Chris Pirillo » artist

Buddha Fett

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:32:14 +0000

Buddha Fett

What could be better than Buddha AND Boba Fett? Seriously?

Artist Mike Capp is fantastic. I think I am now in love with this drawing. It’s every geek guy’s dream come true!

Buddha Fett

Treebeard Loves Hobbits

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:01:10 +0000

Treebeard Loves Hobbits

I’ve talked before about my favorite artist Justin Hillgrove. I happen to have several things in my home that he has drawn. While at an event earlier this evening, I was lucky enough to watch the man at work. How amazing is this?

What type of art do you enjoy? Who is your favorite artist?

Treebeard Loves Hobbits

Two More Justin Hillgrove Original Paintings

Chris Pirillo — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 21:03:49 +0000

Two More Justin Hillgrove Original Paintings

I don’t know why, but I’ve liked this artist from the very first time I met him (which happened to be the very first time I ever saw his artwork).

Seems that every other time I walk into @TwilightArt (in West Seattle), I see something of Justin’s. Last night, I became the proud owner of “Transplant” and “Beast of Burden.”

I’m not the kind of guy who buys original art, mind you – I’m usually just fine with whatever’s in front of me. Justin changed all that.

Two More Justin Hillgrove Original Paintings

Favorite Seattle Artist – Justin Hillgrove

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:02:09 +0000

Favorite Seattle Artist – Justin Hillgrove

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My favorite artist of all time is Justin Hillgrove – and he happens to be right here in Seattle. The first time I saw his work was during the Seattle Folklife Festival back in December. I fell in love with the original artwork on display, and knew I had to have some of it in my own home. Unfortunately, the originals were a bit out of my budget. However, Justin has prints and even postcard books available for people like me who wish to have something created by him.

Justin spent several years as a freelance designer and illustrator, but suffered from a huge case of burnout. He stopped painting for several years – until he inherited old canvases and art supplies from his grandfather. He received a lot of encouragement from his good friend (and fellow artist) Mike Capp, and began to paint once again. He had so much fun creating “Love the Sinner” that he couldn’t stop. Today, his artwork is found hanging in galleries all over Seattle, and he has had showings across the United States.

Justin’s artwork is fun, which is why I love it. Each piece is whimsical, and many of them bring back memories of our childhood. Not only can you buy prints and original paintings – Justin also creates designs for tshirts, books and more!

If you know of other fun artists that I might enjoy getting to know, send me a link to what they’re doing. I’m always interested in discovering something different and new.

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Favorite Seattle Artist – Justin Hillgrove

Monsters and Imps: Geeky Art for All

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:34:46 +0000

Monsters and Imps: Geeky Art for All

This is a guest blog post written by Imei Hsu.

No matter where you go in the world, whether staying in a four-star hotel in a world-class city, or accepting the invitation of the owner of a hut in the poorest of towns in a third-world country, the soul of humanity expresses itself in art. That art can be found in antique, handwoven tapestries, or mass-produced “kitty plates” replete with flashing Christmas lights. Nonetheless, it beautifies, and changes the feeling of the space in which it lives.

When first-year college students prepare to move out of their parent’s home, they not only go through the process of collecting what they need for their college dorm rooms, they are decorating that room for form as well as function. Granted, some do it with a bit more elegance or taste than others, but whether the wall poster is a print of Michelangelo, Warhol,or Betty Boop, the person tacking it up on the wall is declaring to the viewer what speaks to him or her.

Classes on art appreciation are useful in helping non-artists learn more about the world of artists and their messages in their mediums. But when befuddled people say, “I don’t get this piece of art,” I ask them, “What do you feel when you look at it?” This is almost always going to be a subjective process, but so is the determination of what one wants to surround herself with. Art is, in the end, what we make of it.

Ever since I heard the song, “ Darkness” by Peter Gabriel (Up, 2002), I’ve had a renewed fascination with monsters. I’ve never enjoyed movies about zombies, nor have I gone out of my way to see horror movies. There are enough things in real life to make the hairs on the back of neck stand up! But a reprise in the lyrics of this song put me on a search for representations in art that would make the feeling accessible, if not almost tactile:

walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
the deeper i go, the darker it gets
i peer through the window
knock at the door
and the monster i was
so afraid of
lies curled up on the floor
is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy

The monsters we are scared of are not always “out there”. Sometimes, they are “in here”, and other times they are among us, facing circumstances of which we are all too familiar.

