Giant ocean waves appear to crest behind a trio of pooches – Snickers, Dottie and Fella – as they ride atop a float making its way down Orange Avenue in Coronado’s Independence Day parade.
The image is one of many in author-illustrator Michael Phillips Ives’ children’s book, “Cool Coronado Tails.”
“I wanted to go in a new direction,” said Ives about his book, describing it as a love letter to Coronado. “These dogs I’ve been painting for over 30 years in different formats.”
The book depicts a group of canine friends as they experience the parade and other annual city events. A version of these dogs are in another of Ives’ collections about his childhood.
Ives, 78, is a lifelong artist who for decades has made art with watercolor, acrylic and wood.
“I feel really fortunate to be able to have the spark of creating every day,” said Ives. “Coronado has stuff around every corner.”
Ives first made digital art on the iPhone inspired by a cityscape front cover in The New Yorker. He eventually moved to making digital art from his iPad Pro as soon as it launched, a studio he takes everywhere.
Ives said he wrote the chapter stories in “Cool Coronado Tails.” He turned to ChatGPT for help with illustrations and the publishing process. On his computer, Ives asks the bot to generate an image with a prompt. From there he refines the image using Photoshop, later transferring it to his iPad where he spends hundreds of hours on the Procreate app adding layers to enhance what will become a final illustration.
“My credo when I was writing these was, ‘I don’t want to write them just for kids from 2 to 8, I want adults to really enjoy it too,’” said Ives.
Collections
Ives said he attended trade school for architectural drafting and holds an associate’s degree in architecture.
His mechanical drawing background led him to the Peace Corps, teaching architecture in West Africa, and office jobs, including a position in Raytheon’s graphics department before he took “a leap of faith” and moved to Santa Fe where he pursued art.
“I gave them four hour’s notice and left,” said Ives. “I had moved to Santa Fe and no one knew me and I had to prove myself all over again.”
Since then, Ives has dedicated his life to making art influenced by the places he has lived.
Ives said he’s been influenced by impressionists and outsider folk artists to paint colors almost at war with each other.
He aims to create art that is “whimsical or so different that no one has ever thought about before” through a style he describes as “loosey-goosey.”
“I want people to get a kick out of it and to share it,” said Ives, who grew up in Perrysburg, Ohio. “And that’s kind of the feedback I get, especially my hometown series.”
His online website features a collection with 28 designs of important childhood memories, including his most popular piece, “Sledding Maple Street Hill, 1954,” the first in a series of acrylic paintings and digital illustrations.
Ives has a total of seven collections online, including a group of 21 pieces on Coronado celebrations that he began sketching in 2019 around the time he moved to town.
“The first one was the Fourth of July parade. And the second one was Halloween on Orange Avenue,” said Ives. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Wow, what a town. They know how to do stuff here.’ And so the series just kept going.”
Last October, Ives launched a new phase in his career.
“A good friend here in town asked me on several occasions, why wasn’t I writing and illustrating children’s books with my styles,” he said about what led him to publishing.
Digital art
For the past half year, Ives worked on the storyline and illustrations of protagonists inspired by a trip to Bali with his wife approximately 30 years ago.
“The dogs would come into the rice fields every day and they would just raise hell,” said Ives.
Ives said those memories stuck with him, and he brought the images to Coronado in his children’s book collection.
“I named them after important things in my life,” said Ives. “Dottie’s got dots. …She’s the smart one. She keeps the others in order. Fella’s kind of goofy. And Snickers just kind of follows him around like a little puppy dog.”
In his previous collection on Coronado, Ives said every illustration he sketched from start to finish.
In his book’s illustrations, Ives integrates AI for the start of the artistic process, beginning with a generated image he then spends hours editing on his iPad to “give them my own spirit.”
“I’d say (the illustrations are) 85% me, 15% AI,” Ives said. “I just use it as an initial tool and put it aside as quick as possible.”
“It’ll go back and forth from my iPad to Photoshop … several different times before I’m really satisfied with it,” said Ives.
Ives organized the book’s pages in Adobe InDesign with finalized illustrations and text.
“This is probably one of the most difficult projects I’ve ever done in my life,” said Ives. “I may not have done it because of the academic or the administrative hoops that I had to jump through in the publishing world.”
Ives said AI allows somebody like him to make products that he never would have accomplished on his own.
As for the creative process, Ives says AI apps cannot replace a creator’s skill.
Ives considers AI another paint brush in his studio and advises young artists to “make sure, at the end of the day, that what you create is yours.”
“I became successful when someone could walk into a gallery, see my work on the wall and say: ‘That’s a Michael Ives!’” he added. “The same goes for working with AI, be sure you’re strong in your own style as an artist through developing your own techniques and purpose… Don’t be lazy and give in to just pumping something out with the click of a button.”
In May Ives travels to Hawaii, where he wants to be more hands-on with his art, focusing on sculptures and acrylics.
“Everything that I do is just a labor of love,” said Ives.
To learn more about Ives, visit: https://ivesart.com/.
