I’m going to assume that the painting is in a saved state, and that if I close the current painting, it will have saved a copy for me automatically.  At least that was the default behavior with Brushes. With Art Studio, you need to explicitly save the document via the File menu.  And with that inexplicable moment of oversight, I lost the latest and greatest in a flash!

I’m not easily deterred, and I have started two new paintings using Art Studio, and just in case a lighting storm happens by, or the app decides to crash; I have started saving every time I put my iPad down to take a break. A very important lesson learned, as well as a cautionary tale for UI designers.

Sunday didn’t finish with a bang, but with a slow subtle throbbing headache. After spending the whole weekend designing and drawing, my eyes were spent, and sending another completed file out left me elated and yearning for a dream state.

The completion of 2 new sticker designs was satisfying though, almost as much as placing the order. I spent 2 days, the first day working on half of the image of a new 1Spot sticker, and the 2nd day was spent finishing up the overall layout. The design for the new sticker is an adapted version of “Elevated,” the colorful profile picture I have posted on my artist page on Facebook.

This incarnation is in black and white, and I ended up adding more elements to a section of the painting that I felt needed more work. However, an unfortunate side effect of the conversion of the iPhone painting to a TIFF image results in every flaw showing up in high quality. Thus the clean up process involves cleaning up lines; straightening, erasing, and filling. Very tedious work that starts grinding on the hands after a while, but a step I consider important in quality control. By Sunday afternoon, I had finished this laboring process and started working on another sticker design for myself. The design I used for this piece was “Bliss,” another iPhone painting, and fortunately, the larger details meant less clean up work for this sticker. Around 7 pm I had finally finished up both layouts and submitted them to the printer for final output.

Which meant for me, I could finally eat something. Sometimes when I get too ingrained into a project and I’m looking at a deadline, I will forgo eating until the task is completed. That’s probably not the best way to fuel my creativity, but the meal is like a reward for a day’s work. After a late evening Ziindi/1Spot meeting, I was finally able to drift off into lala land and recharge.

Aside from the weekend tasks I had assigned myself, I managed to check out the video game exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. The event was a great break from work and seeing all the old school consoles brought back many memories; mostly of the massive amount of hours spent gaming either on a console or on a pc/mac. Katja was kind enough to accept my open invitation via Facebook, so it was interesting hearing her experiences with gaming. We also toured the rest of the museum, and I think by far the most impressive installation was the black butterfly’s permeating the entrance. Overall a nice break to a working weekend, and after getting home and working on the 1Spot sticker a bit, I started sketching out a concept for another project that I have on the burner.

Sometimes it takes me a while to come up with the final concept of an idea, and in this case I decided to appropriate the classic Firebird logo and play around with it. I worked on this concept all night and completed this piece around 4:30am Sunday. I cannot sell this piece for fear of invoking the wrath of the car gods/corporation, so here it is in full glory for free!

Aside from sending out another completed character for Coyote and the Stars (which I worked on in my downtime over the weekend), the weekend was very fruitful, even if it did make me not want to go to work on Monday, and sit in front of a computer again. I feel very tanned from all this monitor time.

I first met Byron Fenix when he played for us at our Ziindi Vol 1.1 release show. He was recommended by Jeff Slim when we were asking the artists involved whether they knew any DJ’s who would be willing to play the event. I can remember that the music I heard that night was a welcome change from the usual dearth of Native DJ spun events. The blend of electonic, disco, jazz, and R&B caught many listerners by surprise, and lent itself well to the contemporary art inspired event.

From this first collaboration we (Ziindi) knew that we wanted to utilize and promote this soulful young man. Most notably at 1Spot Gallery‘s opening event in January of this year. Byron also runs a weekly radio program (Soul Deluxe) via Radio Phoenix and was recently made accessible via Native Voice One nationally.

This guy is on the move and with the recent completion of Soul Deluxe’s website, listeners can find out more about this enigmatic young man. Byron is usually playing in several locations on a regular basis, and the website also shows his current schedule. You can also find him playing at, The Lost Leaf, Civic Space Jam, Cosmic @ SoChu House, Searsucker, and Solstice at Bar Smith.

Check him out and drop a note to him if you like what you hear!

http://www.souldeluxeradio.com

The life of a gallery owner never stops, even on our downtime at 1Spot, the business side keeps on rolling through the summer.  I spent the evening attending a meeting with the newly formed PGC.  A lot of great ideas were bandied about, and the coalition seems invested in generating more interest within the regional/national art scene. 

I’m in the middle of converting another application at my workplace, and it’s a constant reminder that we all progress, not only with technology, but also with our own priorities in life.  Older technology gets replaced, with no lasting legacy or impact.  Consider the VHS tape, it seems like a few years ago, everyone had to deal with rewinding tapes before checking them back in at their local video store.  Video streaming and the decline of cable television reminds us that services we considered important, are now changing to access and availability across various media devices.  The 10 cent phone call has been replaced with data rates and telephony subscriptions.  The wired remote has been replaced with wireless controls available via your phone.  All these inventions are supposed to help and improve our lives, but at the same time, our dependence on these devices keeps us on an upgrade schedule of our own.  Welcome to homo sapiens 2.0, “the sape,” the modern day android.  Whether we like it or not, were now a commodity of popular culture.

With that in mind, I’m going back to my conversion process, which will allow users access to more detailed information, public information that is valuable and will likely be mined and sold by 3rd party vendors to the same marketing firms and businesses that decide what colors are fashionable for next year.  I guess that’s the only thing that stays constant if your a business owner, what does the buyer want and how can I get them to buy my wares and keep coming back for more.

I had time to play with Brushes 3 over the weekend, and its a fun painting application.  The options in brushes and layer control make it a welcome upgrade to the app.  Apart from getting used to the new interface, I settled in quickly and produced “Depth” in about a half hour.

Another awesome feature is the ability to share drawings between devices, something I always found myself wishing when using the previous version.  The detail is amazing when using the tools and I found this flower like iPhone painting easy to crank out.

Aside from these weekend drawings, I finally watched The Cabin in the Woods, and it was an adventure.  

And now I’m off to draw more designs!

I will be showing my art exclusively at 1Spot Gallery in Phoenix, AZ from June 7th to August 2nd.  These dates are tentative and I am flexible at private showings by appointment.  Expect digital and painted works, with the highlight being the limited run, iPad poster prints.

I’m also working on more exciting projects on the side, and I’m looking forward to completing the Coyote and Stars project with TinkR’ Labs.  More new art is in the works and look forward to some Ziindi projects in August and September. 

I have a new Facebook artist page that I’m going to use instead of my personal FB account, so visit the page and keep up to date on new works:

https://www.facebook.com/DefinitionOfClarity