MicroVisions 5 auction now live!

MicroVisions 5 auction is now live on eBay.
Opening bids start at $50.00.
Auction ends Wednesday, May 26th.

Each year, Dan Dos Santos and I ask about a dozen artists to create a 5x7 painting of their choosing. These miniatures are exhibited at the Society of Illustrators and placed on auction with all proceeds going to the Society’ student scholarship fund.

This year’s contributors pulled out all the the stops and created an amazing exhibit. A huge thank you to the artists that have given so generously of the time and talent: Scott Altmann, Scott Bakal, Rick Berry, Bill Carman, Jon Foster, Donato Giancola, Michael Kaluta, Tim O’Brien, Omar Rayyan, Allen Williams, and Boris Vallejo.

The Society Scholarships are among the illustrations industry’s toughest awards. Less than two hundred students are chosen to be in the exhibit from nearly 6,000 entries—about half of them earn cash awards. Not only do these awards help subsidize students financially, they also go a long way to boost the confidence of young artists (and their nervous parents) by proving their voices stand out amongst thousands of others. It’s never long before you start seeing the winners on their way to becoming the field’s biggest names—John Jude Palencar, James Jean, Tomer Hanuka, Dan Dos Santos and hundreds of others since the Scholarship’s inception in 1981.

For those of you in New York, the exhibit is on display at the Society of Illustrators through May 22nd.

Donato Giancola’s MicroVisions

Anyone following Donato Giancola’s website closely has seen a few new Lord of the Rings drawings and paintings. That’s because he’s working on what sounds like a dream job, a Tolkien inspired art book for Underwood Books (the publishers of Spectrum.)

Donato took advantage of the time spent on MicroVisions to creat this portriat of Dwarf Telchar forging Aragorn’s sword, Narsil, which will also appear in th ebook.

I’m getting so excited to see this little show. It will be on the walls at the Society of Illustrators starting April 27th. The auction will be the first or second week of May — stay tuned for details!

Donato's ebook cover for The Dragon Reborn

We have unveiled the cover to the third volume of the Wheel of Time ebooks, The Dragon Reborn. Head on over to Tor.com and you can hear Donato talk about his work and see his initial drawings.

Art Out Loud DVD trailer

Trailer for Art Out Loud, Vol 3 from Kate Feirtag on Vimeo.

A little set-up tease for an upcoming DVD of the September 12th's Art Out Loud at the Society of Illustrators with:
James Gurney
Sam Weber
Charles Vess
Donato Giancola
Greg Manchess

Earlier report of the event here. I'll give a heads-up when the DVD is available, of course.

Hmmm..makes me want to start another Art Out Loud.....

Donato demo download from Massive Black

Just out from Massive Black's downloadable demo series: Donato Giancola's "The Mechanic." Long term readers know I've seen Donato demo a bunch of times, he's a born teacher. $60 dollars for 5 hours. Download version available now, there will be a DVD version out in November.

Order it here.
Trailer below.
Apropo t0 nothing, I love this painting -- one of my recent faves from Donato.



[Thanks to Dan Dos Santos for the heads up.]