Margarita is a beautifully designed, drawn and realized animated short (about 12 minutes long) from Hampa Studio.

Another example of small independent studios doing high level work, this award winning story follows the adventures of a young princess (lived in the imagination of our actual protagonist, a young girl being read the story by her mother), who sets out to find an evening star that has captured her fancy.

The film is based on a poem by Rubén Dario, and the adaptation works to evoke the poetic images wordlessly, with only sound effects and music to accompany the images.

The animators chose to take the approach of traditional hand-drawn animation, with wonderful backgrounds, delightful character design and fluid, elegant animated motion.

There is a Making Of feature that is actually a bit longer than the film itself, in which the creators discuss the conception of the project as well as their process in bringing it to fruition.

There is also a trailer that was released prior to the final film. In addition to the page on the Hampa Studio site, there is a site for Margarita, that has an English version, as well as a blog.

[Via Animation Blog]

Southwest Art is a print magazine devoted to American Western art, with a focus on contemporary artists. The magazine is a division of F+W Media, and is related to sister publications that include The Artist’s Magazine, Watercolor Artist and The Pastel Journal.

They post a number of full articles from the magazine on their website, along with related images, currently including several from their November 2010 issue. These feature artists like Clyde Aspevig, Rock Newcomb, Mark Haworth, Raj Chaudhuri (who I featured previously here) and Daniel Keys (who I featured here).

There is a blog and lists of other articles (accessed from the drop-down menu in the red navigation bar), that also frequently features entire articles and images.

The magazine holds competitions, one called 21 Under 31, focusing on young, emerging artists under 31 (featured in their September 2010 issue and linked on the website here), and another called 21 Over 31, focusing on artists from 31 to 64 years of age (featured in the November 2010 issue and arranged as a linked list here).

Though the focus is on a a particular region of the U.S. that is often considered to have its own approach and range of subjects, the artists and work featured would be of interest to anyone who enjoys contemporary landscape, still life and figurative art.

(Images above: Daniel Keys, Clyde Aspevig, Rock Newcomb, Raj Chaudhuri, Mark Haworth)