A guest post by Bill Zeman of Tiny Art Director

My wife and I really wanted to see The Milkmaid when it came to the Metropolitan Museum last year but couldn't find a time to go without our kids. Vermeer's paintings have a wonderfully emotional effect on me – they are so still and quiet they come alive in the simple moments they depict. But that quietness that I love is just about the last thing any kid would be interested in, especially my kid, Rosie. Finally in the show's last week we decided to risk it and dragged the kids along, knowing full well what was likely to happen: after a long subway ride we'd arrive, run to the bathrooms, get sidetracked by the Temple of Dendur, then the armor collection, and finally end up in the cafeteria, exhausted and cranky, and never get to see the Vermeers at all.

I've tried a few times to make my kids look at paintings in museums. It usually goes even worse than when I try to get them to look at my own paintings. Rosie, in particular, has always had a very strong reaction to art; generally one of outrage.

You might know her from my blog Tiny Art Director. Since she was two, I have been painting pictures for her, consistently failing to please her with them, and blogging her funny and usually devastating critiques. The result, Tiny Art Director: A Toddler and Her Vision has now been published by Chronicle Books.

If you've read either the blog or the book you'll know that calm scenes of 17th century domestic life would not be to her taste.

Strangely though, she was excited to see the Vermeer show, so we set off eager to experience a moment of the Dutch Master's delicious tranquility, imagining our attentive and sophisticated daughters at our sides. When we entered the dimly lit gallery we understood why Rosie had been willing to come.

"Where's the stage? I thought this was a show. I wanted dancing!"

She was immediately and literally bored to tears, and it looked like, as predicted I was not going to be able to enjoy the art myself. Somehow, The Milkmaid wouldn't come alive for me with Rosie struggling like a cat in my arms.

But soon after she managed to free herself, she discovered Vermeer's Allegory of Faith – a large painting with a snake being crushed by a rock in the bottom corner – right at her eye-level. Awesome! A scary creature being killed! Rosie had found the drama she was looking for – the story in this painting unfolded for her and gave her a rare opportunity to inspect primal forces up close. She was entranced and stood millimeters from the canvas, studying the details for several minutes.

Allegory of Faith by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1670-72)

A guard came over to ask her to step back. "I'm wondering about the blood coming out of its mouth," she explained.

What makes kids so strangely fascinated with gruesome and violent scenes? Is it pure bloodlust? And if that's all they care about in art, why do we bother to pollute their angelic little minds with it? Isn't art supposed to civilize them?

Throughout the Tiny Art Director project, and in after-school art classes I teach, I've noticed that cute, sweet stuff like puppies, ponies, and princesses definitely has a place in kids' hearts and minds, but what really gets them interested is blood, violence, death, and of course, the awesome creatures that cause all that destruction – dinosaurs, dragons, and monsters.

In one class we made a trading card game. The children invented characters including "Evil Death," "Evil Rain," and "Evil Pumpkin" each with creatively deadly powers (Evil Pumpkin rolls around and flattens people, and Evil Death poisons people by licking them). At one point, worrying that the deck was getting a little too murderous I suggested they also do some nice characters. They dutifully produced "Refreshing Raindrops" and "Heart Power (Loves everything and everyone)", but I felt that I had stifled their creativity.

Perhaps they were exploring the dark side in their drawings as a way of safely trying out dangerous ideas and gaining confidence and understanding of their place in the world. By drawing dinosaurs, dragons, and ninjas, they could feel powerful and be in control! By creating evil and deadly characters they could explore and come to terms with their own fears of death and violence.

My own Tiny Art Director often requests gruesome or violent pictures from me, such as the head of a princess poking out of a dragon's mouth, and although I don't always indulge her on these, I think I understand and don't get too disturbed by her morbid intensity. Once she asked me to paint her a duck and a crocodile.

