On Friday, September 22, we will hold the opening for our new show at ERA Gallery titled "Rated G." As noted on the card above, it is a collaborative show. The items on display can be grouped into three categories, which each artist created a piece for. Our first project was to design quilts, which were then taken to a local quilt-maker for construction. The second group is a collection of paintings which each artist created a paint-by-numbers pattern for. Multiple copies of the patterns will be available and displayed next to each painting. The final element, which was also the largest undertaking, is a children's coloring book.

Local author Joel Finsel contributed five short stories, and five artists illustrated each of those stories. The name of my story is "Ruby's Slippers," and I had previously mentioned doing illustrations for this a little while back. Needless to say, getting this book made has been no small task, but it is finally coming to fruition. Each artist's illustrations will be displayed individually in the gallery as well.

Of course, as is the custom at ERA, plenty of additional elements will be present the night of the opening, making it a bit of a inter-disciplinary event. Among those will be performances by the 1997 International Grand Teenage Whistling Champion, Tony Woodard. In addition, each story from the book will be read to the attending audience by special guests.

The painting for which I created the paint-by-numbers pattern is With Open Eyes. I felt it lent itself well to this endeavor, and I hope that it will complement my other offerings such as the quilt. Now, I still haven't seen the quilt itself, and I must admit I am a bit anxious as to how it's all going to turn out. At any rate, this is shaping up to be quite an affair.

A little while ago there was some discussion over on the Tapland forums about how it was such an unusually good online community, with so many intelligent and helpful members. This got me thinking a bit about another community that I have had the privilege of being a member of.

Back in the days when I was still studying art at RMC and just beginning to get into digital art, I had found one particular "online gfx community" which really stood out. This was none other than Toeng.com. It seemed to be filled with so much enthusiasm then, and I think much of that was because of the man in charge. Al "Toeng" Wijoyo was an enthusiastic digital artist himself, and really made the place come alive.

Eventually I became a moderator on Toeng, with the power to accept or deny the work being submitted to the site. It was a good place to put my art education into practice, and my critiquing skills to good use. Being one of the few members with a formal art education, I would like to think that I contributed to the community something that would have been otherwise lacking.

So in my nostalgia I decided to see what else I could dig up on good ol' Toeng.com, knowing that the site itself is no longer up. A few traces still remain, such as Toeng's member profile on the Graphic Forums, and a thread about the community at CGSociety.

Further digging revealed a website called Splash Challenge, which still contains two of Toeng's very own walls. The other works on the site are a good example of the type of submissions you would have seen on Toeng.com as well. I still have a soft spot for this type of digital art, and it really felt like we were a repository of a pioneering new art medium.

What made Toeng.com special was not only the art, but also its members. Even if most of us were quite young, I think that everyone was there to learn what they could and teach what they knew. The purpose of the community was to provide a place where anyone interested in digital art could come to learn how to create it, and then turn around to upload their work for everyone else to see. It was always a collaborative effort, with members giving advice and providing support for each other.

These days, a few of us are still up on the intrawebs. Joylee still has her site up, and you can view her most excellent vector work there, but I have not seen any updates for quite some time. Some members, like Ashveen, Axii, Holoden, 9thProphet, Matanza, Yajido, Iced02, and Xiaoyu, went over to DeviantArt. Still others, like Silver, Javen, Spoon, Chrono, Trunxz, and Chisa are nowhere to be found. It seems that when Toeng went away, despite our best efforts to stay in touch the whole group fragmented and just evaporated like so much rendered morning dew.

Al had gotten a demanding tech job in CA, and was unable to maintain the awesomeness that once was Toeng.com. Little by little members began to break away, and towards the end the site was riddled with PHP and MySQL errors. Only a handful of die-hards remained, but ultimately even they left. So rest in peace Toeng.com, you will be missed. And the best of luck to Al, and everyone else from the community, wherever you may be.

I have finished designing the Aniwave poster finally, and got it to the printers. Unfortunately, due to some technical issues at the print shop they won't be ready until early next week. So we'll have to wait with the distribution until then.

I think it turned out pretty well, and I enjoyed creating this according to my vision. Now I just hope that the initial quantity will be sufficient.

For the last several months, in preparation for the upcoming show at ERA, I have been collaborating with five other artists on a coloring book. To elaborate, the show is going to be called "Rated G," and will feature three elements from multiple artists. The first element is a quilt which each artist designed and was then made by a regional quilt-maker. The second element is a painting, for which each of us created a paint-by-numbers pattern. And the third element is the aforementioned coloring book.

Local writer Joel Finsel contributed five short stories, and each of the artists created illustrations for one of the stories. The title of the story that my illustrations are for is "Ruby's Slippers." It centers around a young girl named Ruby, and features a kind of coming-of-age theme. The above image is the first illustration for the story. Yoshitoshi Abe fans might recognize this a little homage to that artist quoting an image from Lain.

The coloring book will come in two forms. First it will be available as a limited edition hardcover at the night of the show's opening on September 28. There will be only 50 of the limited edition books to purchase, and whatever does not sell that night will still be available at ERA. Moreover, UNCW's print lab will be taking over the project in creating a more widely available paperback version of this book. We expect that to be available early next year. The price of the paperbacks will naturally be much lower than the limited editions.

I will probably upload a few more of my own illustrations here in the future, and we'll see about including the story that goes along with it. No promises on the latter though.