Art & Story Blog

The modification has so far gone well. The stubborn curve is starting to come out of the pages and I’ve enjoyed the versatility and portability of this “frankenskine.” But shortly after starting to use it, I became aware that I did NOT refill this moleskine with the same paper I tested out in the weeks prior.

The paper I originally used seemed thinner and slightly off-white, whereas the paper I put into the book was a bright white and somewhat thicker (and as a result, stiffer).

See if you can tell the difference between the two in these photos:

I don’t have much time to write this post, so I’m hoping the pictures will speak for themselves. Today I took a Moleskine small daily planner and reloaded it with 90 lb. Fabriano Artistico hot press watercolor paper (according to the instructions posted by Martha at Trumpetvine Travels). This is something I’ve been meaning to do for months, but with Sketchcrawl 15 tomorrow and only two pages left in my current Moleskine sketchbook, today was the day. Some of the watercolored sketches I’ve posted in the past couple weeks have been on loose pieces of Fabriano Artistico already cut and folded with the intention of binding, but I never got around to it. Well, at least now I’m sure I like this paper. It’s versatile. It takes well to pencil, ink, and watercolor. Everything I need in a sketchbook but in the Moleskine format. Anyway, here are the pictures! Sorry there are so many. I’ve sized them down to make them a little more manageable.

Cables and Clouds, Los Angeles

Taken from the front steps of my apartment, these are the same telephone poles that appear in this drawing from Sketchcrawl 12 1/2:

The number of header images now in random rotation is 23 and it can sometimes take a lot of clicks before a new header image is ever seen by the public. Since I don’t get that many hits on this blog, anyway, for some of you that could mean it could possibly be about a YEAR before you saw a particular header image in use. For that reason, I’m going to start taking the other header images out of rotation for about one week after posting new ones. So for about the next week, this will be the featured header image on the Art & Story Blog. EDIT: I’m going to include the recent Hawaii headers in this week’s rotation, as well.

We didn’t make a holiday mix CD in 2005, but we did get our acts together to make one this year! Hey, finding stuff that doesn’t make you want to throw up is challenging stuff. This year’s concept is Holiday Lights.

Mele Kalikimaka, everyone!

A couple of years ago, my girlfriend and I collaborated on a Holiday mix CD to send to family and friends. The idea was to have a few Christmasy songs scattered throughout, but just to put songs on there that we liked and that might play well in a wintery, festive, giftwrap-ripping environment. Hopefully it would also be a CD someone could listen to at other times of the year and not have the urge to regurgitate. We called it Holiday Here and There. Playing off of that title, I thought of how our families were scattered about here and there in Hawaii, Seattle, San Francisco, and Cincinnati and designed this cover/insert:

(Note that the colors are slightly off from the print version. I’m having calibration issues between Photoshop and Imageready.)
Front of the CD insert:

Back of the CD insert (what you’d see with the CD case open):

The full insert unfolded:

Here’s another new header image from a recent trip to San Francisco.

Finally, here are some new header images made from photos taken on the October/November trip to South Carolina and Mississippi.

Below is a flyer and poster design I’ve just completed for No Shame Theatre’s 20th Anniversary. This one will be distributed in Iowa City, where No Shame originated (the first No Shame performance was out of the back of a pick-up truck). An alternate version will be used for the Los Angeles No Shame and we’ve also discussed putting this image on T-Shirts.

Okay, so it’s rather grotesque, but keep in mind that the forms are abstracted and you could not see anything grotesque in it, were it not for the aid of your own imagination. Any resemblance to forms or actions deemed rude or obscene are purely coincidental. Given another look, I’m sure you’ll see that what you thought was one thing is really just a nose, or eyes, etc., of a silly cartoon character. Harmless G-rated fun, all around!

“Whackjob!” was a literary reading series in San Diego that I did flyer designs for. I was given pretty much total freedom to interpret each reading’s theme title and would employ whatever tools or styles seemed to fit the bill. The themes illustrated below are “Better Than Hope,” “Genie In A Bottle,” “Poemectomy,” a Valentine’s Day theme, and “Wipe Out,” respectively.