Port Washington visit

On Thursday I gave my first auditorium presentations at the wonderful John Philip Sousa Elementary and Manorhaven Elementary schools in Port Washington. After reading Ike's Incredible Ink together we did a draw-along and the kids drew some amazing rocket ships. That afternoon at Dolphin Bookstore we did a collage project and made some "story-telling ink" of our own. Thanks to the amazing Dophin Bookstore for arranging!

New York Times Weekend Arts

This past Friday I had the very great pleasure of working with Richard Aloisio at the New York Times to make the cover of the Weekend Arts section. Here is an awesome photo taken with my telephoto professional camera, the iPhone.

The assignment was for a summer book review. Richard gave me a general direction (summer, the joy of reading, beach reads) and let me totter off. I started with many many very rough sketches. I drew a lot of cliche ideas. As the night wore on, I drew some bizarre ideas. Here are some sketches that I hope fell somewhere in the middle.

The idea I liked best was to use bright, summer colors in semi-translucent paper droplets to represent the different summer books, and a person in a field of these book-droplets who gets to pick their favorite one. Luckily that was the one that was picked! I was thinking about a collage from an earlier project. Here are two more finished sketches that came next:

 Richard suggested I add a sun and a beach to add a bit of context and make the scene more summery. He also had the idea to use pages from the actual books that were being reviewed. Here is a bit of process work. I think I saved it at this point because this was when I thought, these damn paper droplet thingy-s are tiny and this is taking forever arrrrrrg oh god I better save this file. Now you know my secret art-making process!

Oberon for Summer

March 28th is officially Oberon Day, the day when Bell's Brewery starts serving their famous Oberon Ale.  This delicious beer is only available in the summer, so hey you know it's summer if there is Oberon (though if you're in Michigan it's probably still snowing).
In honor of my Michigander heritage (and with a shout out to my good friend Sam, Lord of the Cellar at Bell's) I picked the Bell's Oberon six pack case to redesign for my Type and Image class.

Not my image

Below are some of the thumbnails I started with.  I decided to go with, roughly, the one on the bottom left (next to my million dollar idea of Edible Googly Eyes).  Then I made a collage made with beeswax and tissue paper for the sun rays, and drew the rest of the image and type with pencil, scanned it in, and colored it digitally. 

 

 

And here is the unfolded box with a digital mock-up I made of the folded box.  I'll be printing up and folding a dummy box next week, so I'll post that when it...er, exists.

The Glowing Mountain Goat

I've never submitted to threadless.com, but I thought today I would give it a whirl.  They are having a Griffin iPhone Design Challenge and I came up with the design above.  I started out with a collage, which I actually made for a different project (more on that later).  But, as the one requirement for the challenge was a black background, I had to make some adjustments...

More collage

I've been on a weird Nabokov kick...but not his books, his face.  I've been using it for all of my demos and experiments, when I needed a portrait of "someone," when I needed a book cover...and now I've collaged his little head.  Speak, Memory.

Beeswax Collage

I tried out beeswax collage today and man, I loved it!  The tissue paper comes out super bright and I love the transparency.  I have to admit, though, I was totally thinking of Chad Kouri's work while I was working.  He makes the greatest collages evah.

Wrapping paper

Today I made my first repeat pattern for a funky screen printing studio called Frinton Press.  They have a yearly wrapping paper design competition, and I stumbled on to their call for entries just a couple days ago.  Here is what I submitted.

I know there's an easy way to do it on Illustrator or Photoshop, but my googling skills were just not up to the task and I couldn't find a tutorial.  But I did find this wonderful analog how-to by illustrator Julia Rothman on the Design*Sponge website, which you can see here.

Fish Birds

Today I made fishbirds.  They're going to be part of a screen print I'm making.  I'll post it when I finish.  Enjoy!

InCharacter: Humility

Ironically, I'm posting my own illustration on a blog dedicated to my own illustrations, and this illustration is about humility.  ME I'M GREAT AT DRAWING HUMILITY CHECK IT.

INK!

page 10 and 12...

INK!

Slowly but surely...

INK!

It's almost the end of the quarter, and that means my children's book is almost done! Right? Right! Ok!

I'm writing a children's book for one of my classes about a guy who wants to write a book, but he can't think of anything to write. He figures that the problem is the ink he's trying to write with; it's just not up to snuff. So he goes on a mission to make his own ink. Here a few pages I have so far. (Click to view larger.)

