how do you eat your jelly bellies?
things are looking up.
30 September, 2008 – 11h37
so what if zune only has a four percent market share. so what if the zune software only works with windows. so what if i have an iphone, an ipod nano and a macbook air instead of their microsoft counterparts. this is way cool, and i work with the people who make it happen.
art acquisitions.
29 September, 2008 – 23h37
hans and i have spent the spring and summer of this year steadily building our cute art collection. a few notable findings by particularly interesting creators of cute are listed below.
a springtime gift for hans, a cookie by kickass-peanut. if it can be made plushie, this girl has done it.
a small gift from hans to me, created by violetpi. maia [as i’ve named the tiny kitty] sits atop a jewelry box made during my college days.
a charming little print by tad carpenter that we stumbled across at blue bottle.
a bird from the heidi kenney opening we attended at schmacy. we’ve named him garamond.
illustration friday.
25 September, 2008 – 22h29
i finally put my incessant sketching to good use and completed a creation for illustration friday. this week’s topic was “clique”.
pointless.
25 September, 2008 – 12h00
when you’ve caught up on twitter and rss and you’ve nothing better to do at work, try this.
really, it’s about as exciting as all of those flashlight apps on the iphone. and after the novelty’s worn off, you’re that much closer to going home.
working. sort of.
3 September, 2008 – 22h18
i’ve reentered the working world, and it’s about time too. after all, summer couldn’t last. the days are shortening and the rain is less than a month away. and i would be focusing on my work, if only microsoft could get windows installed on the machine they’ve supplied me. it really is deliciously ironic.
honestly though, there’s more silver lining than cloud. every day that the “cannot proceed” error plagues the windows installation means an afternoon off for me. and with weather like this, it really could not get any better.
there’s beauty in the turp wash.
26 August, 2008 – 23h13
i’ve been working vigorously on the new series, hoping to get as far as i can before my days become consumed with paycheck-earning work. today i began four new pieces, lightly sketching and then doing quick, one-hour-or-less turp washes [burnt umber + turpentine + paper towel + as little brush as possible].
working smaller allowed me to get caught up in the details of painting, but my new, larger canvases are forcing me back into the habit of being a big picture painter. sure, the eyes still get more attention in the early stages than my art school teachers would approve of, but i’m following my training with a combination of sketchbook planning and loose underpaintings. thus, no part of the painting is left unplanned, though all is loose enough to allow for the natural evolution of artmaking.
so enjoy a first look at the paintings of the “midnight in the garden” series.
business cards.
19 August, 2008 – 11h16
let’s talk about the business card. the approximately two by three point five inch piece of cardstock that tells anyone holding it your vital information while also visually conveying the look and feel of you and your brand. it’s quite possibly the most difficult of all things to design. but there is hope! and plenty of inspiration.
of course designing the perfect wallet-sized representation of yourself wouldn’t be a challenge without the constraints imposed by the printing companies. so before jumping too far into a design with pop-up book style effects, it’s best to get your bearings on what popular printing companies are willing to do.
if you’re looking for the highest quality of printing with the most vibrant colours and the blackest blacks, i’d recommend modern postcard. they’re pricy, but worth the cost when seeking photographic quality in printing. they also print showcards, so they’re an obvious top pick for artists seeking additional printed materials.
also a high quality printing company, 4by6 does postcards and business cards in a limited variety of sizes and finishes. they also have a rounded corner option and are commonly used by artists.
vistaprint is incredibly popular, affordable, and does a great deal of quality printing. there are, however, a good many horror stories from those who’ve done business with the company. vista tends to be spam-happy, and the quality of the printing is noticeably less than that of modern postcard and 4by6.
competing with vistaprint is the slightly more expensive and slightly better quality moo.com. moo even offers convenient photo uploading from your etsy, facebook and flickr accounts.
if you’re looking for less quality and more convenience, companies like 48hourprint and overnight prints do a decent job on printing standard business cards quickly and affordably.
beyond those companies, there are countless printers in local markets worth looking into. and, if you’re feeling uber-ambitious, search for traditional printers using letterpresses. sure they’re pricy, but the original product is worth it.
learning from the treehouse club.
14 August, 2008 – 13h26
as i add final coats of varnish and touch up paintings’ edges, i’ve been doing quite a bit of reflecting on my last series, “the treehouse club”. the first half of the series was painted in saint louis, the last in seattle. definitely a life change for me, though i feel it hardly affected the paintings. i feel a definite growth from the work, both in skill and in understanding my reasons for painting. from their skin tones to their wide-eyed, full-lipped facial features, my females are becoming ownable. the second half of the series made it clear, i’ve found a style that is both comfortable and exciting.
the first eight paintings were done without any conceptual aim or purpose. technically, i was going to push myself into new territory. the scale of the pieces was dramatically smaller than anything i had previously done, though not quite as small as the princess tinies, which were also beginning at the time of this series. i was forced into a discomfort zone i’ve known since my introduction to painting class; i was forced to paint in a scale that was nowhere near life-sized.
i began without the series in mind. i perused the pages of vogue, dog-earring images with models worthy of being painted. the first several paintings were far less traditional than usual, and instead bordered on illustrative. i took this a step further, destroying the illusion of space with pattern. in several of the early pieces, the pattern overwhelmed the figures, making them feel very much unlike the rest of my paintings.
then came the move to seattle. i let the paint dry, cleaned up the brushes, and discovered a trend amongst the paintings, so titled the series along with the individual pieces accordingly. “the treehouse club”, subtitled “less than admirable characters”, depicts villains and less-than-noble protagonists as females [though several, like “holofernes” and “the caterpillar”, are male in stories].
without necessarily planning to continue the series, i began painting on a new set of canvases. i still had no goal in mind, except to learn something about how and why i paint. so i painted, and the seattle females had quite a bit in common with the last of the saint louis females. so they joined the series, and found appropriate names - “baba yaga”, “goldilocks” and “rapunzel”.
the moral of this series is obvious as i wrap up: creating pretty things is not so much of a challenge when the conceptual is an afterthought. while it is important to just paint, to practice regardless of a specific goal, ultimately i don’t want the audience to view a piece or a series and leave thinking only “that’s pretty.” so as i move on towards my next set of paintings, “midnight in the garden”, i’m giving myself more time to research and gather source material, to work in my sketchbook, and even to sketch more on the canvases themselves. “the treehouse club” remains precious, but more for the process of learning than the product.
homonyms and ad placement.
12 August, 2008 – 21h10
movie trailer ≠ utility trailer. ad placement fail.
google carries the phenomenon one step further. a search for “trailer” brings up organic results consisting of movie trailers - juno, the dark knight, indiana jones, etc., while all sponsored links are utility trailers. furthermore, related searches include car trailer, motorcycle trailer, enclosed trailer and equipment trailer, completely ignoring the ever-so-organically popular movie trailer. talk about different audiences… you have to wonder what sort of clickthrough those ads are getting.
