Melinda Josie

January 15th 2014

It's a little belated, but happy new year, everyone!

To say that I have a little catching up to do on this blog is a bit of an understatement. It's quite embarrassing how behind I've gotten on this thing. (Perhaps I should use this post as a job listing for a new studio assistant??).

Even though very little has been posted here in the last… month… s… I plan to go back through the work I've done over the past while and update what I've been up to during this hiatus.

So; since my last post, some exciting projects have come over my desk. One in particular was a solo show that I worked on over the summer, and opened at Hellion Gallery in Portland in November. I've got photos of the two new paintings I did for the show that I'm fixing up, and will do a proper post in a couple of days.

I also worked for TIME Magazine for the first time this September. I was asked to do a set of nine portraits for them for an article on the Clinton Global Initiative; among the portraits were ones of Bill Gates and Brad Pitt, which was a lot of fun.

I've been working for nearly a year now as the regular weekly illustrator for The New York Times Magazine's back page; the Lives article. It's been a wonderful job so far, and I'll post a few below with links to their articles.

Keeping Kosher

My Fake Levantine Romance

Hunting a Chimp on a Killing Spree

The Knuckle-Curve

A Prairie Home, Abandoned

‘How You Doing, Baby?’

Life With Bella

I also did a job with the WWF, which was a dream. I love what they do, so it was a pleasure to do a set of illustrations for the Winter 2013 issue of their quarterly World Wildlife Magazine.

One of the highlights of the past few months was a series of portraits I did for The New York Times Magazine's Movies Issue. I was asked to illustrate 14 Hollywood screenwriters, which accompanied 11 short films, (and may be viewed here).

Seriously!? I don't think there's a single person on this list that I don't admire. This job was an absolute joy. I particularly liked being able to paint local writer/ director Sarah Polley. Very exciting.

I'll update with further work in an additional post or two in the next few days.

To close off this first post of 2014: some New Year's resolutions; drink more water, take my vitamins, keep this thing updated like a responsible freelance illustrator...

August 14th 2013

I've found out about some pretty great contemporary artists through Beautiful Decay in the past, but one of their more recent posts found me falling in love with the work of painter Jeremy Miranda. His work is some of my favourite that I've seen in a long, long time.

Seriously; look at this stuff:

Wowzers.

To view more of his beautiful work, (including watercolour studies- swoon!), visit his website, blog or shop to buy originals and prints.

July 29th 2013

One of my favourite recurring illustration jobs in the last while has been a set of black and white portraits of chefs featured in The New York Times 'Eat' section of the magazine. Some previous features have been done on chefs Juanjo López, Julie Sahni and Claudia Roden.

The two illustrations pictured below were published in the magazine in the past few months. The first, of Linda Lau Anusasananan, was featured in mid-May in an article called 'The Nomad's Kitchen', and the second of Edward Khechemyan was featured in this past weekend's article titled, 'This Armenian Life'.

July 24th 2013

Back in the early spring, I had a couple of visitors. The one, Celine McKay, was an old friend from back home. She now runs a beautiful publication, Pure Green Magazine. The other was a local photographer, who's work I've admired for a while now; Rebecca Wood. Celine had asked us to get together so they could do a feature on my workspace for the current issue of the magazine, Inspired Workspace.

We met up at the Common, a favourite coffee shop of mine, had a nice chat, then headed back to my home/workspace for more photos.

It was so wonderful to catch up with Celine after so many years. We'd been friends in high school, and as these things go sometimes, had lost touch over the years proceeding. She now runs this magazine and has recently become a new mother, so we had a lot to catch up on!

Below are some photos from the feature, as well as some outtakes, all captured by Rebecca. They were both so lovely to work with, and it was such a great day spent with two great women.

July 19th 2013

Here is a much needed update, and there will be lots more coming soon.

I've been so busy, (and overwhelmed by this heat wave we're having), that I haven't had much time to show what's been keeping me so busy. Sometimes it can be quite hard finding a balance between working and showing my work.

Here's something to get the (rather large) ball rolling; I've been asked by The New York Times Magazine to do a weekly job with them. I'm illustrating the final page of the magazine,for the Lives section. I've done these jobs before, but it's nice to have something so regular!

Here are a few from the past month or so.