Colonel Windpipe's Musical Brigade

Meet the color guard for Colonel Windpipe's Musical Brigade. Colonel Windpipe started out as a project on a blog in which a few illustrators were drawing members of a fictional marching band. Then, they received so many submissions they moved to a flickr account, where you can see the hundreds of characters people have posted. The only requirements are that the characters have a red jacket, gold buttons, be marching to the left, and be on a white background. Any one can submit, so, you should! Yeah, you.

Bay State Parent

It's the second year of grad school, and that means it's time for the Publications class. In this class, a magazine sends a request for an illustration--often for a particular article--to our professor, and everyone in the class submits a sketch to the magazine. The magazine then chooses which illustration they will use in the magazine and then that person takes their sketch to finish, and their illustration is printed.

On the first day of class everyone sat down, ready to receive our syllabi and run, only to find out he had received a last minute request from a Bay State Parent magazine and needed our sketches submitted that day.

I frantically kicked out a couple of ideas and submitted two sketches. I don't know how, but they ended up picking it, so I got to take it to finish and it will be in their next issue! Above is the sketch and below is the finished illustration.

A Modern Reader

One day this summer, I met M. Rebekah Otto at Cafe Mustache in Chicago. Bekah needed an illustration to accompany her monthly Rumpus column "A Modern Reader," and had gotten my name from our mutual friend Eliana Stein (a killer graphic designer, p.s.). She was in Chicago from San Francisco to see family, and we decided to meet in person to talk about ideas for the drawing.

She walked in the door and immediately told me this hilarious story about, in her first day back in town, running into her kindergarten teacher in a grocery store and I thought, I like this girl. It turns out Bekah is also an Editorial Aide at Atlas Obscura, a regular contributor to The Believer, and a savant regarding quirky San Francisco facts and where to find the best biscuit and chicken sandwiches (Bakesale Betty). Check out her fantastic writing at any one of those three amazing publications.

Here is the final work for her column, a little character navigating a sea of words. It should be up in a couple weeks!

826CHI & The Boring Store: Scrabble for Cheaters

826CHI's annual fundraiser, Scrabble for Cheaters, is here again! The idea is that you and your Scrabble partner raise money, and then, in the Scrabble tournament, can use that money to buy cheats. So the more money you raise, the more you can cheat, and the better your chances of winning!

$25: THE SWAP: Trade out a letter
$50: THE NON-CON: buy a vowel
$100: THE BLANK: Flip a letter over and make it blank
$150: THE AUGMENT: Add 10 points to any letter to increase its value
$200: THE ALSORANS: Add Q, Z, or X to any word
$250: THE KOSHKA: play a word in any non-English language
$300: THE CONFER: Consult the dictionary for one turn
$400: THE SPURN: Reject an opponent's word for no reason
$500: THE WEBSTER: Invent a word (must have definition)

The tournament is October 23, at noon. If you live in Chicago, you should play! Registration has opened. The even sounds really fun and 826CHI is an incredible non-profit that provides after-school and summer tutoring in all subjects for kids K-12, and hosts an enormous number of creative writing workshops, events, and field trips.

Check out the poster I made for them here, or on their website.

welcome back new kiddos

I'm back in Savannah for my second and final year of grad school! So many people are back already and it's been great to see everyone again. It's like Chicago was just a(n awesome) dream.

This Thursday is orientation for the new grad students, and my friend Lis (check out her amazing collage-y illustrations) cooked up a welcome for them. She asked the second years to send her self portraits, which she's going to hang up in the grad room with our name and hometown, etc. Cute. This is what I sent her:

boring store posters

This is what I came up with for a poster set assignment: posters for my favorite non-profit, 826CHI aka The Boring Store. The first poster is for their fund-raising event, Scrabble for Cheaters (it's hard to see on the screen, but that "A" is mysteriously worth 500 points). Check out the information about the event here. And check out the 826NYC chapter's Scrabble for Cheaters event here. Their web design is fantastic.

Almost done with the second poster!

fish on a leash

Here is the one the only "Fish on a Leash" exercise! I have to say, this isn't the most brilliant concept I've ever had--it didn't stray far from the obvious. But I tried to make that big fish look super heavy and vacant and the little fish look light and purposeful. In the end I had some fun with it.

today is brought to you by the letter S

One of my esteemed colleagues, Mark Eberhardt, has revived the SCAD Graduate Illustration blog. To celebrate, he asked the current grads to create a new masthead by making one letter each. I picked "S," and ended up making two.
This one is gross and hilarious. But flying stamp man was chosen instead.