Monday, April 20, 2009

walking

walk_done.jpg
ink and photoshop

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got this idea while I was going for a walk yesterday. Basically a visual image of what going for a walk does for me. It relaxes me, my worries and obsessive-like doubting thoughts float away. I've been going for a lot of walks lately.

spring!

rediscovering the joys of real live ink. :)

robin_ink02.jpg
ink wash

robin_ink01.jpg
ink wash

robins_sketch.jpg
pencil

stop thinking

stopthinking.jpg
ink, marker, watercolor pencil

did some drippy ink textures in my sketchbook separately and added them together in photoshop. was going to do it right on my original sketch, but then didn't want to wreck it.

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original drawing from my sketchbook. which now has very wrinkly pages.
stopthinking_sketch.jpg

weird dream

a strange dream i had a while ago.

teethdream.jpg
felt marker

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Saturday, April 04, 2009

MyFonts - eric gill interview

I subscribe to an e-mail newsletter from MyFonts, and the latest one caught my attention. Particularly this portion:

You have often spoken and written about the contradictions and injustices of industrial production. You’re notably critical of the way craftsmanship has been replaced by a process in which the job of creating things has been split up into different roles. What are your main objections?

The chief and most monstrous characteristic of our time is that the methods of manufacture which we employ and of which we are proud are such to make it impossible for the ordinary workman to be an artist, that is to say a man responsible not merely for doing what he is told but responsible also for the intellectual quality of what his deeds effect. The ordinary workman has been reduced to the level of a mere tool used by someone else. However much skill he may have in his fingers and conscientiousness in his mind, he can no longer be regarded as an artist, because his skill is not that of a man making things. He is simply a tool used by a designer and the designer is alone the artist.

So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the salesman who neither designs things nor minds machines but is supposed to know what the public wants. But the public doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of finding out.

- Eric Gill


read the whole interview here.

haha! I absolutely love that last bit. Sums up in-house graphic design to a tee. And production departments for that matter. That's exactly how I feel at work. We are called "designers", but we are totally just bodies that know how to use the programs and make the computer do what essentially the sales rep and customer want. We don't "design" a damn thing. I've only worked in one other in-house design department, but it was basically the same. You come up with an idea, and yes, you sell that idea to the committee or customer, but ultimately it is the customer that has the final say. They are the one paying for the product. They make changes and ask you to add or take out stuff. You can try to sway them if it is a hideous suggestion (starbursts are awesome!!), but they can say "no, I think we should do such and such". And, ultimately, the customer has the money, the company you work for wants the money, therefore the customer gets what they want. Designer = tool. In-house design = fail.

my opinion is, if you want to do real graphic design, you have to network your way into a small design firm, or start your own business.

wow i am ranting today, and apparently i'm really bitter. huh.

/rant

more painting!

snow_trees_final.jpg
acrylic paint

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this is a painting I've been working on (on and off) over the past few weeks. Inspiration is from one of the tree photos taken on one of my walks.

some process pics:
snow_trees01.jpg
I started by painting the whole canvas black, and then used masking tape to "draw" some tree shapes. Then started filling in some flat color.

snow_trees02.jpg
Layered on more colors for the sky. Attempted to paint snow. kinda hard that.

snow_trees03.jpg
Happy with the sky. Not happy with the snow. Took the masking tape off to reveal the trees.

snow_trees_final.jpg
Added the branches to the trees, first with a paintbrush. Didn't like how that looked, so I switched to a palette knife. That actually worked quite well, but I blobbed on too much paint sometimes. Added white highlights to the snow with the palette knife. I think the palette knife works pretty good for a snow effect. Now I'm happy with how the snow looks, but not really liking the tree branches so much. Eh, it's a "sketch", I was playing around and having fun with the paint. :)

playtime

watercolorpencil02.jpg
stamp and watercolor pencils

playing around with watercolor pencils today. And seeing how they work with my stamps. quite nicely.

watercolorpencil01.jpg
stamp and watercolor pencils