Let’s start with this Andrew Loomis painting I found at R. Ege Antiques.

Andrew Loomis

Here’s a few from the Post Road Gallery. Note the Vedder fireback!

These last few are from the Richard Norton Gallery here in Chicago. I was captivated by the Icarus bronze.

More in the series:

• Antique Fair Finds part 1
• Antique Fair Finds part 2
• Antique Fair Finds part 3

Shogun Rising |Tokyo zombie swarm | Aaron Miller

Hi friends and family,

I’m part of a group of artists and writers putting together an awesome graphic novel, Shogun Rising. We’re crowd funding it through KickStarter. I could really use your support for this project. It’s been a lot of fun to work on so far and I can’t wait to add more to the project. The cool thing is that this probably won’t end with the graphic novel.

Shogun Rising is a near-future love story, set in a banished Samurai village that must fight to survive the zombie Apocalypse.

For now I’ll let the art I did entice you to click on the link to check out the project and hopefully decide to back it and get a copy of the graphic novel for yourself.

Hiroshi | Shogun Rising

Miko | Shogun Rising

Matsuta | Shogun Rising

More in the series:

• Antique Fair Finds part 1
• Antique Fair Finds part 2
• Antique Fair Finds part 4

More in the series:

• Antique Fair Finds part 1
• Antique Fair Finds part 3
• Antique Fair Finds part 4

We’ll start with a really exquisite piece from TK Asian Antiquities. This sculpture is made from the bones of a monk. It was considered an honor to have your bones crafted into a piece of art. The monk has been given a second life.

This unique bone rendition of Shri Chitipati was made for the highest practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism who resided in Mongolia.

This exceptional and delightful ritual carving is of great rarity and importance. The skeletal forms are referred to as Shri Chitipati and are Divine Beings whose major function might be considered the guardianship of “celestial burials” often referred to as the Glorious Lords of the Pyre. Almost the entirety of the Buddhist population in most periods and areas were cremated.

The Shri Chitipati are always shown in skeletal form and are generally considered a Father with Mother although other theories abound. Occasionally the heads take on leonine skeletal forms, although all heads of Shri Chitipati are shown with a “third eye of wisdom and enlightenment”. The figures are visually all shown dancing on
conch and courie shells (which are the Tibetan symbol of music) and embracing. Other constants in the few sculptures and representation of this known type include the wearing of crowns with five skulls and a Jin Gang Chu (an ancient Indian weapon adopted to symbolically represent the ritual implement for destroying Demons) which sits atop the crown.

The Shri Chitipati also holds a skeletal stick in one hand which symbolized the ability to smash that which would yield evil deeds, talk and thoughts. The Father will hold in one hand a bowl which symbolizes having taken control of the Devil’s blood. His Wife will hold a vessel with the “sweet dew of wisdom” in her right hand and a protective “flower/grain” in the other. It appears this rendition and the few similar to it were made for the highest practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism who reside in Mongolia, and does not seem to appear there prior to the 18th century.

I was also intrigued with this bell.

I have a lot of great finds to share. Please subscribe to the right to make sure you don’t miss the next post.

More finds!

• Antique Fair Finds part 2
• Antique Fair Finds part 3
• Antique Fair Finds part 4

The Fury | 9×12″ | oil on panel | 2013 | Aaron Miller

The theme of my latest workshop was The Avengers’ Nick Fury. Our model had the full costume and lots of fun props. I opted for no jacket during the long pose. The outfit underneath had a lot of character to it. I was hoping the eye patch was enough to place the character. I’m sure I’ll see the model running around the comic convention in this costume or something else just as cool.

Andean Bear | Lincoln Park Zoo| 8 x 7.5″ | Aaron Miller

Recently the Plein Air Painters of Chicago met up at the Lincoln Park Zoo on a beautiful Saturday morning in April. I regularly run along the lake front and the zoo is always my favorite detour from the running path. We have a regular route through the zoo to see as many animals as we can visit and keep to our course. When the painters decided on the zoo for a location I decided I needed to check on the animals we seldom get to see. And as luck would have it the Andean bear was out having his breakfast. Painting a potential moving target is always chancy. I tried to set up my equipment as fast as I could with out being too distracting. As a fail safe bring a camera with you, even a cell phone will work. Once I got set up I took a few photos just in case. About half way through the painting my buddy decided he’d had enough time in the sun, picked up his bone and went inside. I was disappointed, but I took a few photos and filled in the few spots from that reference. I had a busy day ahead of me but I was so glad I got the chance to make it out. I plan on doing this as often as my schedule will allow. But I also think I’ll working in a quicker medium, such as pencil, ink, and watercolor.

