a coating of salt

Mix Cd covers Part I

2010-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

This past spring I was involved in a cross country music exchange where mix CDs were sent from corner to corner and some to middle-west. Some of the makers included art, some did not. When putting the mixes on my iPod, things felt bare if there were not any pictures so I sought to remedy this. Here is Example #1. Austin from Houston sent me a CD that said 'leaving' on it and had a playlist but nothing else. Just a couple of weeks ago, I found this comic relating to a book I was reading at the time (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon), and the art was by one of those artists I wish I was... just without all that, you know... effort, Chris Ware, here is the cover:

and so began my re-creation in photoshop. I started with a trapezoidal shape for the main building, then found a common perspective point. After that, I used a basic block type to make the title and 'faked' its 3D-ness.:

Then I added some more buildings for atmosphere and I lightened the clouds up. The perspective windows were rendered pretty easily with the perspective transform tool in Photoshop:

Finally I changed two of the windows to match the original, and I darkened the letters across the center band for some 'dynamism' and a hint of shading.
click image for the full 500x500 size
no, I didn't add the guy flying because I didn't feel like it, and because it's such a small detail for an iPod, mine anyway.

painter

2010-02-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

painter essentials stuff, rocks and faces

wacom again

2010-02-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

i pulled out my wacom tablet again last night and found these being drawn by my hands.

if i look at Craig Thompson's blog, i try to draw like him.

2009-08-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

photoshoots after weddings take too long.

2009-07-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday had a wedding occur in it's late afternoon. after said wedding, it permitted the customary taking of pictures, while the guests waited. I was one of those waiting guests. Though the Bride and Groom had selected and no doubt created some fun word games to be played all over Saturday evening's home stretch, I quickly realised the intense effort needed to finish 'first' in any of these games coupled with the lack of prize or recognition for doing so. I began to draw. First, I had a pen and began doodling to accompany such earlier created characters as Tom the T-Rex, then wanted to add color, using only what one could find as provided at the table by fellow guests. I shaded a Lady Rhino Bug's wings with some reddish lip balm, but then was privy to a revelation. My friend Molly had, just the previous day purchased a set of pocket water colors. I borrowed someone's water and began to fill in my shapes as follows:

Above is the palette where I mixed my colors. after the creativity ran dry, likely caused by the arrival of the newlyweds, I traced over the blobs of then dried color to give them each a little 'something.'

This is the spiderbaby, he was originally just a blob of colors that i made to start my hands back at the watercoloring, then when i had finished coloring my friends below, i traced him out with a pen to make him into something.

these here are Brittany's Mom's and Dad's hands as they tried the 'hands' at the provided word games.

This was intended to look like someone who was sitting across from me, but ended up looking like an usher who was seated to my left at a different table.

The giraffe wasn't supposed to look so mean, but his eye-darkness got out of hand.

a fun image, it wouldnt be so fantastical, but i didn't know i'd be coloring them, so i kept adding to the rhino, things like wings and spots.

I didnt think i could make a reasonably realistic penguin using the colors at hand. i think i proved me wrong.

painting again. but different. and faster

2009-06-13T18:54:00.001-07:00

here is what i did all day on saturday. my back hurts.

It's not exactly magical, but it is a leopleurodon

It's water colors this time.

here I had some leftovers.

Where I shall reposit.

2009-06-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

Before we begin, let it be said that regardless of any grown-up sensibilities Blankets offends, Craig Thompson is a brilliant artist. Follow his near finished progress on his middle-eastern (?) epic Habibi
here at this blog.
I thought I'd sketch one of his sketches and put it here:

Next, I drew the Grumble-bee and the Vistasaur:

And sneak preview, here is a rough of Isaac and the T-Rex:

this is for a proposed story book for someone a friend babysits, we'll see how it goes, i'm planning on painting it in watercolors. Which I've barely ever touched. but what better way to learn?

2009-02-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

I was going to illustrate myself a header for this page, using this picture. but when i started to look like Orson Welles, i decided to throw that idea out for now then i made it into this:

2009-02-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

heres the other book cover i am working on.

and here is my scalable tracing. i added some texture and will cut that back when i am finished, but i think i will age these guys so they look... aged.

new project new project

2009-02-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

i am redoing some vintage sci-fi book covers for a make-type project that i am covering on my other blog. here is act one scene one:

Doodles part II

2009-01-28T18:56:00.001-08:00

Left over from yesterday

traditional Ball point pen doodlin'

2009-01-27T17:27:00.001-08:00

had a meeting today, and these are what were on my handouts when we were finished.

streetlight

2008-12-27T16:13:00.000-08:00

yeah... you know

2008-12-24T17:37:00.000-08:00

ladies..

xmaszombie

2008-12-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

intesting

2008-12-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

and it's blue

Two, quick and dirty

2008-12-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

I decided that it was windy wherever i was drawing today.. and everyone is walking to the left

cutest cubist

2008-12-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

quicker, dirtier more precise

2008-12-10T18:19:00.001-08:00

tablet has arrived

2008-12-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Today arrived the tablet. thus began my many tiny little updates. this is one of my first sketches.

Bedroom in Vienna

2008-12-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

A sketch of my bedroom from my bed in a castle in Vienna.

PaintTube

2008-12-03T18:42:00.001-08:00

This is a quick sketch of an empty paint tube. The file ended up being called Paintube, and it looks like a woman reclining.

Selling out from the bottom up

2008-07-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

This is what I have for my website. It cashes in on most of the things I called out in my last entry about vector graphics. I went with a hulk color scheme, the star is just a water mark and isn't on the website. I haven't set a real date for it, just kind of working on it as I feel compelled to.

