Today I put out the first ever, artist interview on my channel. I sat down with @AlvinSurreal and we talked about his come up, how he got into art early on, and what he's done to get to this current level.
We talked about surrealism in his art as well as his creative influences. Alvin shared a lot of his experiences and what he had to do for opportunities to present themselves.
Alvin spoke about the importance of making art for yourself first. And how that will lead to opportunities based on what you’ve manifested through both your work and the energy you put into the world.
I hope you enjoy the interview and make sure to tell me your favorite moment from the interview in the comments!
Click here to check out the full interview!
Peace,
Mahmud
How to Make Money as an Artist on Instagram →
What’s up my internet friends!
Some of you may already be aware of this but I recently put together a 5 question SURVEY around the subject of how I can help you guys, creatively speaking.
Based on the responses I received I decided to make a VIDEO about making money online off of your artwork.
I specifically speak about 4 ways that I’ve personally made money off of my artwork this year.
So, if that’s something you’re curious about or interested in, make sure you check out the video and hopefully these tips will help you level up your art business!
I would love to hear from you all in the comments on whether these tips were valuable or not.
I hope to see us all making money off of what we love to do.
Hope the rest of your week is chill.
Mahmud
How Can I Help You Creatively?
Hello Internet Friends,
I hope all is well. I wanted to reach out to you all to ask how I can help you creatively? I've always loved to share information with fellow creatives and if I can share in a way that is more specific to your needs I'm here for it. So I put together a 5 question SURVEY. I would love it if you could answer these questions in the survey link above. The survey is anonymous FYI. I hope to be able to help you creatively based on the answers you've submitted.
Thanks,
Mahmud
Humpday News for the Mid-Week Blues!
I’ve got some news to share. We got new videos, new merch, and new projects to come! READ MORE..
2 Announcements, 1 Achievement, and What Made My Day
What’s good my internet people!
It’s been a few weeks but your boy is back with a new newsletter. I’m excited to make 2 major announcements, share 1 new achievement, and show you guys something that made my day this week!
So let’s start with the first major announcement. Today, at the time you’re reading this, I’ve released.. READ MORE!
I'm Out Here Workin! Are You?
What’s up internet friends!
It’s been a minute since the last newsletter. I’ve been getting my creative groove back in this time. I’m feeling good about the upcoming projects to come as well as the couple I recently finished. I hope you’re all doing well out there. Let’s catch up on some things. READ MORE..
There's A Lot Going On Right Now Huh?
I hope all is well. I’ve fallen off schedule over the past month for various reasons but I’m getting back into the swing of things. There’s a lot going on right now in the world. Let’s catch up for a bit.
If you’ve been tuned in with my on and off art progress you’ve probably noticed this sketch. It started out very roughly in my sketchbook and then I took it to the iPad to clean it up a bit. It’s my original character Mona. Some of you might be confused because you were introduced to a blue wolf named Mona, but guess what, they’re one in the same. Mona was a human once. Her story will be told soon through my original comic Onion City Chronicle. READ MORE..
Who Missed Me? Nobody? Ok Cool..
So who missed me last week? Or was it more like "Ayyyyy no email from that dude. Woohoo!" I hope it wasn't the latter but hey I understand. Honestly, if you were unaware I'm fasting for Ramadan and it usually slows down my creative productivity. After work I'm usually lounging on the couch until sundown and when it's time to eat I find myself binging food, water, and tv until 2am sometimes. And when I'm up that late you can kiss my early morning art sessions goodbye. But hey, I'm getting in where I can so let's catch up. READ MORE..
“Bad Dreams Every Night” The 2nd Piece In An Endless Series
I don’t normally write long form blog posts about my paintings or any pieces of work really but I thought I would start doing so in 2020.
Before getting into my latest painting I must first touch on the series I’m working on. In 2019 I had the idea to create a series of works where I would fuse elements derived from significant paintings in art history with familiar modern media elements including, but not limited to, music, anime, video games, and film iconography. The settings of the works would be the fictional world of Onion City, a place heavily inspired by my home town of Chicago, as well as the many places I’ve experienced in my life. The subjects of the series would be none other than my original characters who I’ve been developing for a few years now. This series is a very exciting way for me to create works of fine art that bring together my many interests, influences, inspirations, and original characters in one original setting. Initially the idea was that this series would be strictly for a solo exhibit but after working on 2 pieces I’ve come to realize this could be my “thing”.
