LOS ANGELES (AP) — Artist Mike Kelley, described by colleagues as an "irresistible force" in contemporary art, has died, police said Wednesday. He was 57.

Kelley was found at his home Tuesday and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said, without providing further information on the artist's death. An autopsy was pending.

"Kelley's work in the 1980s was part of how one defined the Los Angeles arts scene. He had a remarkable ability to fuse distinction between fine and popular art in ways that managed to perturb our sense of decorum," said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

A family friend who was concerned about Kelley went to his home and called police, Bartl said.

The friend told investigators that Kelley had been depressed because he had recently broken up with his girlfriend, but no note was found, Bartl said.

"Mike was an irresistible force in contemporary art. ... We cannot believe he is gone. But we know his legacy will continue to touch and challenge anyone who crosses its path. We will miss him. We will keep him with us," Kelley's studio said in a statement that the Los Angeles Times published on its website.

Kelley's work was included in the upcoming 2012 Whitney Biennial out of New York.

Kelley used many mediums and source materials. "He was always breaking boundaries and challenging convention," Barron said.

Some of his greatest works were large scale installations, she said. "Some of his room-sized, full-gallery sized extravaganzas are truly impressive."

Kelley was a student of John Baldessari. His 1994 retrospective organized by the Whitney, which came to LACMA in 1995, established him as a major figure in the art world, Barron said.

"His work was widely collected and exhibited internationally. He had a voracious appetite for all kinds of art. He was enormously curious and worked incredibly at his craft. He was never afraid to thing really big. Artists like that don't come around very often," she said.

Born in Detroit, Kelley founded the band Destroy All Monsters with three others in 1974.

He left the band in 1978 to attend California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, near Los Angeles.

"He was extremely intense, very serious, phenomenally well read. He would go very deep into his subjects, a real artist scholar but with a real passion for whatever he was investigating," Barron said.

After encounters with him, Barron said, "I always came away learning something new, thinking about things differently and in awe of his curiosity."

Although she corresponded with him in the last couple of weeks, the last time she saw him was a month ago.

"It's incredibly sad. It's hard to imagine somebody with the life force and intensity that Mike brought to bear is no longer with us. His impact will be seen with distance as all the more powerful and we'll have to begin to process this," Barron said.

By Kevin Sprouls



All right, everyone, gather ’round! I’m going to show you all how I create those iconic portraits, in the style I introduced to the Wall Street Journal and still seen around the world today.

The required tools include:



A soft pencil (I actually use a lead-holder, like the old draftsmen used back in the day, HB grade lead.)



Ink for the technical fountain pens (You can use a dip pen like this, but I wouldn’t recommend it— hard to control, and messy!)



And you’ll need an eraser. (The one pictured is known as a “Pink Pearl”— I prefer the kneaded rubber type, which is superior.) A fine, high-quality paintbrush and some white designer’s gouache will take care of any “adjustments” which might be necessary.

Many of my clients send photos to work with that, I must say, can be challenging. The following illustrates one case of a recently produced portrait. Step one: The Client sends me the photograph. It looks like this:



Not great, but it has just enough detail to work with. Step two: get the image into photoshop, convert to grey, size image to my liking, and crop.



Step three: I print out the greyscale image and transfer the photo’s information onto illustration board by tracing on the photo. The resulting contour drawing is like a map for me to follow as I “ink” the finished product.

Everything is done by hand, one mark of the pen at a time. Once the portrait is inked, the pencil lines get erased, and I’m ready to “touch up” any visual issues with the paint brush. And the final result:



This is a large image, to show detail. Below is the portrait as it might be used on the web or in print.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial. I understand that the folks over at the WSJ use a slightly different process to get their hedcuts into the paper, but the hallmark style remains the same: Picturing Business.

By Laura Barisonzi

My time-elapse photo of the Boston Marathon and the technique I used to capture it are featured in the February 2012 issue of Popular Photography magazine. Here are the 5 steps:

Step 1: Previsualize your photos. Devise a few creatively imagined images, focusing as much on backgrounds as the runners. "I had the idea of a flow of people contrasted with the still cups, so I did some research to locate the most heavily used water stop along the Boston Marathon"

Step 2: Gather Your Gear. For the 4-second shutter speed used here (at f/10, ISO 100). Barisonzi needed a 3.0 neutral-density filter and a small tripod. Because the filter produces an almost black viewfinder, she had to compose and focus before threading it on.

Step 3: Find your angle. By selecting a low vantage point, Barisonzi was able to make the in-focus cups appear more prominently in her composition. (To get that low angle, she had to lie prone on the ground with an assistant standing along side to prevent her from being trampled.)

Step 4: Prep the site. To the amusement of many bystanders, Barisonzi spent a few minutes rearranging the discarded cups into a more interesting pattern.

Final Step: Play with exposure. Barisonzi altered shutter speeds to find the right blur, one that was dramatic but clearly made up of runners

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By Brian Bailey

We recently released the imagery from the 2012 winter and summer ad campaign for Beaver Creek Resort. I had the pleasure of working with the talented creative director, Olaf Richter,  from Genesis in Denver, CO.

Olaf wanted the imagery to have an aspirational, dreamlike quality, more polished, less improvised. He spoke about the magic and warmth of the light playing off the refined sophistication that is Beaver Creek. I was so excited when we had our first conference call. Both my producer Lisa Schrag and I were so thrilled when we opened our email to find line drawings instead of a bunch of stock photos put together in layouts! Kind of a throw back to a not so distant era. I was so excited to begin this assignment! We shot the winter portion last April and the summer in August.

We had scouted the winter locations the week before, and fortunately I had shot plates of all locations. Turned out, there was no snow on the trees for a couple of locations when the shoot began, so I was able to use those plates thanks to the steady hand of Adam and his crew at http://sugardigital.com/. The funniest challenge was we needed a 9 foot snowman, and with the warm spring temperatures we weren’t sure if we would actually be able to make one. Despite a late effort to have a prop builder deliver one, we decided to go for it as it snowed the night before! I do believe this was Olaf’s proudest moment!

Here are the first two ads released as well as the original photography and some of the drawings. For a more in depth look, I have included the original Beaver Creek Shoot Brief at the bottom of this post. It’s always exciting to see the concepts come to fruition.



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You can check out Sara's full article by purchasing the Communication Arts Jan/Feb Typography Annual right here.

The latest from Erica Shires...




Naked Princess Lingerie from Erica Shires on Vimeo.



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