My Second Solo Show is Creeping Up On Me!

My second solo art show is slowly but surely creeping up on me. I realised today that is is a mere two weeks tomorrow! Yikes! So I thought I'd give you a guys a quick wee blog post to let you know how the preparations are going on and what sort of goodies I am planning for you all. 

WELL, first off I have my invitations, posters and fliers all printed now. Thank goodness! The invitations to the opening night will be posted on Monday morning so everyone will receive by Tuesday/Wednesday. I have already started sending all the email invites out, so they should also all be out by Tuesday/Wednesday. 

Again I would like to thank my very talented friend Rhys Stenhouse, who has designed my invitations, posters and fliers. He's done this for me over the last 3 of my exhibitions so I am very, very pleased with his work. He is a very professional, very talented graphic designer and I highly recommend him for all your graphic design needs! 

Take a look at the amazing job he did of the opening night invite! So cool right? 

I know not everyone can make the opening, but here is an invitation to my blog readers anyway. He really has done a beautiful job of turning my watercolour piece "Miss Red", which will be on sale at the show, into a stunning piece of graphic design. Go Rhys :) 

Speaking of getting things printed, I will have prints of several of my paintings for sale on both etsy (for those of you who can't make the show) and at the show. There will be greeting cards, prints and postcards available as well as badges and keyrings with my art in them. The keyrings and button badges are a new product I am trying out, just as a quirky way to carry my art with you. I think it will be quite fun, and I am hoping to have a few other novelty products ready over the next year!

As far as the work goes I have a lot going on. My work for this exhibition is a celebration of tea and stories; two things that I think have an almost symbiotic relationship with my art. There seems to be a good mixture of a more illustrative style of work, as well as my continued exploration of fine art techniques. There is also a mixture of different work surfaces for this exhibition: from canvas and panel to burr wood board and old shelves. I've tried to be both eco-friendly and economical in my preparation for this show and I hope it is obvious in the final analysis. 

A few pieces are making return appearances. My four tea and ink "Muses" from the exhibition "Baklava Nites" earlier this year, as well as my representation of the Greek god "Apollo" will be on show again. "Apollo" is going to be united with his sister piece "Artemis", who I will not be showing online until after the opening night, so you will have to wait to see her. There will also be a selection of new watercolours on display. I haven't worked in watercolour since high school, but felt that now was the time to start experimenting with them once again, so they are certainly worth a look. 

As you can see my studio is starting to look a little bit manic with everything going on! 

And so I shall leave you! I will hopefully update again before the exhibition opens, but if I don't there will be a post telling you how it went! For a sneaky peek at a few of the works already on sale please check out my facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/KimberlyHagenART

where you will find the watercolours available as well as some of the other pieces that are still available. 

Hope you all have a brilliant few weeks :) 

Kim. X

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https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KimberlyHagenART

Black and White Boy- The Album Art Commission

Hi guys and gals,

I know I've been terribly inconsistent of late posting in my blog, but I felt that this was a perfect opportunity to make a new post!

I have been very busy of the last two months working on a few rather challenging, interesting and different commissions! The one I've just finished (and the one I'm blogging about today) is the album art for "Black and White Boy's" new album "Fragile". This was an amazing opportunity that came about after Andrew- the genius behind Black and White Boy- saw my chalkboard drawings in the Beanscene and thought my work had real potential for his album cover.

This was obvious very, very flattering and also such a great chance to try something completely different. It was also a chance to let my inner illustrator out to play, since I have quite an illustrative streak in my current style of work.

So to start with, when doing a commission it's always a good idea to draw up a creative contract. Nothing scary, no small print, just something simple and easy to understand for both client and artist. Cover the basics such as copyright, time scale to completion and payment. If you guys let me know I'll do a proper post on the ins and outs of creative contracts, but not in this post :P

After all the boring (but necessary) paperwork malarkey was done the first stage is to play about in the sketchbook! Something I love doing, and I always have a little sketchbook in my handbag! Here are some of the basic first ideas I had:

 You'll obviously notice I stuck to a similar sort of idea. This is because the client gives you a rough idea of what they are looking for, inspired by and think would look good. When you take it to sketchbook you have to work with both your own ideas and the clients to create a symbiosis of the two concepts.

These sketches were sent to Andrew and he loved them, then giving me further ideas and more refined criticism so that I could narrow the scope in development. The umbrella was particularly liked, as was the tea staining and so I pulled these two elements forward to the development stage.

The development stage

So the development stage was more refined, and I asked again what the client thought. He loved the vibe, thankfully I was pretty close to the mark, but he questioned whither the character could be a child rather than an adult.
Personally I have rarely drawn children, but I loved the concept! It worked well to truly hammer home the concept of a fragile, vulnerable character. And so I took my development and concept sketches and reworked one or two other options:

Option 1

Option 2 and Wild-Card Option 3

AND it was back to the sketchbook. Three options were given, two from the original idea, and one wild-card, because you never know!
Andrew was very quick to decide that he wanted option two and so the final piece began!

And here it is!

"Fragile" album art commission by Kimberly Hagen. Copyright 2013

The final piece is now finished and being picked up tomorrow. I am very proud of it, as it was such a fun, and different project! I particularly enjoyed being able to continue tea staining, which I loved doing for the group exhibition I was part of in May. 

Thank you Black and White Boy for the opportunity! For those of you who are curious to hear the music of this very talented gentleman clicky HERE. The website is full of great info so please do check it out! 

Thanks and keep checking to see if I've updated ;) 

Kim. XX

http://blackandwhiteboy.net/home.cfm

^ Check it out

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