www.elisemartinson.com

Swatch TTR Art Rules competition wrap-up

Elise Martinson — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:55 +0000

My recent hiatus from the blog was due to my trip to Los Angeles for the Swatch TTR Art Rules contest. I was in LA for five days, meeting the Swatch crew, the other finalists, exploring the city and filming our interviews before the winner was revealed on Friday night at a spectacular event at the Royal/T café.

8 May 2012
The first day consisted of the other two nominees and myself arriving from the airport, meeting the folks from Swatch and TTR and having dinner together at Hotel Erwin (where we stayed) right by Venice beach. Everyone was so friendly and I enjoyed their company over the next few days.

9 May 2012
The second day was predominantly filming our nominee interviews. We visited Marina Del Ray Harbour for Bettina’s interview on her design GRATEFUL, DJ Skee’s studio for Marta’s interview on her design Scream of Victory and the hills of hollywood for my interview about The Stuff of Legends. The interviews you will see below are the work of two extremely talented German videographers who were with us. They totally looked the part, getting around on skateboards with their huge cameras and tripods slung over their shoulders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9i_sEFHWu8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-T5xJbDP70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7SneBbOwlI

That night I headed up to Abbot Kinney Road near the hotel and I caught up with a local friend of a friend at The Tasting Kitchen which served really unique meals made from local organic ingredients. I enjoyed good food, drinks and company and got the lowdown on where to head for sightseeing and shopping the following day.

10 May 2012
On Thursday Marta, Bettina and I walked to the outdoor shopping mall in Santa Monica via the beach. Shopping in the US is great, it’s like there’s always a 30% discount on everything compared to Australia and there is more variety. I bought clothes, gifts and a few kilos of Super Sculpey clay to bring back! We headed back to the hotel afterwards for drinks and dinner courtesy of Swatch at The Tasting Kitchen again. Which was still great because we didn’t have anything that I had the previous night (except for this awesome bread pudding with caramel and pecans. Which I did not mind eating again, at all!). I met more great people including a very nice blogger from Italy who joined us in exploring LA over the next couple of days.

11 May 2012
The following day we headed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the tar pits to check out an exhibition of ancient Mexican artworks (Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl ) and a mid-century modern Californian design exhibition (California Design, 1930-1965 Living in a Modern Way). LACMA was huge! We only had about two hours to spare but we probably could have spent half the day there, the architecture itself was something to marvel at as well. Its a pity we didnt have more time but we had to head back to get ready for the main event, the Swatch Art Rules night!

The peachy dress I am wearing in the picture below was actually made by my super talented sister, Shelley Barton. Check out her Facebook page here.

After drinks, DJ performances and socialising we sat down and waited to see whose design would be revealed underneath the red cloth!

And the winner is….

Marta Zarina-Gelze from Latvia with her entry Scream of Victory!

Congrats to Marta! Marta and Bettina are both lovely people and I am so stoked for Marta! The final trophy actually features a button which gives its own little “woohoo!” of victory when pressed. Marta’s trophy and Swatch watch design will become the official tour watch and trophy for the 2012/2013 TTR World Snowboarding Tour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow7duQBd7x8

That night we had a mini after party near the hotel.

12 May 2012
Thanks to a late night I didn’t wake up as early as I hoped. A bunch of us still managed to make it into Downtown LA before I had to get back to catch a shuttle to the airport. We saw Little Tokyo, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and various other little surprises while we were walking around. Before I knew it I had to rush back to the hotel, pack my bags and say goodbye to my new friends. Thankfully Facebook makes it easier to stay in touch!

