posted: May 19, 2009

In the beginning of March, one of my illustration dreams came true:  To do a project with Yoga Journal.  I've always respected the magazine because of how much illustration they use and the artists they choose.  I respect the magazine a lot more now that I've worked with Ali Zeigler because working with her was a dream.  I felt we were a team trying to get the best work done for this project.  It is also nice to work with an art director that is able to use some white space in their designs!  (See tearsheets below).

The topic was about meditation and how to control those outside thoughts from creeping in your brain and distracting yourself.  It takes a while to train yourself to push away all those day-to-day thoughts, lists and worries and just meditate in a calm state.

During the project, I thought about my experiences with mediating.  Years ago, I was taking martial arts classes, specifically Ju Jitsu.  I actually made Brown Belt 2nd degree but because of financial burdens on the family, I had to drop it so I never had attained Black Belt which was probably 6 months to a year away.  I still retain a lot of what I learned from it today...except maybe for the physical parts!  Under this Brie and Cracker/Guiness belly is a washboard stomach!  One of the things we used to do was meditate at some point every class and the techniques we learned still is with me today.

Not to get too deep into medication techniques, one way I've learned to ease myself into calmness is to visualize a white field...of paper if you will.  In the middle of the paper is a small dot.  I take long, deep breaths in and as I do so, I visualize the dot getting larger and larger until it fills the 'paper'.  As I exhale, the dot slowly returns to its original size.  So, I find myself able to just 'be' and not be surrounded by thoughts of things that distract me from calmness.  It's a simple technique but it gets the body (breathing) and the mind (visualizing) to do something very simple and lead your thoughts away from everything else.

In April, a couple of weeks after I was done with the paintings, I was scheduled to do a couple of lectures at San Jose State University and the Academy of Art and made plans to hang with the West Coast Iller Set...Adam McCauley, Robert Hunt, Scary Joey and a couple of up and comers who were under the tutalege of Mr. Hunt.  I figured, while I was out there and Yoga Journal is headquartered out there, I'd make an appointment to have lunch/dinner/drinks or whatever else.  We made a lunch appointment and I got to hang with Ali and the other two art directors Ron Escobar and Charli Omett.

Before we went to some sweet little lunch/sandwich place around the corner, I went up to their offices and got to see the magazine all laid out on the wall.  They were all wonderfully nice and cool.

While we were out to lunch I had mentioned that I was going to hang out with a bunch of illustrators in the area.  All of them looked at me funny.  I said there is a pretty high concentration of illustrators in San Francisco and they were surprised to hear that.  They said that no one ever calls to have lunch.  I couldn't believe my ears!

The lesson here is, if there is a major magazine nearby, you may well want to try to contact them old school and not hope they stumble on your website.  I think asking art directors out to lunch/drinks whatever, especially after you've worked with them is a classy thing to do and help continue work coming in.  There's nothing wrong with the 'ole 3 martini lunch!

Late one night about a week ago in Penn Station I was rummaging through the Newsstand Museum looking at my pals work and came across the new issue of Yoga Journal.  It immediately took me back to that wonderful time doing the job and the experiences I had out there in San Francisco.

The project also inspired me to get back in touch with the inner spirit.  I haven't been exactly centered lately with 1000 things all going on at once.  Not that anything specifically horrible is happening other than concerns about my mother's health. I just think I'd like to find that 'center' again and get a little more control over what's going on around me, in my mind and in my personal life.  This was a good job to do.  Thanks Ali!

posted: May 12, 2009

Scott Bakal

The 4th Wall Gallery
2925 Fairmount Street
Dallas, TX 75201

Opening Reception: May 21st  7PM
Show runs through until July.


In 2009, I decided I wanted to start doing more gallery work. Matthew Abramowitz, owner of the famed Storyopolis in Los Angeles must have felt my vibes because he contacted me around the holidays asking if I was interested in doing some gallery work. The next thing I know I was shipping 20 pieces to his new gallery in Dallas to be part of a 3-person exhibition.

I decided to finally put my Me + the Devil series up for sale so I am showing nearly the entire series and a few other various pieces I've done more recently.  Usually, I showed the work just for exhibition purposes during my lectures, etc.  The decision was a hard one to put them up for sale because of the time and work I put into the series and the wonderful experiences and successes I've been fortunate to have with it.  I know almost every artist has that pit in their stomach when it comes to selling originals.  It was time for me to move on, I think.  The one piece pictured above won't be there because of a UPS accident which left a six inch tear right down the middle of the piece which I am considering getting repaired and another is now part of the Society's permanent collection.