As usual, she was disappointed in the result, but unlike some previous efforts (and despite my obvious intent), it wasn't because it was too scary. Her response was "You have to do it with him killing that bird." The picture failed because it missed the crucial moment and left us with a kind of Schrödinger's Duck – forever trapped in a state between life and death, always swimming away but never escaping or being eaten. Unlike Allegory of Faith this painting wouldn't come alive for her and couldn't teach her anything about life and death or her place in the world.

That day in the museum, after I finally got my moment of peace with The Milkmaid, I watched my daughter stare at the dying snake and tried to answer her questions. Eventually she became aware of the woman in the painting with her hand on her heart.

"What's that girl doing? Is she scared?"

I realized then that she was feeling brave and powerful for looking so closely at this scene, and didn't want to identify with a frightened character. Like with the kids in the after-school class art was lending Rosie its power. It reminded me of her comments about a collaboration that we had done previously featuring a T-Rex trying to eat a girl.

"I want her to be brave. She's not scared of one thing cause that's me and I'm not scared."

NEATOBAMBINO EXCLUSIVE: Want to get something really neat for Father's Day? Bill Zeman has kindly agreed to do a really neat NeatoBambino-exclusive contest, with the Grand Prize of an original sketch for your Father's Day gift and 4 signed copy of the Tiny Art Director book.

To enter leave a comment submitting a picture you'd like Bill to paint with some connection to the theme of fatherhood

One winner chosen by Bill will win the Grand Prize, and four others will win signed copy of the Tiny Art Director book, made out to your father's day gift recipients. Good luck!

Hello, Neatoramanauts! Thank you for participating in the Tiny Art Director contest on NeatoBambino earlier this week!

Congratulations to Wendy, CheeseThief, TheRhube and nepomuk who got signed copies of Bill Zeman's book Tiny Art Director.

The Grand Prize of a custom drawing went to Maceo24 who requested "A daddy and baby dragon picking their teeth with a devoured knight's sword. Armor can be laying on the ground and the baby dragon can be playing dress-up with the devoured princess' clothes."

Here's Bill rendition of the drawing:

Don't forget to visit Tiny Art Director - Thanks Bill!

I'm Gilbert Ford and I work inside of a converted old studio inside of a pencil factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with many other illustrators. I do editorial illustration, advertisements, children’s books, and product illustration. I have recently authored and illustrated a picture book called FLYING LESSONS, published by Disney.

My work is influenced by elements from the classic era illustration and animation, but told with a modern twist. My pictures are either colorful and saturated, or in a minimal color palette based on screen printing. My personal work, whether created through writing a story, creating a screen print, or doing variations on a singular theme, tries to press the boundaries of how we commonly perceive things- both visually and verbally- through a cartoon world of bizarre comparisons, abstract analogies, and clever puns.

This was done as my response to an art show about the great out doors. Rather than do a pretty picture about nature, I wanted to comment on hunters who enjoy the great outdoors and the violence hidden beneath the surface. I love creating visual puns and I thought it would be fun to turn the actual hunt into the actual outcome-a dead deer.

By Patrick Palmer: I am a traditionally trained artist – I try to capture the beauty of the female form with a minimum of marks - you can recognise someone from 100 yards even though you cannot see any detailed features. Capturing this essence is what I am constantly trying to achieve.

I have a diploma from Heatherley's School of Art in Chelsea and another at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin. I have also been given extensive personal tuition from a close friend of Francis Bacon and a senior lecturer at The Royal Academy.

I am now lucky to exhibit in 4 galleries in the UK and various art shows.

Anna Friel: I know Anna and really wanted to capture her. I was playing around with various colour washes as a background to standard charcoal drawings and I started this drawing on a scrap of paper as an experiment. This was a bit of a struggle but I was happy in the end. It sold at the Affordable Art Fair. The yellow-ochre colour made it.

My name is Matt Rebholz and I am an artist and a professor of printmaking and drawing based in Austin, Texas. My recent work has to do with the intersections of science fiction, science fact and the spectrum of utopianism/dystopianism that those intersections represent. My work is inspired by comics, art historical figures such as Albrect Dürer, and technical illustration.