The trip was a really great experience. I met some fantastic people, saw parts of LA I hadn’t seen before and enjoyed being spoilt by the generosity of Swatch. I really didn’t expect to be chosen as a finalist so I am feeling optimistic and looking forward to whatever surprises could be next in store for me

ASA “You Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine”

Elise Martinson — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:29:56 +0000

Today I attended the “You Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine” event held by the Australian Society of Authors. The event invited illustrators from all fields to share and view samples of each other’s work. We also discussed some of the hot topics that seem to always come up in illustration conferences such as prices, contracts and whether to specialise or diversify. There was a turnout of about 12 people which I thought was a nice number, not too few but few enough to get everyone joining in the conversation.

I had the opportunity to meet some incredibly talented people today some of whose work I was already familiar with. It was great to see people at different career stages as well; some who were studying, some who were published, others who were unpublished and others who have had success at self publishing. I wish I had more time to talk to everyone individually! I really enjoyed the event and I hope that ASA has another one later in the year or next year. It would be really awesome to see how these illustrators will have progressed by then.

Here are links to the work of some of the attendees:

www.simonswingler.com
www.jillbrailsford.com
www.bettysargeant.com
www.jothompsonillos.crevado.com
www.katzcowley.com (under construction)
http://www.thestylefile.com/show.php?illustrator_id=74
www.connyfechner.com.au
http://laurawoodillustration.com/
http://www.illustratorsaustralia.com/portfolios/shane_mcgowan

If you’re an illustrator and you didn’t go, you missed out! Keep an eye out for future meet ups on the ASA website.

New Etsy store items

Elise Martinson — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:10:31 +0000

I recently started up a new Etsy store for my original works and signed prints. I finally have a couple of items up now (instead of an empty shop!) so if you’re interested feel free to check it out or check back later for new originals. I might put up the Diablo III sculpture as well once the competition is over.

Thylacine Adventure signed Limited Postcard Print by Elise Martinson

Spirix - The Little Deity of Natural Balance

Two week Diablo III sculpture challenge

Elise Martinson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:25:03 +0000

This is the reason for my late posts recently. I’ve given myself two weeks to sculpt my entry for Blizzard Entertainment’s Portrait of a Champion contest so I’m challenging myself to finish it before the deadline on the 29th of April (only six days left!). I haven’t done any sculpture (not to mention a human figure with gravity-defying hair and clothing) in less than two weeks so this is a definitely a challenge for me. I’m going to keep updating this post with my progress over the days remaining until the deadline (and hope that I can actually finish it by then!). I’m also taking a different approach in that I’m not working off much of a sketch. I figured if I just created an accurate human figure, it should be easy enough to add items and clothing and basically turn it into the wizard it ought to be. So far so good.

Below are the progress shots I have so far. Keep checking back for more! I’m going to be updating this daily until the 29th of April.

Basic skeleton held together with Apoxie Sculpt

Building the base - consisting of a tightly packed aluminium foil centre and Super Sculpey exterior. You'll notice I occasionally throw in random props (like the crazy "hair" and wire "staff") just to get an idea of how things are going to look.

Closed up the base

Detail added to the base

"Bones" given some more strength using Super Sculpey firm. This then went in the oven to harden everything. I later learned the bones were a bad idea because they didn't stick to the wire and started spinning underneath the clay later. I left them as they were but in the future I would use Apoxie because it's way more adhesive.

Building up the anatomy

Smoothing out the anatomy by "raking" the surface

Smoothed out some of the raking with a flat tool. Added some detail to the face. This is the hardest park because I have to make the other side of the face symmetrical!

Same stage, different angle.

Update, 23rd April. Took me most of the day to fiddle with the facial features. Even one millimetre off is the equivalent of about 50mm on a life-sized model so this was extremely tricky. I'm still not sure if it's really correct but I certainly gave it a good shot. I've really got to get a move-on if I want to finish it in time.

Update, 24th April. I had work to do today so I had to put this off for most of it. I worked on the staff (which is currently hardening). Hopefully I can get the majority of the armor/clothing done tomorrow!

