I’ve noticed a theme in these last few weeks topics: reinvention, daring, ambition… I finally gave in to it this week. I did Madonna. Mostly because my brain was a bit blocked, and I couldn’t come up with anything else.
Early Madonna though. Quintesential Madonna. “I want to rule the world,” Madonna. In other words, Madonna at her most ambitious. 
It turned out very Andy Warholish. Which I’m not sure is a good thing.
Just got through tweaking things cosmetically around here. Just a little spring cleaning, nothing major. I may get around to more resounding changes at some point, but that’s if I have time (which unfortunately, I may just).
Although not this weekend. I still have projects on the go, not to mention a party. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant a party every night this weekend.
All the people I’ve known since I got here are getting ready to move on with their lives, and graduate already. Including Liam. The last couple of years everyone pretty much hasn’t had the time to go out and actually do stuff due to a combination of working and school. Whatever happened to the hazy, crazy Animal House days when College meant equal parts fun and study? Maybe I’m just friends with nerds. Yep, that’s entirely likely. Need to get myself some new friends or something.
Otherwise, I’m also excited that I found a guide to organic growers in my area.
“Organic?” You say.
Yep. I’ve been looking for where to find heirloom vegetables like funky purple potatoes, and black tomatoes and all manner of all natural, but completely unnatural looking vegetables, so I’m not some gigantic hippy freak (although I do have tendencies…). I thought you could only find that stuff in big cities despite the fact that I live in one of the most fertile growing regions in the country, and I’m sure a lot of organic food is grown right here. Turns out I was wrong, and it makes me happy, ’cause now I know where to find home-made preserves and heirloom apples.
I’m also totally gonna have to check out the Pelham farmers market. It looks like the place to be come May (which is in 3 days, awesome).
I refuse to sink so low as to buy my underwear at the dollar store (not that I’m judging, and thanks for the compliments). But I did find these great typographic alphabet refrigerator magnets there a little while ago. There’s sans-serif letters, and italics, and lower cases, and titling capitals, and Small-X heights… and I’m a giant design nerd.
If I scrap-booked, I’d go to the dollar store for everything - they have the same stickers and hole punches and borders they sell everywhere else for astronomical prices - but for a dollar instead. However, I also refuse to sink so low as to scrapbook.
Just had a pretty good lunch meeting about the Project. It’s coming along nicely (on my end any way - the other end is sick, unfortunately). I’m actually pretty much finished up. I just have to clean up my work, make sure it all makes sense, and do a little supplemental fun stuff. Since a certain someone is after me for keeping secrets, I’m sharing a little sneak peak of my work. I really didn’t mean to make things sound so clandestine, I just like keeping things to myself until they’re complete - especially when they’re for a client and not just personal (and maybe if you sent me an email or asked me about it in person I’d share the details). 
It’s a model sheet of one of the characters I’m working on. You may recognize her from a previous illustration. Actually, she started out life as a preliminary sketch for “the Project” but I decided to… you know, a couple of birds, one stone.
Although now that things are winding down, I’m worrying a bit. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do when this project is over. I may have to start actually trying to make work for myself. What a novel concept. But I have a couple ideas. I’m sure I’ll come up with something.
But I have been buried under work of late. That infamous Very Big Project is taking up all my time. Which I don’t mind actually.
I’m working mostly in black and white, very clean lined, but cluttered with gradients, and a lot of grey filling in the empty spaces. I didn’t like the way that looked - too lazy and muddy looking. I looked back at my original drawings in my sketch book, and realized that they looked a million times better. They’re just black brush pen on white sketch paper, no fancy gradients to be found.
So I’m keeping the illustrations just to stark black and white, thick, line drawings and recreating the shadows and texture by hand. Which I’m much more happy about, but is definitely a bit more time consuming. Stark black and white just works so much better graphically. It pop’s right out at ya, which definitely what I’m going for with this work.
Stark, pop, graphic and dynamic. Definitely some good hints as to what I’m working away at.
I had a bunch of ideas for this one, but found the simplicity of this little tightrope walking girl, to be the most appealing. I was thinking up all kinds of way’s to make her doubley daring, but I kept it down to the bare minimum in the end. Although I did keep in mind that for women to have jobs at all in the earlier parts of this century was definitely daring, so her vintage look is certainly on purpose. Actually, one of my discarded idea’s was for her to be wearing some kind of suffragette sash, which would have been neat, but would have cluttered up the image. I like to keep it subtle.
Here’s my first finished silkscreened t-shirt. Note me in the middle with my Blow-Pop. I was going for a whole late nineties raver thing… or I was too lazy to take it out of my mouth. My tongue is blue!