I was just about done packing up when my dad and step-mom came to visit on their walk going downtown. I’m so glad my dad got to see me at work a bit.

quick reference shot on the cell phone.

Thanks for stopping by Dad. | photo courtesy of Ron Miller

You won’t have a lot of support for free themes. Some theme authors do offer forums for their themes. You can pick up some great tips there. I certainly have. Having some CSS skills will certainly help you in the long run.

If you decide to work with one of these themes don’t forget to check out these tips when building your site. At the time of this writing, the theme I have been using is Paragrams.

If you’re going to host your own site one thing that helps is a host that helps you install everything you need to get started. I’ve used Dreamhost since 2004 and have been very happy. They have a one-click install feature. Their customer service has always come through as well although I haven’t needed to use it much. If you decide to use them you can use this code to get $20 off your first year. “AARONMILLER1″

If you want to opt for a totally free site and still want that clean feel you can set up a Blogger site. Dan Dos Santos over at Muddy Colors has a great post on setting up your Blogger site.

1. Art Works

2. Paragrams

3. Imbalance-2

4. Gridly

5. Grid

Recently on Awesome Horse Studios Livestream show we did portfolio reviews. We covered many different aspects of the portfolios and one big section went to the actual portfolio site itself. Once the show is available online I’ll replace some text here with a link. So, that’s my nifty way to get you back to my site.

I wanted to share some of the simple things that you can consider for your own site. We’ll start with then things your illustration portfolio should have and then ten things to avoid on your site.

10 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO

1. BIG, uncropped thumbs.
2. Contact info on every page.
3. Every image should have its own URL.
4. Make your portfolio page your landing page.
5. Edit the work in your portfolio.
6. Organize your work.
7. Credit yourself.
8. Make your links open in a new tab if possible.
9. Use your name to brand yourself.
10. Obtain your own URL with your name.

10 THINGS TO AVOID DOING

1. Don’t use flash.
2. Don’t use music.
3. Avoid colorful or confusing graphics and backgrounds.
4. Don’t use contact forms
5. Don’t use obstructive watermarks on your images.
6. Don’t crop your thumbnails to a tight detail
7. Don’t post your image so small an art director can’t see your fine work.
8. Don’t clutter your website with words – the art director should want to look, not have to read.
9. Dont’ use a nickname unless you’re committed to using it everywhere – even on a check written to you.
10. Don’t link me to a dead end.

DO THESE THINGS EXPLAINED

1. BIG, uncropped thumbs.

Use large thumbnails of your images that aren’t cropped. It helps keep the image as a whole memorable and easy to find for someone on a return trip to your site.

2. Contact info on every page

Wow, you’d think this would be a no brainer, but even I just realized I didn’t do this. You’ll see above it’s been remedied.

3. Every image should have its own URL.

This feature makes it very easy for an art director to share a specific image of yours. This makes it very easy for you to share a specific image of yours with an art director. It also makes it easy for your images to be downloaded for an art directors future reference.

4. Make your portfolio page your landing page.

There’s no reason to have a splash page just to make someone click one more time to see your work. The most likely reason someone is going to your site is to see your work. So, there’s no reason to start them off anywhere other than your portfolio, not your about page, or your blog, or your store. Make your portfolio the first thing they see.

5. Edit the work in your portfolio.

This is not going to be easy, but you simply cannot show everything you’ve ever done in your portfolio. It’s time to get serious and start voting art off the island. You’ll want at least 6-8 and max out around 10-12. Let that number be finite and rotate images in as you see fit. And don’t stop there, keep the images you’re choosing consistent. Don’t gather your 10 best and not have two more of any one category. “But what about all that other art? I just love it and want people to see it.” There’s a solution for you! Send your work not quite ready for the portfolio spotlight to your blog. That’s the perfect home for it. It has a comfortable seat next to your process work, sketches, articles, accomplishments, and pictures of your cat in a jedi costume.

6. Organize your work.

Now that you’ve edited your work down it’s time to put them into categories. If you have enough portfolio quality work (aiming for 8-12 images) then you can make a separate gallery for that particular work (such as separating your character work from your 3D spaceships). Keep the categories to the work you want to continue getting more of. If you put everything into one area and still keeping to the preferred portfolio size limit then you will not appear as proficient in any one area.

