sneak peak

I'm going out tonight and I don't care what my conscience says about it. I have so much freelance work to do right now that I could work for the next 20 hours straight and possibly not be done.  My brain needs breaks.  This is exhausting.

The Punk Rock Mommy poster is a design I did for my friend Jon's photography show coming up in May.  The show highlights a photography project he did with our friend Andrea who had breast cancer and passed away in 2008. She was a straight up punker her whole life, but had 6 kids and was an amazing mother to them and many other people.  Jon was allowed to be at her side, snapping photos, from the first doctor's appointment all the way up to a couple days before she died.  She wrote a blog during this time- a total of a year and a half- called PunkRockMommy.org and got a ton of press for it. Thousands of people read it daily.  Check it out if you get a chance.  Now, years later, Jon is fulfilling her wish that the blog be turned into a book.  Jon, myself, and this guy Chris have been working on it since the beginning of the year and the gallery show is promo for the book coming out.  The book is going to be beautiful- mostly designed by Chris, but with a ton of influence and guidance by Jon. The man has a vision and I'm really enjoying being a part of it.

 These two Jazz Fest posters totally shouldn't be up here for others to see. They're not completed at all. I just did them over the past couple days and sent them off to the lady who needs them yesterday. Our next steps are for her to choose colors, give me more info to put on the bottom of the posters, and then we'll tweak the designs for the next few days until we send them out hopefully on Friday to the printer. I'm just excited about them.  I like making "music art". By the way, as I type, there are three men sitting on my roof doing shape-note singing. It's beautiful and inspirational. Abstractly, I don't know why humans make music but I'm sure glad we do.

...when you only have an hour...

As I get older, I'm getting worse at remembering to get people presents for fun occasions. It's terrible and I feel like a jerk. I should make a resolution to remind myself a month before each event/holiday. And I have less money, so I make more presents, which takes more time. So when I am forgetful and then I remember that I have to make someone a present in the next HOUR... these kinds of things occur.

This was make very quickly for my friend's kid's 1st birthday.  I didn't have time to scan it, so I took this low quality phone picture.

On the flip side of things, I'm making flyers for my job now. This one is just kind of cute. I'm trying to stretch the bounds at work to see how much time I really have to design and how much time I have to dedicate to admin work.  So I didn't spend too much time on this and it's not amazing, but it's a start to hopefully at beautifully hand-drawn aesthetic.

I also make things more along these lines:

I get immensely self-conscious about my design work. I'm an almost 100% self-taught designer. I don't know tricks to making type very interesting like "real" designers do. Every day I gather reference and inspiration to copy, twist, mimic, and learn from. My "inspiration and research" folder on my desktop has thousands of images in it from poster designs to website layouts to typographical tricks to email headers to everything else you could imagine. My mantra for years has been "ugh! i just need to get better at this!" as I spend hours and hours trying different layouts.

But then today I showed one of my co-workers a design I made for her and her jaw dropped and she told me that I make magic happen.  She is usually very generous in her compliments and doesn't know how to design herself, but it made me feel competent  in my work, which helps everyone once in a while, you know?

I'll get better at this.

Out with the old

A couple weeks ago, I spent some time at my parents' house cleaning up what used to be my bedroom in order for them to create a guest room or study.  It included tossing a bunch of art that I made when I was really little, which was fun to giggle with my mom over.  I snapped a few crappy photos with my dumbphone and tossed out all but a couple pieces.  Then yesterday, I barrelled through my current studio, filling up three huge bags full of my old art that have been sitting in my closet ever since I made it.  I snapped a few more pictures and saved a few more pieces.  The pieces below are mostly of the pieces I kept. I now regret not photographing all of it before tossing the ripped bags out into the rain.  Whoops.  Well, now I have room to store more pieces that I don't really like. Hahaha  One thing I'm thinking of doing is posting these pieces on Facebook and giving them away. I don't want money. I want you to take it away from me! I haven't fully decided if I want the world to see these things.