I learned some important things on this attempt:
Most importantly, that a pastel shade of acrylic paint doesn’t show up too well on vibrant coloured fabric.
Also that if you are ironing on the floor (due to lack of appropriate board), your cat will invariably want to see what you’re doing, and come very close to burning its tiny-little-self.
Another is that it is very hard to take a proper picture of yourself in a tiny bathroom (and if you get your boyfriend to help, he will not understand what you want, and then just end up making you look fat).
But I will spare you from turning this into “everything I need to know in life I learned while silkscreening”.
Next up, I’m thinking of trying to find some cheap but cute white cotton underwear, and emblazoning my name on the butt (so I don’t forget who I am). This all depends on me being able to find cheap but cute white cotton underwear. What ever happened to the stuff we all wore as little girls? Why don’t they still make those? They were both cute and comfortable. Everything I find these days is incredibly expensive, incredibly matronly, or incredibly poorly engineered. Actually, I have a few cute Betty-Boop pairs from H&M, but they’re not plain, they have Betty Boop on them.
Enough about my underwear! Geez, I’m gonna get some weird Google hits outta this one.
I’ve been stumbling upon some fascinating things recently. So I do believe I will share the linky goodness.
Quintesential British kit. Like Restoration Hardware… but British.
All the awesome free comic fonts you could ever ask for.
An illustrated journal of vaguely dark, turn-of-the-century, big-foreheaded girls.
Todd Oldham’s crafty new book looks like a good read.
The instantly ubiquitous Google sightseeing. Clicking on this link will cost you at least a half an hour.
I love spring, and cute girls and bunnies, and this comic pretty much exemplifies those things.
Also some non-internet things:
Bust magazine (I’ve taken a while to warm up to it’s scattered feminist sensibilities, and it’s odd teen magazine fetish, but this last issue had some interesting stuff in it).
The freakishly warm weather today (24 degrees celsius).
Black currant wine (despite what you may have heard about fruit wines this is the best thing ever),
And rice and peas (and when I say peas, I mean kidney beans, not peas, get it? Whatever, it’s a Jamaican thing).
I have always wanted to learn how to silkscreen. Every thing I’ve read or seen makes it look fairly complicated and definitely expensive.
Then thimble posted a link to this tutorial.
It is awesomely easy, and makes me massively excited. My head swims with dreams of silkscreened t-shirts, and tote bags, stationary, and prints, and throw pillows, and personalized underwear, and inexpensive but great gifts, and, and, and… don’t let me get carried away or anything.
So the above is my first successful attempt on paper. I’m working my way up to fabric. But I’ve got big plans, boy do I ever.
First I came up with a design.
I wanted something simple to start out with, so I decided to go with my name in a swashy, neo-baroque script. Very the Arcade Fire. I figured my name is generic enough that I can use it on a variety of items.
I used voile netting stretched on a small embroidery hoop, and sketched in the pattern with pencil, then painted over it with Mod Podge (which I bought specifically because it had such a funky label). I let it dry and then scraped a blob of pure acrylic paint across my design with an old plastic gift card (just like they do in ‘real’ screen-printing).
I’ve found that a somewhat thick acrylic paint works best so far (like the cheap kind that comes in little 2 ounce squeeze bottles). Anything too runny just bleeds. Anything too thick won’t squish through the holes properly.
It feels good to accomplish something substantially crafty. In fact, it’s been a terribly productive weekend. I’ve gone out for walks, fixed my jury-rigged curtains, unscrewed unsightly screws from my window casements, and baked a cake.
Although the cake was kinda a cheat. Just a Betty Crocker rainbow bits - which I’ve decided may just be my wedding cake - cupcakes actually.
Classy, I know, but It was my birthday cake from the age of about 4 on, so I figure if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Plus, have you ever even had a truly yummy wedding cake? I find they’re mostly pretty disgusting, and I’ve had some fancy ones.
Of course I might change my mind entirely and go for a croquembouche instead, which just happens to be the traditional French wedding cake.
I’m a complicated gal that way.
Here’s my version of reinvent. I thought this one would be tricky at first as it’s more of an abstract concept than usual, but then I came up with a killer concept.
Can you tell I’ve been watching the first season of Alias for the very first time?
Graphically speaking though, hair is always perfect to work with. It’s so fluid that you can do pretty much anything with it and still have it look like hair (so long as it’s on top of someone’s head). Everyone in the world knows what hair looks like (because they hopefully have some) so it’s universal.
Its universal. Its versatile. It’s instantly recognizable. Perfect. Illustrative. Concept. Boo-ya.