Last year, I bought a felted monster toy for my friend Chris Pirillo at Christmas from a store in West Seattle called Twilight. Twilight features hand-crafted art and original works from Northwest artists, and the owner appears to like geeky art in particular.

Through this store, Chris later found the work of Justin Hillgrove of ImpsAndMonsters. I recently ran into Justin and his painting pal, Mike Capp, who he credits for encouraging him to return to painting after being burned out in the world of design.

Filmed and published with permission by Imei Hsu.

Chris has his own reasons for enjoying Hillgrove’s work, but mine isn’t tethered to the nostalgia of recognizable childhood images; those images are more likely to be those of “Hello Kitty” and the characters of Japanese anime show, “Starblazers” for this Asian American kid. Instead, I love how Hillgrove allows us glimpses into the less loveable parts of life — skeletons, death, predators, monsters with teeth and claws — and invites us to own them as we see ourselves in their vulnerable and awkward life situations. Even a monster-avoidant person like me finds amusement in the world of HIllgrove’s creatures and cartoons. it makes his work a kind of geeky monster art for all.

I bought the print, “Empathy” for my psychotherapy office. To me, it represents both the ability for monsters to identify with others, and for the monster within us to to see our need for love, connection, and even — oh no! — a cuddly moment. It’s a reminder to me that our inner monsters can and do freely roam the earth. Some of them are simply waiting for us to notice… and smile.

Do you think humans can resist the appeal to make and surround themselves with art and artful design? What’s your favorite art?

B. Imei Hsu, RN, MAC, LMHC, is a nurse psychotherapist, Yoga instructor, professional dance artist, and occasional guest blogger for Lockergnome. She is the founder of HipsForHire.com, matching performance and visual artists with people who want to hire them and raise money for good social causes and charities. She’s also a musician, and is currently learning how to yoddle her cat, Charles-Monet. Imei lives in Seattle, WA. You can find her on her blog, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Monsters and Imps: Geeky Art for All

DNSF David Newman Makes iPad Portraits

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:30:59 +0000

DNSF David Newman Makes iPad Portraits

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During the recent 1C Company Another Night in Moscow 2010 event, I happened to run into David Newman. He is an artist who can do some pretty amazing portrait work – right on the iPad. I had to see it to believe it for myself, so I sat down and let him draw.

You know me – I couldn’t sit still. However, David did a pretty fantastic job capturing my likeness.

Thanks to the folks at AMD for bringing me down to San Francisco for this event.

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DNSF David Newman Makes iPad Portraits

iPod on the iPad

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:54:53 +0000

iPod on the iPad

Using your iPad as a music device will let you see and touch your music in ways you can’t when using your iPod. The large screen makes it so much easier to view your library, and make changes as needed. You can browse through your entire collection by song, artist, album or genre. You’ll be able to see your collection as full-sized album art. You can flip through them just as if they were physical CDs.

Tap a song to play it and the “now playing” screen shows up. It will show you the album art for the track you’re listening to. Tap on the album art to flip it over, and you will see the track list. A simple touch of your finger can pause your song, shuffle through your playlist, change to a new song and adjust the volume.

It’s really easy to add music to your iPad. Tap a button and head over to the iTunes store to find new tracks to purchase. Or… transfer existing iTunes libraries from other devices by sync’ing them together.

I’ve seen a few people make comments as to how the iPad is “nothing more than a glorified iPod”. When it comes time to listen to your music though, isn’t a “glorified iPod” a GOOD thing?

iPod on the iPad

What is the Name of That Song?

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:39:27 +0000

What is the Name of That Song?

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How often have you heard a new song and liked it, only to not find out the name of it at the end? It can drive you crazy trying to Google pieces of the lyrics, attempting to figure out who sings it, and what it’s called. You can’t buy the song for yourself if you don’t know the name of it. That’s where Midomi comes in. With Midomi, you can use your own voice to hum or sing lyrics to any song, and the service will find it for you. Once you’ve found it, you can watch the video for that particular piece of music, or even record a version of your own to share with the world.

Create a profile on Midomi, and sing your favorite songs. Upload them and create a playlist of searchable songs for others to enjoy. The next time anyone searches for that song, your performance might be the top result! You can listen to and rate others’ musical performances, see their pictures, send them messages, buy original music, and more.

There are more than two million legal tracks on Midomi. You can listen to samples of original recordings, buy the full studio versions directly from Midomi, and play them on your computer.

