BRYNN METHENEY

Working on lot of projects lately which is leaving little time for personal work. Unfortunately I’m unable to share anything at this point but I thought I’d make a post about some books that I feel need to be shared. ;) I recently talked to two classes at my former college CCAC. One of the things I mentioned was making books online for promotional purposes. So I thought I’d share a few I either own or am going to own soon. Of course all of these books are made with creatures in mind. If you are into creature design and animal art I would suggest picking these up.

First up is Mike Corrieros book: “Planet to Planet”. This book is filled with creature sketches an designs. The cover is gorgeous, as you can see. The inside is full of black and white pencil drawings and what looks to be digital sketches. I actually own this one and I look at it constantly. This book is 67 pages – each one is filled!

Mike has always been a big inspiration to me – I remember joining COW for the first time over on conceptart.org for the “StormBringer” challenge and being blown away by what he produced. He was even kind enough to comment on my entry. Mike has always had great ideas and is very willing to share his knowledge and learn more about creatures, the natural world and the industry. He’s always looking for ways to push form and keep his designs looking credible – like they could actually work. More about Mike Corriero.

Allison Theus has been an inspiration since I was in middle school! I’ve been following her art online for a while now and I’m very happy to say that we’ve been able to become good friends through a small project we’ve been working on. Her work is just awesome; incredibly detailed and imaginative. She’s also made an online book called “A Book of Mostly Creatures”. From what I’ve seen of this book it looks like a great collection. It’s also 154 pages!

Her attention to anatomy and form has always been a motivator for me to make sure I’m looking at animals and paying attention to their muscles and how they connect and move their bodies. Not to mention her beasties are usually demented and just all around badass! More about Allison Theus.

Next up is Christopher Burdett. Chris and I have recently become contacts and have quickly become friends online. Chris’ works is incredible. He’s always been super fun about his work too (check out his birthday posts on his blog). His blog is constantly being updated with new and exciting things to look at. His work is always dynamic and always awesome! He has always inspired me with how he’s able to handle his creatures! Chris has actually made a number of online books but one I’m sharing is called “Pandas 1-36″.

Something that I think is important in being an artist is to always give back. His book, which was orginally created from doing sketches of pandas for his wife, is acollection of panda drawings. What’s so great about this book, besides the adorable drawings of pandas, is that all of the proceeds go to helping pandas and their charities! This is so important. To give back to something that perhaps inspired you to begin what you do or to donate to something you believe in; this is how we can give back through our own art. Anyway, Check out more of Christopher’s work and learn more about him here.

Anyway, I hope I did some justice to this awesome bunch. Please be sure to check out their work and the books I mentioned above.

Last year I put together a book through lulu.com called FishHooks. It is a collection of illustrations, sketches and studies that I thought I’d like to show and sell at APE. It actually did quite well and lots of people seemed to enjoy the book. Overall is was a great experience putting it together. I highly recommend putting together a book of work. Not only is it a great way to get your work to fans and potential clients, its really fun!

Here are links to all of the books if you’d like to purchase them:

Planet to Planet by Mike Corriero

A Book of Mostly Creatures by Allison Theus

Pandas 1 – 36 by Christopher Burdett

Enjoy!

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This was a quick warm up from this morning. Nothing too special – just trying to wake up and get things going.

Tuesday night I was invited to speak to two classes at my former college, CCAC. Robert Hunt and Bob Ciano had me share my work with their students and talk about life after school. I focused mainly on self promotion and the act of working on something creative everyday. Something I knew right out of college was that I’d need to keep up my momentum. Having a blog like this and joining online communities helped me stay on top of deadlines I had set for myself because I felt like I had an audience to please somewhere – even if that was never the case. I also covered online promotion and the power of social networks like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve had a good amount of success reaching people through the internet. Of course I also talked about physical promotion, networking and meeting people. Sending out books and prints to potential clients and such. I also covered how long it takes to get things moving when it comes to freelancing. Graduating in the midst of a economic crisis was hard enough. December 2009 was tough, real tough. No jobs anywhere. Yet somehow, I made it work. It took lots of willpower. There were plenty of days where I wanted to give up and go back to school for something – anything at that point. Something to take me out of the recession. However, I think sticking with my art through that time really made me realize how much I love doing it. Of course, I’m busy with lots of deadlines and projects but I’ll never be busy enough. I think that was the thing I really wanted to talk to them about. To never be satisfied. To try everything. To constantly move forward. This is what really got me working at what I love – never giving up, never giving in and always being thirsty for the next project. Overall it was a lot of fun to talk to the students. A friend of mine and fellow illustrator, Brianna Harden shared a quote on her blog a while back that I thought was inspriring to anyone starting out and anyone who has been in this for a while. I shared it with the classes later through email:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” -Ira Glass

While I’m no expert and I’ve only been at this for a couple of years, I do know that: working as hard as you can and being nice to your peers can get you places. It’s not easy and it will never be easy but if you have others there with you who are as inspiring and motivated as you are, it can be awesome.

