The final, belated result of a commission for my bud Zoë, who wanted me to do a portrait of her special gentleman- the lovely Jacob Strick- in full Myst regalia.
I have next to no time to do commissions in between personal projects and work, but who am I to pass up the chance to draw fellow Myst/Riven/URU enthusiasts in their proper setting? Also I love these guys. <3 <3
-C
Steamcon® IV - October 26-28 - Seattle, WA
Steamcon® is going into its third year of Artists’ Alley, a place for Steampunk craftspersons to promote their hand-crafted and Steampunk-relevant wares! We know that it can be difficult for smaller-scale artisans to afford or procure a full-blown vendor’s table at conventions, so this is a chance for the less mass-produced artists to get their work out there.
Steamcon® will receive Artists’ Alley applications for review until June 1st, at which point we will begin evaluating & accepting exhibitors until the Artists’ Alley is full. All applicants will be juried, and consideration will be based on applicability of wares, date of receipt and diversity of merchandise available in the Artists’ Alley.
- It’s worth noting, for example, that we see a lot of jewelry artisans who work with assembled gears and clock parts. If you’d like to stand out from the crowd of other applicants, your best bet would be to make something that is uniquely yours.
- Also note that participation in previous Artists’ Alleys does not guarantee that you will be afforded a space this year. We receive a lot of applications at once, and we want to make sure that the Alley is juried for quality and relevance.
If you wish to participate, please read and fill out the application HERE, and send us photos of your wares by either posting them to the Steamcon Flickr group, or e-mailing them to us at artistsalley@steamcon.org.
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to shoot me a note at artists_alley@steamcon.org. We hope to see you in October!
Claire Hummel
Steamcon® IV Artists’ Alley coordinator
Signal boostin’ now that it is a reasonable hour. On the west coast, anyway.
Steamcon® IV - October 26-28 - Seattle, WA
Steamcon® is going into its third year of Artists’ Alley, a place for Steampunk craftspersons to promote their hand-crafted and Steampunk-relevant wares! We know that it can be difficult for smaller-scale artisans to afford or procure a full-blown vendor’s table at conventions, so this is a chance for the less mass-produced artists to get their work out there.
Steamcon® will receive Artists’ Alley applications for review until June 1st, at which point we will begin evaluating & accepting exhibitors until the Artists’ Alley is full. All applicants will be juried, and consideration will be based on applicability of wares, date of receipt and diversity of merchandise available in the Artists’ Alley.
- It’s worth noting, for example, that we see a lot of jewelry artisans who work with assembled gears and clock parts. If you’d like to stand out from the crowd of other applicants, your best bet would be to make something that is uniquely yours.
- Also note that participation in previous Artists’ Alleys does not guarantee that you will be afforded a space this year. We receive a lot of applications at once, and we want to make sure that the Alley is juried for quality and relevance.
If you wish to participate, please read and fill out the application HERE, and send us photos of your wares by either posting them to the Steamcon Flickr group, or e-mailing them to us at artistsalley@steamcon.org.
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to shoot me a note at artists_alley@steamcon.org. We hope to see you in October!
Claire Hummel
Steamcon® IV Artists’ Alley coordinator
My buds in the League of S.T.E.A.M. released their latest episode for Season 2, Tall Tails! If you like tentacles and Lisa Foiles as a pretty adorable mermaid, watch this business.
You can check out the rest of season 2 HERE, including an episode with Grant Imahara as a delightfully moustachioed antiquities appraiser:
Swagggg
This is the Reade family portrait I was commissioned to do for Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention, and I finally got my hands on a copy from the lovely Paul and Anina so I could see it in print. It’s credited to Charles Dana Gibson, which is simultaneously flattering and daunting, but a year after inking it I’m actually kinda happy with how it turned out. Kinda.
The original is about 11 x 17”, in pen & ink- yeah, that’s right, sometimes I don’t draw on a computer. Occasionally. Almost never.
-C
Just figured I might as well post some of my Nerfpunk concepts, lord knows if they’ll come to fruition- the dandy is about… 60% sewn at this point, but the idea of a neon, faux-fur coonskin cap is hard to resist.
Just realised I never got around to posting any photos of my nerfpunk costume from Steamcon here in Seattle way back in October. I’m very good at keeping up with things that relate to myself and only myself, aren’t I?
the intent behind nerfpunk, in case you haven’t been following along or just plain forgot cuz it’s been months (that’s more likely i’m sure), is to flip around the expectations of steampunk. A “typical” steampunk garment utilizes a weapon that they assemble to match the costume; typically, this is a nerf gun. The idea of nerfpunk was to reverse it - pick the gun and make the costume match it. That means no modding of the gun was allowed! I kind of cheated, in that I waited until they released their new little discs because I liked the colour scheme better… but it’s still heinously garish.
things i like:
• the sleeves. i spent most of my time on them (even more than the corset, which is kind of tragic really) because I wanted them to have a stupid number of layers. friendly mockery ;)
• the idea of the vinyl gun holster. it was made like 20 minutes before we hopped on the bus to the hotel so it’s not stable and I’d like to expand on it further.
