Fan Expo 2011 ~✿ (2" Buttons, Magic Mugs and Mouse Pads)

Two inch buttons! Two inch buttons are here for FanExpo. I made 2 inch ones 4~5 years ago, but they didn't sell as well, so I stopped making them. But this year, I brought them back. My weekend was spent assembling buttons, getting poked by sharp pins, iron-smelling fingers, endless Jurassic Park series, and heart break. These are going to be 3 dollars each at FanExpo (I think). 

This is a silly drawing of slugs in my sketchbook. Do they look depressing? I cannot tell because I've been drawing crying monsters way too often. I love these dudes... Especially the one with five-o-clock shadow.

Snakes in the Forest was painted for Erika's Canvas Collective site. You can download this image as a desktop wallpaper from her site. 

Jellyfish Wrangler! I love jellyfish. I wouldn't go near them, no, but they are cool. Did you know that some jellyfish is immortal? I wish I were immortal. There. I admit it. World is big and many things to see. I also wish I could time travel. Oh~ all the mistakes I made in the past! I'd go back and NOT DROP THAT COCONUT ICECREAM SANDWICH ON THE GROUND.

This painting makes me feel infinitely guilty. I am sorry that I painted boobs. I mean, I paint boobs all the time, but not for illustrations. Ooooh the guilt. Please take this painting off my hands. I'll be selling the original at QWAC next month.

Come visit my table at FanExpo 2011! My table is A98 at the Artist Alley. I got a corner table again, yes! Please come and say hello. If you mention my blog, I will give you 1" button of your choice. Wait, we need a secret code. Say, "hoot hoot" and I'll give you a button of your choice. Bring me a vegan snack, I'll give you three buttons.

FanExpo is 4 days this year:

Thursday, August 25 - 4PM TO 9PM

Friday, August 26 - 10AM TO 8PM

Saturday, August 27 - 10AM TO 8PM

Sunday, August 28 - 10AM TO 6PM

At Metro Toronto Convention Centre 

How to find Hyein! Find DC table and walk straight to the back. :D

Limited Quantity Magic Mugs! It's a black mug when it's cold. When you pour hot water, my painting shows up.

Lastly... the magic mugs are here again! Sorry for not having enough last year and they were sold out very fast. I didn't know how many they might sell, so I only made a small quantity. Because I am an idiot, I made the same quantity as the last year. I should've made more, but the material cost is quite a lot, so I got scared.  Come and get them on the first two days!
I made the mugs with In Bruges I & In Bruges II and Mr. Furry Pants.

In Bruges I & In Bruges II together on a magic mug. I like how they almost connect. :)

Mr. Furry Pants will also be on magic mugs.

I will also have Mouse Pads of some of my work! I am only making 5 mouse pads, again, the materials are expensive and I'm not sure how many I can sell. Do people buy mouse pads? I will update photos of mouse pads when they arrive tomorrow.

Last of shameless self promotion. Society 6 is having a free shipping world wide week! Until Sunday August 28th. Come and get your iphone cases, tshirts and more (I wish I had an iPhone...) at www.Society6/HyeinLee.
You know what I'm going to get? John Malta's prints! I absolutely LOVE LOVE his work. He is my current favourite artist. Maybe I should also get his iPad skin...

Oh and my another favourite artist, Alex McLeod is having a show this week. Opening is Thursday. I'm so sad that I cannot make it to his opening (I have to be at FanExpo). His art works have been my monitor wall paper for two years now. Please go check out his work this Thursday at Angell Gallery. I promise you, he's AWESOME.

Again, my apologies for the thin content on my blog. I'm so, very busy. I panic everytime I look at my calendar. I just handed in the final final rough (Wut? Only in grad school) of my thesis paper. I cannot wait for my Master's to be over. The end is nigh!

I want to get back to painting, drawing and moving images. Aaaaanyways. See come visit me at FanExpo. Say "hoot hoot," I'll give you a button.

On Billboards in Toronto - Thanks Courvoisier

Thanks Wilbur and Selena for sending me this photo. It was at Union Station. Unfortunately, it was taken off before I went to see it. 

There are more around the town, but I've been too busy to go take photographs.

My painting, In Bruges I is all over downtown in billboards and advertisement boxes. I'm very excited about this. Now I can check that off my Life Wish List:

In Bruges I is a special piece for me, the painting was inspired by trip to Bruges. I always wanted to go to Bruges after watching Daughters of Darkness as a teenager. Then in 2008, a great black comedy, In Bruges came out. I needed to go there. When I told people I'm going to Bruges, everyone asked, "Where is that?" or "Never heard of it. Why do you want to go there??" It is a beautiful Gothic city above water, perfectly preserved. It is sort of like Venice, but I love it more than Venice. Bruges has surprisingly affordable and beautiful Bed n' Breakfast places with skeleton keys. I was alone there, once again. After 5pm, all the museums and shops close in Bruges and tourists leave the city. I was strolling between the striking Gothic buildings eating Belgian fries, I felt happy in loneliness.
As a sneaky sneaky-little-doo, I sneakily linked the image to my Society 6 page. If you have a disposable income and like my piece, you can order prints :D

Anyways, In Bruges I won second place at The Courvoisier Collective awards. I'm very grateful for the wonderful people at Courvoisier. They kindly sent me two mini bottles of their delicious cognac. A small drop tastes like a burst of grapes!
My piece is shown at Gallery 1313 starting tonight, August 10th to September 4th, 2011.
Opening reception starts at 7:30PM.