The order in which I'm putting these pictures is... first ones are post-college, then college, then highschool, then gradeschool, and lastly possibly some of the first "art" i ever made.

POST COLLEGE ART:

This is break-up art.  Interpret as you will.  I'm way over it and never want to see this piece again.

This is a piece I drew for a group show I was in based on a nautical theme. I was surprised that I was the only person out of the 50 participants who focused on pirates.  Irate pirates at that.

I painted this for a show in 2011.  Rravens are a symbol of death because of their carnivorous ways and so when you spot a murder (group of ravens) flocking to one spot, it can  be a telling of someone's immanent doom.  I made this in my phase of studying post-apocalyptic everythings.

I made this while in a study group called the Rookery. Interpret as you will.

This is a study of a famous scientific illustration of a wolf. I drew this in my phase of studying wolves, their  behaviors, and their anatomy. Ask me about that another time.

COLLEGE ART:

I'm seeing now that my dumbphone has a really terrible camera. Sorry this is so blurry. This is a watercolor collage of all things associated with water. College assignments have really weird results sometimes.

This piece was a study in 3 things. First, we learned the rub-away technique (which is all the brown muddy parts). Rub-away is where you put a thick layer of oil paint down, then take a rag and start wiping away the paint in order to create the tones that make the picture.  Then ontop of the rub-away, we did Underpainting, which is painting sections of the piece in one color in order for that paint to peak through the Overpainting. You can see the green part of the one guy's face and the pinky forehead of the guy of the other side.  Then we studied flesh tones in oils and painted parts of the faces so that we could still see the Rub-away and Underpainting processes.
The journey is more important than the result....?

We had to dissect one of our favorite things. I chose a snickers bar. 

Dissecting another one of my favorite things was my '71 superbeatle- my first car.

Figure study. His name is Andre.

Weird pastel drawing of my friend Liam

My first interpretation of Mother Earth. I know, I know, she's probably not white. Whatever. I was 17.

This is a pastel I did for my roommates when we were parting ways. I later added a poem that I digitally placed on the truck. It goes like this:

And this, I suppose, is where it must end.

Move away, step away, like an old trend.

But I like I said yesterday with all of my heart,

I love you more than then sum of my parts.

You've been there with my playing hopscotch and all.

I fear in this new house, my spirits will fall.

So lets keep together your heart and mine

With play dates and giggles all of the time.

Don't worry, my friend, as we drive away slow.

For five houses down is not far to go.

-by Me, in like 2005 or something

This is a terrible photo of a really nice pastel piece I did vaguely based on the play Othello.

You know when you take pictures while you're staring out the window of the airplane? Well, as a 16 yr old, I thought it'd be a good idea to paint that.

This the the most meta art piece I've ever made. This is a painting of me throwing out a painting that I didn't like.

And this is the painting that I apparently never actually threw out, although I still don't like it.  hahahaha

I think this was an assignment to copy an idea from a Norman Rockwell painting, but put our own twist on it.

HIGHSCHOOL AND GRADESCHOOL AND CHILDHOOD ART:

I've often been embarrassed by this piece, which I drew on the wall of my childhood bedroom. I just think it's weird. But it's my childhood best friend, Jenny. I drew it because I wanted to work on drawing faces. Who knows why I chose to draw it on the wall.  My parents have kept it up there ever since, God bless them.

I also painted this on the wall.  My mom actually wants me to finish the piece instead of paint over it. What a funny thing- a collaborative art piece with yourself from 15 years ago.

Um.... I don't know what this is or why I made it, but my name's on the back and I have a vague memory of making it.  I flipped out when I found it. I now understand why I had very few friends as a child. What a weird kid. When I showed one of my roommates the other day, he said that there is a book cover that is similar to this. That adds to my questions, but maybe provides the hints of an answer.

I think this is my first drawing of zebras. I must have been in second grade or something.

On the back of this piece is my mom's handwriting announcing "A Great Tree!".  How supportive she was. There was a whole little series of this kind of tree drawn on the dot-matrix paper that my dad would bring home from his "Computer" job. This is the only one that said it was great. I was probably about 4 when I made it.

