Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda

... here I am at ... art camp!

Two weeks ago, I went off to Eagle Hill Institute for a week-long intensive study of scientific illustration.  What a fun experience! I haven't been in a classroom for a drawing class for a couple of years, so it was really wonderful to have a wise, objective voice of reason in the class who wanted to talk about the pieces we were creating and bounce ideas around with us and give advice.  Awesome!

The first thing we did was go out and collect our specimens that we were going to focus on for the week.  For this, we went out on low tide to this little inlet of ocean.  It was magically misty.

Then we went back to Eagle Hill, set up our still-life set ups or just totally geeked out over one specimen. Below is Zoe, who drew a beautiful crab in pen and ink.

This is my station, where I'd decided to draw a crab claw and a fern.

This is the classroom we were in.

This is the building that the classroom was in. Eagle Hill is nestled into the coastal forest of Downeast Maine. The ground is covered in thick, spongey mosses, and the forest is dense with vegetation. This are is one of the few places I have been where I would not have been surprised at all if a fairy tapped me on the shoulder and blew pixie dust in my face. It's just magical like that.

About mid-week, we went hiking through a bog to find orchids, carnivorous plants, and pitcher plants. Check. Check. And check.

This is a pitcher plant. The long stalk is topped by a strangely structured flower, and then at the bottom are these open pods that look like pitchers. They eat animals and insects!

I did not draw this, but this is one reason that scientific illustration is super helpful and awesome! Way better than photos!

 On the way back from the bog, we stopped off in Acadia National Park and frolicked around the rocks for a bit.  Seriously, this area of the world is so amazing. Out of every crevice that could have a spot of life in it, life is found!  Like this grass:

This is the most barnacles that I have ever seen in one area.  Have you ever seen barnacles open up to eat? Its so gross and awesome!

This is Zoe and I. She is another Beehiver who went to the Institute with me.

One of the craziest things about the week was that Eagle Hill just opened a french restaurant called Christopher's.  Literally the week we were there was their first week open.  And so our meal plan for the week-long seminar included five 4-course dinners at Christophers.  WHAT!!??  It was so amazing. Oh and I designed their logo for them last month. Here is it:

 Yeah, this is what we faced all week. Crazy.  Amazing.  I gained weight.  It was worth it.

And then on our last night there, we hung our pieces on the wall at the restaurant.

 Class pic. Awe.

 Zoe & her pieces.

 Me and my pieces. I'll put up better pictures another time.

After the institute, this crew hung with us in Machias. In fact, we took these 2 guys (Marshall & Lennart) to a contra dance in Eastport and went crashing through the woods to do some night swimming.  Marshall spent last semester in Madagascar as part of his biology schooling and Lennart is on his Phd track for microbiology. He studies plankton.  And draws it very well.

So yeah, I went to art camp, drew pretty things, made friends, and picked up new skills.  So this past week I've been working on a wedding invitation and got to utilize my skills immediately.  Here's the mint I drew for part of the invitation. It's not exactly accurate, so it's not scientific.  But it's good practice and a start.

And then, just to show, this is another part of the wedding invite:

So, that's my little update for now.  Makin art.  Yeah.

Poster Printing Whoa

The poster was birthed at the printer this week! It is so awesome!  I can't wait for everyone to see it. So much work is shown in these prints.  Its overwhelming and also super exciting to think about the next stage of this work's life- being out in the world, shakin the ground & watering seeds of change!

I wanted to show some of the pictures from this week. It was a much more satisfying week at the printer than last time, since we walked away with finalized posters in our hands. Woohoo!

This is the printer we print the poster on.

The printer is probably about 60 feet long. It is a model from the 60's and there are only a handful of these around the US. The guy Mike who runs the machine has been working at this printer for 7 years and is a PRO at this thing. Inspiring to watch him work.

Ever wonder what CMYK stands for?  Well, it's the 4 ink colors that create almost everything that we see on any given printed page.  Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.  These 4 pictures show the incredibly detailed rolling mechanism that helps the inks to perfectly evenly roll onto each page. 

Cyan

Yellow

Black

Magenta

This is the blue plate of the poster running.  AH! So cool! I totally geeked out over this whole process.

This is Mike looking through a magnifying glass to see if the registration of the CMYK plates are lined up on the print itself.

This is the view inside the magnifying glass. Success! They are all lined up! If they weren't you would see tiny dots of one of those colors peeking out from under the layered black dots we see here. 

Mike lowering the sheets down for a test-run of folding.

Ethan, Ralph and the scoring master decide on methods of scoring the poster.

We had so many discussions about the levels of all the colors until it was PERFECT.

Is it perfect yet?

Me signing off that it is perfect.

Another shot of one of the plates, ready to run.

Zoe examining the poster (or checking her phone...)

Holy moly! 1,100 posters have been printed!!!

Nicole, gazing at this poster after dedicating 5 years of her life to working on the smallest of details of the illustration. The poster has been in the process of being created for 9 years.

This is a tiny crop of the poster. Every inch of this 6-ft-long poster is as highly detailed as this. I can't upload the full poster image because it's too big for this right now, but maybe I'll figure out how to do that soon. 

living every day

Today is Saturday. Today is Saturday. Today is Saturday.  I've lost track of days of the week up here.  Today is Saturday.

First off,  check this out!  I feel like this is a "Look what I did, Mom!" moment.  I have been doing the graphics for a band called Phillybloco for the past 4 years and two the the members of the band just married each other (so cute I want to barf), and THESE pictures popped up on facebook!  

This is the wedding cake with my designs on the top and bottom layers!

the happy couple with the cake

the design is from the drums that i painted for the band.  this shot is cool for really selfish reasons, actually.  i designed their shirts, designed the logo projected in the back, and designed & hand painted the drums, and know how to play most of those drums (not that well anymore since i havent played in over a year.. yikes), but still makes this photo super fun for me. ha!

Ok. Enough patting myself on the back.  

I found this picture and my heart melted. I miss my cat so much that my heart literally melts a little when I think of her.

But I'm up here working very hard.  These are some pictures of the work I've been doing.

This is Dylan working on the stop motion animation we did most recently.

The building we are working in is an old building that has a lot of construction going on with it. This is a shot of Ethan & Zoe illustrating next to the window. You can't see it too well, but outside the window is the river that I love here.

This is another shot of the river. These little falls here are called Bad Little Falls.

This is Ethan being a weirdo while he's drawing.

This is Dylan and Nicole working on another stop motion animation we did this week.

Its so much fun! 

This is Josh helping with the movement of the camera as it rolls around the room.

Josh and Dylan working on filming.

 The below 2 images are some notes that I think are interesting. The one on the left is a list of rules about what goes into a poster here at the Beehive.  The one on the right is some more process items.

And this is me fake-drawing on the huge poster that we are in the process of getting out into the world.

Soooooo yeah thats what I got for ya right now.

working on the kickstarter

Just wanted to put up a couple pictures of the project i'm working on right now. We're covering a room of an old 5&10 store with photos that tell the story of the beehive collective that we can film in sequence and use in the kickstarter video we're working on.  The map pictured is a map I made that will be used to highlight middle America. There will be a little animation of where folks spent time to do research for the latest poster project, which we are in the process of printing right now.  The woman pictured in the first photo is Kehben, who's one of the original folks who started the beehive collective back in 2001 or something.  The man in blue is Eric, who owns one of the houses we live in. He's awesome.

Ok back to work.