Alex graduated in 1990 from Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California.

“His earliest artistic influences were comic books and movies especially the strong visuals from science fiction television and films like Star Trek and later Star Wars.”

About his influences he recognizes :

“…the great Japanese artist and designer Shinohara Katsuyuki. He is one of my favorite artists ever.”

And other artists like:

“…Aron Wiesenfeld, Jeff Soto, James Jean and Ben Marra are a few of my favorite young guns…”

In the year 2000, he received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation. And that changed his artistic life. He describes the experience of Japan:

“…The Blade Runner vision of the future was smacking me over the head, and I was not prepared for it.”

This trip showed him the stethical approach to the art of Japanese culture and he took mostly from advertising and vintage pictures, all the imagery that it will be present in his art the next years.

His inspiration comes from many sources, even Russian and British Art (read the article about inspiration I wrote):

“I absolutely love old photos and vintage pictures. The Victorian Era is the time when I would have liked to live.”

His work have been published by Taschen in 2004 under the title Japanese Beauties. In 2007, Chronicle books published The Art of Alex Gross, a monograph featuring Alex’s painting, drawing and printmaking from 1999 through 2007.

He had been classified as a Pop Surrealist or Surreal Pop artist.

He mixes the images in a dream like reality.

“…this whole idea of freely mixing imagery that doesnt normally go together was really exciting to me.”

The creative process of Alex Gross begins with an image as a main inspiration, then he sketches in the computer. And the final artwork is hand made on traditional painting.

“Often, the genesis of a painting for me will be finding an image like that one, which really inspires me to take it and do something with it. I have borrowed imagery from gothic artists like Rogier Van der Weyden a

ll the way to modern artists like Shinohara, Yokoo Tadanoori and George Tooker, to name a few. These days i tend to use mostly images that I find in old photographs.”

“All of my gallery work is either Oil paint or mixed media, which include oils, acrylics and some collage. I do use the computer quite a lot in the sketch phase. But in the finished product it is not really being used.”

And finally he has an advice for illustrators and it is a principle for everybody in the creative field:

“I dont really have advice for illustrators other than to say develop your own personal voice as best you can, and people will be drawn to it if it is real, it is you, and it is creative.”

And now, check some of his work.

And remember to visit his site: http://www.alexgross.com/

Source Box:

Text:

http://www.vivianite.net/alex-gross-4.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Gross

http://www.graphotism.com/Interviews

http://popdrawer.blogspot.com/search/label/Alex%20Gross

Images:

http://www.alexgross.com

Pedro Vilas-Boas

Rik Oostenbroek

Simon Page

Jonny Wan

Rhys Owens

Anton Repponen

Alberto Cerriteño

Vicente García Morillo

Yury Ustsinau

Elzo

Beneficial Websites

Tutorial:Building a website for the iPhone

iPhone WebDev

CSS iPhone

Creating the for the iPhone

It was a challenge learning what you needed to do to make things work on the iPhone. First off you have to think about the small screen, flip orientation, fluid widths because of the orientation, load time, etc. Here are a couple of highlights that you need to remember when creating for the iPhone.

1. Fluid Widths / 100% Widths – you don’t have to use fluid widths but if you don’t, when a user flips their phone sideways your content doesn’t stretch to fill the width. I found that it works best to design so that your buttons, content, images expand based on the orientation. It looks better and it makes for a better user experience.
2. Load Time – you have to remember that some of your users may be viewing the content on their 3g / edge network. So load times are key, you want the page to load fast so make sure you optimize your images properly.
3. Large Buttons – people have fat fingers. Even though I have heard that the iPhone has an algorithm that molds the click function based on your usual habits it still makes it easier for the user when your buttons are large enough for them not to miss.
4. Mobile Detection – You need to have a snippet of code that allows your site to be loaded when a user is visiting with their mobile device.
5. Text Adjustment – When you rotate your iPhone because the resolution changes your font size increases, it almost seems as though the font size gets bigger. To keep this from happening you can incorporate this snippet of code in your body style  -webkit-text-size-adjust: none;.
6. PNG’s – Make sure you use PNG’s where needed and enjoy taking advantage of transparent PNG’s. Remember you don’t need to test for IE or anything else accept for mobile safari.

I highly recommend that everyone take the next step and create your portfolio, mini site, etc for the iPhone. It is a great learning experience and you will learn a lot about how people may interact with your site as you browse around on it yourself. More and more people are going mobile these days so we need to adapt to this change and create experiences that are beneficial for you and the user.

Enjoy! Follow me on twitter and don’t forget to visit BoomSkins to get your iPod, iPhone, and Apple Laptop protection!

Select the images you want to “batch resize”

Open them in “Preview”

Press CMD+A to select all the images

Now from the “Tools” menu choose “Adjust Size…” and change the image dimensions as you prefer (often you will have just to modify the width).

Than remember to “Save All” the images from the menu “File” and you are done!

“Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. The musicians in these bands stood relatively still during live performances, in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state, hence the idea that they were gazing at their shoes.” – Wikipedia

In our day to day lives we become detached from taking a moment to breath. So please take a moment to stop what your doing and take a look at the examples of great artwork and music below.

Explosions In The Sky

Jónsi & Alex

Jesu

This Will Destroy You

Giants

Mogwai

Mono

Russian Circles

Heretic And Lovers

Sigur Rós

Codes In The Clouds

Crippled Black Phoenix