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Christine Mitzuk
As well as being a freelance artist, you are very involved in art education and have several intriguing hobbies (archery practice and harp playing being a few!). What does a normal day look like for you?
Generally I use the morning hours for idea generation or image creation. My afternoons are usually idea execution or business-related tasks.
A “normal” day will look something like this. My alarm goes off at 6:30 am. Depending on how cold it is outside of the blankets, I roll out of bed about 6:45-7:00. I tend to the dog. Then a bit of exercise, followed by morning ablutions, and breakfast. I start work as close to 8:00 as I can (probably a remnant from my days as a graphic designer, but I just feel like I accomplish more if I do this). Next come email and Facebook. Then a bit of drawing warm-up, either using artists.pixelovely.com or noodling around in my sketchbook. Lately the noodling around is in the form of a Fake Journal for International Fake Journal Month (Roz Stendahl’s brain baby. She’s awesome. Check it out.)
Then I get moving on whatever project needs my attention first. Around 1:00 I break for lunch and a walk around the neighborhood. After that I’m back to work in my studio. My husband comes home from work and pokes his head in to say hi. Depending on the day, the afternoon session could last till dinner or only a few hours so I can go teach at The Atelier. If I’m not at The Atelier, I’ll be working on something else after dinner. Usually sketching heads from TV I’m watching with my husband, but lately it’s designing some sea-themed jewelry to go with the oil painting I’m working on. No, you can’t see it yet.
As for the harp, I played for over ten years performing here and there. Now I play for myself when the mood strikes me.
As for archery, I started that hobby well before a certain book series turned movie hit mainstream. Now that the weather is getting nice, I’m looking forward to getting out to the range for some practice.
You use a wide range of mediums, including traditional mediums like oil painting, watercolor, pen and ink, even scratchboard! Plus you also do digital painting as well. How do you decide what medium you will tackle various projects in? And what is your typical process like, how you go from first idea to final art piece?
Watercolor was my first love. These days my main two media are digital and oil paint. Time is the main factor in deciding what medium to use. If it’s a commercial piece where the client buys all the rights and I need to hurry up, then I’ll probably create the final art digitally. If it’s a piece for me (fantasy, still life, portrait) then I’ll most likely do it in oil. If I want immediate gratification of creating, then I’ll work in watercolor. It has the least amount of set up and clean up and I love how it has a mind of its own. Watercolor tends to find its way into my more whimsical pieces.
The more I work, my process evolves. Currently it goes something like this: research; idea generation; more research and gather reference; sketches; tighter drawing; value and color studies; final.
I’ll either have a prompt from a client or my own idea. Brainstorming comes first. I make lists of words, either pulled from the prompt or related conceptually. Then I do a bunch of thumbnails with pencil on paper. If I can’t visualize something, I set up my camera and take a bunch of shots, acting out the idea. I try not to let the inner critic look over my shoulder at this point. Next I pick the thumbnails I like and do larger sketches, with basic values blocked in. I try to make them legible to someone besides me so I have to sort of detach a little and make sure my imagination isn’t filling in any visual gaps. This is usually where options would go to the client. Next I get photo reference, either on my own or with the help of my photographer buddy David Ginsberg (eclipseproductions.org). If necessary, I hunt down or create costume bits and props. Next I bash together a rough comp with all my reference using Photoshop and convert it to grayscale. Then I do a line drawing, value studies, and color studies. Finally I paint. Sometimes the painting just pours out. Sometimes there’s an ugly phase where I’ve lost the trail and need to get back to the values and impetus of the piece.
Who are some of the artists who inspire you?
My tastes fluctuate, but these are some of the artists I keep returning to. Susan Seddon Boulet (I want to have more mystery in my work and I love the mystery she created in hers). Greg Manchess (his compositions, brush work, and nailing values). Barry Windsor-Smith (I love his lyrical line, specifically in Gaia and Fire). Mucha (his lithographs are lovely but I enjoy his oil paintings and the lyrical line in his drawings more). Cheng-Khee Chee (love his watercolor paintings of fish, lots of mystery there), Joaquín Sorolla (value, color and brushwork). The prints of Yoshida Hiroshi.
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Hillary Pearlman
You have an eclectic background in art-making, experimenting in a variety of mediums (including mechanical/musical sculpture!), even studying for several months with a calligraphy landscape master in Wuhan, China. Tell us a little bit about your journey as an artist so far and what’s next for you.
I was a member of S.F.S.F.S (the South Florida Science Fiction Society) as a fetus. I grew up in libraries, museums, and Tropicon. Even as a kid I would walk through the art show at Trop several times a day. I was absolutely fascinated with epic spacescapes, monsters, dragons, you name it. Movies like The Dark Crystal really fueled me, I wanted to be the person responsible for THAT shot, kind of thing. I wanted to create crazy worlds and universes that people had never seen or conceptualized. I spent my days there in my mind, much to the disdain of all my school authorities. My journey as an artist has been more of a gaining of perspective. Washing my eyeballs with everything I can lay them on. The landscapes always came very naturally; the most important thing I learned while under the study of Cha Jiàshóu (Professor Cha) was not to fear the canvas, whatever it may be. At the time that was rice paper and he was smacking the back of my head at mistakes, Kill Bill-style, but I learned more from him in the three months I was in the Wuhan, China area than I could possibly illustrate with words. One maybe: “attack.”