Canzine Ad Campaign

I am working with the wonderful people at Broken Pencil magazine for their Canzine 2011 advertisement campaign. This is a magazine ad, and we'll have a completely new image for the posters around the town. Canzine is one of my favourite events, and I am very honoured and excited to take on this job. Check out Broken Pencil's brand new pimpin' website!

Thank you Benjamin Rivers and Sean Martindale for all your help. :)

This year's Canzine theme is piracy. I pictured digital piracy. I painted circuit-looking board with resistors and chips. Animal paws and a tentacle are grabbing/stealing whatever they can. It's a playful way of showing illegal data downloads. I must admit. I was listening to TRON: Legacy soundtrack a lot, while painting this. I love the movie, it makes my heart swell! I love the soundtrack so much. Daft Punk, dude. This is my favourite of it all: "Game has Changed."

 I know you cannot really tell from the illustration, but all the little wood pieces are actually laser cut and hand painted. It was an insane amount of work. At this point, I am not sure if it was worth the hassle because it looked computerized anyways! And I could make pretty convincing wood texture digitally. But it is definitely fun to paint with hands instead of staring at computer screens.

Look at these little dudes... I like them!

Keep posted for the Canzine Toronto posters with brand new images! I am so excited and grateful for Broken Pencil team for letting me paint two different images for this ad campaign.

And I will see you at this year's Canzine. Follow me on twitter @HyeinPain and tell me when you visit my booth at Canzine. I'll give you a free button just for being an owly person. It should be a lot of fun. :)

Canzine Toronto:
Sunday, October 23
Toronto – 918 Bathurst Centre
918 Bathurst St. @ 1 – 7 pm

Baby Skincare - Canadian Family

I did a small spot illustration for wonderful Canadian Family magazine's baby skin care article. The whole page was cut, so it didn't get published, but here it is! Thank you Colleen for a wonderful art direction. It's so much fun to work with Canadian Family. I was very happy to get away with drawing bottles with funny faces. Haha...
The article is about choosing a right skincare product for your baby. And the right answer is whatever you and your baby like the best. The so-called "natural" products aren't necessarily good. As a weirdo who uses "natural/organic/paraben-free" skincare products, it was good to learn that. I will still stick with paraben-free products, however.

Here are some rejected roughs:

I know this one's a bit silly, but I really liked it. Talk bubbles!

The baby and the lotion are high-fiving each other. Yeah. Another silly idea.

Across the Ocean

 My friend Pauline and I are collaborating overseas. She's painting murals of my drawings in France. Pauline is a dedicated and talented wall constructor. She owns a company Hylé. She constructs and paints walls with environmentally and health conscious materials. Her painting pigments are fine Italian limewash, the same stuff, which murals in centuries old European churches were painted with.

I am so very excited about this collaboration. It is a strange and wonderful feeling to have my friend painting my drawings in the other side of the world. And to think of my work as a permanent mural in some child's room in France! Oh the wonders of modern technology! I'm happy and grateful for the opportunity.

Today is the last day of July. It is usually my favourite month of the year. I've been meaning to post more this month, but just could not find time. I am finishing off my Master's, and things are crazy busy. I am discouraged by school. People are dying all over the world in horrific circumstances. I can't believe I am worrying about petty and insignificant things. I cannot wait to be done so I can get on with my life.

To end this post in upbeat, my sweet friend and an awesome motion graphic designer, Sara made this for me for my birthday! She's another friend who's ocean apart from me. I met both Sara and Pauline in Berlin. Another proof that Berlin is magical.
This is made with the photo she took of me as a ghost. I LOVE it.

★★ Twinkling Stars Above ★★

Finally, the opening sequence for my videogame prototype, ★★Twinkling Stars Above★★ is completed. The music for the opening sequence is by Ghostrust under Creative Common license. The credit says Michael Daykin because my brilliant musician friend Mike composed the music for the whole game.

I thank my coop students, Nayoun and Hyunjin for all their help.

Busy busy busy days!

Resurrection (Zombies!)

I realized that I've never written about Memories of Enemies show from last October. I was waiting for a chance to scan the artworks, but no avail. For the death of me, I could not find a way to scan 30X40" painting and 50X60" drawings. So here are the photographs of the pieces for Memories of Enemies.

Out of All Them Bright Stars I
Mixed Media on Wood Panel
40X30"

The title was from Nancy Kress' short story by the same name.