I have some in progress shots that I’ll post after this. Mostly this costume was, unfortunately, more of an afterthought than I really wanted. I had way too many other costumes to prioritize (in that they were being made for a)children and b)people that are not myself), which left me little more than a week or so to create something from the sketches I’d been working on for months. I’d really like to go back into this costume with the intent to make it more than just some piecemeal assembly of ideas, but you know. when have i ever done that?(the other nerfpunker in the photos is my friend Melinda! she makes amazing costumes AND she won an award for this one in the bathing suit contest!)
My buddies in LA are the originators behind nerfpunk, and so Aidan, Melinda and myself were working on our own Nerfpunk costumes for last year’s Steamcon. I never finished mine (had SO MUCH TO DO for that con augh), but they finished theirs, and they are gorgeous, and they deserve reblogging. :)
Multiculturalism for Steampunk is starting up a weekly art challenge, and it looks promising. SO EXCITED. I’ve had a bunch of ideas for non-Western steampunk outfits floating around in my head, and it’s nice actually having a weekly deadline to motivate me to finish some of them.
This is pretty subtle in its steampunkery (read: no extranneous metal bits), but I was just trying to bring in a few western/Victorian elements to traditional Indian clothing- legomuttoned sleeves, the double breasted, collared choli, and adapting the churidar into buttoned spats.
…Also a sweet hat.
-CI think there are some colonialist questions that get raised when you incorporate specifically British Victorian elements of couture into Indian fashion? A few?
Buuuuuuut I would fight a man on a grizzly bear for this lady’s comic.
I am so glad you said this. I thought I was alone in this. British Empire, anyone? Company Rule? British Raj?
Dear internet, I shan’t assume that you all know about the British Empire. I know not everyone has the same education and it’s problematic to assume this.
But know that British rule in India lasted from around 1757 to about 1948, and that the relationship between the coloniser and colonised is extremely complicated, and still very much has real lived effects today. Sure, the outfit and character look beautiful, but I just don’t think you can go around mashing up Victorian fashion with Indian clothing just for surface steampunk elegance without encountering some problems. I can appreciate the visual qualities, but the history and meaning causes some concern.
/inb4 people start screeching that I am ~*oversensitive*~ and can’t enjoy anything :-{D
No screeching, I promise! No such thing as being oversensitive with this sort of thing. I tried to avoid choosing anything specifically British (or any of the imagery specifically associated with colonization/”exploration chic”, things like khaki and piths), and tried to make it seem like the character had agency. I definitely don’t want to pretend I’m creating this in a void, that there aren’t historical and cultural contexts surrounding the politics of dress, but was trying to integrate elements that didn’t overwhelm the original culture.
Granted, I am of the opinion that Steampunk that erases past racial greivances (i.e. alternate history where white people are awesome and never did anything wrong and we’re all best friends) is kinda shitty and naive- that’s why I drew this as a character, and not as a costume design for something I would wear (as a white chick). If one were designing a Steampunk world, it would be unfair to assume that this cultural crossover didn’t happen and wouldn’t have existed, but I honestly apologize that the original post might make it seem like this was drawn solely for aesthetic purposes- and I’d like to address that and make it clear that I am definitely trying to keep context in mind, and am happy to be called out like this.
Multiculturalism for Steampunk is starting up a weekly art challenge, and it looks promising. SO EXCITED. I’ve had a bunch of ideas for non-Western steampunk outfits floating around in my head, and it’s nice actually having a weekly deadline to motivate me to finish some of them.
This is pretty subtle in its steampunkery (read: no extranneous metal bits), but I was just trying to bring in a few western/Victorian elements to traditional Indian clothing- legomuttoned sleeves, the double breasted, collared choli, and adapting the churidar into buttoned spats.
…Also a sweet hat.
-C
Editing to add commentary in response to toryot: No such thing as being oversensitive with this sort of thing! I appreciate it, honestly. I tried to avoid choosing anything specifically British (or any of the imagery specifically associated with colonization/”exploration chic”, things like khaki and piths), and tried to make it seem like the character had agency. I definitely don’t want to pretend I’m creating this in a void, that there aren’t historical and cultural contexts surrounding the politics of dress, but was trying to integrate elements that didn’t overwhelm the original culture.
Granted, I am of the opinion that Steampunk that erases past racial greivances (i.e. alternate history where white people are awesome and never did anything wrong and we’re all best friends) is kinda shitty and naive- that’s why I drew this as a character, and not as a costume design for something I would wear (as a white chick). If one were designing a Steampunk world, it would be unfair to assume that this cultural crossover didn’t happen and wouldn’t have existed, but I honestly apologize that the original post might make it seem like this was drawn solely for aesthetic purposes- and I’d like to address that and make it clear that I am definitely trying to keep context in mind, and am happy to be called out like this.
(Source: shoomlah.deviantart.com)
