District Quarterly & Humane Society mural & more

My piece "Heralding" made it into the District Quarterly's Music issue!

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And what's even better is it's on the FIRST PAGE! The release party was today and my jaw dropped once I opened the magazine and saw my illustration right there. The colours printed out perfectly too!

The District Quarterly is a student-produced literary art magazine at SCAD and it is published every quarter. I made this piece specifically to submit it for consideration :) Here's a link to their online viewer in case you're not in Savannah to pick up a copy.

Hummingbirds aren't songbirds but their beaks were great for this purpose since they're so long. And then if you'd like my "deeper" explanation, here goes: Hummingbirds are contributors to the process of pollination, which helps to keep flowers growing, which in turn makes flowers the "music" of spring, and this music is directionally shooting out of the instruments/beaks like sound waves.

This piece reminds me a lot of my mother since she has a garden in her house with plants that were specifically chosen because they attract hummingbirds. Seriously if you just sit there for a couple minutes, soon enough you'll hear a buzzing and zooming past your ears and maybe even spot a blur of dark green. I never thought a buzzing in your ears could be so pleasant.

Humane Society Mural
Last weekend I was part of a group of students helping repaint the Savannah Humane Society's mural. The mural is in really bad condition since the original paint keeps chipping, bubbling and cracking off. It was originally painted by SCAD students many years ago and has become a defining "look" for the Humane Society so they really wanted to restore it to its former glory. It's not done yet so I am planning to go back and help some more.

You can read more about it here: http://www.scaddistrict.com/?p=17444

That's me! Photo credit: http://www.victoriajenkinson.com

Lectures
And finally, this quarter I've had the pleasure of attending two lectures by illustrators Sterling Hundley and Istvan Banyai.

Sterling's lecture was during class through a Skype chat on a projector. I was very excited since I  found my technique of choice by studying Sterling's technique for class one time. He had a lot of great advice for us about starting in the field. It was very refreshing since he didn't sugar coat anything at all yet he still managed to deliver a very uplifting and optimistic message. He is publishing a retrospective soon, you can read more about it on his blog: http://sterlingclintonhundley.blogspot.com/2011/04/sterling-hundley-monograph-blue.html

Istvan's lecture was quite hilarious. You don't find many people like him everyday since he just spoke his mind. The best part about this lecture was a lot of the work he showed us was rejected for publication, but it was great work! It was clever and it was beautifully designed. He basically taught us: don't take it to heart.