Most of these pieces are etchings, a 500 year old printmaking process. It involves hand drawing the images onto a copper plate, then submerging the plate in an acid that chemically etches the linework into the metal. Ink is then driven into the lines and it is transferred to paper by passing it under the steel roller of an etching press. I produce my prints in limited editions (typically between 5 and 20 impressions), and while very similar, each impression is unique. For more on how prints are made, please check out this excellent interactive cartoon produced by the Museum of Modern Art:

This piece explores the concept of the Arcology, a hybridization of the words architecture and ecology that refers to a self-contained, self-sufficient living structure. In this etching, rival arcologies constructed from various spacecraft components are densely packed together in a vertical environment reminiscent of an urban landscape. It is unclear to me whether they are cooperating or squaring off against each other.

By Michael Renouf: I’m a Practitioner of Cartoonism with a Licence to Cross Wires, mostly working in educational publishing in London, UK. I’ve been freelance for a long time, with periodic interruptions for child-minding, logo-designing and animating maps for local government presentations. In danger of becoming a Theoretical Cartoonist, instead of a practitioner, I started a drawing-a-day-for-a-year blog in 2007 called Non-Stick Plans. The year is long ago up but I’m still posting the odd drawing - some of them very odd. Below is a selection of images, mostly from that very blog.

Vermicellist - My work could be described as ‘warm’ rather than ‘cool’, so I’m waiting for a time when warm is the new cool. My influences include Pericle Luigi Giovannetti, William Heath Robinson and Gerard Hoffnung; all ‘warm’ cartoonists. My main currency is puns, either visual or verbal (like this drawing), occasionally both.

By Joe Holliday: As the family story goes, I got my last name because my dad robbed a bank and was trying to elude the authorities. When I scattered his ashes at Ayers Rock I came to the conclusion that there are crossovers of past, present, future and all points of space. My work is an attempt to show this without being a hippy about it. This is why I use found objects and images, layered images, randomization, and dead, living and non-living materials.

I currently work for the Rogue Artists Ensemble and will be attending Cal Arts in fall. My goal is simply to destroy the universe.

The Machinery of Behavior
The images used in this are taken from alchemical prints, gun manuals, and prairie dog diagrams. This is an image of behavioral sciences and their relation to subconscious expression.

By Alex Eben Meyer: hi, i am an illustrator living and working in sunny greenpoint brooklyn, an area of nyc which is fast turning into a weed garden of illustrators (hell, my studio is in an old pencil factory (yeah i know, illustrator, pencil factory, it's a bit obvious, but the space and the people are great). in my work, i strive for accessibility, humor and fun. i want viewers to smile and enjoy, and then look for the greater details, thinking and occasional snark. i'm not really one for grandiose artist statements, i'd rather have you look, and enjoy.

hp artist series wallpapers: hp approached me to be involved in their artist series of backgrounds for the 2010 hp laptop series. i have a great fondness for sketchbooks and drawing in coffee shops (see below) and they were looking for that feeling of experimentation and energy for these backgrounds.

By Marianne Williams: I'm a photographer living in Los Angeles, CA. I work shooting film stills and various happenings, meanwhile hacking an ongoing series of portraits of LA music and artist friends called LA Daze. Candy colored images combine elements of the subject's work and personality with pop culture, historical and religious iconography, exposed artifice, and movie references. Romak has helped a lot with brilliant make up skills and I get a lot of my props from Dapper Cadaver, it's always a collaboration. I print an annual magazine style portfolio of the project and hope to release it as an art book at some point.

1. Cindergarden dons half porcelain doll face and half death mask inspired by traditional Mexican Dios de los Muertes dolls. A skeleton arm encircles her neck.