7. Credit yourself.

So, that art director we mentioned earlier, she’s now pulling your images off the web into her “Gotta hire this awesome artist soon” folder. And she might not remember who you are. If your name is on the actual file the problem won’t even exist. You can take it one step further and add a bit more canvas to your image and add your name or URL there. I usually keep it simple: Image_Title-Aaron_Miller.jpg

8.  Make your links open in a new tab if possible.

What you’re trying to avoid is someone essentially leaving your site. There’s potential for them not to return with no easy way back. Bye!

9. Use your name to brand yourself.

This is such a huge topic in itself. But for simplicity’s sake stick with your name. When you introduce yourself, you’re probably going to use your name. That makes it very easy later on to connect you with the art you’re creating. You are the business you are branding.

10. Obtain your own URL with your name.

Now that you’re using your name to sell yourself and your work it’s about time your buy the URL for that name. With the amount of websites created everyday the likelihood of your name bing available will grow slim. Even if you are not ready for that leap yet to make your own site, if the URL is available you better snap it up. If it’s gone you may end up having to struggle with branding not only your name but whatever identity you have to come up with.

Let’s elaborate a bit here. I’d like to point out my good friend Tim. He had a very long and hard to spell last last. For better branding he decided to shorten his URL to his first and middle name.

DON’T DO THESE THINGS EXPLAINED:

1. Don’t use Flash.

I pointed out above that an art director might like to interact with your site for various reason. You strip away that ability with your work locked in a Flash site. If I’m an art director I can’t save the image, I can’t share the image, and I can’t look at your site while I’m at a convention on my iPhone.

2. Don’t use music.

I’m probably already listening to my own music, thankyouverymuch. More than likely if I’m looking at your website in an office I don’t need a surprise soundtrack disturbing those around me. The most honest reason is that I don’t want to hear your website that sends me into an easter egg hunt for the mute button.

3. Avoid colorful or confusing graphics and backgrounds.

Your art needs to take main stage here. Don’t distract me with some weird color or another image fighting for attention. Keep it neutral. Lighter rather than darker. Light text on a dark background is harder to read and you need to keep the font size much bigger.

4. Don’t use contact forms

Art directors usually need to keep track of whom they are emailing. If you use a contact form they can’t do this anymore. If you feel you mist have a form also make your email address available to see. It can be very frustrating trying to hunt down your email if I don’t want to use the form. I could also be working on my contacts and will want to contact you later. Make it easy for me. Also avoid an “E-mail me” button with your email address not visible anywhere.

5. Don’t use obstructive watermarks on your images.

Your portfolio is there to sell your work. Having a huge watermark on your images is a huge turnoff for an art director that has to try and not see it to see your work. Don’t be so worried that someone is going to steal your images that you’re willing to give up the work you’re trying to find with those images.

6. Don’t crop your thumbnails to a tight detail

Avoid cropping your thumbnails to do some detail that it’s a surprise to see what the actual image is like. The first thing that does is make your work hard to judge at first glace of your portfolio page. It also makes your work hard to find later on since you can’t identify it if you don’t happen to remember what that tiny detail was. I realize 99% of the website theme designers don’t care about creating galleries of odd sized images. It’s much easier to keep things unified. So, if you must choose a theme that’s going to crop your images anyway try and get as much of the original image in there as possible. You might even consider a custom featured image (this is specific to wordpress).

7. Don’t post your image so small an art director can’t see your fine work.

Now that I’ve clicked your tiny super cropped in thumbnail I am feeling limp looking at a very tiny image. Fully understanding that you don’t want to put out hi-res images for unsavory people to use without your permission, you still need to sell the art director that you can do some amazing work. And she can’t do that if you’re image is so small she has to guess at the quality you may or may not deliver.

8. Don’t clutter your website with words – the art director should want to look, not have to read.

This should be fairly simple. If you image post has as much text as this article you’ve probably lost them as a client. In reality, as art director has only so much time to spend on your website. Keep the portfolio posts simple. Elaborate on a process themed post or something similar in your blog.

9. Dont’ use a nickname unless you’re committed to using it everywhere – even on a check written to you.

That nickname you are so fond of at 17 might not really work out for you at 35. Sure we know some artists that still use their nickname. But they’ve also branded themselves with it. They turned what could have been a mistake into an asset.