Thanks to James for sending in this screencast, so that everyone can have fun on this awesome site. Let me know what other websites you cannot get through the day without!

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What is the Name of That Song?

How Well Can You Draw?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:38:43 +0000

How Well Can You Draw?

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Chris is an extremely talented artist. His claim is that he can draw anyone – and he proved it in this video. The way I see it is that if he can draw yours truly this well, he can draw anything.

Are you an artist? Leave a comment here in this post, and show us your work! You never know when something may strike my fancy and end up here in my blog for the world to see.

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How Well Can You Draw?

GarageBand Tutorial

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:09:04 +0000

GarageBand Tutorial

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Today’s screencast is one that is both informative and fun. Alex is a GarageBand expert, and wanted to show all of you his tips and tricks. When I’ve used GarageBand in the past, I simply clicked on a lot of things and attempted to actually make something that resembled music. However, there are actually specific things that you can do. Who would have ever guessed?!

Once you open GarageBand, you’ll want to choose “Loops”. That lets you use all of the tracks included with the application, as well as adding in your own instruments. Name your recording whatever you choose. At the bottom, you’ll see options for changing the key, tempo and beats per minute. However, it’s usually better to change it from within your project.

Choose a category to the right of your project window. You’ll see a listing of all the tracks, and you should choose whatever one you like the most. You should play around by putting a few different tracks together, to see what works well together.

GarageBand allows you to change the length of each track in your project, as well as letting you fade tracks in and out. Alex gives excellent instructions for managing this, and plays his end result for you. It’s not difficult to do. I would have never figured it was this easy!

You can also record your own voice (or musical instrument!) and add it to your track. Use your built-in mic or external microphone. Create a new track, and choose “Software Instrument”. Once you’re all set, you can start playing your tune… and then save it. Play around with the different instruments that come included with GarageBand, and even add your own singing in there if you dare!

Once you are finished with your song, click on “Share”. You can now send your creation to different applications, such as to a CD burner or iTunes. Don’t compress the song file, or you will lose quite a lot of quality.

Thanks a lot Alex for teaching this old dog some new tricks!

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GarageBand Tutorial

Natasha, Art Girl Geek

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:14:49 +0000

Natasha, Art Girl Geek

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Traci Toguchi was in Las Vegas during this past week, covering the Consumer and Electronics Show for us. While attending an after-party hosted by Robert Scoble, Traci ran into Natasha Wescoat, who happens to be a friend of mine! Natasha is an Art Geek in the true sense. Not only is she an amazing artist… she’s also a true techie Geek! What more could you ask for? I have to give props to our friend Daynah for the camera work during this video… using an awesome Vado 3 that Creative sent to Traci for this purpose.

Natasha loves attending conferences, especially CES. She is obsessed with gadgets in general. She was also chosen to be a Ford Fiesta Agent. This involves spending 6 months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, lifestreaming their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what the Fiesta is all about.

At one point, she created a unique – and amazing!! – art print of my dogs, Wicket and Pixie. The print was auctioned off, and the proceeds were given to a local animal shelter. That was an amazing experience for me, and we had a lot of fun trying to get the dogs to cooperate! I’m not sure the pups will ever lose the ego boost they gained from being turned into something that will be appreciated forever.

Natasha states that she is always inspired by whatever place she happens to find herself in. She manages to find something beautiful everywhere she looks. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if everyone could do that?

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Natasha, Art Girl Geek

Manage Your Music Library with TuneUp

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:21:14 +0000

Manage Your Music Library with TuneUp

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Tommy has created a screencast for us to show you how to easily manage your iTunes library using TuneUp. According to the TuneUp website, the program will clean up your library automagically. They used my word!! They must be good. TuneUp is touted as being your music collection’s best friend. Let’s take a look and decide for ourselves.

Often when you enter a CD and much of the information seems to be missing, such as the album art, genre and artist information. TuneUp will take care of this problem for you. Click the “Clean” button, and drag your track to that area. It takes only a few seconds to process. Click the “Save all” button once it is finished, and everything will appear – automagically!!

Another great feature of this application is called “Tuniverse”. If you’re listening to a track, Tuniverse will automatically display related music videos from YouTube, including live versions of studio recorded tracks. It will also pull up information about the artist, such as their bio. You can even click a button to take you to merchandise sales for the singer or band found on eBay!

