Tina Imel's oil paintings are an amalgamation of classical portraiture, punch cartoons and medical texts. Her portraits border on the surreal. She often incorporates pieces of someone else's past into her own environment.

Her fondness of possessions that have outlived their owners and her traditional style of painting give her introspective and very personal work a connection to history. Tina is an award winning artist whose work has been shown in galleries across the United States and Europe. Her paintings will be published in two upcoming books, including a collection of contemporary female surrealists.

Sometimes when you take a walk through Myspace, you trip over dead branches and step into holes dug out of the ground by some wild critter, but every once in a while you stumble upon something that catches your eye that makes falling flat on your face worthwhile.  That something this time is Leeble Skeet.

Glubdub:
I like your designs....what do you do with them?

Leeble Skeet:
fanks man. I'm just using Illustrator for now. I'm about to get into combining Photoshop in the process so I can take it to the next level.  For right now it's just pen tool, live paint, gradients, and the occasional layer of photo realism.

GD:
Thats cool man. Are you able to envision a design and then recreate it, or are you creating on the fly? Have you gotten any work with your designs?

LS:
It's about 50/50.  A lot of the time I plan the overall idea, but there's always a lot of random shit that happens along the way. I only got back into it about 3 weeks ago, so I haven't had much time to promote.  The only payment I've received so far is a grip of VIP passes for a sts9 design.  Guess that doesn't count huh?   I'm still finding my niche market. I have a feeling it might do well eventually, because alot of people seem to relate to it.

GD:
What inspires the designs that come from your head?



LS:
I'm about to give some pretty useless answers, but I've been a space cadet my whole life.  I spend a lot of time staring at thangs and stuff.  When my gears are turning, i see weird shapes/designs inside a lot of those thangs/stuff.  I like designing from the ground up, but i also like to change it up sometimes.  For instance, recently i wanted to create a toxic cloud pouring from the skull of a character.  I brought in a photograph i took of some smoke, then stared into it until the design took form.  At that point i just go in on a new layer and create my own outlines.  Well that's all i got on that subject.  it's all about finding new ways to project your creative flow, and keeping your head right so you can do that consistently.

GD:
What were you doing before you got into the digital design to scratch that creative itch?

LS:
I've always bounced between audio and visual expression.  I wanted to be a cartoonist as a kid, but after a couple years of art classes I was told I couldn't because of being color-blind.  I stopped doing art for the next 15 years and became obsessed with techy EDM.  I just sat in a studio learning how to produce dnb/dubstep, played some shows, and turned down every chance I got to be successful at it, because of my stubborn idealism.  Digital art worked its way back into the picture when I went to school. I did a couple short animations as I learned my way around Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects.  I actually fell off again these past couple years, but as of a few weeks back have been driven by something.


GD:
That was anything but useless. I love hearing how different one creative process is different from the next, how each creative person comes from a completley different background from the next, and how many different places a creative flow can come from.
When you say you're colorblind, do you mean you can't see color at all or do you have trouble distinguishing between colors??  It fascinates me that you can create such cool work and be colorblind.



LS:
Yeah, Deuteronomy is what it's called I think. I can see alot of colors, but alot of the time I'm way off.  Recently we finished a piece and Rhett says "I really like that gold you threw in there."  My reply was "wow there's gold in there???"   People are constantly telling me things about my use of color that I didn't know. I think Illustrator's inclusion of color guides is what made it possible for me to get back into art.

Thanks so much for the words of support. I've been creating my whole life, and have always been vastly misunderstood.  These past couple weeks have been the first time people have actually been able to relate to the stuff that comes out of my head. it feels very fulfilling and makes me wonder if my life will take on a new direction.

Aaron Tompkins makes teddy bears that swear at you.  Teddy Bears stuffed with crude vulgarities, angry aggression and perversity.  Bears that will flip you off, and ones that might turn you on a little, even if you wont admit it.  Teddy Bears so cute, you want to rip off their heads, or bend them over and have your way with them.