10. Don’t link me to a dead end.

If you’re going to open a store or start a blog, soon… Don’t make a link to it. Wait until you’re actually ready and then do it.

I’m sure if I tried I could add ten more reasons to each column. Hopefully this should help you for now. I wanted to give a special thanks to all the artists and art directors that have passed some of this information down to me. And to Cynthia Sheppard whom I bugged to work on this article.

I wanted to create an area I could direct aspiring illustrators and students needing to fullfil an interview assignment. In this article you will find links to other interviews I have done as well as questions I’ve answered in the past that as sure to be relevant. I have no doubt that over the course of my career my views will change. With all the links and resources listed, the student needing to complete their assignment should be able to find everything they need with a little journalistic legwork. I’m just making it a bit easier to find it all. This doesn’t mean I won’t answer questions from students, I’m still delighted to help out when I can. This just makes answering the same questions easier. Not exactly an FAQ page but the next best thing.

Also, don’t forget to browse through the other posts in the Articles category on the blog.

Let’s start out with links to previous interviews:

• Something We Like
• Wicked Fairytale
• Making of Knight, Death, and the Devil
• Chicago Contemporary Figurative Art

For those willing to put in a bit more time looking for information here are links to other media I take/took part in:

• Ninja Mountain Podcast
• Awesome Horse Studios
• Drawn Today Podcast

For those that are interested in the traditional work I do, did you know about his blog I run?

• Oil Color Palettes

Or maybe you’d like to take part in this workshop I run?

• Figurative Illustration Workshop

The (sort of) FAQ section. These are a few of the questions I’ve answered for other students:

How did you develop your skills and find a media that works for you?
Lots of work. Beyond art school, you need to keep going to workshops and classes. You need to experiment with media to know if it works for you or not. There’s no other way to do it.

How have you dealt with issues of instability (finance and job wise) that many professional artists face?
There is stability to some extent in freelance. It takes a while but after some time you see patterns and it starts to regulate itself. The more you put into making it better the better it gets. Overall it really is a hard road to set down on.

How has your focus shifted from when you started as an artist to now?
I am actually back on the original track I set out on that I was derailed from when I got into art school. I found it is a typical story with artists about my age that wanted to do the kind of work that I’m doing. Money can shift your focus. An instructor can shift your focus. Friends can shift your focus (mine were not for the better in art school.) Family can shift your focus, if you let them.

How has your family, work space, other artists, and where you live influenced your work?
It will influence you tremendously. If I were able to work alongside other amazing artists I know my work would improve. I know if my wife didn’t support me my work wouldn’t exist, at least not the level I’m at currently. If I didn’t have enough space I’d probably only work digitally. Surround yourself with other good artists and successful people.

What would a normal day be for you?
I don’t have normal days. But on a day that I happen to just be painting, well, I spend most of the day working with a few breaks for snacks and lunch until about 7 or 8pm. I usually start around 9 or 10 am. If the deadline is near I go back to work around 11pm.

How much time do you spend working on your art and/or doing other things?
I spend as much time as I can during the day on whatever project is up. If i can’t really dig in to my work, then I plan all the other stuff that needs to get done. If I have to leave the house I try and do as many errands as I can at once, such as grocery shopping, pet food runs, lunch with friends, costume rentals, reference gathering, etc.

How did you decide what classes to take in college?
They are usually decided by the major you choose. But I took the fine art track in illustration school to be more familiar with the materials I wanted to use, specifically oils. Plus I knew that more traditional foundation was really important. I just didn’t apply myself as best as I could. Stay out of relationships if you can. Try to hang out with the kids doing work especially those doing work beyond homework. Join a life drawing group or club. You need to destroy the high school mentality of school work, the kind of thought that focuses on just getting the work done enough to pass a grade.

Do you prefer a studio at home or in a different location?
I’d prefer a different location. I  take care of the dogs and help out around the house since my wife puts in a lot of hours, a home studio is just fine.

Where do you prefer to get your supplies?
I live in a city that has some local art stores. I shop at Blick for most of my supplies. But I do need to order items off the internet. Chicago does not cater to plein air painters so anything I need for equipment needs to be ordered online. I love my brushes from Rosemary Brushes.

What software do you use?
I mainly use PhotoShop for my digital work and spice it up at times with Painter.

This post will be updated at least once a year.