Update, 25th April. Definitely overestimated what I could get done today! I'm still not even halfway done with the clothing. This is taking me much longer than any sculpture I've done before, I think it's mostly because I don't have any really good reference images so I'm spending a lot of time squinting at low resolution screen shots or trying to fill in the gaps with my own ideas. It's going to be tough, but I haven't given up on the deadline yet. Also I think her pose has become a bit static but I'm hoping her robe and hair will add some movement to the whole thing!

Update, 26th April. Made good progress today. I still have a few minor tweaks to do before baking. Her right hand, crystal ball and pony tail are still to come.

Update, 27th April. I made hardly any progress today. I spent most of the day travelling to pick up a mini air compressor (early bday present to myself) and trying to find an orb for her to hold. As feared I spent ages and ages searching without finding anything. I've since managed to secure one at some new age store so I'll be picking that up on Sunday. The staff broke in the oven for some strange reason. I hope nothing else falls off.

Update, 28th April. I applied gesso with my airbrush and new mini air compressor (so quiet! ) and painted the rest with a brush. As you can see she has lost a few fingers and broken an arm (bicep area)... thankfully that was all she lost when I accidentally knocked it over! >.< More detail to come and I will be mostly repairing stuff tomorrow.

Update 29th April: I think I will call it finished. I'm hoping some decent photography will help make it look better (you can see how bad the colours are on the white walls and how bad the distortion is on the orb) but I won't be able to show the images until later because the contest requests the submitted images are "unreleased" (I hope these work-in-progress shots don't count... plus it was made specifically for this competition). The staff is a bit bent because the second time in the oven it sort of "wilted". I thought about putting it in front of the heater to soften up the clay and reposition it but it's so brittle I don't really want to try it again. I'm not really sure about Super Sculpey Firm at the moment, I've had more problems this time than I have had in the past with regular Super Sculpey.

The sculpture has been a good learning experience but I’m not that happy with the end result. I think in the future I would work larger, consider working with just Super Sculpey and only using Super Sculpey firm where it was needed and avoid double baking where thin and straight parts could potentially wilt. It’s my first sort of realistic human figure so not bad considering that I guess. I think sketching it out might have also helped speed up the process because trying to see the details of the armour in the tiny in-game-graphic videos was really time consuming and I ended up having to do a lot of guesswork anyway. Oh well, I’ll enter it and see how it goes Below is the the final image I submitted.

Update 30th April (still the 29th in the US) : I just scraped under the deadline! It was pretty rushed, the lighting turned out a bit too intense and after I submitted I realised the alignment of the top image is a bit off but at least it made it in there. You can see the final entry on the official contest site by clicking the image above.

Swatch TTR Art Rules competition finalists

Elise Martinson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:01:54 +0000

Firstly, I apologise to those who have already heard me excitedly posting this news everywhere on Facebook but for those that haven’t: it was announced that I am one of the lucky three finalists in the Swatch TTR Art Rules competition! Over 3,000 entries were received so this is quite amazing. My earlier post about my entries can be seen here. The two other finalists are Marta Zarina-Gelze from Latvia and Bettina Lundström from Switzerland whose creative entries are below.

Scream of Victory by Marta Zarina-Gelze - The idea is to reveal the winner's joy by a soundwave. It can be personalized or universal.

Grateful by Bettina Lundström

The Stuff of Legends by Elise Martinson- What is it that makes someone achieve legendary status? What is the stuff that makes them great; these trailblazers that leave the competition in the dust? Maybe it's an amalgamation of life experiences. Maybe it's just pure awesome. Whatever it is, we know that winners and champions are full of the stuff. Some are born with it, most people work hard to cultivate it and winners are overflowing with it. This trophy captures and reflects the moment when a victor is oozing with the stuff. The stuff of legends.

I’m due to fly to Los Angeles in May to meet the other two finalists and attend the very prestigious Art Rules award night, where we will find out who the lucky winner is. The prize is a paid two-week trip to New York and the winner’s designs will become the 2012/2013 TTR World Snowboarding Tour watch and trophy!

