Archive for the ‘drawing’ Category

I created three ink & watercolor drawings as a wedding gift this weekend. It’s been years since I created some finished artwork entirely by hand — there’s an element of excitement to having no option to “undo”. I drew the herbs from life, tying and hanging each to draw. Then I took a photo for color reference and added the watercolor using the photos.

I added the labels by printing them backwards, making a laser photocopy, and transferring the ink to the drawing using xylene (a wonderfully toxic solvent/cleaner). The transfer came out far too light, so I used a 005 micron pen to trace the type by hand. It was the last detail I added to the finished drawings. The effect is perfect, and after a half hour my nerves had sufficiently recovered from the ordeal.

May 15 was the 27th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. Molly took the kids solo one more morning than usual that week, and I took Smartbus 460 to the Royal Oak Farm Market. Results:

yewknee.com blogged yesterday about The Johnny Cash Project, as he puts it, a “crowdsourced, animated stop-motion video” of Johnny Cash. Sign up and you can contribute by drawing over specific frames yourself. I love that you can then watch your drawing session at high speed. Here’s my drawing over frame 302 (awaiting approval):

I turned 30 last month. With three kids, the oldest turning 4 in October, 30 years didn’t feel like much of a landmark. But I did get money from generous family members, and I bought some fun items this year.

One of those was a Wacom “Bamboo” drawing tablet. This is the  amateur user version of Wacom’s Intuos line. It has fewer pressure sensitivity levels and doesn’t detect the tilt of your pen like the more expensive tablets, but it’s a great little tool to play with. Besides, I generally draw in pen & ink and color on the computer, and for that it’s perfect.

It installed without a hitch on my macbook pro. I did have a little trouble in photoshop after the initial install. There was a long delay between my mark on the tablet and the mark appearing on the image. Then it would cut out entirely after a couple marks, and I’d  have to switch to another application and then back to PS. I restarted my mac and haven’t had a problem since.

The image here was drawn entirely with the tablet, directly over a photo of my friend, Evan.

One of my graphic design profs in college had us keep a graphic design “sketchbook”. She had a series of assignments involving type, photography, collage, and other visual experimentation. It was a fantastic ongoing assignment that really forced visual play, a concept necessary to healthy creative flow.

I found this in a shoebox this weekend. It’s a collage/drawing I kept from my sketchbook that semester.

House Party!

This father’s day my mom bought me the Legend of Zelda at a flea market. Zelda was one of my favorite games growing up, and I loved playing it again on my old NES.

Naturally I searched for maps online, and there are plenty. But I was disappointed — the first map I saw had every secret, every level, every door… OK, I know that’s what a map is for, but I immediately realized it took the fun out of the game. The process is half the fun – more than half. Add my natural fascination with maps, diagrams and information design, and you get this. I realize it grades me as a Class A nerd, but I don’t care.

No one I’ve shown it to has been particularly interested (not good criteria for a blog post, right?), but then I ask, “Did you play Zelda much?” The answer is inevitably “no”.

I’m pretty sure as a kid I had a map some friend tore out of Nintendo Power. I didn’t know what I was missing.

I’ve been participating in Moustache May again this year. For the uninitiated it may be hard to understand why such a number of men would want to sport moustaches for a month, post photos of themselves online, and obsessively check and comment on each others photos. All I can say is don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it.

I see Moustache May and (from the same creators/organizers) Whiskerino as a space for daily creative outlet, and this year I started making merit badges to go with my photos, as if MM were some kind of scout troop. You can see some of my favorites at left and my full MM profile with pics here.

I didn’t keep it up the whole month – just not enough time in the day. But it was a great exercise to be drawing daily. I wish Sketchcrawl weren’t 45 days away – I’d love to dive in already warmed up.