What is your process like? What is your favorite medium and how do you go from first idea to final art piece?
When I was back in the US, my attention turned to color. Chinese watercolor is traditionally very dull; I’m a kid from South Florida, I was starved for bright and noisy. As I was learning more about color, by proximity I learned how to think in terms of problem solving. I’m still learning and hopefully will be until death or dementia. The beginning of that mentality was the beginning of my quest into recycling and recovery.
The musical instruments were another natural progression. My mother, Dina Pearlman, who is also a fantastic fabric artist, was in a folk/filk group when I was little called Orion’s Belt. They would rehearse in our living room. Music has always been a part of my life, and instruments have their own life, I simply seek to extend it in memoriam with functionality. My process is evolution. I don’t usually repeat a lot; everything I do ends up being more. Sometimes “better,” sometimes “worse.” I have managed to train myself not to set fire to everything I dislike that I make. I got yelled at a lot for that. My mission is to keep growing, for as long as I’m able.
What led you to working in the speculative fiction field and who are some of your favorite artists?
Well, the first and third inquiries have a similar answer. (See above.) More often than not, my obsessions swing between Vincent Van Gogh, Michael Whelan, and Bill Watterson … that can move towards H.R. Giger on darker days. At the moment, I’m incredibly grateful for my opportunity to work with the fantastic people of Lightspeed Magazine, illustrating stories from authors I love, and Waking Dreams Games, for whom I have the luck of illustrating a gamers manual for their Legends of the Dragon Keeper tabletop series. Thank you universe! Thank you, Lightspeed. Thank you, Galen Dara, for everything.
Galen Dara sits in a dark corner listening to the voices in her head. She has a love affair with the absurd and twisted, and an affinity for m
onsters, mystics, and dead things. She has illustrated for 47 North, Edge Publishing, Lightspeed, Fireside Magazine, Apex Publications, Lackington Magazine and Goblin Fruit. Recent book covers include War Stories, Glitter & Mayhem, and Oz Reimagined. She won the 2013 Hugo for Best Fan Artist and is nominated for the 2014 Hugo for Best Professional Artist. Her website is www.galendara.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @galendara. Her illustrations for Lightspeed are collected at: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/tag/illustrated-by-galendara/.
Artist Gallery: Li Grabenstetter
Li Grabenstetter is an illustrator, writer and designer living in DC by way of the Netherlands and Hungary and other interesting places. With a BFA in printmaking and minors in bookbinding and drawing, they came to illustration through a consummate love of books and other printed matters. Influences include art nouveau, the symbolist movement, and the art of Harry Clarke, Ivan Bilibin, and Yoshitaka Amano. Li’s work has been featured in such diverse venues as GUD Magazine, AE, Crossed Genres Magazine, and several US patents. In their spare time, Li likes to read about monsters while surrounded by trees. Twitter-ites can find them at @magneticcrow. Their website is www.magneticcrow.com.
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Artist Gallery: Hillary Pearlman
Hillary Pearlman is a Baltimore based artist with an eye for trouble, and an art for whimsy. She has a love for found objects, recycling and bringing new life to the hollow. Formal training includes months under the guidance of a calligraphy landscape master in Wuhan, China, where she resided for part of 2007. Her heart is in fantasy and science fiction, but the rest of her does what it wants so there’s always an interesting string of results.
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Artist Gallery: Elizabeth Leggett
Elizabeth Leggett is a 20 year veteran freelance illustrator. Her artistic influences include Micheal Kaluta, Donato Giancola, John Jude Palencar, and Jeremy Gedes. She completed a 78 card tarot in a single year and launched it into a successful Kickstarter. (Portico Tarot and Art Prints) In December, she won two places in Jon Schindehette’s ArtOrder Inspiration challenge and is currently under consideration for inclusion in Spectrum 21.
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Artist Gallery: Christine Mitzuk
Christine Mitzuk is a Minnesota based artist. She loves creating visual narratives fueled by traditions, tales, the world without and within. You can find her around town at drawing co-ops or out enjoying a walk with her husband and their four-legged friend. She teaches classes at The Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art in Minneapolis, MN. Christine has created art for Fantasy Flight Games, Llewellyn Worldwide, and private commissions. Find more of Christine’s work at ChristineMitzuk.com.
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Illusion, Expectation, and World Domination through Bake Sales
Pat Murphy
In this article, I’m going to tell you about illusion, expectation, and the lies that your brain sometimes tells you. And I’ll explain how those lies relate to science fiction, the women who are destroying it, and the future of our society.
But before I get to all that, I’ll start with a story that is also a puzzle.
A spacecraft from the planet Earth lands on an alien world. The captain sends out a landing party, which includes Robert (a middle-aged scientist) and his strapping twenty-year-old son, Robert, Jr., also known as Bob.
An alien monster that looks suspiciously like a Tyrannosaurus Rex attacks the landing party, killing everyone except Bob, who hides in a convenient cave. The monster then turns on the ship.