TuneUp costs $19.95 per year, or $29.95 for a lifetime subscription. It works in both Windows XP and Vista, and Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. There is a free version available, with a limited amount of cleans. You can clean up to 100 songs with it, and produce 50 album covers. With the paid version, you have an unlimited number of each to use.

Okay, so Tommy was right. TuneUp is a powerful and easy-to-use program to manage your music! Thanks for the excellent screencast.

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Manage Your Music Library with TuneUp

How to Discover New Music

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:37:14 +0000

How to Discover New Music

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How do you discover new music? Don’t sit there and tell me you only like one type of music. You can’t just stop at some point in your life and decide you don’t want to listen to anything new. One thing I like about Pandora is that I can give it a specific genre or artist, and they’ll help me discover other artists that may be similar. I got an email from TJ recently who shared with us his top 5 list of ways to discover new music.

Find out who your favorite artists consider to be their inspirations. Chances are, you’re going to enjoy listening to them, as well. It’s easy to go online and find a biography of musicians you like. Those will usually include a list of names of the people who inspired them.
Listen to a lot of music on the radio, last.fm, or any other service. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a song on the radio that I liked, and wrote it down quickly to find later and purchase for my own collection. I tend to turn the radio to stations I might not normally listen to. That helps me broaden my scope, and allows me to find music I love that I might otherwise never have heard.
Get out and listen to local musicians. We musicians love all the followers we can get. Getting out and hearing them is always fun, and they love your support!
Join music-related forums. You’ll be exposed to so many different types of music that you may not have even heard of! Read what others are saying. If they’re raving about a new artist or song – check it out for yourself!
Trade music with others. I remember when I used to trade CDs with a good friend of mine. Just that summer alone, I was able to discover a ton of new things that I hadn’t heard before. I went from having only about 100 songs in my collection to more than 5000.

This same thing happened to me back in college. I traded CDs with a friend of mine. The name of a particular band was strange, but I gave it a chance. Turns out, I loved their music! By sharing the cassette tape with my friend, it turned me on to a whole new style of music… which turned into sales for the artist.

I want to consume music as I want to consume it. I’d rather “rent” the music, instead of owning it. That’s why I subscribe to Rhapsody’s service. I can pull up and listen to whatever I want, when I want it.

So my question again is “how do you discover new music”?

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How to Discover New Music

Would You Like to Make Money with Music?

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:11:34 +0000

Would You Like to Make Money with Music?

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How would you like to find an unknown band or musical artist, support them, help them get a recording contract, and then receive a portion of the proceeds from their sales? Is that something you’re interested in? On SellaBand, artists can upload their music, and find supporters.

For the first time fans and Artists can be in business together. Therefore each Artist issues 5,000 so called Parts. Parts cost $10 (plus transaction costs) each. Together Believers have to raise $50,000 to get their Artist of choice in the studio. At any point before your Artist has reached the Goal of $50,000, you can withdraw your Parts and pick a different Artist. You can even get your money back (minus a small transaction fee). It’s your music. It’s your choice.

Once your Artist has raised $50,000 SellaBand will assign an experienced A&R-person to this project. Together with a top Producer, your Artist will record a CD in a state-of-the-art Studio. During the process you will get an exclusive sneak preview of this exciting process.

All advertising revenues generated via SellaBand will be shared equally between the SellaBand Recording Artists, their Believers and SellaBand. The amount of money you and the Artist will get paid depends on the market share the artist has in the total number of downloads on SellaBand.
Three of the songs on the CD will be given away as free Downloads. The other tracks will be sold as paid Downloads for 50 dollarcents each. The net profit of these sales will be split evenly between you, your Artist and SellaBand.

That is very cool. Discover new artists and music, help launch their careers, and make money in the process. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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Would You Like to Make Money with Music?

Where do you go to Discuss Art Online?

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:47:19 +0000

Where do you go to Discuss Art Online?

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My brother Adam is an artist, who is very passionate about art of all kinds. He has a live stream now. So if you’re into art or even music, why not drop by and visit him? You may even catch him live at work on a painting.

YOU all got him into this live streaming business. I recently visited Adam in Iowa for a few days, and streamed live from his living room. He became addicted quite easily. He loved the interaction with all of you, so thank you for that! Take it easy on him though. He’s not a computer geek like me… he’s an art geek. Don’t throw computer questions at him, or he’ll likely tell you where you can go.

Adam has a lot of opinions, and he stands behind them 100%. I’m proud of him for that. I enjoy watching him on his stream, and I hope you will, as well.

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Where do you go to Discuss Art Online?