Today’s watercolor.

Doodles

A couple of doodles.

Finished the buildings!

Hooray! I finished the buildings I started on 11/30/11.
I learned the value of sketching out the form before doing the details. I learned this by not following that advice and winding up with portions of buildings that look like they have been through an earthquake!

Next practice sketch will be done with the basic form in place first.

My habit of jumping right into detailing is proving to be much harder to break than I anticipated.

Today’s sketch

I forgot to start posting my sketches. I’ll start with what I worked on today. I noted this illustration a couple of days ago while reading Sandman Vol 6. I believe this was the cover of Three Septembers and a January. Original by Dave McKean.

I had a hard time with the curves.

It’s good to have a goal.

I have set a new goal for myself — become an illustrator. I have toyed with many ideas in the past and have always been stopped by my level of illustration skills. It seems that no matter how I have tried to get around it, I need to learn how to draw. I want to learn how to draw. I have a million ideas to execute, and for some reason, I have not taken the time to hone my illustration skills.

I was in a very peaceful state the other day. My mind wasn’t cluttered with worry or lists of things to do, so I posed the question to myself, “What do I really want to do in life?” My first thought was, Draw. I followed that thought out over the next few days and realized I had quite a list of things I have talked about wanting to create and couldn’t follow through on the way I envisioned:

• Carnival and sideshow posters
• Infographics
• Silkscreening
• Event posters

I have spent some serious time reading typography and design books lately, in the hopes of creating more poster art. While those are certainly worth my time, I was ignoring the fact that my very favorite poster styles are all hand-drawn.

I like money*

Another aspect to this endeavor, besides creative frustration, is finding another source of steady income. I have been trying to increase my web design business since my print business is steadily declining as more of my clients move online. There have been some major issues with web design for me. The first and foremost being that it does not work well with my print design workflow. I have to do web work on the weekends because I need large blocks of uninterrupted time due to its dynamic nature. That does not scale up well. Also, I just don’t enjoy it that much. I plan to keep up my web design skills so I can be of service to my clients, but I don’t think trying to grow it into a full-time business is going to work for me.

Instead, my plan is to create business illustrations for stock photo/illustration sites. This will require many, many, many illustrations to bring in an income, but the number one thing I keep seeing if you want to improve your drawing skills is: practice. Win-win! I can draw for myself or to make money and no matter what, I’m improving my skills.

I am amazed I didn’t think of this sooner. I am a frequent buyer on stock illustration sites. I know exactly what I am looking for when designing a magazine or brochure for my clients and I always have to settle. I already have a huge list of concepts to execute. I won’t ever have time to create them for the magazines I work on, but it sure will keep the ideas coming. Another plus is I work with several different industries, so I may be able to fulfill a niche or two in the stock illustration field.

Goal Time

1. Draw Daily – I’ll share my progress here
2. Learn drawing fundamentals – perspective, figures, value and volume
3. Get to know Adobe Illustrator like never before – Lynda.com training and vector.tutsplus.com
4. Draw at least 20 business illustrations worthy of submitting by January 20
5. Apply to several stock illustration sites with 20 illustrations
6. Profit! (Sorry, that’s a reddit joke. I couldn’t resist.)

Inspiration

These are some of my favorite styles and what I’ll be aiming toward.

I’m a big fan of silhouettes, negative space, spot colors, and hand lettering.

Links to above artists:

John Dunivant

Tim Doyle

Kelli Anderson

*It’s a quote from Idiocracy – a comedy about the future that will make you sad.

Plymouth and Jackson ~ Sept. 17, 2011

The original plan for this trip was to pig out and Marlene and Glen’s Dead Fly Diner in Plymouth, then head over to the Plymouth House Inn to interview the current owners about the history of their building (it’s quite a story!). But, the work week ended with the interview unscheduled and the interviewer, me, unfit to interview. I needed a day of fun on a whim.

Wednesday, Wire, Trill and I headed out at 9:30am to the Dead Fly Diner. We arrived about 10:30 and didn’t have to wait too long to be seated. Wednesday and I decided to try their famous homemade waffle batter. Wire went for the crab cake eggs benedict with biscuits and gravy and Trill ordered a ham and cheese omelette. All conversation stopped when the food arrived, we were so hungry.

