Zahhhhmbay Zahhhhmbay

She has risen!

The story is that this chick is a groupie for the band I AM THE TRIREME, who died and came back from the grave because the late night groundskeeper at the cemetery was listening to her favorite song, so she killed him and took his mp3 player. And his braaaaaaains.

Here's some shots from the process...


To find out more about I AM THE TRIREME
visit their myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/iattpa


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In your heeead in your heeeead.

I haven't posted in a while, so's I figures it's about time I give an insight into what I'm doing. I've recently had to drop the projects I was working on to start something I need finished by this Thursday 11:59 PM. I started today around noon and am approximately at the 10% mark.

She came back from the grave to kill the late shift graveyard groundskeeper for his mp3 player, because she heard him listening to her favorite band.

Tata Gala 2010

Hey guys, I have some exciting news! A piece of mine was recently selected to show in a juried exhibition that raises money for a really great cause. Sponsored by Juxtapoze Magazine, the Tata Gala is a show of illustrators, painters, designers and photographers, with proceeds benefitting breast cancer research. Each piece in the show is centered around le lovely lady lumps, in effort to draw attention to the need to find a cure and preserve these beautiful things we call boobs.

My piece was selected to be shown along with several other artists, on a 50 inch LCD monitor... that's only 10 inches less than my height! It was also chosen to receive the honor of "Distinguished Merit" which I was thoroughly stoked about, since I feel this is probably my favorite piece I've done to date. Here it is:

The piece is entitled "Verity" and meant to express the moment in the sickness when the realization that this isn't a nightmare finally, truly, sets in with the patient. I used my usual colored pencil, graphite, digital color combo for the figure, and figured out how to utilize some oil, water color, and ink textures for the background. Far more serious, and far more rendered than the majority of the work I've been doing, I'm glad to see that this was such a success.

Yesterday evening was the Florida show at the Sarasota Design Center. The New York "Best of the Breast" show is February 5th-25th at Sacred Gallery on Broadway. I'm not sure if my piece is going to be in that or not, but it's still worth checking out!

Find out more about the Tata Gala at:

www.tatagala.org

For more on how YOU can help breast cancer research, please visit:

www.nationalbreastcancer.org

Fish and Chicks: personal exercise in color, light and shadow

I did this just as a personal exercise for myself because I wanted to explore lighting and shadow. I feel like a lot of my work lacks a bold contrast between light and dark, and that's something pretty crucial to conveying the human form... so I should probably start doing it. I also wanted to get back to my original color sensibility... which is to figure out a way to use the whole rainbow. I think I pulled it off pretty well here, and managed to use the color as a secondary means of communicating the shape and glisten of the tail. If I were to put this image to practical use, I would use it as a cd cover for a screamo band. Probably Chiodos.

For my next project I'm going to be doing another project centered on the female figure, which was sort of the motivation for doing this exercise. More updates on that as it unfolds.

google translate: ra ra, lutdut daha, ga ga, oohla laha

I revoke my statement in the last post. This is my new Best Piece Ever. I really nailed the boobs on this one. And on that note, I'm going to use this opportunity to practice my professional artist's statement writing, while utilizing some sweet html I just learned to make my longer blogs more reader-friendly.
Ahem...

Lady Gaga, Royal Flush mock cover
Kristin Leigh Koefoed, 2010

For this personal piece I decided to make the illustration of a mock cover for the magazine Royal Flush. Keeping the general voice of the magazine in mind, I recognized that were this a real-world assignment, avid RF readers might at first be horrified to see a pop icon on their favorite alternative magazine. Due to this, it was especially important to make the headlines as clear as possible verbally, and as present as possible graphically. It is indicated that the feature article tries to analyze the nonsensical phenomena of modern pop music from an outside perspective, rather than glorifying it.

For the secondary text, I referenced previous issues of Royal Flush and compiled a list of people featured in the magazine, their occupations, and markets. I used the whole to develop a better sense of what RF's readers care about and from there, I only had to make a list of people and things I would write about if this were my magazine.

For the Royal Flush logo and the Number Foundation insignia, magazine editor Josh Bernstein was nice enough to send me high resolution copies. For this I am so thankful, because trying to use the pen tool to trace over a crappy scan would have undoubtedly bore horrifying results.

However, as I was unable to acquire Neutraface 2, the House Industries font family used by the actual magazine, I laid in a substitute font** that I felt had the same overall feel. Overall, I would like to see the piece done in Neutraface, but I think for the lack of $300 this version satisfies the needs of the assignment and my personal standards.


**–The font used is Telegrafico, one of my Top Five Favorites Free Fonts for the month of April 2010. The huge problem with Telegrafico is that there is no lower-case set. Luckily that was not an issue for this assignment.

the naked swimmer, round sixty seven... final?

We're scheduled to review everyone's images for the portfolio day postcard today. One lucky dreamer will have their life's aspirations fulfilled and be selected as the winner. Their image will be mass produced and mailed out to a bunch of art directors so we may beg them to come and look at our little workbooks.