Show & Tell (blog)

  • Better get my signing hand ready to edition these prints for the St Johns Bizarre this weekend!

  • More on the topic of paper sculpture: so I’m doing a window display next month for Wanderlust, a local vintage shop in Portland. From talking about my peacock screenprint to deciding to turn something from 2D to 3D— it further fleshed out when at a local farmer’s market I found a dodo-like gourd. From there, the idea went from peacock to mystical bird/simurgh to more of a firebird creature. Here’s a rough color study of what I’m thinking (though the tail will definitely curl around the base)— paper mache + wire armature and then paper feathers, dipdying tissue or coffee filters, using paper plates, metallic paper and paint to build the shape of it…

    Of course, never having done this before who knows how it’ll go! I’m sure I’ll be posting lots of process to my Instagram, so feel free to keep an eye or suggest some helpful advice as I go!

  • Another doodle, and some outward thoughts on focus that have been churning about for weeks:

    Lately I’ve been thinking a lot trying to make sense of what exactly I am doing as an illustrator. We just got through Focus Week- our senior students’ thesis defense- which has gotten me thoughtful. I think teaching has brought that sense of ‘what am I doing? and how can I really push it farther?’ up a lot— it’s so invigorating when I see my students start to grasp what they’re really driven by, or how their own personal language starts to become translatable. This takes time, and I miss that element of learning and grasping. So it’s one part that, and one part late spring restlessness, and one part reflection upon what’s past and what’s to come. Eight years of making have flitted by, taking on a broad variety of projects and markets— and while I’m pleased with the evolution, I’m not sure what should be next. I do know I want to orchestrate it and be proud of the results. I remarked to a student the other day that I wish I could take thesis like they do— to focus in on one thing for months, and really tear it apart and build the strongest thing they can. I envy my friends working on animation and book projects for that reason— that passion and focus to create something really engrossing and special is something I miss, and both those fields are things I’m fascinated by.

    But where to start? I’m sort of taking a brief hiatus now (not outwardly seeking freelance work unless something awesome pops up) to figure that out. This year has had some really fun projects, but I’ve had too much fracturing of time and projects between freelancing and teaching that I’ve lost focus a bit on what’s really fascinating to me to explore deeper. So sketching more, writing more, and exploring personal projects a little deeper will be very key moving forward.

    First up on the plate oddly enough: paper sculpture. (More to come on that soon)

  • More tablet doodles. Juggling a migraine all day is no fun, but drawing seems to help alleviate or at least distract it!

  • Doodle in Manga Studio 5. Never having used this program before, it’s a little odd to get used to but certainly useful for inking…

  • After playing with a Cintiq at Stumptown Comics Fest, I got hugely tempted to invest in one or something like it. Despite lots of hemming and hawwing (the mister’s take: ‘it’s a business expense! invest in the best one you can!’), I opted to invest in a Yiynova MSP19U. In a few weeks I’ll try and give a review once I have really gotten to terms with it, but tentatively now that the buyer’s guilt has worn off? I love it. I think it’ll speed up my process, loosen up my arm, encourage me to do daily morning warmup sketches and help push the collage aesthetic I’ve been drawn towards lately. I will be very curious once I’m working with my analog process how things work out too.

    More to come! Would daily sketches on the Tumblr be something you might like to see? I don’t want to clog things with doodles, but it’s fun to show some process and keeps me accountable…

  • Recent illustration for the April issue of Plansponsor. When in doubt, build a giant mechanical elephant, that’s what I always say!

    Thanks as always to stellar art director SooJin Buzelli.

  • I got invited to create some work for the 2013 St. Johns Bizarre here in Portland— last year they had Carson Ellis turn out an amazing poster , so I was doubly thrilled to get to work on this year’s poster. This will be a four color screenprinted poster, and there will be some other merchandise I’ll be designing too. Can’t wait to attend the event!

    Click to enlarge for more details…

  • Recent illustration for Jamie magazine— filled with Japanese dragony goodness.

  • Fabric from @lizzyhouse’s pattern workshop last month. Still wondering what to make w/it….

  • A couple recent pieces for Storey Publishing— I did some lettering for this month’s Fresh Picks column (click over there to take part in a neat giveaway if you’re a gardener-type!) as well as found a cover I did an illustration for last year. They changed the design quite a bit so when I was scrolling through the thumbnails I thought it was a photograph at first! I like my little tomato sapling roots.

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