By Ugo Nonis: Born and raised in Paris, I moved to the United States in 2000, I lived in NYC then recently moved to LA. My process is very straight forward, I grab a canvas, some markers and start. Most of the time I think about people I know or situations I've encountered and represent them in a way only I can recognize. While painting I follow my hand and let it guide me, after a while I look at the work and I see how to move forward making shapes I love. I have rules that I follow and sometimes break. I like to try to paint on different surfaces as each surface feels different, I am always looking for the smoothest one. I really enjoy the feeling of my hand sliding and creating lines.

My main inspiration is the people in my life. Every time I start a painting I think about someone I know and the way we are related. I paint my ideas and feelings about that person then after a while I just let my mind wander and let other outside elements influence me. I also paint my wishes and use that time to daydream. As far as visual inspiration I can't really tell you because I really don't know where my art comes from, I never went to art school or thought about what type of art I wanted to do. My roomate in NYC (Brian Sensebe) is a super talented painter, he had an empty canvas, I grabbed it and theses lines came out of nowhere. I am sure a million visual things inspire me but I am not conscious about it.

110th
This is oil paint markers on canvas, it's the first time I used an accent of color. The meaning of this painting is mine to keep but as with all my work I love to let people find their own and let their imagination travel in the painting.

My name is Jaime Margary, also known as Kalapusa. I am known mostly as a sculptor and an illustrator, but I enjoy learning and practicing other mediums and doing as well as I can to master them and find what visions they may bring that cannot be found in any other. My artistic urge is fueled by an intense curiosity to see the end result of an idea brought to life. The projects I pick usually have a technical challenge I have not overcome before, to reap techniques that have a potential for projects I previously thought out of my league. I want to grow as an artist, expressing different styles reflecting different sides of myself and the way I see the world.

Piranha Plant and Vincent
My Piranha Plant sculpture with my dog, Vincent, standing guard. In creating it, I based my design on this question: Had it been based on a real living plant, what would it look like? I used clay, a strengthened wire skeleton and a special mix of acrylics to get the right appearance of flesh (particularly the inside of the mouth). During its creation, I documented the process for a video in which you can see the individual pieces being sculpted and painted before being put together.

By Christy Brooker: I started tattooing in 1999 fresh out of High School. I can't remember a time when I didn't draw. Some of my first memories are of my sister and I doodling in church. After twelve years of working in some of the best tattoo shops in Missoula, Montana and Seattle, Washington I decided it was time for me to open my own studio and do it my way.

In 2009 I opened Damask Tattoo llc. I've created a spa style environment with antique furniture, light colors and brightly lit private tattoo rooms. Damask is in a discrete office building on top of Queen Anne hill in Seattle, alongside a naturopath, acupuncturists and massage therapists. I've also become very involved in the tattoo community in Washington. As director of the Women's Tattoo Forum I plan events and host a yearly art show that features all women tattoo artist from around the country. I'm also Treasurer of the Washington Association of Body Artists and serve on the advisory board for the Washington State Department of Licensing's Body Art Department helping to write rules and bring new legislation to improve the standards in my field.

In addition to tattooing I paint in oils and acrylics and am taking classes to improve my skills in these mediums. I love learning new techniques, tricks and tools in all of my art forms and am constantly looking for more knowledge that I can implement in them. Stop by the website, take a look and and drop us a line!

1. Al Capone portrait - There's always an attraction to the bad boys for us. This client has a whole sleeve based on the romanticized 1920's gangster and we couldn't do it right without All Capone.

Hi, I'm Peter Bowen, an illustrator/graphic designer based in the UK. Between 2005 and April of this year I worked as a graphic designer at 55DSL, a sister brand to Diesel. I'm currently working freelance from my secret base in London.

Sometimes with a slightly dark edge, but always with a sense of humour, I work in a wide variety of styles and techniques, from airbrushed digital paintings to typography, hand-drawn characters, and anything in between.

It's Popeye quietly dozing in the afternoon sun. I figure he's pretty old by now, and just needs to take it easy every now and again. It troubles me you don't see him very much any more, so this is what I think he's up to.

