Of Multi-Cultural Steampunk, Showcasing Art in Faraway Lands and Agent Jiang

Hello all!  How are ya?  It's been a week and I've missed talking to you but I'm back with a couple of things to share while Nessa is getting some sleep before our busy weekend.

I had a great opportunity this week to send some of my art to Boston to be displayed in an upscale coffee shop.  Nessa's sister, Sarah got it all set up for me, the owner liked my work and it seemed like a slam dunk.  Once I did the research, I realized that displaying my art will involve a lot more preparation on my part.  After calculating printing one copy of each piece, framing them using the cheapest frames I could get away with using and then shipping, I found that it was going to cost a little over $300.  Then other questions arose:  What if the owner wants more than one copy of each piece?  How much is insurance?  What if they don't sell?  Having never done anything like this, I had no idea of the up-front costs.  The conclusion:  A little too cost-prohibitive right now but I will do this at a later time and I'll give myself time to save up.  Thank you, Sarah!  We'll definitely revisit this in a few months...

So by now you know that I have more than a passing interest in Steampunk.  It's new, (so to speak) it's groovy and it's rife with possibilities.  Most steampunk is geared (ha, ha, ha. OK, not so funny really...) towards a Victorian English setting.  So I started thinking, "How would you portray a steampunk character from a different culture?"  Now while I freely admit that this is not an original idea, it still opens a door to some interesting possibilities.  What would a clockwork samurai look like?  Would an Irish character look any different than an English one?  How would an African steampunk warrior dress?  It's all very intriguing!

To continue this thought, I pulled an older piece out of mothballs and revamped it with my eye towards doing a multi-cultural steampunk character.  May I present all the way from China, Agent Jiang - the newest member of Sargas Prime.  She has danced upon the Affinity Bridge of Fengdu and battled Tick-Tock Tigers in Wuhan. She stole the Omega Engine from Fu Manchu himself, which earned her the nickname, "Ghost." I caution you to treat her well because you will not see her coming if you don't.

This will be on sale in my Etsy shop very soon, but in the meantime, please comment and let me know what you think!  I'd love to hear from you.   :)  'Til next time...

- Chaz -

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Of Steampunk Games, Krakens & Being Kind to your Engineer

Good Morning!  How are you guys today?  

I feel fantastic and I can't wait to embark on a weekend of gaming!  I play in a really fun D&D game run by my bandmate Rion & his wife, Sarah a couple of times a month.  Right now we're trying to beat up a bunch of evil dwarves who have stolen, among other things, huge amounts of cheese from the surface villages and towns.  I assure you all that my being lactose-intolerant will not quench my heroic fire one little bit.

I also run a steampunk/fantasy game about twice a month called RookeMare.  I've been GM'ing games for a number of years now, but they have always been fantasy-based.  I'd been dying to run a steampunk game but I'm having an interesting time of it.  I have to keep reminding myself that the setting is Victorian!  Here's an example of a typical encounter:  "You see before you a really mean-looking orc! Ummm yes... it's got a big 2-handed sword... oh, I mean rifle!  Yes... a steam-powered rifle.  With gears on it... ya... and ummm, he's wearing Victorian-styled armor and a bowler hat - ya, that's it... a bowler hat!  Oooh - and he's wearing goggles..."  It's a pretty new game and we're all having fun, it'll just take me a little while to shift gears.  Oooh - didja catch that?  "I said, "Shift Gears!" ha ha ha... never mind...

My girlfriend, Emily, her sister, Sarah (different Sarah) & I all went out to Mimi's for dinner.  (Mimi's jambalaya is amazingly good!)  Sarah had just gotten back from a biology conference in Salt Lake City and she was telling us about the various lectures she attended.  Really fascinating stuff, especially the knowledge that there are life-forms we have yet to lay eyes on because they live so deep underwater.  As you can imagine, being an artist, this really began to fuel my imagination. What if things like the Leviathan and the Kraken are still swimming around today?  Because no one really knows what lives down there, no one can say with any assuredness that those kinds of "fantasy" creatures don't exist!  Remember that the next time some silly muggle says, "Dragons aren't real."

Now for some art!  Yay Art!  I did a piece called, "Steampunk Sally" a couple of years back and while I loved how the figure came out, the muse was off eating a sandwich when it came time to do the background.  This year I vowed to do up a new background for her and I finished it Thursday night.  So here she is - all dusted off and ready for the new year!  Incidentally, you can purchase this piece here!  Let me know what you  think.  :)

And remember - always be kind to your engineer and other members of the support team when you're bounding about on your adventures! Saving the cheese is rarely a one-person job. 

- Chaz -

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Of Workouts, Twitter, Steampunk & Josephine

Heya, world!  It's me Chaz Kemp with another installment of my blog.  Woo Hoo!  That makes 2 in a row!  I'm on a roll.  :)  Thanks to everyone who read my inaugural post.

A good art tip is a cool way of starting off a blog ya?  
Exercise.  Ya, I said it.  Exercise.  I try to do it first thing every morning so that I feel really good all day.  You know all of the benefits so I won't get into that... All I'll say is that it puts me in a confident, positive and happy frame of mind.  Simply put - I draw better once I've done something physical.

Yesterday I got to hang out with an old friend of mine named Jyoti. He runs his own business as well and we talked about ways to stay inspired, goal-setting, motivational techniques, etc.  We hadn't really seen each other in quite a few years and a few weeks back he called me out of the blue!  He's a really great guy and though his business is different than mine, I got a ton from our conversation.  Life really does rock!

I created a brand new Twitter account and I'm clueless as to how it works.  I understand Facebook, MySpace, my email, the internet and this blog.  I'd jump on Twitter and ask for help but that'd take up some of the 150 letters that I can use to create a tweet. siiiigh  I only joined it because the Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market 2010 said I should.  It's a very good book, by the way, and the one for 2011 should be out now so buy it here.

On a side note - my girlfriend Nessa & I love to have little role-playing side adventures over email. They're like creative writing exercises for our own amusement. Today's was a rousing steampunk adventure wherein we fought a whole dirigible filled with cross-dressing villains. I won't get into too much detail except to use the words: Leather harness, cowboys, exploding tapioca, unibrow, pump, job opening, spiked whip and cake.

Moving on... Here's a line drawing I'm doing for a project called Gaslight Underground, which is a steampunk live action role-playing game.  It's going to be so completely awesome your head might fall right the heck off.  Anyways, I promised I would show you guys some work-in-progress kinds of things so you can see my work as it's happening:

I call her Josephine, which is a groovy Victorian name.  I've decided to make her elven and give her a sweet jacket because that kind of puts the "punk" in Steampunk.  When my client is ready, I'll do up a version with just the base colors, I'll tweak the outlines, do the shading and then do the background to give it the Art Nouveau flavor that I love so much.  I'll make sure I post drawings at each stage.

OK - until next time... DON'T eat the cake - you really don't wanna know where it's been.  - Chaz

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