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.
I spent a lot of time alone, waiting for buses in my youth.
I tried to capture a bit of that Frank Miller/Sin City style, and mesh it with my own . It took forever for some reason.
I’m not entirely sure I’m happy with it. I started out with something much more complicated and colourful, and I kept having to remove stuff to keep it graphic, and visually minimal. I’m pleased with her face, and not so sure about anything else. I think it would of helped If I had any kind of modeling or reference images for any of it, instead of just guesswork from memory – but I really wanted to just get the image in my head onto the screen without any outside influence (other than my Big Fat Kill graphic novel).
An (admittedly selfish) note to bloggers: If you are a 32 year old housewife with angst: please refrain from telling the world about it. I only read about your cute little lives to entertain myself, and occasionally steal ideas on how to make stuffed animals or block prints, not because I want to see what teenage live journals would be like if they all aged 10 years, got a domain and knowledge of Typepad (but retained their need to have random strangers validate their lives).
Seriously. We all need a lot more Travis Nicholson in our lives. Now that’s how you blog.
Also note how I did not bracket that opening paragraph with <selfish> blah blah </selfish>. That’s tired.
Enough of my self indulgent telling other people how to live their internet lives though.
I am actually pretty happy with the way things are going (disappointing daily blog reads notwithstanding).
The VBP is going very well, despite yet another slight hiatus due to finishing off my work at the Press.
It’s coming to a close. The last issue of the academic year is hitting stands, and all that’s left is for me to train the incoming protege, and hope he or she doesn’t outshine me too horrifically.
The cat has a habit of waking us up at half hour intervals in the morning. If we have to get up at 8, it’s a good thing. If we get to sleep in, we end up threatening her with death. Poor thing just gets lonely and wants to play. So I’m up.
I did not entirely enjoy Sin City when I went to see it the other day. I felt it could have been stylized even more than it was. Especially the ucky violent parts. They weren’t exactly realistic – especially not when the blood was colours other than red – but they weren’t exactly obviously fake. They were just kind of… b-movie.
In the comic book the violent scenes were all silhouette, and were almost kind of beautiful – all spidery, dripping cutout’s of light – practically lace work. It took some of the hard edge of what was actually going on in the images off my mind and let me enjoy the dark yet intriguing sensibilities of the Sin City world.
But I’m not sure what I expected from a movie that involved that Tarantino fellow.
I just loved Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow so much, I had high hopes for another high-camp, all CG, graphic-styled, movie.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only gory movie I can truly appreciate is Evil Dead – talk about high camp and stylized. Bless Sam Raimi. He knows where to draw the comic book line.
I’ve been involving myself in the discussions at Keri Smith’s wish jar journal. Keri seems to be in a constant state of self improvement, and while I usually hate all that self-improvement malarky, its so refreshing to see someone go at it from a ‘ME’ perspective as opposed to a ‘YOU SHOULD’ perspective (I have a thing about people who are preachy – it probably has something to do with having a father who is a Preacher).
I’ve been noticing that a lot of what she’s been talking about lately has a lot to do with the tension between being an illustrator and being an artist. That gap left between art as self-expression and art that appears to be just what’s on the surface. Isolating and analysing whether there is any gap at all, or if it’s simply a mental mirage that must be surpassed.
So the following is pretty much lifted from comments I left at the Wish Jar:
I think I personally find a great tension between being an illustrator and artist. I know that for the most part they are one and the same, and that the reality is there should be nothing that separates the two. Creation is creation.
I just remember not knowing that such a thing as illustration existed when I was a child, only scary, self-important ‘art’ with it’s need for controversy and communication.
I, however, just wanted to make cute stuff.
Then I found out that drawing cute stuff was illustration, and that it was separate from ‘art’.
Now I occasionally feel pangs of regret that I don’t go “deep” enough. I think we’re both discovering (me through Keri) that anything that comes from an honest place (shallow or otherwise) can be important, can be art. I just need to remember that childhood place where only creation is important.
I always hated Ann of Green Gables when I was a girl because Ann had to give up her creative nature to grow up.
I want to be an adult, and get to keep that creative nature.
I am still very busy, what with the Very Big Project and all, but for once I feel like I’m actually getting somewhere with it. That is either because going to that conference this weekend allowed me to “get some perspective” and “come back with a fresh outlook,” or simply that all the various visual elements are starting to come together to give the thing some backbone, some real body and reality.
If you’ve ever started something, and looked at it when it was halfway through, and been about ready to toss it in the trash… Well, then you know where my mindset was. I can be freakishly patient most of the time when it comes to artistic things, but sometimes it’s hard to see things clearly when they’re not whole, and completed, you know?
Not that this project is completed, of course, it’s just that there’s enough of it done for me to be sure of where I’m going with it.
It doesn’t help that I’ve got that whole “dayjob” thing to do at the same time as the VBP. Thankfully I got to do a fun info-graphic this week. Info-graphics can be the best, creatively, because there’s so many elements to play with. I’m serious, really! They may be stodgy old charts and maps traditionally, but that’s exactly what makes them a challenge to make fun and pretty.
This weeks Illustration Friday topic is (as you can probably tell) travel.
I missed last weeks so I decided to get this one out of the way early before the conference.
Oh, and last night the cat managed to drag a duck leg bone (our delicious dinner last night) out of the closed garbage can and into our bedroom where she proceeded to gnaw and feast until I woke up and heard her (and had to take it away).
She’s a talented, mischievous little gourmand.
Now I must go pack.
Christine on tweets for 2010-01-25
the Sis on christmas ready
kickpleat on a chicken (and rice) in every pot Christine on married kickpleat on married