Hi, I’m Stephen McCranie and I’m a cartoonist. It’s nice to meet you all on the internets here! My goal is to draw comics that make people happy.

My latest attempt to make people happy is a calvin-and-hobbes-esque comic strip called Mal and Chad that updates Monday thru Friday at MalandChad.com. Here’s the main cast of characters:

I’ve been cartooning since I was 5 years old. I didn’t know how to write at the time, so I scribbled out comics on printer paper and had my mom fill in the speech bubbles for me. Even though I couldn’t read my own comics, for some reason I just had to draw them! I guess I caught the comics bug early, and I haven’t been the same since.

I currently chronicle my obsession with comics as well as general life happenings in a journal comic. I’ve also got a bunch of extra comics and art work on my gallery website, Doodle Alley. My current comic strip, Mal and Chad, is featured on the digital syndication site GoComics, along with strips like Foxtrot, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes. I’m also currently working to complete a children’s graphic novel based off the Mal and Chad comic strip, which will hopefully be printed in the summer of 2011 by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin.

By Oded Ezer: I’m a typographer, and my profession is typography. Modern typography actually includes technologic opportunities like 3 Dimensions, work with materials, motion graphics, name it, whatever. Everything is typography. There are some people who insist on defining what I do, labelling it under such titles as art or lettering, installation or science. No matter what label it is, it is their issue not mine. I am a typographer in the 21st century and this is how it looks.

I get my inspiration from everything. Literally from everything. Inspiration, in my opinion, is to be capable enough to absorb the total culture that surrounds us, like movies, architecture, history, modern philosophy, even your mother’s cake. You can proceed to talk about the amazing layers there are in that cake, and say that it’s soft and sweet. How can you say this in type? What taste a letter has? What I’m trying to say is that there are people who restrict their inspiration by diving into the shallow end of things, instead of experiencing everything and finding inspiration from amidst all of that. I would really recommend to fight those limits and absorb everything, even a small talk between two people on the street, or the small statuettes in Oxford that cover the exterior of buildings, it’s amazing, like a mystical experience. A kind of Harry Potter thing, and it’s real, so why not to get inspiration from that? The world is full of materials that you can work with.

(Photo courtesy Lazo Kakou)

Typo-mohawk
A humble homage to the British '70-'80s Punk movement: the Typo-mohawk, worn during my talk at the London College of Communication.

By Miles Kinghorn: While some would say my inability to settle on a single medium would be evidence of larger commitment issues, I prefer to think of it as "I just like a lot of different things." Having grown up drawing, and then transitioning to film and photography as I went on to college, I've always been interested in different styles and techniques; every medium provides its own advantages and drawbacks, and it's fun to play in those sandboxes.

After being raised in Texas and subsequently attending college there, I moved out to Los Angeles in 2002. I bounced around the design and music video worlds for awhile, working on other peoples' projects while still carving out time to develop my own work. Eventually, I landed at a motion graphics shop that lets me indulge my various artistic interests; depending on the project, I might be shooting stills, building models, or doing good old-fashioned computer animation. My professional work has informed and accentuated my personal projects, and I can look back through the years and still be instantly reminded of what I was both thinking of and working on at the time I created each piece. Whether it be the clean, modern lines of poster design or the more whimsical series of portraits of friends and family, it's important to me that I can trace my influences and personality through my different undertakings. The result is a body of work that is both fragmented and unified, different yet alike; in short, it's as varied as I am.

"Banked" & "Flat" - Two prints I made for Eat Your Art Out III, a benefit art auction for the Angel City Derby Girls. Both pieces were printed at 12" x 12" and mounted in plastic sleeves to resemble vintage album covers. The repeating circular patterns are evocative of the roller derby track as well as the kinetic motions of the Derby Girls, while the distressed look of the covers harkens back to an earlier time when Derby Girls roamed the earth in packs, wild and free.