For the sake of the crew, the captain must order the ship to take off, abandoning Bob. But the captain says, “I can’t leave Bob behind. He’s my son.”
Who is the captain?
I’ll give you a few minutes to think about that. But before I tell you about your tricky brain, I’d like you to take a moment to watch this video, shot at a shopping mall in Norway. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfpWdYoa2_o ]
This is the Ames Room, invented by ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames, Jr. in 1934. (You can find many videos of this illusion online if you search for “Ames room.” I like this one for its brevity and Norwegian commentary.)
In the video, you see a woman and a man walking around in a small room. When the woman stands on the left side of the room, she looks very tall. When the people change positions and the man stands on the right, the woman shrinks and the man looks very tall.
There’s no trick photography here—just your own tricky brain. Your brain is used to seeing rooms that are rectangular—where the walls meet the floor and each other at right angles. Your brain sees the Ames room and assumes that this room is rectangular, like most other rooms you’ve encountered.
But the Ames room is not like other rooms. None of its corners are square. The back wall is not parallel to the front wall. In fact, the corner on the right is twice as far away from the video camera as the corner on the left. The floor slants—the distance from the ceiling to the floor is much greater on the right than on the left.
When the woman walks across the room from left to right, she is actually walking away from you, heading for the distant back corner. As she moves away from you, she looks smaller. When she’s in that distant corner, she looks smaller because she is farther away. The slanted floor contributes to her shrinkage—the distance between the floor and the ceiling in this corner is enormous, making her small by comparison.
The room is dramatically distorted, but your brain insists on seeing it as rectangular. To make sense of what it sees in the room, your brain tells you that the people shrink and grow—which makes no sense at all. But still your brain clings to its belief in rectangular rooms.
Most people believe what they see. They think they see the world as it really is. But researchers working to understand human perception know otherwise. The world you see is something your brain invents from information it gathers from your eyes and interprets using its assumptions about the world. You don’t see the world itself. You see your brain’s interpretation of the world.
It’s your brain’s job to make sense of the world. Sometimes, in its efforts to find sense in a confusing world, your brain takes a short cut. The Ames room is one example of how your brain and perceptual system can take a short cut and get lost along the way. Rather than seeing what is really there, your brain sees what it expects to see.
Now let’s get back to Bob, cowering in a cave on that alien planet, and the spaceship captain who is unwilling to abandon the boy to his fate. Who is the captain? Bob’s mother, of course.
When I wrote about Bob and his mom, I based the story on a classic puzzle: A boy and his father are in a car crash and the father is killed instantly. The boy is airlifted to the best hospital in the area and prepared for emergency surgery. The surgeon rushes into the operating room, sees the boy, and says, “I can’t operate on this patient. He’s my son.”
I first heard the tale of the reluctant surgeon thirty years ago. You would think that with the number of women doctors around, this story would no longer be a puzzle. Yet when Boston University researchers Mikaela Wapman and Deborah Belle posed it to students in 2012, only fourteen percent of the students realized that the surgeon was the mother. People came up with a variety of creative solutions: The surgeon was the boy’s gay, second father; the “father” in the car referred to a priest; the story was all a dream. But the notion that the surgeon was the boy’s mother eluded most of them.
The story of the spaceship captain and the tale of the surgeon work in much the same way as the Ames room. We see what we expect to see—what we are used to, what is familiar, what has been taught to us by pop culture, by our society, by examples all around us. We see what we have learned to see: a rectangular room, a square-jawed male spaceship captain, a man in surgical scrubs preparing to save a life.
And here’s why this matters. Your brain’s unconscious assumptions—the expectations tha
t lurk beneath your conscious awareness—can affect your behavior in ways that you may not realize or like. Consider a 2012 study, in which science faculty from a number of universities considered the application of a student for a laboratory manager position. The student was randomly assigned a male or female name. Otherwise, the application was identical. Yet men and women both judged John to be more competent than Jennifer—more valuable to the tune of $4000 a year in salary, more worthy of mentorship, and generally more likely to be hired.
These academics fell victim to what social psychology researchers call “implicit associations” or “implicit bias,” the unconscious assumptions built by social conditioning. Consciously, they may have felt they could be objective in their evaluation of candidates, treating male and female equally. But in the end, they saw the room as square.
It’s hard to change hidden assumptions, expectations that are buried so deep that you don’t even think about them. Just telling yourself that the room is distorted, that women can be surgeons, doesn’t work. Clearly it’s difficult to see the unexpected—even when it’s right in front of your eyes, even when it is the only answer that makes sense. How can we change those hidden assumptions, the expectations that are buried so deep we don’t even think about them?
That’s where science fiction comes in. Science fiction is in the business of exploring the unexpected. This is the literature of thought experiments. We science fiction writers ask “what if … ,” and then spin a story about the unexpected consequences of some change in the fabric of the world.
In the sort of science fiction that interests me, the “what if” questions aren’t limited to changes in technology. Rather they focus on changes in society, in gender roles, in how people relate to each other and to the Others in the world around them—whether aliens or AIs.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49 Page 45