Moleskine book

I finally got around to buying myself a Moleskine sketchbook. I used a small one when working on the Sketchbook Project, but that never really felt like it was mine. Now I have one to call my own. It's impossible to not feel inspired when you own one of these...I mean this is the same book that Picasso and Hemingway used! I feel like I want to draw, paint, write...anything...I just have to do SOMETHING!

I sketched a stone wall I had seen in a book using watercolor pencils....which is how I realized the Moleskine sketchbooks do not handle water well. I guess now I have an excuse to go buy the Moleskine watercolor book.

Painting

I've taken a break from designing baby clothes and logos and decided to get back to some more traditional art. I really just wanted to play with my some of my Christmas presents...a set of acrylic paints, brushes, an easel, and clayboard. I'm not much of a painter; I never have been. I'm really not good at anything with color - pastels, watercolors, colored pencils, etc. But I know I won't get better unless I practice, and if I happen to create a lot of crap in the meantime, oh well. So, I asked for acrylic paints because they seemed like the best of both watercolors and oil paints.

For my first painting, I was really trying to get the feel for how the paints act. I tried mixing up washes and painting right out of the tube. There are definitely a lot of problems with this painting, but also, some aspects I like. I thought I did a decent job of laying in the wash for the sky. I also thought the use of a little orange was well placed. The actual pier looks like crap...the lines aren't straight, they're too thick, and the colors suck. But I learned a lot in the course of this painting which hopefully I will carry on to future paintings.




The second painting I tried to do more like a watercolor painting. I used watercolor paper which reacts much differently than clayboard. Again, there are several things I like and dislike about this painting. I like the way the sky wash turned out. I also like the texture and depth of the sand. I really like how the different colors of the water blend together on the right side. I could have done a better job with the hobie cats, especially the body of the boats. For the sails I probably should have stuck with the more transparent glazes, but I went for the thicker paint. I also took a little artistic liberty with the coloring of the sails which did not turn out well. Overall, not TOO bad, but I need lots of practice!

Yankees Suck!!! Now with less copyright infringement!

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Yankees Suck!

This is how I roll!

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Maybe a dingo ate your baby!

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Potty like a rockstar!!!!

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Another onesie design....

I drew the star shape and filled it with "metal gold" in the graphic style menu. I copied the star (no fill; black outline) and made it slightly bigger than the 1st. I aligned the 2 stars in the center. I gave the black outline a brush stroke (0.25pt). In the next layer I made the text, and also gave it a brush stroke, and rounded all of the edges. In another layer, I took a picture of some wood grain, live traced it, and colored it white. I then manipulated the size and placement of the texture until I was happy with it.

More Onesies

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Some more of the onesies and bibs I'm making for my future niece/nephew. These are not too original, but my brother-in-law is a huge fan of the tv show MASH, and the band R.E.M. The MASH design is pretty straight forward...I just used a font that was similar and filled it with black, and outlined in white. I created a box filled with green behind the text. I also made a red rectangle, then copied it, rotated it and aligned the two in the center. Then I added the shapes together in the pathfinder menu.

For the REM design, I found a picture of the Monster album cover and applied the live trace. It took a bit of playing to get the detail I wanted. I also had to carefully delete the elements I didn't want. I then used live paint to fill in the image with a shade of orange. The text was added in a separate layer.

Baby Onesies

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My brother in law and sister in law are having a baby in June. I am VERY excited for my 1st niece/nephew to enter the world. Since I'm no good at quilting or knitting, I've decided to design and print custom baby onesies. I have a ton of ideas, some original, some not so much. Anyway, here is the first design I've finished.

I took the sketch of George Bush I drew for The Sketchbook Project (see post on 10/23/07) and placed it into a blank document. I applied a live trace, changing the threshold until I was happy. In a separate layer I created the text. I also placed a picture of a crumbled sheet of paper that I found online. I applied a live trace to the paper and placed it in front of the text. I copied the text and pasted in front. Then, selecting the pasted text and the paper, I made a clipping mask.

The 2nd onesie was just text that I filled green and then applied the woodcut appearance under the graphic styles --> text menu.

Can't Stop!

I can't stop thinking of different ideas for my friend's website. There are so many things you can do with the letter "e." For this design, I drew a box, and then placed the letter on top. I subtracted the letter from the box (pathfinder menu), and added a shadow. I then copied the box 3 times and changed the orientation of each one. Viola!

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Happy Accidents

While playing with some different logo design ideas I was moving the images around on the screen. The picture above happened when I copied the triangle with an E, and then pasted it on top. I was going to reflect the image, but I kinda liked the way it looked, so here it is.


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Illustrator logo

This is just a very basic rendition of the sketch below in illustrator. I didn't do anything special. I used Live Paint to color the logo, then dropped a shadow.


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More Logo Work

This is a rough sketch of another idea I had for my friend's website logo (see post below).  His initial's are actually ME, and that is how he usually signs his posts, emails, etc, so I think this design works as a play on both letters.  The initial sketch was done in pencil (on the back of an old xerox copy....gotta love drawing at work!), and then colored with a black sharpie.  Later, when I'm not on company time, I'll see what I can do in Illustrator. 

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button/pin logo

A friend mentioned needing a logo for a website he runs. He wanted something simple, perhaps just the letter "e." So I was playing around today with some simple pin shapes in Illustrator that I learned about on Veerle's blog (in my links). For Veerle's complete tutorial, go here:

Here are the 2 designs I've come up with based on the pin idea (the actual images are much nicer than the png files I've uploaded):






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New Year's Resolution

I can't believe I've let 2 months slip by without updating. I resolve to do better this year. And not just at updating this blog, but to spend more time drawing, painting, and whatever else I can think of! I was looking at one of my favorite sites, www.illustrationclass.com, and the latest exercise involved random doodling. So, when I've had a few minutes here and there, this is what I've come up with.



These are not done yet:





Check out Von. R. Glitschka's website above for this creative exercise and more.