Facebook page

Hello - just realised that I haven't updated this page in a while - silly me!
Just a short thing for now - here's a link to my facebook page

www.facebook.com/JMArtpage

This is the main page I currently use for snippets of new sketches, photos and links to art events.

World of Avatar Offices

Beginning of this year I got a sneak peek at World of Avatar and MXit's new offices. I was really pleased to see that I've had a hand in the interior decorating :).  Really cool offices and a nice afternoon and thanks to Alex for the lovely tour - I just discovered that I had some photos I took from my visit there - so just sharing them over here.

I love how the prints came out - and WOA has a really cool logo as you can see in the background. It was a nice surprise to see all of this :)

Awakenings 2

This is the cover of my second graphic novel Awakenings 02. It has been a long slog completing this baby and I wish to thank the following people. Regina Rugge - who is always my proof reader and advisor. Mills Litho Printers in Cape Town - who always go beyond the call of duty to keep their clients smiling - you guys did an excellent job with this and the previous book. Special thanks to the National Arts Council of South Africa for their generous contribution towards the printing costs of this book.

This book is available from:
Reader's Den in Claremont South Africa http://www.readersden.co.za/
Outer Limits in Gauteng and Cape Town, South Africa http://www.outerlimits.co.za/
Clark's Books in Cape Town http://clarkesbooks.co.za/
The Book Lounge in Cape Town www.booklounge.co.za/

And the following is a newspaper article from the Local Tatler :)

Painting with Inks

I haven't done traditional art in AGES. Some of my ink bottles were a bit crusty. But I decided to do something for the Co/mix Exhibition in Grahamstown in 2011 and I wanted something different from a print. So I took some of my original art from AW2 and start to experiment colouring the pencils with inks. (Kinda halfway through I remembered to stretch the paper :0 ) And my plastic J&B whiskey glass makes an awesome brush rinser - I am more of a gin fan anyways :).

Random Wall Nonsense

One of the random spots in the house which I start to colonize with leftover prints and art

Interior decorating

This mural was done while I was still working at am i collective - to make the office look more illustratory- if that's even a word. Drawing with charcoal on the walls is fun. Good clean healthy fun. At least until you discover that you need to fixitive the hell out of the picture to make it stick... (yes in this office they approve if you "improve" the walls)

Old Beertjie pics

Seeing as the website for theses marvelous painted bears do not exist anymore. I have decide to post some of my own photos showing me bonding with bear. Ah, I love this piece of plastic goodness. There were 50 of these creatures painted as part of a wonderful exhibtion held at Am i collective in 2009. I only rediscovered these photos om my harddrive this week.

Mune gets SAFTA Award!

In Feb 2011 I heard the happy news that Mune had won the SAFTA (South African Film and Television) Award for best animation. This is a photo of the Golden Horn Award. Very Shiny and we're very proud. It also serves as a deterrent for potential muggers while walking down Kloof Street at night.

ImagineFX FXpose feature

Here's a feature I had in the Expose section of ImagineFX Feb 2011.
(click for larger view)

Playing in Painter

My first time palying in Painter (X) and I am loving it!
See bellow for the results. (click for larger view)

Mune!

Time for an update! This is the poster for my animated short film Mune. It's about people with cities on their heads trying to find love. And last week it's been nominated for a SAFTA award for best animation!!!! So excited!
The following is a list of festivals Mune has played at:

• Youth Talent Film Festival
  Port Elizabeth, South Africa
• BUT Film Festival
  Breda, Netherlands
• FLExiff 2002-2022
  Sydney, Australia
• Anim'est
  Bucharest, Romania
• Banjaluka 2010
  Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Africa in the Picture
  Amsterdam, Netherlands
• 2nd Bi-Annual for School Films
  Tunis, Tunisia
• Rencontres Henri Langlois film festival
  Poitiers, France
• 6th Athens Animfest 2010
  Athens, Greece
• Design Indaba Film Festival
  Cape Town, South Africa
  
• International Short Film Festival 2011
  Chennai, India
  
• Cape Winelands Film Festival
  Cape Town, South Africa
  
• Animayo 2011
  Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
  
• 7th MCM Filmfest 2011
  Venlo, Netherlands
• Independent Days 11|Filmfest
  Karlruhe, Germany
• National Arts Festival 2011
  Grahamstown, South Africa
  

Awakenings Artwork

Yay! Again yay! I am finally done with this picture. I have gotten some advice on using textures which I put to good use. Click the image for a larger view. This was going to be the cover for Awakenings 2, but yeah.. I think it's a bit too busy and not striking enough, so this is gonna end up as a poster in the book.