There’s Bastard Bear, Junky Bear and Psycho Teddy, who curse at you and goad you into alternating bouts of laughter and destruction.  There’s Horny Bear, who begs to have her titties licked and the Orgazm Otter who cums and shutters inside its fluffy fur, with the sweet ‘vocals’ of Daisy Grace lending to the experience.  Everything you could want from a cuddly teddy bear, Aaron Tompkins will gladly give you.

I stumbled upon Aaron’s artwork on the walls of 313 Gallery, the art gallery that was part of CBGB, may it rest in peace.  Aaron’s alter ego Vinnie Wartlip’s concocted paintings of twisted cartoon characters on old discarded windows.  The figures wound their way around the frames of the pane, not unlike your intestines twist through your body.

I was just beginning to scratch my collecting itch, I’m a hunter and gatherer, and lowbrow art was an easy prey.  I can't seem to get enough of those inanimate objects of eye candy that hang on my walls like trophies.

Aaron was the first artist I collected.  I must have 10 or 15 of his pieces, each one great in its own way.  But my favorite piece, the one that shines above all the rest, was the first piece that I bought.  That piece wound up crashing to the floor, nearly killing the cat, when the hook in the wall gave out.  I found it scattered about the kitchen floor in pieces small and large.  That piece stayed with me for a long time, because of its disturbing beauty and because a small sliver of it had found its way into the bottom of my foot.  I spent the next few months buying up his stuff because it truly moved me, and because I hoped the more I bought, the closer I’d be to recapturing the way I felt about the one that slipped away.

Glubdub : The first message exchange we had was an email I sent you telling you a painting of yours that I had bought crashed to the ground. I sent you a picture of it cracked open and sprawled out on the floor in a final tribute. What did you think when you got that email?

Aaron Tompkins: I thought “oh well!!” I have broken TONS of paintings, it almost becomes part of the art, I actually had one that was multiple layers of glass that fell off the wall at CBGB’s gallery!
It was a KISS orgy painting…now destroyed!

GD: You were very cool about offering me another piece to replace it, in exchange for a swearbear song. Did you think I was trying to pull a fast one on you? In the end it was kind of cool we got to swap art for music.
AT: Art for music is great! I would give away all my art to better the SwearBear army!

GD: How did you get into art? Were you one of those kids that painted or drew all the time, or did your creativity take a different form in the beginning?
AT: My mom was an art teacher so it is just something I’ve done forever.

GD: How did the idea of painting on window panes come about?
AT: Well, I didn’t have money for canvas, and I saw a pile of old “storm windows” in the basement of a building I was living in Northampton Mass. So I took about a dozen windows from there and painted for a week straight; I think about 8 good paintings all under the name “Vinnie Wartlip”.  The series was called “Monster Wedding” I was living with the now famous “Attaboy!” at the time! Was a blast!

GD: Did the misadventure I had with your first piece happen often?
AT: Always. I enjoy when they broke so they are gone! I was actually thinking of doing a retrospective show where we hang all the paintings and then shoot them all , having broken glass everywhere, Film a video of it to finalize that chapter in my life!

GD: I would think it would be hard to move your work from show to show without a few casualties.
AT: Sure, it is a hell ride! I was just asked to ship a “six panel” window panel to LA for an art show in November. I m a bit scard, cause’ we are gonna have to build a custom shipping box…

GD: Which came first, the art or the toy design?
AT: Art has been since birth. I got into the toy thing from collecting vintage toys in high school, When I was 16, before the internet or eBay, before toy collecting was cool, then I went to college and got a BFA in toy design in NYC!

GD: What kind of toys have you designed?
AT: I have designed and invented in every area of toy design, From electronic, to novely, to girls toys to games. I ran a design firm where we did “service” work for tons of companies in design, packaging, inventing, the works!

GD: What are some of your favorite pieces?
AT: Mostly now a days we are making only SwearBears toys and stuff! I invented over 250 toys from 1996-2000, that was my sole job as well as “Intelectual property Invention”. I had a toy specific agent at the time,Most of the good ideas in Mass market toys are hard to get to market, it is a Big Biz. game with big players!