Art Appreciation

I’ve loved Jody Lee’s work since the first covers of hers I saw (probably for Mercedes Lackey).

Her understanding of classic forms, color, and decoration are peerless. She was creating stunning (and instantly identifiable) line designs long before anyone else I knew – and I invariably use her work in courses I teach about the Dos and Don’ts of Branding and Marketing for self-publishers.

She is (along with my friend Paul Komoda) the artist I most want to own a lifelong monograph of.

http://www.jodylee.org/website/Portfolio/QuickReference.html

Art Appreciation

Thanks to her husband’s superb painting, I’d seen Laurie Lee Brom’s face long before I actually met her. But seeing her paintings was a different thing entirely – luminous oil portraits with a hint (or more than a hint) of the Gothic. Her work is colorful and elemental, and the same sensibility and delight at putting a raccoon into the hoops of a skirt somehow removes the inherently clichéd quality of fairy wings. It’s a fine (and beautifully scrolled) line, but she walks it very well indeed.

Current Work

This portrait of my beautiful Scrabble-partner Saamanta is a kind of happy accident.

It’s not the final version that will appear in the mystery project I’ve been working on – but it’s become its own sort of finished piece.

While that’s never really happened before, as I move into this new (to me) technique of working up large pencils and then painting, perhaps such accidents will happen more often….

Current Work

Time for more Month of Love! Here are weeks three and four!

Month of Love – Week 3: Keys

www.leemoyer.com

As I thought about keys, I knew I wanted to show them in their glorious variety. I thought I had a plan, but then I saw the brilliant cover that Michael Kaluta had recently made for Joe Hill’s Locke & Key. There was no way I was going to compete with that!

But then I thought of a scene in Return to Oz – the game of finding things – and I remembered Silver, the Clockwork Girl of Oz. I’d invented her (and several other Oz characters) years ago for a still-secret project with old friend Keith Baker, and it struck me that she summed up much of what I was feeling. I hope you like her as much as she would like you.

Week 4: Metamorphosis for Month of Love

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle

Meg Murry is changing, and so is the cancer that is eating her younger brother alive.
So too is the the ‘Drive of Dragons’ that Charles Wallace witnesses in the wood.
Metamorphoses bring risk but, if we are true and brave and kind, also opportunity.

Art Appreciation

Amy Crehore is a fine artist and musician.

After a long career illustrating for magazines like Rolling Stone and Playboy, her award-winning work is most often found in galleries these days (and sometimes on ukuleles).

She’s also an amazingly lovely person and friend (though I see her far less than I would like).

Current Work

It’s been my pleasure to bring you an assortment of wonderful artists who are doing interesting work. But there’s a secret history of illustration too – of artists working at the top of their game who have been largely forgotten. Today, I get to talk about the seasonal revival of Small Gods, and shine a brief light on the remarkable work of Will Crawford who was born almost 100 years before I was, and who illustrated for Life Magazine before the turn of the 20th Century.

 

I like to use classic styles and works for my holiday-inspired Small Gods. I had a little fun with JC Leyendecker a couple years back (for The Small God of Baby Cheeses), but in this case I wanted some rich ink work. And who better than Crawford?

I hope you’ll enjoy the before and after below.

 

Giving thanks to you, one and all!

Lee

 

2013: Art Year in Review

2013 was delightful in its variety. And while I cannot show (or in some cases even mention) some of that work (due to confidentiality agreements and other arcane processes), it all made for a challenging and rewarding year. Below is a short tour of the year’s many images:

Check These Out: 2014

As I’ve done each of the last 3 years, I painted a pin-up calendar in collaboration with a non-profit. This year it was The Clarion Foundation for their Writer’s Workshop – a fitting group for Literary Pin-Ups. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with so many talented authors and I am quite pleased with the result of our collaboration. Pat Murphy wrote a splendid piece about working with me on her painting.

The 2014 calendar I did is eligible for a Hugo as Best Related Work.

Covers:

Good Intentions & Natural Consequences by Elliott Kay

Eviscerated: Feminism’s First Daughter by AJ DeFaria

The Best of Joe Haldeman by Joe Haldeman for Subterranean Press

CD Covers for the eponymous Copper & Coal and for Horsetamer by Julia Ecklar

Starstruck by Elaine Lee, Michael Kaluta (and me).
2013’s successful Kickstarter campaign was the easy part – I’ve still many a page to paint!

Conventions:

Lower left: Norwescon program cover, Lower right: Keycon program cover

This is the “quilt” of pre-existing images I made for Norwescon, the first of the conventions it was my honor to serve as Guest of Honor this year.

Ambercon Northwest T-shirt Design

Games:

13th Age and 13 True Ways

13th Age (which I Art Directed and painted with Aaron McConnell) did come out in 2013.
And while its follow-on book 13 True Ways isn’t out yet, below is the cover in progress (with several obvious instances of Aaron McConnell’s excellent pencil work still on display):

The Doom that Came to Atlantic City, a game I’ve been playing and talking about for decades, is finally set to appear (with rules by Keith Baker and pieces by Paul Komoda) in Q1 of 2014 from Cryptozoic. And in addition to adjusting the assets to create a print-and-play version, I reworked the assets for the final printing. Here are some of the card backs:

I worked with Patricia Smith on 15 pieces for Rich Baker’s game Primeval Thule.
I look forward to seeing the final book!

Posters:

Andy Prieboy in Los Angeles

MacBeth in Philadelphia

Lakewood Center for the Performing Arts

Northwest Children’s Theatre

Collaborations:

With the marvelous Aly Fell:

Painting over the pencils of Mark Dos Santos in the style of JC Leyendecker:

Miscellaneous:

My annual live-painting carney-sideshow at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival
This year the audience suggested The King in Yellow at a Sushi Bar.

Kitty and Drew knew winter was coming. Judging by her photos of Boston, she was right!

Glorianna was painted for the Starstruck Kickstarter.

Before guesting at the North American Discworld Convention in July, I had begun a series of Small Gods, inspired in part by Terry Pratchett. But that was months ago, and at the rate of one per day, I have now completed more than 200. I post them daily on:

They can be purchased on my new web site at www.leemoyer.com/smallgods

I have on occasion taken the opportunity Small Gods resents to work a little beyond my 1-hour time-limit to create paintings, like the Small God of Holiday Turduckling below.

I had some real breakthrough pieces in 2013 and I am looking forward to seeing where my work goes in 2014. Already on the agenda: 2 covers, an alphabet book, an overview of Hobbiton, a whole lot of Starstruck, and the desire to find a literary and merchandizing agent for the high-concept books I want to see published in 2015!