Jim Tucker Studio/Studio Beechmont, 2109 Beechmont Avenue, Cincinnati, OH (2026)

06/24/2026

Art school taught me the best art comes from direct observation. Draw what's in front of you. Look harder. I believed it through my whole 20s, and I still see a lot of younger artists believing it now. As a mid-career artist and art educator, I recognise it as a well walked path for artists.

Back then I used to dream of drawing characters straight off the top of my head. No reference, no photo, just pull it out of my brain and onto the page. But I never could. I'd sit down and was always so dissatisfied with what came out. Partly reinforced by drawing an illustration from my imagination and then it getting panned by my professor.
Turns out I wasn't failing. I just didn't have anything in the tank yet.

All those years of observation were filling the shelves. You can't pull a character out of your head if there's nothing up there yet. I spent my 20s looking outward, packing it all in, the cartoons, the cultures, the food, the people, every place I lived.

Then one day I could. It happened when I started my morning doodles. Sit down, draw, no plan, just a way to begin the day. And the characters started coming out on their own. No reference. Straight from inside.

That work is the most me my work ever gets. It's an illustrated guide to my subconscious. The illustrations of my actual life experience, finally coming up through my hand in my own language.

So here's what I'd tell a younger artist. If you can't draw from your imagination yet, you're not lacking talent. You're early. Keep observing, keep showing up every day, and one day the shelves are full enough that the real you starts pouring out on its own.
And one more thing. Keep making the drawings that impress your friends, not just your teachers.

Jim.

06/23/2026

"Eat what the locals eat." That phrase has gotten me into rooms, into friendships, and one time, allowed me to observe a small personal crisis in Manila.

This piece commemorates the time a teammate was reduced to tears by a tiny steamed purple bird. That's Balut. If you don't know what Balut is, feel free to look it up but please be respectful of other cultures.

Food shows up in my work all the time. The reason is simple. Food brings everyone together no matter what they believe or where they come from. When I moved to Seoul 20 years ago I wasn't an adventurous eater at all. But I noticed something. Every time I happily tucked into Korean food, coworkers and strangers lit up. It cut straight through the language barrier. It helped me belong. That stuck with me and it still guides me today.

So, meanwhile, back in Seoul. I played on an expat rugby team. A proper mix of manly men from North America, the UK, Korea, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. We traveled all over Asia for tournaments. One of them was in Manila.

First-time attendees were required to eat Balut. No way around it. And let me tell you. Watching a brick s**t house of a man reduced to actual tears by a slightly icky egg is one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. For the record, I was not a cryer. I ate that sucker down as quickly as possible.

This isn't me throwing shade at Balut. I'd never do that to another culture's food. It's me laughing at us. At how soft we Western folks can be the second something lands outside our comfort zone. We'll tackle each other into the dirt all day but hand us an unfamiliar food and we crumble.

That Balut character is one of my all-time favorites. Good to see them again after all these years.

This one already found its home, but there's plenty more where it came from. DM me if you want to see what's available.

Jim.

06/21/2026

Occasionally, I find a character that really gives me trouble.

The premise seems simple enough and I feel confident I'm going to punch it out first time. In this ice cream series, the snowball was that character.

I drew it all the way through. Finished it. Then I looked at what I had and started over.

It wasn't bad. I'd posted a photo of it and people liked it. But the face was really bothering me, I didn't like that I'd used the snowball as hair, something about it just wasn't sitting right. So I scrapped a finished drawing nobody would have complained about and drew the whole thing again.

I think about a thing I think I once heard Conan O'Brien say, or at least how I remember it. A good joke is like an elastic band. You stretch it as far as you can without it snapping. That's exactly how character design feels to me. I keep stretching until the thing stops looking like an ice cream and starts looking like mine. Until it couldn't be anyone else's.

But you can snap it too. Stretch too far and people stop knowing what they're even looking at. They lose the reference, the connection, the little click of recognition. Then it's just mine and nobody else's, which is its own kind of failure.

The first snowball was definitely my work, but not quite the me I wanted to put into the world.

So the whole job is finding that edge. Far enough that it's unmistakably yours. Not so far that it stops being theirs. And the only way I know how to find it is by hand, redrawing the same thing until the band is tight.

That's why I started the snowball over. Not because the first one was wrong. Because it hadn't been stretched in the right way yet.

Weirdly, now I'm looking back at it I feel like it deserves another shot.

& Happy Fathers day all...

06/19/2026

A few weeks ago my friends got married in front of one of my murals, and in the moment, it really struck me.

It's been five years since we drove to Cincinnati. I know the exact count because my wife is graduating her residency at Cincinnati Children's this summer. That's the marker. Five years of her doing one of the hardest jobs there is, and five years of this being the longest my family has ever lived anywhere together.

Fifteen years of living like a nomad. Seoul, Berkeley, Phoenix, before here. I'd started to want a place to call home but I had no idea where it would be. I had a good feeling about Cincinnati. I didn't expect it to feel like this.

And the thing that shows me how rooted we are isn't a milestone. It's seeing my work woven into people's actual lives. A mural standing behind two friends as they get married. That's not a white wall in a gallery. That's an honor, and somehow my art got to be part of it.

That's the whole point for me. Work that gets off the wall and into people's lives. I just didn't expect to feel it this close to home.
Five years. The longest we've ever stayed anywhere. And it's the most like home anything has ever felt.