Now that we were filled up with thousands of calories and hundreds of grams of fat, we were ready to decide on what we were going to do next. We decided we would check out the main street in Jackson. First, we had to make a side trip to the park to use the restrooms because the single bathroom at the Dead Fly diner had been occupied by one person for over 20 minutes. We were scared to go in after, so public toilet it was!

Because of this side trip to the Plymouth park, we discovered this very unusual set of playground equipment. So odd, that I called Trillian out of the Jeep to come over and explain to me how the heck one played on this contraption. She was as baffled as I was. Wednesday and Trillian spent some time checking out each thing and trying to figure out how one has fun on it. I took photos for evidence. We decided it was clearly designed for fish people. Satisfied with that explanation, we headed to Jackson.

On our way into Jackson, we spied a church completely surrounded by a crowded cemetery in the valley below. We made that our first stop. On our way to that cemetery, we drove by another one, and since we were feeling a bit lazy, we just drove through it (politely, of course). That cemetery contained the graves of the victims of the 1922 Argonaut Mine fire.

The church and cemetery we viewed from above on Hwy 49 was Serbian, and located next door was a Serbian Orthodox Home. The cemetery was very tidy and the majority (if not all) of the monuments displayed the Serbian Cross, which made an interesting pattern in the cemetery. It was a bit sterile for my taste, I prefer the cemeteries with unusual reflections of personalities and little tributes placed around the graves. The cemetery in Bodega Bay is my favorite because it is filled with personal touches.

After a quick examination of the cemeteries, we headed to the other end of Main street to browse around in the shops and enjoy the architecture.

Wednesday and I both found items to buy. This is unusual for me, I very rarely buy anything at antique stores. I just like to look at everything. I scored a very cool fainting couch for my Blythe doll. I couldn’t believe how inexpensive it was. It cost less than if I found a cheesy plastic Barbie couch at the toy store! Wednesday found a Viewmaster, which she has a collection of, and a stack of reels. The reels were the real treasure; a collection of commercial wallpaper reels from the 50′s. Oh, they were atrocious and wonderful! The best part, beyond the rare find was that it was very reasonably priced. At the same shop, I spied a necklace that I absolutely had to have. A letter L from an old-round key typewriter! The shop owner’s friend makes these necklaces. There were only 5 letters left, so I was very lucky that my L was there!

We went in and out of very many shops, visually enjoying all the different items they had on display. There was quite a bit of old photography and printing equipment that was fun to examine. We also found a rare bookstore that we spent quite a bit of time in, but everything was slightly overpriced, so we left.

On the way to the bookstore, we spied a large train engine up on the hill and signs pointing to a history museum, so we trudged up the steep hill that Wire wanted to go back and get the Jeep for. After disturbing a couple of teens that thought they had found a quiet retreat for some probably-inappropriate snuggling, we found that the museum was closed until further notice. Wednesday couldn’t resist ringing the giant brass bell on the porch, which earned us more irritated stares from the young lusters. We snickered and left to check out the remaining Main streets shops.

We didn’t find much else of interest and we were getting tired, so we sped up our weaving in and out of Main street and worked our way quickly back to the Jeep. We had one last place that we wanted to check out. A funky assortment of yard sculptures that we saw on Hwy 49 on our way in.

Poor Man’s Bronze is the name of this eclectic yard of art. Need a 10 foot flamingo? They have it. Need a giant Betty Boop? They have it. Need some well-read Playboys from the 70s? They have it. Wire snapped a couple of photos.

Much to Trill’s dismay, we spied a thrift store across the street. We were greeted enthusiastically by the owner who was so happy to see someone with a blue mohawk. It was the cleanest and most organized thrift store I have ever been in. Wednesday found a colorful folding yardstick that needed to come home with her.

It was exactly the day that I was in the mood for. I had a fantastic time. I always love our food and discovery adventures with Wednesday.

See the photo gallery here.

Logo Design for the Esoteric Order of the Zombie

A logo that Wire and I designed together for the Esoteric Order of the Zombie. Our hobby site of weekend adventures of strange and unusual places.

Movie Poster Design

I designed a movie poster for a local filmmaker. Part of the design process included being the photographer for the poster as well. Trillian played a zombie in the movie, she wasn’t crazy about being sticky for several hours, but she’s glad that she did it.

Photoshoot of one of the filming days.

New photos added

Some new photos added to the site:

Auburn Photos

Bodega Bay Photos

Art Journal page 2

 

Art journal, page 2.