On the back of this one, my mom wrote "Fog".  We both laughed a lot when we found it together. How nice of her to see this as something, even fog. Oh, homeschooling...

Wedding Invitations

I am surrounded by people getting married.  Albeit my feelings about marriage, I’ve benefited a bit from it because I’ve gotten to create and illustrate now 4 different wedding invitations for my friends.  This is my latest creation.  I was given very specific instructions about the illustration, but I think it ended up pretty nice.  I even signed it.  I never sign my pieces.  Again, did hand-lettering.  Well, really just tracing a font. But it’s a good excersize in keeping your hand steady as shit.  I'm designing the other side of the invitation as well, with all the info and stuff.  I'll add that later on.

The final piece.

This is how I traced the names. I wrote them backwards on a piece of tracing paper and then placed it perfectly on the watercolor paper with the penciled-side of the tracing paper down, and colored all over the lettering so that it would transfer.  Magic.

This is just an in-progress shot.

the back

This is the original sketch.  When you're making art for friends, sometimes its best to make fun of them  while doing it.  The response to this sketch was that it wasn't wise for the deer to being saying "shoot". :o)

Catch the Carrot

This year I started sitting with the fact that the freelance design work that I do is 99% marketing.  Posters for events, re-designing websites, etc.  It makes sense and I’ve learned a lot about marketing over the years- not from schooling, but from experience.  I have a lot more to learn.  But I now do 2 official marketing things.  I am on the Marketing Team for the Food Co-op around my neighborhood, and I got a full time job (eek!) as Marketing Coordinator at a local non-profit called People’s Emergency Center.  PEC, as we call it, is half homeless shelter for women and children and half Community Development Corporation, or CDC. I work for the CDC part of things, making flyers, emails, facebook pages, websites, etc. for all the social services in the neighborhood that we’re associated with. I think I’ll learn a lot in the position and am glad to be getting a steady paycheck for designing every day.

The piece below is for the Food Co-op. They’re doing this marketing campaign to get new members, so they’re placing these stained glass carrot decorations in a bunch of different local shops and then putting on a scavenger hunt to find the carrots. If you “catch the carrot”, you get a discount on your new Co-op membership.  Oooooooooo!  So this is the design I made for the poster. I did hand-lettering for the “Catch the Carrot” title, which was fun. I don’t get to do hand-lettering very often, so I thought I’d give it a whirl on this one. 

Update: Just found one of these in a bus stop...

To Whom I Do Not Know

Today, I was reminded, is the first day of Lent. Millions of people have been flocking to churches all day to be marked as Christians with an ashy reminder crossed into their foreheads.  Millions of others cower at home, fearful of the judgement or persecution they might receive if they are marked for believing something that has given them hope and life in the world. And even more are completely indifferent to this annual journey, or are judging the Christians for any number of ridiculous or legitimate reasons.  I sit at home, scratching my favorite new pen across the box I received in the mail today. Today is one more day.

The potential is apparent.

Ever wish, after totally fumbling through an interview for your dream job, that you could just write your interviewer and just tell them that really, you would just do so well at that job and they should give you a shot?

That may have happened to me yesterday... And it reminded me of this documentary I watched last week about Snowy Owls, who are probably one of the most skilled hunters of all birds.  Or, at least, I think so. But as owlets, baby owls, they are so fumbly.  They waddle around, tripping over stuff and catching their balance by sticking the wing out like a crutch so they don't fall.  It's totally pathetic and adorable.  And you know that they're gonna grow up to be so amazing. It's in their genes. Unless they die, they're going to be amazing as adults.

Thats kinda how I felt a little bit.  Like, come on!  I know I could be AMAZING at this job if you just give me a chance!  Pardon my bumbling words and stammering answers to your questions.  Just trust me.

So I drew this little owl.  Because the potential is apparent.

I also gave the original to my friend who just had a baby.  Seemed to fit.