This is exciting for me because while I've had other exhibitions over the years, this is the first exhibition that I consider a 'big' one for me.  It feels like I am part of a like-minded set of artists who I admire and respect.  I'll be flying down for the opening!

posted: May 4, 2009

On May 7th and 8th are two student art shows in New York City which contains loads of great art!  Both are open to the public and free to attend.  I hope to see a bunch of you at these openings!

First, the Fashion Institute of Technology Senior Exhibition
Opening reception: May 7th,
Time: 6-8pm
Dates of the show: May 8th-19th, 2009
Address: Museum of The Fashion Institute of Technology, E Building
27th Street at 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Thank you to the judges Fernanda Cohen, John Rocco and Mike DiIoia (Discover Magazine) for helping select a great show.

Then, the following evening, I will put on my Chairman Suit and help host the:

Society of Illustrators - 2009 ANNUAL STUDENT COMPETITION
Awards Presentation and Opening Reception

Reception: FRIDAY MAY 8, 2009 6:00 - 9:00PM

Admission is free!
Exhibition May 6 - June 6, 2009

It would be great to see all the fellow Drawger's there!  Every year art directors, designers, reps and illustrators come to this opening.  The last two years have been packed houses and spilling out into the street!  Here are some pieces I dig from the show.  Student Show

I also will be giving out $60,000 in scholarship money Friday night!  It'll be a blast!

posted: April 27, 2009

In July of 2007 I called up Rob Dunlavey and asked if he would like to do some sort of sketchbook experiment.  I really didn’t know how to define how or what we were going to do this but I was open to anything.  We ended up talking about ideas and directions of what we could do.
As we’ve all here at Drawger have come to find out, Rob really takes his sketchbooking seriously.  It is really inspirational and I always enjoyed looking at his sketchbook stuff here at Drawger.  I thought it would personally be a cool experience if I worked with him on something like this.  Maybe I’ll learn something, maybe he’ll learn something…maybe we’ll make a pile of shit.  Whatever!  No matter what we thought would come of it, it would be a pretty cool project.
I was happy that Rob thought it was a cool idea and the rules we ended up with were pretty simple.  We’d get a sketchbook,  hold onto it for a couple of weeks/months and play around with it and mail it to each other when we hit a point that we thought we should pass it on.  As far as the work itself, all was fair game.  If one of us wanted to paint over something or redo a page, we did it.  If we wanted to add something to an element that was already there, we did it.  The only stipulation is that if we add or subtract something from a page, even completely painting over an entire page, we had to do it with respect to making a better piece.  There certainly were some failures in this book and I’d say about 6 or so pages in their current state were completely different pieces of art when they started.  This is a tall order because we are two separate artists with different sensibilities.  We actually did have a couple of phone calls that were along the lines of “Oh man!  You painted over that!  I liked that!”  when one actually liked what was happening and the other didn’t.  Such is life.

This sketchbook travelled the greater New England area for a year and a half and we saved some of the cancelled postage to go along with that book.
One of the things that I knew which was going to happen, and which I wanted to happen was the development of new elements and bringing my work somewhere new.  Some of the elements that I first started in this sketchbook regularly appear in my professional work now.  How to deal with odd shapes, strange colors and textures that I normally NEVER would have thought using was thrown in my face from Rob to deal with and elaborate on.  Knowing that it was a no-holds-barred situation, it allowed me to mess with things and not worry too much about result.  In my mind, often it was about the act of making art and not worrying too much about result.  Still, I studied what I ended up making in the work and saw if something actually ‘worked’ or not.  Even today, I look at some of the pages and think…”Nahh…that one still doesn’t work.”  It came to a time with this book where we both needed to stop and accept the current results.

During the time I had the book in-hand, I often took the opportunity to show the progress to students to inspire them to start their own sketchbooks. They still ask about it!  In turn, over the last year or so, many started collaborative efforts with classmates or started their own very experimental sketchbooks themselves.  It is fascinating to see what the students have been coming up with.
I attached in this post are some midway scans of the some of the art as a reference for you to see how one image developed over a period of time to what we ended up considering the ‘final art’ for the book.
In the end, it was a great self generated project and I made a great friend throughout the process.  We haven't worked through what we're going to do with it yet but we've gotten into discussions about putting it up for auction to create a scholarship for the Society's Student Scholarship Competition or to give to a charity that we agree on.  We'll see where that all goes.  We did want to share the fun with everyone first!

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