Below is a video of last years event (if you don’t see it, try refreshing the page). I’m super excited!

Stay tuned for more updates.

Artist feature: Lisa Page

Elise Martinson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:30:55 +0000

I stumbled upon Lisa’s work while looking up images of endangered species and instantly fell in love with the adorable furry friends featured in her gallery. Much to my delight she has allowed me to feature her work in my blog. Lisa Page creates amazing plushies of animals including adorable hedgehogs, mice and meerkats and also endangered species like her iberian lynx and clouded leopard plushies. Words cannot describe the quality and character that make up her soft sculptures so without further babble, here are some pictures of her fantastic creations:

Iberian Lynx by Lisa Page

Hoggles the Hedgehog by Lisa Page

Bluebell Mouse by Lisa Page

Ollie the Chinchilla by Lisa Page

"Come Fly with Me" Sugar Glider by Lisa Page

More of Lisa’s work can found at her DeviantArt gallery, or her website. She also puts up some of her creations for adoption on this page. Be sure to take a look!!

Elephants on parade! Mali in the City submissions

Elise Martinson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:29:23 +0000

These are my submissions to the Mali in the City art project being organised by the Melbourne Zoo. 50 life-size fibreglass sculptures will be painted by local artists and spread around the city for a 6 week period. Afterwards, the elephants will then be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the zoo and its conservation efforts.

The zoo encouraged people to include themes of conservation in their designs and I found that pretty challenging to do without creating a generic jungle/endangered species theme. I wanted to do something different from what has been seen in all the previous Wild in Art animal sculpture projects and do something that made a single, bold statement and something that was also in line with the subjects I enjoy painting. This is what I came up with…

"HERE TODAY..." ...Gone tomorrow. The existence of threatened and endangered species is a fragile thing. Populations are disintegrating as a result of human activities and climate change. We need to take action before it's too late.

"ELEPHANTASY" Animals have been a powerful source of inspiration and symbolism for people since the cave men began making marks on stone. Even the modern day fantasy worlds in popular culture have been heavily influenced by what occurs in nature. Just one of the many reasons animals are an important part of the human experience and should be preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Happy Easter!

Elise Martinson — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 07:11:43 +0000

I hope everyone’s having a great weekend and enjoys a safe and happy Easter!

Wildlife in need: Black rhinoceros illustration

Elise Martinson — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:00:23 +0000

Coin Club has released the next coin in their 1oz silver Wildlife in Need series, the Black Rhinoceros. I did this illustration a few months back but the rest of the series was illustrated by the very talented and very lovely Karen Hull. Below are a few progress shots and a close up of the final piece.

Animation of the illustration process

Below is one of my original designs for the series packaging that didn’t make the final cut. I still like the environmental feel it had, I was thinking a nice recycled stock would top them off!

To read more about the plight of rhinos and how WWF is contributing to their conservation, please click here.

Illustration process of the thylacine postcard

Elise Martinson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 23:28:34 +0000

Below is an animated process of a portfolio piece I just finished. The illustration will be used for a series of promotional postcards for my illustration business. I wanted to target book publishers so I included the kinds of themes that they might want to see; such as animals, children and Australian themes. I love prehistoric creatures and I’m still distressed by the fact settlers drove thylacines (aka tasmanian tigers) to extinction, so this image is a little tribute to some things I love as well as a promotional piece that covers the subjects found in children’s books.

My overall process was the same as usual (rough sketch, cleaner lines, rough colour, detail, final adjustments) but I changed a lot of things in this image as I went along. I think I could have planned it better at the early phases to avoid that. I’m glad that I was able to put more motion and storytelling into my illustration (working on coins doesn’t often demand much of that) and next time I’m going to push for more depth in the background (rather than a simple foreground and a background) and try to loosen up the strokes a bit.

Animated process of thylacine illustration

The final illustration - Two girls getting spirited away to a prehistoric land of megafauna by giant thylacines.