06/18/2026

I know my open studios are going well because I never remember to take photos.

Last Thursday was our third "Studio Beechmont is Open" and I feel like we're starting to find our groove with them. A few beers. Some drawing. All my favourite friends came through. The rad DJ, Bigtree had me smiling all night. We ate some pizza. The usual stuff that doesn't sound like much when you write it down but feels like everything when you're in it.

In the build up I'm always a bit aaaaahhhhhh, this is too much work, why do I do this to myself. And then the day after I realise I had too much fun to remember to pick up my phone. All I've got from the night are the drawings people left behind. The beautiful artifacts.

Some new folks came through too and got stuck into the drawing prompts. A couple asked me how I think through my process, which always catches me off guard in a good way. I don't spend enough time practicing talking about my work, and I'm always a little stuck for words at first but once I get going I remember how to and excitedly talk about what I do.

The thing that got me though. Someone bought a baby blanket they're working on, sat down, and worked on it right there in the studio. That's the whole dream. People feeling like they can bring their own thing and make it here. Not watching me do mine. Doing theirs.

That's what I keep building towards. A community where people just make stuff.

06/17/2026

Thank you, everyone who participated in my little competition, 'B' was the runaway winner and Susan Ruttle Lawrence You were the randomly selected winner! When I get these printed, one will be on its way to you. Congratulations!

06/16/2026

The BLINK wall isn't mine yet. But I'm getting the process ready for when it is. I don't want to be figuring it out on the scaffolding.

So right now I'm refining the process so by the time I get my wall and Frank picks his photo, the whole thing already feels natural. I'm working it out on the smaller pieces I've been working on recently and soon I'll start to grow them in size.

It all begins with letters. I've got a few on rotation, but JLK has always been my foundation. My family. I draw them out and use them as inspiration for most of the piece.

Then I go to Frank's photos. I love street photography, and Frank's work just fits with how I see. I never go in knowing what I want. I flick through until something grabs me. A face, a moment, somebody caught being themselves.

When it grabs me, that's the one. Then I use a doodle grid to map out the portrait. I've always struggled with portraiture, but the doodle grid technique is something that works for the way my brain does.

So these pieces are all built on secret messages. Nobody walking past will know it's there. But I will.

06/15/2026

People keep showing up, and I've been really noticing.

Mt. Adams did something to me. First time back at a festival in five plus years and the amount of interest and lovely conversations was reaffirming in a way I wasn't expecting. I left rejuvenated. One guy was very cloak and daggers about it, but he invited me round to look at a wall he might want painted. Friends of mine who collect my work got married in front of one of my murals. That was a compliment of the highest order.
And I can finally say it out loud. Frank Young and I got picked to make a mural for BLINK.

I'd been holding that close to my chest for a while. The elation actually hit in the interview, when we could feel the BLINK team's enthusiasm in the room. We didn't dare jinx it. We just left, got straight on a call, and went "so that went really well... right????"
Here's the thing I keep coming back to. A few years ago I stopped second-guessing the work. I've been following my instincts and the recognition I've been chasing for twenty years feels like it's finally arriving, and it's coming from my most personal stuff. The Big Tech commissions, the ice cream characters, the BLINK acceptance. The work I made without asking permission, the community showing out at Studio Beechmont events.

Twenty years of stuttering along will teach you not to trust a good week. But this feels like my moment, and the plans I put out there feel valid. I'm walking the right path.

If you've been part of this year, at the festival, in the studio, at a wall somewhere, I want to hear from you. Come by an open studio. Reply to this. Tell me what you're working on. My doors are open, same as always.

06/13/2026

I was clearing out the studio this week and found a few small studies from last year tucked away. Four of them.

Funny seeing them now. A lot of the work I've been making lately started right here, in these little ones.

Figurative studies surrounded by organic freestyling, me figuring out where the thing wanted to go.

Spraypaint, and acylic on on wood, 8" x 8' or there abouts, ready to hang. $150 each.

If one catches your eye, send me a message.

06/12/2026

The first piece anyone ever collected from me was painted on a piece of crappy cardboard.

A decade ago we moved from California to Arizona. Went from an apartment to a house with an actual backyard.

Not growing up in America, smores were still a novelty to me. The whole thing was funny. So when a doodle of a gummy grandad caught up in some kind of smore incident showed up in my sketchbook and made me laugh, I painted it. On distressed cardboard, which I was deep into at the time.

I had a monthly booth at First Friday in Phoenix back then. The plan was always the same. Make something big and loud to pull people in. Gummy Grandad was one of those pieces.
A couple stopped and asked how much it was. I almost laughed. It was paint on some crappy cardboard. But they were serious, and they wanted it.

So I took it back, finished it and built in onto a proper frame. They took it home. Then they kept coming back. They became collectors and at the same time became wonderful friends.

Looking back at this work, this is what brings me joy: a doodle that made me laugh ended up connecting me to people who are still in my life years later.

It keeps happening, too. So many of the pieces I've sold end up with people I care deeply about. The work finds its people, and then those people find me.

If something here resonates, I've got work available. Come find it

Jim Tucker Studio/Studio Beechmont

06/24/2026

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06/21/2026

06/19/2026

06/18/2026

06/17/2026

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