Tag: art

The Indian Artist, Final Year: I’m Publishing a Book!!

Riya A Leave a comment

Good Evening Everyone! I hope that you are all doing well! I am very excited to share today’s blog post with you all. This is a project that is very close to my heart and something that I have been working on for almost a year now!

As some of you may know, I am pursuing a career in medicine with the goal of becoming a surgeon. For a long time, I have been searching for ways to integrate my love and passion for art with my commitment to medicine. In December 2022, I had the good fortune of being hired as a Medical Illustrator. In May 2023, I was asked to be the Creative Design Director for a UCLA-based non-profit organization called Pages for Pediatrics and help establish its first chapter at the University of Michigan.

Pages for Pediatrics aims to write and illustrate children’s storybooks working to normalize patient adversity, advocate for disability representation, and combat stigma towards pediatric conditions in the broader community. To help alleviate patient anxiety, we center children’s storybooks around characters that pediatric patients can relate to as a means of instilling hope, comfort, and solidarity. In order to ensure that every patient has unhindered access to our therapeutic stories, we raise funds to cover the production and distribution of our books so we can donate copies to pediatric patients at C.S. Mott’s Children’s Hospital and others nationwide. This is a dream opportunity for me and something that I am so priveleged to be a part of.

I am very excited to announce that our first book, Leela’s Braids, is set to be published in mid-April!! I helped to write this book centered on Alopecia areata and fully illustrated it myself! This has been an incredible project for me and one that I am very proud to share with you all.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Leela’s Braids and supporting Pages for Pediatrics, please feel free to fill out the following order form by April 17th: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZo0A0l_c0ry2wKDTSYjxJUDb7q4jkYyayQv0qN1beCYPdng/viewform

This would make for a wonderful gift for any little ones and family that you may have. I truly appreciate all of you who have continued to read my posts over the past four years. With my time at U of M coming close to an end, I am so priveleged to leave this project behind.

I look forward to sharing more of the book with you all in the coming weeks leading up to its release. Until then, please feel free to reach out to me or comment if you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts! If you would like to see my work, please feel free to check out my website and follow me on Instagram.

Sincerely,

Riya

Instagram: @riya_aggarwal.art

Website: https://theindianartist.weebly.com/

Witness the Small Life – Bird Brained

Mia Lambert Leave a comment

Oh what bundles of joy we were this past week! Maybe joy is thinking too positively, but bundles yes we were. COLD!! With a capital C-O-L-D is all I, and the rest of Ann Arbor, felt all day every day. Some glimpses of the sun poked through here and there, thankfully, but I almost gave into excavating my winter jacket from the depths of storage. No dice, however! I couldn’t do it in fear of manifesting even MORE snow than we already had.

This week, I was all ears! A fun fact about me is that I way too often listen to YouTube video essays on my commutes across campus. This is due to falling in and out of listening to music hardcore and thoroughly, mostly because I suffer intensely from favorite song burnout. This week, though, I’ve felt a huge draw back to my tune-bumping roots. Because of this, I came to realize how 3 of my favorite artists (as above) all have bird-related names. As an angsty tweenager, I felt extremely drawn to birds, all colors and kinds, as a symbol in my artwork. Visual symbolism is my JAM (no pun intended). They represented the worldly freedom of mind and body so I longed to have as a kid cooped up with her younger sisters much of the time. In my musical realizations this week, I’ve been able to reconnect with that version of myself and reflect on where I was then and where I am now. I have so much freedom to explore, learn, and create now while here in college and I am so thankful for that everyday. I wish I could show my younger self this adventure we’re on and to tell her to slow down her internal rebellion and enjoy the world as it was back then. Although I can’t time-travel and break all laws of science, I hope the pieces of her that are still in me have been able to appreciate all of the craziness and joy we’re experiencing in our new freedom together.

TL;DR: Listen to music, indulge your inner child, and appreciate the birds in our lives. We all need love for ourselves in all versions, forms, and ages we exist in.

To take us into our next week:

Ins: Choppy layers, the Hex Girls (always!), tasteful caricature drawings, wolf t-shirts, gossiping in UMMA, the color amber, a healthy ratio of normal socks to crazy socks.

Outs: Ice cream when Mojo is freezing, not cleaning your water bottle (do it!), a rigid 5 year plan, letting your jealousy fester, a bedtime of 2am.

A very cold, but happy Spring Equinox and here’s to all the birds frolicking amongst the snow and playing wonderful songs across our eternal pathways.

Industrious Illustrating #60 – Botanical Gardens 3

Robin Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! This week I’m going back to talking about my classwork for “Making Science Visible”. We recently finished our botanical illustration project where we each illustrated a plant at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens to be later compiled into a map for visitors to identify plants of interest in each biome with. Our first set of drawings are now printed out and on display at the MBG in the hallway leading up to the entrance of the indoor gardens! I personally did my painting first on paper with watercolors and inks and then digitally retouched the painting, but some of my classmates did their drawings entirely traditionally or entirely digitally. I’d definitely recommend taking a look in the near future to see how we all approached the subject matter!

My work is currently hanging in the hallway at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens alongside the work of my classmates!