This piece was painted during Nuit Blanche Toronto 2010. I've never got to see Nuit Blanche. I either had to do work, help my friends with their art projects or work on my own project (piggy-backing the festival). During 2010 Nuit Blanche, I was busy painting for "Memories of Enemies" show. All the monsters (or minerals from alien landscape) are crying because I was feeling a little sad. I could hear the people having fun outside from my studio. No matter how many times people told me that I didn't miss much, I could not help but to dwell on the things I've missed. Haunted house at the old Bay station on Nuit Blanche few years ago for an instance. How magical is that?! The old Bay station is below the current Bay station. It is abandoned, but sealed from the public. A scene from Matrix was filmed there, apparently. A haunted house in such a strange place sounds like an amazing idea.

Bit of a closer shot. I wish I had a better camera.

Ambidextrous
Mixed Media on Paper
50X60"

This one was inspired by a dream. In the dream, I said, "I wish I were ambidextrous." Then this girl walked toward me and said, "If you cut off your right hand, you'd use your left hand more."
My mom was definitely upset by this piece. She called me after visiting the gallery. I asked what she thought of the show. She said, "uh... your pieces weren't good. Why do you draw violent stuff?" Ha ha ha... Thanks mom!
This is the first "violent stuff" I've done in a long time. I grew out of gratuitous violence in my early twenties to make ma mama proud (..not?).

I have a small drawing version of this giant drawing. Size comparison.

Why Me?

Mixed Media on Paper

50X60"

This is really bad, but I actually forgot the name of this piece. I have a strong feeling that it might have been 'Why Me?'. The green stripes on the trees are dessert take-out bag from Starbucks. I LOVE how they look. I actually cannot eat anything they sell, so I asked for the empty bags. Nice people at Starbucks gave me a whole bunch. I'm not a coffee drinker (I see through space and time continuum if I drink a bit of coffee. And act like a squirrel on acid), but I am thankful for Starbucks. When I was travelling alone in Belgium, I had a wise idea of staying overnight at the airport instead of paying for an extra night of lodging (I learned to never do that again). Um, that airport was cold, dirty and sketchy. Then there was Starbucks. With its 24 hour glowing glory and friendly people... I ordered smoothies and they let me sleep in a comfortable, warm couch. Thank you, Starbucks. Oh and providing me with uniform quality bathrooms wherever in the world I go. Thank you.

Enough blabbering nonsense! And commencing on more blabbering.
I promised a zombie posting. Resurrecting my old art from last October and resurrected dead people. How fitting is that?!

Quite recently, I found out that most people don't have nightmares every night. I have nightmares every single night and I thought it was normal. I was very surprised to learn otherwise. Someone suggested that it's because I watch too many horror movies. Me loves them zombie movies! Very often, I have epic zombie apocalypse nightmares. Epic, yo.

I actually wrote a whole section of zombie movie recommendations but then I quickly felt incompetent. I have a very bad taste and low standard. To give you an idea of my bad taste, Doom made into my list. Delete delete delete my writing. I suppose, part of being an adult is editing oneself. I'm just going to introduce this one:

This is the DVD I have. It has a very embarrassing cover, I know. People laugh when I pull this one out of my shelf.
Anchor Bay re-released much more tasteful cover recently. 

Dellamorte Dellamore
This is my absolute favourite movie in the world. No other movie ever topped this for me. The title means 'Of Death, Of Love.' This movie accurately portrays: love, death, life and bleakness of it all. With its poetic dialogue, strange music and seriously attractive visuals - it is a mesmerizing. At the same time, it doesn't take itself seriously and it's loads of fun. Dread that is not balanced with a hint of humour is just dreadful. There are countless scenes I often think about: Anna Falchi standing under the moonlight, in front of a fake cemetery castle, holding white flowers; Anna Falchi slowly rising in the mortuary saying, "yes, yes my love. It'll be better with me than the others" while Rupert Everett watches; aaaaah, there are too many to list.

The special effects are wonky. You see fishing lines for floating ghost lights. But I just don't care. It is from the time when digital special effects were scarcely available (or too expensive). There is something very charming and even more real about handmade special effects. Imperfection is beautiful.

Every time my relationship fails, I throw my hands in the air and go, "I'm through with love," like Everett does in the movie. It is strange how much 'love' occupies a chunk of life... and DEATH!

★★ Video Game Playtesters Needed ★★

Dear friends,

I've been working on a small video game for my thesis project, ★Twinkling Stars Above★

I need game playtesters for the prototype. Do you have half an hour to spare? Then please participate!

As long as you are in Toronto, I will visit you at your convenience, with my laptop. You have to play the game (very short) and fill out the questionnaire. I need to observe you while you play. You can ask me to withdraw your questionnaire if you change your mind after the testing (withdrawl deadline Aug 1st).

Playtesting dates: 

Friday, July 15

Monday, July 18

Tuesday, July 19

Wednesday, July 20

Please book a time with me with Doodle Calendar:

http://www.doodle.com/hitynxv2pb9ebts7

Or contact me at:
hyein@hyeinlee.com
416.260.6331

I need 20 people for the playtest. Thank you so much! 

★★HyeinPain★★