7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #226: Featuring
Up-and-Coming Illustrator, Monica Ramos
July 3rd, 2011 by jules
It’s the first Sunday of the month, which means I shine the spotlight on an Illustrator of the Future (Future Future Future … That’s me doing a dramatic echo.)
And boy howdy am I happy to bring you the work of Monica Ramos, an illustration student at Parsons The New School for Design, who was born and raised in the Philippines. (I straight up dedicate this post to Tarie.) Below is the first of two illustrations from a children’s book Monica created, called Forest Girl. “She’s wild and brave and loves eating berries,” Monica says. “A little deer is her best friend.”
“I was born and raised in the magical isles of the Philippines,” Monica told me. “My parents gave me a love for outdoors and fed me a steady diet of picture books, especially Dr. Suess, Maurice Sendak, and Shel Silverstein. Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is still one of my favorite books and may have started my obsession with food.
I just want to make beautiful, funny things.
The next couple {images} are are from a story called Lou. He’s a boy who loves food more than anything and imagines seeing food everywhere.”
Mmm. More food.
This is Monica’s bashful Bigfoot. He’s just silly, she says.
Here are several more images I chose from Monica’s site, as she gave me permission to go pull some of my favorites. (I see these, and I envision Monica doing YA covers one day, in particular, don’t you?) There’s a lot more art over there, if you’re so inclined to go look. And here is the link to her Etsy store.
Thanks to Monica for visiting, and best of luck to her in her career.
Note for any new readers: 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you.
I’m gonna skip kicks this week and instead post a poem by Marge Piercy. (And hope I don’t get sent to poetry copyright jail … There’s a good joke to be made here about what poetry prison may be like, but it’s too late as I type this for me to even pretend to be quick-witted — not that I ever actually am successfully quick-witted at 7-Imp, but now I ramble.)
You’d think I would have posted this at the beginning of June, but I routinely do things in life backwards. So, now I post it as a goodbye to June.
“More Than Enough”
by Marge Piercy (I believe this comes from Colors Passing Through Us)
The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushlynew, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.
Also, as I’ve been working this weekend on my computer (when not outside being devoured by mosquitoes), I’ve been going through all of the many songs at this wonderful link. (John, it’s just even more for us to keep up with, but it’s so worth it.) So, I share that with fellow music-lovers.
What are YOUR kicks this week?
Monica! I’m from the Philippines, too! =D I looove your foodie illustrations.
Jules and all other American kickers, I hope you have a fun fun fun July Fourth!
(Kicks) I am grateful for:
1. quality time with my brothers
2. gifts from my daddy
3. home cooked meals from my mommy
4. reading with my cousins
5. making time to read for pleasure even when really swamped with work
6. the joys and rewards of teaching (not monetary of course, hahaha)
7. eagles
Great illustrations! I hope you’ll illustrate (a thousand) locally-published children’s books soon!
WOW! I love this work. If she is interested in an agent, I’m very interested in her! Cheers! and Thank you for the introduction — she is very talented.
Happy 4th, Jules and 7-Imp crew!
My kicks:
1. Visiting friends in Boston
2. Watching Wimbledon (on TV, alas)
3. Kayaking on a Cape Cod pond
4. Teaching my daughter to dog paddle
5. Learning patience
6. Appreciating patience
7. And an experiment with six-beat couplets:
Releasing Butterflies
By Steven Withrow
Something seamy and unseemly in the name
they carry, painted ladies, pins a secret shame
in fore- and hindwing, but its sting recedes in flight,
for they are dazzlers as they grab the air, these brightly
spotted Cynthias of a genus called Vanessa:
you laugh to draw the last, and dub her Iridessa.
©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
What fun illustrations! I can’t wait to see more of Monica’s work.
These are my first kicks so here goes:
1. Nantucket
2. Old friends that remain good friends
3. The Life of Pi
4. Sunny, summer weather
5. Grilled vegetables
6. Thunderstorms
7. Smily pictures of my girls
Tarie, you had a family-filled week, yes? But I think you always do, one thing about you that rocks. And rawks.
Jerson and Liza, thanks for visiting and savoring the art with us all. Liza, yes: Isn’t she great?
Steven, patience and teaching daughters to swim are things I know a lot about this week too. Man, do I like that poem.
Hi again Stacey, whose job I admire so. We zoomed past one another in cyberspace.
I liked the The Life of Pi, and now I wanna re-read it. I like thunderstorms, too, and my seven-year-old has come by a love of rain and storms honestly, I think. Enjoy the sun!
I love Forest Girl, but also Lou and that porridge. Thanks for displaying the loveliness and the poem, Jules, which didn’t feel backwards to me here in Mass. It’s been so wet and gray that roses and blackberries are just now blooming, so good timing.
Tarie, yay for reading, teaching, good food, and eagles. Steven, both Boston and the Cape is great good fortune. And I loved the butterfly couplets, playing with the names.
Lots of happiness here already, and it was a week of kicks.
1. Meeting wonderful Jama
2. at the Eric Carle Museum (Jules, we did our best to channel you)
3. Musing on Jama today.
4. My daughter took her holiday break a weekend early, and spent two days here
5. then our three person family drove to Maine for two days.
6. Ocean, fried clams, ice cream, hotel pool
7. And every July I’m loving the orange day lilies along the back roads.
Monica has a future. How cool that Liza is interested in representing her.
Jules, the poem is lovely.
Tarie, when I see eagles on my way home it’s always a kick. Steven I loved the butterfly poem and Jeanine I would love to meet Jama.
This is the 2nd of three Sundays away from home.
Last Sunday I was in NJ, this Sunday in CA, and next week, ID. It’s our annual road trip to see friends and family. It’s 7 kicks all wrapped in one plus meeting my great nephew Oliver who turned 1 on Friday. Cutie!
