New Website launched!!

It has been quite a while since an update here... about 2 months, to be more precise. After the insanity of last summer and fall where I barely spent any hours not working, let alone any days, I was actually hoping for a much slower, quieter summer. Well, I got my wish with a summer filled with traveling, entertaining visitors, tons of sleeping, great food, a fair amount of wine drinking, book reading (it had been a while), gallery visits, sketchbook drawing.. as well as a little bit of commissioned work here and there.

Leisurely activities aside, I did spend a good portion of August redesigning my website. Originally I was going to hire someone to design and code it for me, but I decided to take advantage of my slower summer months and just do it myself. It was actually a large amount of work, and a lot of research for some of the coding, but I'm pretty happy with the results.. and I was able to set it up in a way that is much, much easier to update. I also simplified the general design and organized the content in a way that allows me to show a lot more work, including animation!

Just click on my new "Tim Tomkinson Illustration" logo, above, to get to the new main site. Or just click here. There are two smaller sections that are still under construction, but they may be finished by the time you read this.. whoever you are. Don't hesitate to contact me if you notice any bugs or generally dumb decisions on my part.

The image above doesn't really have anything to do with my new site, but a blog post with only type is sort of boring to me. I made that piece for a book pitch (can't discuss the details yet), and I later colorized it for a big party / art show that Friend & Johnson threw last May in San Francisco. All the artists submitted a piece that was printed as posters for sale. I have some extra posters of this for sale, as digital C-prints, so contact me if you're interested in purchasing one. Click here for a larger image.

Lurzer's Archive ads

I worked on these two promotional ads for Lurzer's Archive. The top one was made just a couple weeks ago, to be published in the near future.. and the bottom was in the vol. 4, 2008 issue.

The top ad was designed by Coco Connolly using some of the new branding for my agent, Friend & Johnson. The photo on the left was taken by Charles Shotwell, and I decided to make my page into a play off of his photo. I had free reign to do whatever I wanted, but thought it would be sort of funny to somehow use the missing chair from his photo. For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was a guy balancing a chair on his nose. So I went with that idea, and also pushed it to the more ridiculous side with the juggling of live grenades and the unicycle riding (which i've always wanted to try).

I designed the bottom ad myself, since I had the entire spread. And since I was extremely busy at the time, I used existing images: the left side being from a sketchbook, and the right side from a series of spots for Skiing Magazine.

Friend & Johnson - Promo

Here's the piece I did for the latest Friend & Johnson promotion (my rep), to be mailed out within the next couple of weeks. It's another group promo, and is being used to tie into a relationship with the non-profit 826 Valencia:

"Founded in 2002 by author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, 826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can be made when skilled tutors work one-on-one with students."
– 826valencia.org

So in addition to this being a normal promotional mailer, it will be donated to the organization for use by teachers to show students how visual people respond to words. The concept was to show the inspiration of language based on the single word "Edge". So each of the F&J artists worked out their own illustration of the word..

I decided to turn "Edge" into an acronym, E.D.G.E: Effusively Dotted Golden Elephant. I didn't feel like being too literal with the word "edge", and thought this opened up some more fun words to play with. The string on his trunk is just a little joke about how elephants are supposed to have amazing memories, so they shouldn't need physical reminders like bows tied to fingers (or in this case, trunks).

The elephant, as well as the type, were drawn in ink and colored digitally. I'll try to post some of the other artists' solutions when I get the final book..

Paris Envy

So I'm feeling pretty inspired after a wonderful trip to Paris.. where I got to witness the most jaw-dropping display of beautiful architecture and artwork. Anyone who's been there knows what I'm talking about, but it was my first time and I'm still a bit awe-struck by it. I mean, I knew Paris would be beautiful, just from seeing all of the photos and movies over the years.. but I didn't think it would hit me the way that it did. Why don't we make things like that anymore (and by "that", I mean pretty much every single structure in Paris)? It seems like the art of masonry has been lost to utilitarian modernism. Don't get me wrong.. I love the general influence of modernism on architecture. But it also seems to have given license for every uninspired, drab, concrete, character-void structure out there (see: strip malls, apartment complexes). It seems the post-modernists were lamenting this as well, but I think they overstepped their rebellion a bit. OK, I don't know where I'm going with this, but just want to basically say that the architecture and sculpture of Paris is... Bad Ass!! And that I'm going to miss it.

If you go to Paris, you must go to the Musee d'Orsay to see the impressionists. I seemed to have forgotten how varied the work was from these guys, and was left with a new found respect. There was a special exhibition of Pastels that was mind-blowing in it's examples of mastery. These guys must have had just huge amounts of time on their hands. Oh, and if you go, it helps to bring along a crafty Parisian who can get you past the 1 hour+ line out front.

By the way, the illustration above is one I did a couple months ago for a group Friend & Johnson promo mailer, which was all about Paris!

Friend & Johnson announcement

I did these portraits of Matt and Joe -- the dapper new agents at the NY office of Friend & Johnson (my reps) -- to accompany their welcoming announcement. Good to have you on the team, guys! Thanks to Rafael Macho at Propelo for the design.