John Dyer Baizley... myspace site

remember that little networking site?? Savannah artist John Dyer Baizley has some great paintings posted on it. maybe it's coming back?

A Large Dose of Stylianos Schicho..

Austrian painter/muralist Stylianos Schicho is such an inspiration. His powerful, larger than life images exude energy and emotion. Perhaps my favorite element is his use of scale, an obsession of mine. Also, the intense, powerful and thoughtful gaze of every massive character smacks you in the head so hard, you'll be unlikely to ever draw the same again. Enjoy.

Epic Sketchbook: Nomi Chi..

Canadian artist Nomi Chi is insane. dig. Her Deviant site is filled with more great stuff. Her sketchbook pages are beautiful.

Nathan Sawaya..

I will always notice when artists use legos.. I was quite the obsessed little kid. I even transformed my closet into a "lego room" and would lock myself in there for sometimes an entire day, no joke. So it's not a surprise when Nathan Sawaya caught my eye the other day.

Nathan Sawaya is a New York-based artist who's most recent North American museum tour "The Art of the Brick" features large-scale sculptures using only lego bricks.Born in Colville, Washington and raised in Veneta, Oregon, Sawaya’s childhood dreams were always fun. He drew cartoons, wrote stories and perfected magic tricks. Of course much of his playtime centered on the emerging LEGO City he created in his parent’s living room. For more than twelve years the LEGO City flourished. And this is where Sawaya’s imagination soared, and consequently fine-tuned his future art form. Enjoy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!

Kodak

Hey Gang – Check this out.

It's going to be a rockin' night. Free food, drinks, and films - and I will show a secret world premier.

See ya there.

Bill

Top 5 Shorts - Final Call!

Hey Junkie Fans –

This is your last announcement. You have exactly one week to get in your list of top 5 indie animated shorts. We've got a really good response, but I want to make sure everyone has a chance.

So, next week I'll make the announcement (and please, no Plympton entries).

Thanks!

Bill P.

As you know, "Idiots and Angels" is eligible for an animated Oscar nomination, so it behooves me to check out the competition.

I've seen most of the animated features, except a few. One of them is "Summer Wars", which just got released this week. So, I trooped down to the IFC Center cinema ("Idiots and Angels" showed there), where it was screened to a full house. I was excited because the animation was done by Mad House, one of my favorite animation studios, and was directed by Mamoru Hosada, who did the very nice "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time".

Well I needn't worry about competition from "Summer Wars". The animation style is very bland. Second string Miyazaki.

The story centers around an old family gathering in rural Japan and a massive viral attack on a major Internet site called Oz.

The script was so far-fetched that the audience laughed throughout. And at the key moment in the battle, the fight was resolved by some strange card game that I'm sure is popular in Japan, but makes no sense for a typical audience member.

I give "Summer Wars" a C.

Mark Jenkins..

Mark Jenkins is an Washington DC artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using packing tape, but he goes quite a bit further. He maintains the Website tapesculpture.org and teaches his tape casting process in workshops in the cities he visits. Dig.

New Year's Weekend

Over the New Year's weekend, I had a chance to trek out to Pat Smith's palatial lakeside mansion in beautiful Montauk, Long Island. As you know, he's been away in sunny Singapore for the last 5 months.

It was good to reconnect with him and talk over the future of Scribble Junkies, and we've decided to amp it up a bit. I'm going to do more postings and show more of my personal artwork – which will be very exciting since I'm working on so many interesting projects right now.

We also came up with a brilliant idea to promote Scribble Junkies and animation in general. We can't reveal the plan right now since it's still in the early stages, but please stay tuned for the grand announcement sometime soon.

Have a happy new year, everyone.

Some of the best political cartoons from 2010..

Above by KAL. Below, Clay Jones:
Nick Anderson:
Scott Stantis:
Joel Pett:
Mike Luckovich:

Edward Hopper

I've been a big fan of Edward Hopper for a long time, so when the Whitney Museum had a show of his work, I rushed up there to see his work in person.

But as I bought the ticket, I noticed the title of the show, "Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time". I overheard a number of people who bought tickets grumble that Mr. Hopper's paintings were diluted by "other artists". But I loved the fact that we got to see artwork by his contemporaries, his teachers and, his friends.

Among some of Edward Hopper's beautiful paintings were photographs by Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz and paintings by John Sloan and Guy Pène du Bois (I love his stuff), and Thomas Hart Benton.

Edward Hopper's been a big influence on my work, but also when you see my feature film (Currently titled Cheatin'), you'll see how much an influence Thomas Hart Benton has been. The way he bends straight lines, horizon lines and especially human bodies is amazing.

If you get a chance, check out the work of Guy Pène du Bois and Thomas Hart Benton. You'll love their stuff and see how much I steal from other artists.

Chris Stain..

New York Artist Chris Stain. In his own words:
"In the summer of 1984 the art of graffiti writing spread throughout my neighborhood like an epidemic. It captured the imagination of many pre-adolescent youth looking for ways to express themselves outside the norms of school and mundane playground sports. I was one of those kids who became infected by graffiti’s bold colors,striking form, and independent nature. As time went by I investigated other avenues of art as well, such as print making and graphic design. In high school I learned screen printing which would later help me in the separation of line and color that aids in the process of cutting stencils. My work is a direct reflection of the people, neighborhoods, and struggles, that are swept along with the every day lives of the common american. It is my hope that through the work I will be able to convey the importance of the role of the less recognized individual of society". -Chris Stain

Illustrated New Years Resolutions.. Joy and Noelle Vaccese:

Twins are weird may just be the best name for a blog of all time. Both animators Noelle and Joy are illustrating their resolutions this year, it's very enjoyable. Also, dig back for the "12 days of christmas" illustrations. good stuff from my girls!!

Jeremy Fish... good stuff

Jeremy Fish.. wouldn't mind having one of these hanging on my studio wall.

Somewhere & The Tempest

This being academy season, I get to view many of the new Oscar contender releases. I want to talk about two of them in today's Blog in order to tell my loyal readers to stay away.

The first one is "Somewhere" by Sofia Coppola. This film has a bit of history behind it, in as much as it won the grand prize Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this year. The scandal arose when Quentin Tarantino, the head of the jury and Sofia's ex-lover, awarded her the prize. But to compound to the fiasco, the film is one of the most boring films of the year.

The theme is about a Hollywood actor played by Stephen Dorff, who is bored by fame and by life and spends the whole film doing nothing. Now this is a theme she's covered in her two previous films, the wonderful "Lost in Translation" and the not so wonderful "Marie Antoinette". Fortunately, I was able to see it on DVD so I could fast forward the very long tedious parts – I give "Somewhere" a D.

Unfortunately, "The Tempest", by the embattled director Julie Taymor, was shown in a movie theater so I couldn't speed through the slow spots. How this film got money for financing, I do not know. With its Shakespearean verse – I was lucky if I could understand 2 words per sentence. It should have had subtitles. If one doesn't understand the dialogue, what's the point? And the visual effects and costumes, Ms. Taymor's forte, were incredibly cheesy.

The group I saw it with got into a heated argument about the costs of this ill-fated production. I guessed 2 million and another guessed 20 million – suffice to say, I lost.

How they're going to get people into the cinema to watch an indecipherable film, Helen Mirren notwithstanding, is beyond me. Unless her Broadway version of "Spiderman" is a super smash success, I can't see how she'll be able to make another film. I give "The Tempest" a D-.

Happy New Year, everybody.