Ken W. Min ~ Illustrator for Hire

The Lion sleeps tonight...

well, he's not sleeping, more like posing.

again, playing with some painting ideas. nothing too radical from what i usually do and yet, pushing on the boundaries of my painting principles.

Winter Walk...

...or "little red" (as in riding hood. although it looks more like a "hoodie" sweater that she's wearing)
just playing around with some new painting ideas. trying something a tad more "minimalistic".

My Holiday Card

o.k. so i normally don't like to show my card before i mail them out, but i haven't posted anything in a while so i figure- what the hey.

as you can tell, at least i hope you can see, that i have a thing for penguins. love the little critters. very dapperly dressed in black tie and tail and yet amusing to watch waddling around. they have been the primary object of depiction on all of my christmas cards, now on it's 20th anniversary. (ouch! that long...) in the past i would hunt around for penguins on cards. (really hard to find back in the early 90's. this was, of course, before their recent splash in the public's conscious thanks to some high profile movies) eventually i decided to make my own, thanks, in part, to those blank, white card stock at the local store.

hope you like it. and for those lucky few, check your mail box the second week of december.

A New Story

i have a new story rolling around in my head right now. it's about a princess who is also a bit of a tomboy.

i think i'll keep it under my hat for the time being, but i thought i would share some sketches.

A Long Walk ~ Fin

here's the finish for that last post.

this is a story about a girl who goes on a walk with a song in her heart and collects souvenirs from her travels. that's why there are musical notes floating around and icons of the things she has collected. such as a rainbow, and a ball. the heart represents her sunny disposition. as she goes on, she will collect more and more items until she decides to go home to show her mother all she has seen.

one suggestion made to me recently was to take advantage of some of the white spaces that i have in some of my work. it allows one to focus on the important aspects in my pictures, (according to this person) it was something that i thought about and took to heart. i've always admired illustrators like ezra jack keats and eric carle and it is in their footsteps that i trot.

so i hope you, my imaginary viewership, like these baby steps. :)

A Long Walk

i have an idea for a picture book. i've been working on this particular story for a while and put together a dummy book. a dummy book is the storytellers rough, loose, interpretation of his/her story. it lays out how the story is paced on a page by page basis and occasionally has a couple of color finishes to show prospective publishers what the final images might look like.

i had worked this one up to dummy book form some time back, but after a couple of reviews from some people in the publishing field, i wanted to go back to the drawing board and re-visualize some of the images.  the reviews weren't terrible or discouraging, just suggestions to simplify the layouts and some of the visuals.

which is what i'm working on now.

here is one of the revised compositions. at some point soon, i'm going to paint this one up. if anything, just so i can draw a bit of personal inspiration to keep this puppy moving along.

Young Medusa

here's a piece that gestated over a period of a month but came together quickly. i was having drinks with friends when the name "young medusa"© popped into my head. i liked it but didn't have anything to write it down on. so i borrowed a pen and grabbed a packet of the coffee sweetner equal and scribbled the name on a side. that was over a month ago.

cut to this past week. i was preparing samples to send out and i wanted a new piece to enclose, which meant i had to work fast. that packet of equal had been sitting on my desk in all that time and i finally decided to address it. i had a vague, fuzzy notion of the face with the tendrils of snaking hair wriggling out and away from her head but what was her face going to look like. since i had dubbed her "young" as in youthful she shouldn't be the spiteful, gruesome gorgon we all remember her from that cheesy (but cool, fun) movie "clash of the titans". no this young lady would not be quite so despicable...yet.

no, she would still be a little wide-eyed, maybe not quite beaten down upon by life, just yet. and she would have freckles (cause i think they look cute). i gave her a pose that, to me, had a wistful, dreamy quality. (well, that's what i'm selling here :) and yes, that is her serpentine body undulating in and out of the frame.

i don't know her story quite yet, but she whispers bits of it in my ear in the dead of night. of course, i can't ask her in a face to face chat, only through a mirror, cause we all know what happens when you look a gorgon straight on...

you turn to stone.

Book Fair Poster: Final Layout

here's the final look of the poster. the only change at this time was some minor tweaks to the text. it was fun to do. now i'm on to crafting the postcards

the bookmark

and directory cover

these last few are still pending final approval but this is the direction i'm going in. more about cropping and isolating elements. makes me glad i painted the various characters separately and then just collage them together on the computer.

cool beans

 

Stretching Tiger, Crouching Boy

since i'm waiting to hear back from "the book fair people" regarding the poster, i'm on to new things. i did finish it, but i figure since i'm waiting to hear back about possible changes, i'll wait to post it. in the meantime, a friend asked me to contribute a piece to a charity auction. so here is my contribution. initially i was going to do something following the line, "catch a tiger by the tail." but it wasn't clicking with me. then i saw a cat stretching out in the sun after a nap and that's when my line of thought changed course. i hope my friend likes it. i hope it finds a good home. i just hope it goes for more than a shilling. maybe i'll start the bidding at 2 shillings :)

actually, i should be talkin' euros.

Book Fair Poster: addendum

i've got a few more elements finished off for the poster. emma (from jane austen), a cowboy and a scientist/astronomer. (why do i feel like i'm reassembling that disco era band- the village people?? :)

they are still in their 'raw' state, as in i haven't had time to clean them up in photoshop, but for the most part, the paint job came off pretty clean. i don't necessarily foresee a lot of spot checking. but i figured i'll go ahead and post them as is for now.

(my apologies for the condition of the horse. this piece is going on a side, so i didn't feel the need to paint in the entire horse. just my luck, they'll ask to move this element and then i'll be up a creek)