Sketches, itinerary, new digs

Well, I'm here. Here at the new site address. I am really hoping I don't lose all of my readers and all of the people who link my blog. If you've got me linked, please change it! I'm here now.

The impetus for this change was primarily so I would have something succinct to put on a business card that I'm going to be making rather hastily for a trip Kali and I are taking near the beginning of June. Well, I guess there's no better time than now to rough out my itinerary.

May 24-28th - back home in Philly, making delicious food and watching terrible movies.
June 1st - moving into my new place, in real life this time.
June 6-9th - NYC with Kali for MOCCA. This is what I'm making the business card for.
June 18th - NYC for my Society of Illustrators interview.

Oh.

Well, I got a call from my brother yesterday, who simply said that he (being the phone-receiver at the Bosma household in PA) answered a call from the Society of Illustrators, who it seems were looking for me. I applied for the 2008 Zankel Scholarship in the beginning of May and I guess they liked my work enough to bring me up there in June for an interview. I'm getting a free train ride and hotel room for the night, and maybe even a big chunk of cash to help these student loans go down easier. Ah, who am I kidding? A chunk of that money would go directly to Apple for a new computer.

Anyway, I have to get a professional-quality portfolio printed up for that, so I figured I might as well do it before MOCCA so I'd have something to show. This means not only color correcting all my work to a nice gleaming polish, but ideally kicking out another couple of pieces before SoI.




I've decided to revisit a few pieces I did last year that I'm not entirely happy with, or at least haven't gotten out of my system. Macbeth is one of those things I just haven't gotten out of my system yet, so he's getting a makeover. I have a couple other compositions, but this is pretty much a direct redo of the poster I did for Sam Weber a month or two back. I'm planning on doing a few more Shakespeare pieces in the near future. He's just a good guy, is all.

I mentioned in the original post that the Giants I did were not entirely color-corrected to my satisfaction, and I meant it. This guy's finalized, though:



I used to get really hung-up on making the color corrected files look as close to the originals as possible, but as I got older and wearier, I sort of stopped caring about that one and instead just endeavor to make the pieces look as good as possible.

I haven't gotten around to scanning that last piece that I did, and for that, I am sorry. I'm in a rather transitional period here.

Moving house

So, in an effort to become a better professional, I've decided it's time to rename this here site. I'm not changing it from SLAM BOSMA, obviously, because that's too awesome. It's the URL I'm talking about. It's a little ponderous and a little difficult to remember if you need to type it in anywhere.

So what's easier? I suppose sambosma.blogspot.com is pretty easy to remember. Good? Good.

I'm going to change it in about one week, so feel free to update your bookmarks folder or the links section of your site if you've got me linked. And by "feel free," I mean "please please please change it so I still get traffic from you kind people."

I'm still shooting to have a new post at the end of this week, but it's hectic. I went to the emergency room this past weekend and found out I had tonsillitis, which kind of sucks. Also, I'm moving to a new apartment tomorrow, so I've had to pack and all that. What a bummer.

Don't forget! sambosma.blogspot.com !

sambosma.blogspot.com !

Wrapping up the semester

So, my semester is over, which I guess officially makes me a Senior. That's pretty cool, but also terrifying. Over the summer and into next year I need to figure a few things out. The first and most important is how I want to market myself, because that then leads into what kind of work I want to do and how I want to finish pieces. Lately (as you have seen, devoted reader), I have been less excited about working in the simplified style I had been developing. I am becoming more interested in working a bit more representationally, though still keeping forms stylized. I am also trying to learn how to paint, seeing as I have no real background in the medium. I think I'm getting better.

I have two pieces that I'm going to upload to the blog, but I'm holding off on posting the other one, because I want to make sure I stay in the flow of creating new work even though I don't have assignments. However, I'm going to need a little time, and so I'm going to wait to post the second piece. Hopefully by the time I post it, I'll be underway on a new piece.

This is sort of an extension of the assignment that yielded the Minotaur piece, which people seemed to like. Same idea of using a mythological creature to symbolize a contemporary issue. This one is a golem representing the advent of artificial intelligence, and specifically the destructive potential of that intelligence. You ought to know the story of the golem. It's pretty cool stuff.




Like the Minotaur, this was done in black acrylic and then colored digitally. Unlike the Minotaur, I actually tried to render the form a bit. I'd say it's moderately successful. The original print of this has a whiter glow about the forehead, and the human arms are more naturally colored with fleshtones and such. One of the alternate versions of the coloring that I did had blue arms, because they popped better against the clay colored golem. I changed the glow to make it more blue and kept those blue arms in there. I'm pretty happy with it. It's definitely from a transitory period in my work, that's for sure. Don't expect my work to look like this in the fall.

I'm not sure what the next piece I'm going to do is. I have several rejected sketches waiting to be completed. We'll see what I can cook up.

Maybe I'll start posting stuff on this blog aside from illustrations. People do that, right? Blog? I can post about movies I saw or websites that are cool. I don't know, man. Seems a little unprofessional.

We'll see!

I guess I'm getting better

Hey dudes. Guess who's getting better? Me, sort of. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow to hopefully get some antibiotics to fix my throat. Maybe I have tonsillitis or something. Whatever it is, it's stupid and ought to die.

This past Friday I was in New York for the Society of Illustrators student show. I wasn't in it, but a whole bunch of MICA seniors were. Hop on over to Kali's blog to see a couple goofy pictures and some of the talented folks who got in. Kali got her super sweet Estelle LeBlanc poster in! Special congratulations also to Jeremy, who won the absolute grand prize, and Eamonn, who won a cool grand.

So, seeing as it's finals time and I've been sick, I've got this disgusting backlog of work to do. Normally, I try and keep posts relegated to the end of the week, when I actually have some time to sit down and write things at me leisure, but this is only one of four pieces I have due this week, so I'm splitting it up some.

This was an assignment for our Fashion Illustration class, which still isn't Fashion. It's being led by Frank Stockton who is sometimes called Frankstock and apparently called Stocktone (emphasis on the tone, if you ask Sam Weber). Anyway, this assignment was based on a list of things called "Things Worth Shortening Your Life For". For some reason I decided to do one based on professional weight lifting. Here it is.




I'm still working on combining traditional media with digital stuff. This was acrylic, ink, and photoshop all slammed together in the end. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, considering I did it super, super quickly. Anyway, I don't really have much to say about that.

This week I've got a few more things. First I have a piece based on the fortune, "You will become more passionate and determined about your convictions," which has a cannon and some arrows in it. Then I have an advertisement for some sort of razorblade which has some birds in it. And finally, I have this golem thing I've been putting off working on for so long. Those'll all be up at the end of the week, I think.

Ok bye!