Something else I did this week was stop by the UMich Natural History Museum to take reference pictures of their microscopes. Our next class project will be creating and redoing various illustrations for the Natural History Museum’s educational materials, and I volunteered to make illustrations for a revamped tutorial for using the microscope. While I was there, I also asked some of the student volunteers about the microscope’s specs and learned that the base model is a National 215 Microscope. I’m glad that I took time out of my day to gather reference materials in-person, and I’m sure that this will be a unique and challenging illustration project.

That’s all for this week! Next week I’ll be in Seattle to vend at Sakuracon, so I’ll probably be making my weekly arts ink blog post the week after. I just finished finalizing my last merch order last night for the con, so I definitely feel like taking a break from drawing for at least a couple of days (I have 2 orders of keychains and 1 order of prints on the way). To that end, I plan to spend more time with my friends and watch a movie or two this weekend. I hope every one of you guys will also have a restful weekend!

MediaScape Musings # 14 : Catch Me If You Can: A Weekend of Musical Marvel at UM

dsuart Leave a comment

This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Musket’s production of “Catch Me If You Can” at the Power Center. It was my first time experiencing a musical in this venue and only my second musical at the University of Michigan. The audience size was astounding, making the experience feel even more special. Knowing that this turnout was just for one of the three showings filled me with pride for the level of interest in the arts here.

“Catch Me If You Can,” based on the thrilling cat-and-mouse film that a friend had once insisted I watch, claiming it as one of their favorites, did not disappoint. The adaptation captured the essence of the movie perfectly, delivering key plot points with a humorous and entertaining twist. It brought back the excitement I felt watching the film for the first time. The performance of “Fly, Fly Away” by the leading lady was particularly moving, and the closing songs “Goodbye” and “Stuck Together” added a delightful charm to the narrative. Watching the evolution of Frank and Carl’s relationship from tension and pursuit to a surprisingly touching embrace was emotional.

Although the musical didn’t cover Frank’s eventual role in the FBI, the ending felt fitting and left the audience on a high note. Musket, founded in 1908, continues to be an integral part of the University of Michigan experience, offering students various opportunities to engage, whether as actors, crew members, or audience members at the distinguished Power Center. This production of “Catch Me If You Can” was a testament to the vibrant and talented community at UM and a reminder of the power of live theatre to captivate and move us.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 5

Sappy Leave a comment 
Heartwarming

With the Earth against my ass and 
scorching rays caressing my hair, 
I take a deep breath. 

I lay down on the ground and 
let the heat suffocate me further. 

I want to be melted and 
have my heart become as cold 
as the soil, unbothered and flourishing.

- Sappy

Industrious Illustrating #59 – AMKE and the Grindset

Robin 1 Comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! Honestly, I forgot to make a post last week because I was out of state for Anime Milwaukee and was focusing entirely on running my Artist Alley table to the best of my ability. I almost forgot again this week because I’ve been figuratively (and literally!) running around trying to make merch orders/re-orders before my next convention at the end of the month. Anyway, here’s what my AMKE table setup looked like this year:

Overall, I did pretty solidly — my revenue was on the higher end of the middle in terms of revenue I’ve made at conventions in the past — but Milwaukee is a fairly expensive city to visit and I’d bring more premade food with me next time to cut down on costs. Otherwise, I’m fairly happy with my profits and I’ll be back if this con accepts me again next year.

On other note, something I’ve been thinking about this week is that even though I do anime conventions instead of art fairs or other events because I specifically love fan culture and engaging with fellow nerds, turning my online shop and convention tables into nearly a full-time job on top of schoolwork is extremely exhausting. I’m almost grateful that I didn’t apply to any cons in April besides Con Ja Nai (Umich’s own one-day anime con!) and I haven’t gotten into any conventions in May (RIP Fanime, ACEN, and MomoCon) because otherwise my entire year would just be convention after convention interspersed with grinding out new merch designs. For one thing, even though I get a lot of merch design requests it’s not like I actually have to constantly make new designs — I’m only just starting to do out-of-state conventions this year and most attendees haven’t seen my work before! For another thing, if I just constantly work myself to the bone chasing higher revenue, would the extra money really be worth burning myself out and making me forget why I’m doing this as a gig instead of working a more “normal” job? Also, all of this is taking away energy, attention, and time I could be spending working on original projects or seeking out other potential jobs/careers, such as doing commercial illustration or user experience design/research. I definitely want to focus more on those during April and May.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy making new merch — I do this precisely because I love the process of researching and designing new merchandise and making them into reality — but I also can’t remember how to enjoy that process without giving myself space to decompress and relax. I think that this weekend I’ll focus on doing house chores and taking “me time” (probably playing video games and taking walks) so that I can remember what it feels like to be a human being and not an art-making machine.

All of this makes me wonder whether or not I should consider being a traveling freelance artist a viable job path in the future rather than a profitable hobby. I mean, what happens if there’s a year where I’m not accepted into any major conventions and my online sales aren’t enough to make up the difference? But also, another part of my brain reminds me that just about every industry is being shaken up by AI and other changes in the economy at the moment, and a regular salaried job would also place my livelihood at the whims of external forces. The best any of us can do is diversify our income streams and not place all our eggs in one basket, whether that basket is a corporate job or self-employed freelance. Maybe this isn’t as upbeat and hopeful as I wish I could be, but this is a column about my journey improving my art and trying to make it viable as a career, so I think it’s to everyone’s benefit that I’m candid and frank at least on occasion. I hope all of you have a great restful weekend, and see you next week!