Have a great week.
Happy weekend to all of the Imps! This is a fly-by posting. 🙂
1) Remember the play audition, which led to a callback last week? I was offered the role! Rehearsals start later this month.
2) Received updated scripts and filming schedule for the webseries
3) Visits
4) White butterflies
5) I got an audition for a film, and I couldn’t make it in person, so I submitted a video audition – and I got a callback! That will be later this week.
6) Volunteers
7) Time
Hello, Kickers!
One of the things I love about these up-and-coming illustrator features, Jules, is seeing how they haven’t quite settled down yet. Most of them have not one but two or three or six different grooves going on at a time. In any one of them you can see the germ — the footprints — of a mature artist. It’s gonna be fun to see how Monica Ramos (as well as the others) eventually comes to settle down — how she decides “which Monica” to be, over time.
And oooh, the Marge Piercy poem… I may have to figure out a way to shoehorn it into a post at my place. (Although, true, such shoehorning isn’t difficult when one posts on no particular subject. :))
As I mentioned on your FB post about the best-albums list, Jules, I do know of Paste and their awesome e-newsletters… and their potential for becoming rabbit-holes down one which tumbles at one’s peril. Sometimes I delete them unread simply because I know I will not be able to resist clicking, and clicking, and clicking, and holy mother of the gods is it the weekend already?!?
Some quick kicks:
1. Birdcall heard during the morning’s walk with The Pooch: “Knock-knock!” (I could barely withhold response.)
2. The Missus’s office held a shrimp boil/swimming party/games-and-beverages *cough* party yesterday. It’s an annual event, but the first time we could go. AWESOME. (Even if we were among the oldest there — most of the young crusading-liberal lawyers who work in her non-profit are in their 20s and 30s.)
3. This video, which as I mentioned when I FBed it is like Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds…”) for nowadays. Only with a country twang. And a sense of humor. And a couple surprise guests at the end. (Lyrics here.)
4. Feeling a bit like Sisyphus, 6 inches from the top.
5. Three-day holiday weekends. FORCING them (“the first Monday after the third Tuesday of the month,” or whatever) always feels weird to me. But the ones tied to a real date, which just happen to fall on a Friday or Monday: a very pleasant gift from the gods of astronomical and historical accident.
6. This Alice illustration (I don’t know who the artist is, but the image kicks!).
7. Pad Thai. Was going to include the Wikipedia link, but that’d probably dump into your sp*m queueueue, Jules. And anyhow, you who know what I’m talking about know what I’m talking about, right?!?
Have a great week, all!
I like the deer spitting water up like a fountain—an unusual depiction. Best of luck to you, Monica.
jules—I’m all for doing things in life backwards. Thanks for sharing new artists and late poetry. ha.
Lotsa good kicks: eagles, kayaking, thunderstorms, goings on at the Carle Museum, auditions landed/pending, knock-knock birdcalls. : – )
Mine. Let me share:
1. trailer for street-animator BLU’s compilation video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/artshdotit
Seems like a DVD every animation or teen art class should have.
I marvel at how much time each project must take. (!) I am a fan.
2. for anyone not familiar with BLU, here’s last year’s BIG BANG
http://vimeo.com/13085676 (I think JES shared it previously.)
3. listening to son’s Sunday-morning piano lesson while I type.
4. freshly-washed car, sparkling in the sun.
5. Jeanine Atkin’s poem “Not Today” from Borrowed Names.
It’s posted in it’s entirety on jama’s website: — just scroll down a bit) http://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/410782.html
Taped under my office computer; really helps keep me focused.
6. Personal-photo credit cards/checks. One has to look at them so often, it’s nice to see scenes that mean something and are your own.
7. Heard terrible feline yowling last night—ran out in backyard with my flashlight and kitchen broom ready to save my cat, Zeek, from a marauding raccoon, possum or coyote. Turned out to be an even squabble: house cat vs. squirrel. And man was that squirrel furious! Cussing up a storm, hurling squirrel epitaphs at Zeek. Cracked me up.
Happy 4th of July my fellow Americans. Happy week internat’l crowd.
P.S. correction: make that “squirrel epithets”. (I hate it when auto-spell check subs in words I don’t notice.) Though “squirrel epitaphs” made me laugh: “R.I.P. Nutty, a good gatherer and loyal friend.”
Jeannine, thanks for channeling me! So glad you got to meet not only Jama, but also to see and spend so much time with your daughter.
Jone, yay for Oliver, and enjoy your travels! Thanks for taking the time to stop by here.
Little Willow, CONGRATS on the role! Good luck with the webseries, and break a leg on the call back this week.
John, I thought for a second at the end of that video that James Carville and his wife might make out too, like everyone in the video, and I was concerned by this notion. Hee. Love that Alice image.
Denise, I think someone who works in a theater showing The Tree of Life should take that Big Bang film and insert it into The Tree of Life’s genesis-of-life montage (complete with existential whispering). That would be a trip. And, yes, that’s FASCINATING. Must get that DVD (from link #1). Thanks for the heads-up.
And your squirrel epitaph made me laugh.
Oh and John, YES, you’re so right about the “footprints” you spoke of. So true. I noticed that about Monica’s work and wanted to be sure to show both styles. (She really only emailed me the children’s book illustrations, but I also went and chose—with her permission—the ones I think are so sort of YA-cover-esque.)
jules — brilliant idea (Big Bang/Tree of Life). Maybe Big Bang could be the preview short (like Disney-Pixar always has with their films.) Why not make an esoteric evening all the more so? ha!
Hello! Thanks for all your kind comments!
Loved the poem too, Jules. It compliments the great summer days we’ve been having.
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