Vector Art

2008-04-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

A while back I received a mailer that had some exciting, fresh, seasonal looking art on it, and I thought: I have seen this so many times in so many places. I think this look for design has become the standard for fresh exciting and edgy, and depending on what colors are used, a season can be implied. So when is it that a fresh look for design becomes stale, predictable, the status quo? I don't have an answer yet, but here are some examples of this 'look' as it matures and grows in its popularity.

Here are two examples of album art work that have so much in common, but the artists themselves have very little. Illuminated streaks, concentric lines and circles, gradient gradient gradient, abstracted shapes from nature. busy busy busy. Both albums have very dreamy titles, so the artwork gives a sense of infinity, an expanding world. I think that this look can also exemplify creativity. things flowing out of a person into the world around. this, perhaps as an action that was explored in the HP commercials, where Jay-Z or Pharrell Williams' hands did all the talking.

Here is a selection from Istock and an album cover from Euro artist Mika, both very much in the same vein and in a similar vein to the Blake and Common cover, if not the same vein but abused by several years of intravenous drug use. This cover exudes the 'creativity' edge of the others but also uses the handmade aesthetic (Napoleon Dynamite, Eagle vs Shark, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) common in so much media today as well as putting the title 'Life in Cartoon Motion' to good use. I found the Istock image by searching with little more than the words 'vector art'. And here we see, illuminated light streaks, concentric circles, abstracted items from nature, and don't forget the gradients.

Two music players that should try to keep away from each other as best as possible, (or at best the Samsung away from the Zune).

And how simple is this? I took a brush set I found on Deviant Art and threw this together, it has illuminated light streaks, and concentric circles and the necessary speakers.

And this look is all over TV right now. I know that in this area, it's the basis of the look of 1st National Bank. You can see remnants of it in the graphics for Lifetime's creepy dance show, "Your Mama Don't Dance." There's a new ad, man, I wish I could remember who it's for, but it's all these people opening boxes and it looks just like all of this stuff.

What can this mean? Is it a movement? Is it a trend? Is it annoying and uncreative yet? This is a really old post that I took my time publishing. I'm sure there's more to be said, but I've beaten this subject to death in my head.

Irish Weekend

2008-03-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

I watched 'Once' and I made this background. Do note that the actual Saint Patrick's Day feast occurred on Friday, because of the coincidence of Holy Week and St. Patrick's Day. This last happened in 1940 and won't happen again until 2160.

The text is taken from a vision the saint himself had, where he read a letter headed 'The Voice of the Irish'.

Design Pigeon-Holed by Physical Object!

2008-03-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

At church the other day, Sunday, I believe, I saw someone with this book:

And thought that the only way to feature the entire object and comfortably design around it is to center everything on the page. This is of course depending on the rules that the designer is willing to break or bend or even follow but just wants to look conventional or... orthodox. So I went home and sculpted, out of some Sticky Tac I had near, a similar milkshake glass from what my memory served:

Then I thought to break that mold of only being able to design centered-ly with that item the key feature by altering it the slightest bit:

This opened up all possible alignments to the object. Flipping it makes the Right alight and turning 90 degrees either way gives it a centered look. SO. How long until we have all sorts of rag left and right dishes and objects? Apple moved their headphone jacks from the center to the left of the iPod. Sony took push-buttons on their higher end tvs from the center to the right side. It was awful, not that I saw it, but 'Good Luck Chuck' moved their movie poster credit block from the center to the right. I thought the ad campaign for that was a welcome breath of (originally I had an anti-'Good Luck Chuck' rant in these parentheses, but I'm clearly only speaking about the posters.) fresh air in the theatre lobbies. So, I flipped it and filtered it and here was my somewhat final product, untainted by the conventions of the 'center-aligned' milkshake glass.

Handy-dandy Notebook

2008-03-06T13:54:00.000-08:00

A sketch of the grating that makes up the Eiffel tower. It kind of hits on art nouveau in just this small detail, a detail that is repeated several thousand times.

The basic pose of the 'Man of Sorrows' Acadamia in Florence, right near the David. This painting depicts Christ in the tomb, waiting with the sin of the world on his shoulders.

This is a rocky outset? or beach off of Marseilles. I drew it in fear that my friends would be washed away by some rogue wave and I would be saying someday, 'this is where it happened...' Just down the road was Chateau d'If.

This is the view of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the view from the Tate Modern art museum. there's always something in the way of seeing something important in London, but that's history for you, if you don't set it off alone, it gets suffocated by the present.

Ambigram

2008-03-06T13:42:00.001-08:00

A friend, Deborah Busch, asked me to look at some of her photos for a contest. I noticed this peculiarity about one of them and exploited it.

Valentine's Day

2008-03-06T13:34:00.001-08:00

I took some doodles i had made, got some textures from a laundry bad and a sweater's shoulder pad. I found a color pallet on a website and re-colored all things. Then I had wrote all the letters. Also the heart shaped came from stock photo websites that i screen grabbed and edited. Put it into a 1024x768 format and bam. It came out looking like Kirby's Dream Land.
I had to take pictures of all these elements, it would be much easier with a scanner.

Design by Billy Collins

2008-03-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

I pour a coating of salt on the table
and make a circle in it with my finger.
This is the cycle of life
I say to no one.
This is the wheel of fortune,
the Arctic Circle.
This is the ring of Kerry
and the white rose of Tralee
I say to the ghosts of my family,
the dead fathers,
the aunt who drowned,
my unborn brothers and sisters,
my unborn children.
This is the sun with its glittering spokes
and the bitter moon.
This is the absolute circle of geometry
I say to the crack in the wall,
to the birds who cross the window.
This is the wheel I just invented
to roll through the rest of my life
I say
touching my finger to my tongue.