The “thing” I’m speaking on is that which makes a piece “your” piece with “your” style. I create a lot of different things and I work on various creative projects. But each of those projects serve their own purpose. For example, my original comic book, Onion City Chronicle, is meant to serve as my creative outlet where I tell the story behind each of my original characters and bring people into my world of Onion City. It’s a story set in a cyber punk fantasy world of tomorrow that will deserve its own blog post once finished. Now, I may create larger illustrations and paintings of the characters from Onion City Chronicle, and those larger pieces may be based on cool comic panels that I want to see fully rendered. After all, I present my art as something that is very narrative driven where different pieces can represent panels within the same story board. With all of that said, moments in life will always inspire different things. A new film, a new song, or the discovery of an old classic work may get my mind flowing and what better way to express those inspirations than through an endless series that I’ve named, renamed ,and named again, only to land on the following name of “Future Nostalgia,” for now at least.
It went from “Nostalgia”, to “Nostalgia ULTRA” to “Nostalgia 89” and now “Future Nostalgia”. The biggest influence on the name of this series is Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia ULTRA. Nostalgia ULTRA was the name of Frank Ocean’s debut mixtape. This was a very important album for me in my college years and I feel it stood the test of time as it is still a project I go back and listen to. Maybe I do it for the nostalgia factor, who knows . Overall, I felt like the whole aesthetic, the themes, and the nostalgic media elements within this project give this surreal feeling that is truly unique. The songs focused on relationships, personal reflection, and social commentary and that is what I want to do most with my art. Basically I want my art to give people the feeling I have when listening to Frank Ocean, I know crazy right?
To sum things up before we move on, I really just want most of my fine art pieces to live in the space of the “Future Nostalgia” series. I want my fine art pieces to feel like album cuts, my rendered original illustrations to feel like mixtape releases, my fan art work to feel like a freestyle, and my self portraits to feel like Drake’s “time stamp in (blank) city”-songs.
Now let’s get into the latest painting, which I’ve named “Bad Dreams Every Night”. The big reveal is here!
This piece is formally the second in the series, as last year’s piece “Stop Trying to Be GOD” was the first. You can view the first painting here.
With this new piece, I was heavily influenced by a few things. I actually sketched the following concept out shortly after the murder and death of the Florida artist XXXtentacion.
After XXXtentacion passed, I was listening to his music more than I had when he was alive, and more specifically the song “Everybody Dies in Their Nightmares”. For whatever reason that song seemed to hit hard in that moment. The vibe of the song just made me think of bad dreams in general and being unable to move when the bad guy was coming for you in the dream. It’s like someone casted “disable” or “immobilize” on you in a Final Fantasy game, and you ran out of the right potion to remove the ailment. That was for my nerds out there, but, moving on, at the time when I sketched this concept, I was also looking into classic paintings and more specifically the painting “Massacre of the Innocents” by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens.
This piece is a violent depiction of the biblical massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem but what really drew me to it was the bold colors, the drama, and the terror that was depicted in the faces of the characters.
For my painting, I wanted to challenge myself to portray a sense of terror and fear in the faces of my characters while using color to set the scene. I wanted to give off a dark vibe even though I was using brighter colors. The concept at the end of the day is that of a bad dream. We’ve all had them, and I’m sure they can vary but the common theme is that when you’re having the bad dream you’re always wishing to wake up. The piece depicts 2 afraid characters in the foreground and one character yelling in the background as he is being swallowed by darkness with the eyes of my infamous night demon characters above him. I could definitely say so much more but I want you all to experience and interpret the work for yourselves. I want to hear what drew your eyes first and where your eyes are staying as you digest the image. DMs, emails, and social media comments are welcome.
When figuring out the name for this piece I can’t recall if I came up with the name “Bad Dreams Every Night” before or after having 3-5 bad dreams in a row during one of the weeks I was working on it. I may have been playing with the idea of using that name and then it made all the more sense to call it that. Life imitates art and art imitates life after all.
This painting along with the first painting in the Future Nostalgia series are for sale. These paintings mean a lot to me and it would make me very happy to see them live in the homes of a collector who enjoys my work.
Click the images below to be redirected to the shop:
Lastly, you can watch the full process video of this painting by clicking here!
Comic Book Updates, Secret Reveals, And New Stuff!
What’s good my internet people!
I hope you’re all doing well and being safe out there. I’d like to think that I’m back on track this week. I’ve got a few things to share with you all so let’s get into it.