Anyway, those were some of my thoughts. Today I’m working on more stuff I can’t share for a while. I do have another spot in Imagine FX coming to the States soon and some cards done for Fantasy Flight Games that I should be able to post in the coming days.

Otherwise, I’m working on the project I’ve always wanted to work on and its awesome. ;) I really can’t wait to share it.

Its been so cold out lately! Even now, as I’m finishing up a few pieces I’m frantically reaching for the heater! Although I would prefer a cold day as opposed to a hot one.

I have a very talented friend who is part of a site called Alphabeastiary. She’s part of a lot of other sites too but I was recently inspired to join the project to fulfill those moments when my mind is blank for ideas and I just want to draw. The letter D was dedicated to the creature: Dobhar Chu

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This was my take on the critter. Be sure to check out the whole bunch, they are all awesome!

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In my attempt to be festive this year, I began to draw a reindeer in a stoic pose that I thought I would make Christmas cards with. However, he slowly turned into some sort of imp gnawing on a candy cane. Go figure. Anyway, these were my Christmas cards this year. I’m hoping to do something fun every holiday season. The cards were lots of fun to make too.

I have two other bits to share, one a book that has just come out – which I’m super excited about and an animation that blew my mind. First, I’ll talk about the book.

The book is titled, “Animals Real & Imagined“ and it’s illustrated by one of my most favorite creature artists of all time, Terryl Whitlatch. It looks to be a whole book of her studies and illustrations of animals that she’s observed and those she’s imagined and created herself. I cannot wait to get my paws on this book and I suggest that if you are into creature design, that you grab it as well. You can read about the book and Terryl here: Academy of Art News – Terryl Whitlatch

Anyway, here is the animation I mentioned before. It’s been circulating on the internet for the last week. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you take a look:

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This was an experiment I started the other night in pencil, watercolor and oil – a method I used to work in constantly. It requires lots of layering with fixatives, and matte mediums. The end result is usually a more layered looking effect than this. I kept the technique up for a while until I started to get sick from the chemicals in the fixative – the back of label read: causes nausea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness. I endured a year of these symptoms before I realized what was happening.  I was careful to spray things outside, wear a mask or cloth around my face and let the piece dry for a day or so. However, with tight deadlines in school I’d have to breathe in the fumes while I was working on the final product almost inevitably. The fixative would linger around the piece for a week or so.

I recently tried the method again without the fixative, with this drawing of a dodo, but found that turpenoid has the same effect. I’m not sure if it’s association now or if it is something in the thinner but I can’t use the stuff without getting dizzy spells and headaches for a few days. I hate writing about this because I feel like its my fault. I feel like I’m less. In any case, I’m trying to find new methods to replicate the way in which I used to work.

When I couldn’t produce work the way I wanted to, I learned how to paint in the computer. I knew I needed to learn because of the field I had decided I wanted to be a part of but was always reluctant – I think it had something to do with the environment I was in at the time. I had one instructor who always told me to learn it but it didn’t hit me until I went to “Revelations” – an art convention put on by Massive Black. I saw digital painting in a way I hadn’t ever seen it before – in the process of being done. I understood that it wasn’t so different from what I was doing on paper, in fact, it was structured exactly the same. I was excited about art-making in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. I came home, bought a wacom tablet and photoshop and began to teach myself…slowly. I didn’t have too many resources in college in the digital department. There was one class that covered everything briefly, but nothing that taught painting or anything that would be necessary to create a digital illustration from scratch. I taught myself almost everything I know now with class assignments and personal work when I could. Needless to say, most of my attempts were pretty awful in the beginning. I’ve since deleted a lot of my student work except for the work I did for The Morae River my last semester.

I am in no way an expert in digital media either. I only know about 10% of what I should probably know. I’m learning new things every day and I hope to be for a while. The illustration above has digital enhancements added to it. I couldn’t finish it in oil due to the headache. I’m wanting to figure out my process again, in a more health-friendly way because I like to work in watercolor and pencil.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to type all of this….I guess that’s what blogs are for? haha…

edit* …And since you’ve endured my rambling on, you should watch this as a reward. (if you skip ahead to watch it I wont blame you either, hehe)