Animation Again!

Wow, I am animating again... actually studying animation. These two ladies are some of the Characters I plan to animate for a 5 minute short. It's gonna be a challenge.... but I find that I love scriptwriting and pre-production.... now if only I could get an army of Jesca- clones to do the actual animation for me while I go have a drink down the road...

Anime Edition

Recently the Sunday Times printed an anime inspried version of it's weekly magazine. All the artwork was illustrated by South African anime artists- incl. yours truely. Best part was: the magazine was printed right to left like a manga comic- nice going!

I like drilling holes in walls and hanging stuff

I am so used to doing everthing digitally these days, so it's a weird and wonderful feeling for me to see my digital stuff printed and hung on walls.

(I love powertools and I have a hidden destructive nature)

So I thought I'd just share some of this, unfortunately on a webpage you can't see how groovy butt-kick this looks. All the prints are panels from my Awakenings comic (the one which is yet tio have a sequel-aaaaaaaaargh!). It's strange because I am used to seeing my drawings in these teeny tiny panels (the canvas is +/- 85 by 30 cm). So.... if any of you guys feel the burning need for some tasty art- speak to me... and help a local artist support her expensive shoe and tea habit.

And this is just some non-digital handpainted canvasses that hanging out near my workdesk in my "studio"

Jo'burg Mural

Hey there!

Here's a photo of an mural project I did with the super- creative people at Amicollective. Lots of fun and the thing is 70 meters long btw. Just click for a larger view.

Newspaper article

Talking about exposure... This is an article I wrote for the Cape Argus. What a fun opportunity that was! Hah-ha! I actually come across as an optimist in this piece- wow! Well I love comics and I am always keen to offer unsolicited advice to all and sundry, so this was a nice opportunity for a captive audience. Hey you can always turn the page if you don't agree with the writer!

(yeah and click on the image if you feel the burning urge to read!)

Too much art everywhere

Okay I am officially on too many Social networking, blogging and forum sites. My brain has recently suffered a password meltdown of note. So I've taken to writing things down, which is exactly what you are not supposed to do, but with all the random numbers and capitals added to over 20 different passwords and usernames I am not keeping up. And I keep running into the same people where ever I go. No matter how big the site. It's both comforting and scary. Like a family of people I've never met in real life. Sometimes it makes me feel boring, like I am doing a show and tell of the same art to the same set of people over and over again. I sign up on a new (or new to me at least) hang out for designers, artists and such ilk. I browse my sweet way through the recently added gallery section, where I bump into familiar artworks which come accross as old friends. " Hello nice to see you here again. Still looking good are we?" Maybe it's because it's the same section of people, all with access to the Internet, in the same creative industry, with the same hunger for exposure, with a penchant for signing up on too many sites. What counts as too much exposure for a piece of art? Can you benefit from a sense of mystery in today's information overload existence? Or could that attitude be compared to burying a coin in the ground and expecting a money tree to sprout next spring? Maybe I should scale back and not use the internet as a giant billboard for all things Jesca. Yet here I am starting another blog..... mmmm... what can I say, art is meant to be seen.... visual media isn't it?
Anyways enough rambling: I've created this blog as a news storage space. Especially since it's easier to update and add images to than my website. So here's two interviews I did with Otaku magazine a while back.

And here's an later interview which featured in Issue 16-if I am not mistaking

I am going to use this first blog post to Show Off some of my work for Something Wicked Magazine. Now the editor (a Mister Joe Vaz, who moonlights as an actor for rather emotionally laden petroleum ads) has a thing for girls- Girls with rather nasty temperaments usually cradling sharp bladed objects. I was delighted when some of my more maccabre work was used for Issue 07. Way to go!