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1. My comic book Onion City Chronicle is on track! It’s a story set in a cyber punk fantasy world of tomorrow that will deserve its own blog post once finished. I’ve finally finished thumbnailing the pages. It’s going to be about 75 pages and I’m super excited to start drawing each page. The fictional world of Onion City is a place heavily inspired by my hometown of Chicago, as well as the many places I’ve experienced in my life. Right now, I’m working on a map of Onion City, so here’s how it looks so far. Yes it looks like an onion, duh.. READ MORE!!
Just Casually Finishing Stuff During A Pandemic
It’s like week 3 or more of quarantine now. I’m honestly losing track as these days are blurring together. This week was a bit rough on the day job side of things and that seemed to trickle down into my creative stuff. I didn’t get to work on a couple projects from my creative schedule but that’s ok. We’ll just have to reset moving forward. I did finish some things that I'm happy about though. So let’s get into that… READ MORE!
Quarantine and Read... This Newsletter!
It is now week 2 or more of quarantine and chill. Depending on what state you live in it might actually be week 5 or 6. I hope you’re all staying safe, trying to enjoy time at home, and hopefully staying productive out there. I keep hearing people saying “use this time to create more”. And for me, I kind of have the same amount of time I had before, because my day job is still fully functioning as I work from home. With that said let’s talk about some things that happened this week.. READ MORE!
Staying Productive During Quarantine & Chill
Hope you all are avoiding the Rona out there. I recently took a trip to Chicago last weekend because flights were cheap and the hysteria seemed to double afterwards. For good reason I guess. The idea of social distancing and quarantine & chilling got me excited personally. I been quarantining for a well out here just being my best anti social self so alone time at home is my love language. Anywho, let’s get into some fun things I worked on this week.
I dropped some light sketchwork on the internet streets this week, mostly from my flight back to Miami. I’m especially excited about this Faye Valentine sketch because I used a photo of Rihanna for reference on how I wanted her to sit. This sketch ended up being the piece I would work on during my weekly live stream.. READ MORE!
One Fantastic Week!
Hope you’re having a great week. Hope you’re avoiding the Rona out there. Wish me luck on my travels to Chicago this weekend. I’m really not too concerned with Corona virus because one of the major tips for not catching it involves avoiding people/large crowds, which is what I do normally. I took that advice as “continue to be yourself Mahmud”. And I will especially avoid people in my time at the airport. Anyway, let’s get into some things that went down this week! READ MORE!
FREE Print Winner & More!
In February I was offering a free physical print raffle submission to anybody who subscribed to the newsletter, so with that said, the first thing I need to say before going any further is congratulations to David Lopez!
David, YOU are the WINNER of a free Rick and Morty print! I just need you to reply to this email or DM me on Instagram with your address so that I can ship the print off to you! I put my day job to use this week by creating an excel schedule to pick a random winner using a certain formula (what you know about that, hopefully nothing, don’t worry about it)… READ MORE!
Twas A Busy Week Friends!
This was a bit of a busier week for me. I tried some new things this week. As you know, I’ve mentioned before that I have been operating with a creative schedule for myself to keep me productive in my creative work for at least 1-2 hours a day. That schedule has been great but sticking to it got more challenging on the days when my day job was more demanding. So, I finally committed to this wild idea I had in the back of my mind for a while, which is... READ MORE!
"Just a Couple Internet Updates... And A Video!"
So this was another week of moving the needle but I won't bore you with details this time. With that said I made a couple important internet updates and made a video that might interest some of you.. READ MORE!
“Just Moving the Needle This Week”
Whatsup Internet Friends!
Not gonna lie I didn’t finish JACK this week guys. It’s the truth, but I did continue to move the needle on a few projects. Some weeks just go that way and I’ve learned to be just as happy with those weeks as I am with the weeks where I do finish stuff. Here are some things I moved the needle on.. READ MORE!
Creative Productivity is POPPIN Lately!
Happy end of the week! It’s a bit of a shocker to myself to even say this but, I’ve been really happy with my creative productivity lately. And sure, I can definitely be MORE productive on my creative projects, which is normally the feeling that overwhelms me, but so far this past month, I’m pretty happy with how I’m doing. READ MORE!
"January is Over Already? Seriously?"
I hope you had a great January! I’m not sure if you heard but your boy wants this newsletter to be a place where we stay connected and current going forward. I want it to be a place where I can hold myself accountable by sharing updates with supporters of my work and fellow creatives.
Here's 5 things I did this month that I think are cool enough to share with you guys! Check them out, reply to tell me your thoughts, and/or reply to tell me some cool things you did this month that you’re proud of! READ MORE!