ETA!

New Painting…

Friday, June 4th, 2010

I had the great fortune of being able to paint on commission a little something for some friends lately, and got carte-blanche on the final product.. Something I don’t always think to do when I’m painting is take process pictures, but this time around I had a little foresight. Very little was preconceived, in drawing or otherwise, though I had the idea at first that I wanted to paint a thick stand of trees.

Having established my stand of trees (not quite as thick a stand as I might have liked, but they fit the space well) I needed some sort of central focus… Cats are always fun, and then there is some sort of pretext needed, and what always ties in is people. And I love the idea of nature not being scary. So in the end we have a sort of semi-sultry domestic scene, a quick meal cooked after dark by the light of a small gas burner and a little moonlight.

Tags: acrylic, Analogue Couleur, Art, comissioned art, paint, painting
Posted in Analogue Couleur, Updates | 2 Comments »

“RICH, Inside & Out” Book Cover Concept

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Recently there was a design contest posted on globalgrind.com by icon Russel Simmons. The call for entries was to produce a book cover for his upcoming book “Rich Inside and Out, A Guide to Money and Happiness”. Two Images were provided as reference and some of the entries were posted as guidance.

I was up for the challenge, I love a well designed book cover, not to mention great illustration (though none was involved in this instance, and maybe there should have been… hmm). Now there has been, in the profession of Graphic Design, great disdain for contests and speculative work (i.e. work without a guarantee of compensation). And sadly I can no longer can fall back on student status as an excuse for taking part. The AIGA (Professional Association for Design) even has an official position on such work (namely, that it is a big huge no-no, and devalues all Design). But at this point in my  life, I take what I can get, so if my time can be spent designing something at least potentially ‘real’, then so be it.  Below is my entry…

Tags: book covers, Branding, branding and Identity, Links
Posted in Updates, print | No Comments »

Welcome Back, Welcome Back…

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

The trip to Vancouver was a mixed bag, mostly a success, but hard work. Vancouver has not gotten any cheaper, in fact it’s generally more expensive, especially in terms of transportation… Skytrain is a whopping $2.75 per zone (of which there are four, more or less) and add five dollars if you need to get to Vancouver International Airport.

Is it useful? Absolutely, just about everything you might need to get to in Vancouver is accessible by Skytrain or Bus. Lets just say I probably spent in the area of ninety dollars in three weeks on transit alone, and that’s with a lot of casual forgetfulness thrown in to soften the expense.

The city looked pretty as ever.. Olympic-ness as far as the eye could see, and characteristically bustling with metropolitan activity, most of it reserved and polite. I was considering a relocation on this trip, and visited upwards of sixty different Design-related business over a two day period. Almost all of them were in stages of post-Olympic-business shock or at a near standstill and praying for signs of economic life. If someone is reaping the boon of Olympic spending, it’s not your average boutique design firm.

One thing I loved about the Vancouver Olympics was the level of support for local artistry and culture. There were tonnes of art installations, and the Native component of BC’s cultural landscape was pretty well represented, even in the official merch’ offerings. There was plenty of discontent around, but many of the admittedly disgruntled were proud of how Canada was getting behind the Olympics.

For all its issues, if you can afford to live there, Vancouver is probably one of the prettiest, safest and friendliest cities in the world!

Tags: news, Olympics 2010, travels, Vancouver
Posted in Updates | No Comments »