Eight years of watercolour cards featuring house cats

Cat Cards 2003-2011 by Julia Minamata | Make Your Own Book

Yup, right on the heels of my portfolio book debut comes something a little bit different! For the past eight years or so, I've been painting watercolour cards for family birthdays, Mother's Days, Father's Days -- all occasions, pretty much. These cards often depict family hobbies and always feature the Minamata family cats: Leo, Sparky, and Dido. Leo is the grey tabby, Sparky is the fluffy orange and white one, and Dido is the dapper cat in the black and white tuxedo.

The book has fifty-five watercolour illustrations of cats playing racquet sports, Yahtzee, Scrabble, gardening, birdwatching, shovelling snow...

Most of the originals are framed up on the wall of my parent's dining room, although there isn't enough room to have them all up any more. Not all of the cards are in the same place -- some are with my sister, some with my parents, and a couple with my boyfriend. The book is the only place where you can have them all collected together!

Sadly, Leo and Sparky are no longer with us, but Dido is still going strong. Expect to see more cards starring her in the future!

Portfolio book now on sale!

julia minamata portfolio by Julia Minamata | Make Your Own Book

Okay, so I'm pretty excited! I've just self-published my portfolio using Blurb. It's a great site that allows anyone to create their own books. The software is slick, there are lots of options, and most importantly, Blurb isn't a bunch of intellectual property pirates out to shake down creative people for all they're worth.

One of the most important courses I took when I went to Sheridan College was basically a Business 101 specifically for illustrators. Super-savvy illustrator Kathryn Adams taught the class and showed us how to read those eye-watering Terms of Service agreements. After reading Blurb's TOS, I was satisfied I could use their service with few qualms. Same goes for Society6, Artflakes, and Etsy. Even better, after I'd already decided, I discovered that Anita Kunz sells books using Blurb, too! If that's not the ultimate endorsement, I don't know what is. Anita Kunz is pretty much the queen of illustration and if you've ever read Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Time, or any other magazine for the past few decades, chances are you've seen her work.

Got sidetracked, back to my book! My portfolio book has nineteen images in it, so it's quite skinny for the price. There's no denying it. But it's still cheaper than purchasing pretty much any one of my prints from Society6 or Artflakes, and MUCH cheaper than purchasing an original on Etsy. And I did go for the thicker, nicer, lustrous 148 GSM (100#) paper! If you're gonna do something, might as well do it right!

I have to admit, creating the book was possibly more for myself than for anyone else. I've always been a bit giddy about self-publishing, ever since I was president of the comic book club in high school and we got our stuff printed on the black and white copiers at Staples. Nowadays with the web and smart phones I always have my portfolio at my fingertips, but there is just something about real books and real paper.

One thing leads to another... And my March illustration job "A Brave New Book World" turned me on to this awesome new era of self-publishing. Funny how that works!

Dorothy in the Poppy Field

Here's my Work/Life 2 image! I wanted it to look somewhat related to my Alice at the Tea Party illustration in subject manner and execution. My Alice piece has a very early springtime feel, I wanted this one to be more lazy hazy late summer.

Dorothy prints on canvas and more on my Society6 Printshop
Dorothy original silkscreen prints for sale on Etsy

My mom tells me that I should make sure to let people know these illustrations are silkscreen prints. She's a clever lady, so I'm going to do as she says!

Everything on my portfolio site (except for "Umami: The Fifth Taste" ) are silkscreen prints. That's hard to see when stuff is at low-res 72dpi, so I'm going to start posting images of extreme close-ups of my work so all the weird, rough, real, and natural details can be seen.

I once did a (for me) massive silkscreen print for a college assignment for wise and wacky illustrator/illo prof Rick Sealock. If you ever get a chance to have Rick as a teacher, grab it with both hands and wrestle it to the ground! I mean wrestle the chance, not Rick. The silkscreen print was about 20"x10". I don't often work that large because the amount of materials, time, difficulty, and potential for disasters increases exponentially as I increase the size of my prints. But I wanted to explore the possibility of working larger, and that's what school is for!

My point being, I had done this gigantic silkscreen print, dusted off my portfolio so I could drag it all the way to Oakville, and Rick pointed to an area of the illustration the size of a melba toast and announced that that was the bit he liked. I was just relieved that he liked any part of it, but it's true: Sometimes little corners of an illustration can be lovely and work on their own.


(Click the image to enlarge)



(Click the image to enlarge)

I love silkscreen printing. I love having a physical piece of art in my hands that doesn't just exist as Matrix-y strings of zeros and ones. It's worth the struggles, surprises, and little discoveries. Here's to wabi-sabi!

Work/Life 2 is here!

I'm excited to report that Work/Life 2 is finally being released on April 7th! It features the work of 100 professional illustrators from around the world. I was lucky enough to score a spot in it, one of the few illustrators to be included in both the first Work/Life and this new edition. UPPERCASE's Janine Vangool has done a gorgeous job. Check it out!

UPPERCASE has even done an iPhone app, which should be debuting shortly. As a devoted iPhone user, I'm totally psyched about it!

Next week I'll post the piece I did specially for the book -- If you find yourself in Calgary (UPPERCASE #204, 100 - 7th Ave SW Calgary AB Canada T2P0W4) April 7th you can see it even earlier than that! And of course, I'll be putting up original prints of the illustration for sale on my Etsy shop, and my Society6 store will have prints of all sizes available, too.

Work/Life

Work/Life is a celebration of Canadian illustration. I was so fortunate to be able to participate in this project. It's a gorgeous book and shows not only the work of some of of finest illustrators Canada has to offer, but their workspaces as well. It's a beautiful book.

Work/Life was published before I started my blog, so I hadn't posted about it! It's time I fixed that :). They're still available for sale, so pick one up if you haven't already!

Click here to purchase online at UPPERCASE Studio Shop.

Drawing Inspiration: Visual Artists at Work

A few weeks ago I got my copy of Drawing Inspiration: Visual Artists at Work, and it is really terrific. The project started off quite a few years back when I was still in school - me and whiz-bang Sheridan Illustration instructor and pro illustrator Rick Sealock got approached to be contributors by Michael Fleishman. After numerous back and forths and revisions and a bit of waiting, it's now out and available on Amazon!

Congratulations to Mike for his perseverance and passion.

Click here to purchase online on Amazon.com.