Merry Christmas '014

Merry Christmas!

Who watches the watchers?

Watching kids while they sleep? Santa is kind of a creeper who should probably be on the naughty list himself.

Pugly

An example for Art Class. The assignment was to pick a breed of dog and three colors and is essentially a paint mixing assessment.

Hands Up Don't Shoot

The gesture that the protesters in Ferguson adopted of marching forward with hands raised reminded a little bit too much of the menacing dehumanizing posture of a lumbering Frankenstein's monster as he terrorizes villagers. Basically the antithesis of what I think they intended.
I thought it was kind of a funny visual, or at the very least a provocative one, and also one that basically you could read any way you wanted based on your feelings about the shooting and protests. Supporters could see it as a criticism of the testimony that compared Michael Brown as a monster. Opponents could see it as a criticism of the protesters' simplified message of a complex issue. Basically something for everyone to agree with or rail against.
So I whipped this up in Photoshop, posted it to Imgur, and waited for the fireworks to start.
Nothing.
Apparently I'm not very good at trolling social media.

Mean Cuisine

We did a color theory assignment in class examining the way marketing and advertising uses color to manipulate consumers and cater to specific demographics. The idea was to take a product targeted to one demographic, for example women, and alter its color scheme to appeal to another demographic, for example men.
For my example I tried to give Lean Cuisine a makeover to sell it to dudes, complete with douchy Ed Hardy tribal designs to replace the cutesy curly q vectors.

Barry Glib

I'm doing a special editorial cartooning lesson with another class from another school and we had just finished our brainstorming session and were getting to go around the class to share our ideas. I drew the POTUS on the board to spur those who didn't want to share into speaking up.

In retrospect, I think I tried to cram in too much into it and it should have stuck with just the NSA or just drones, because while the NSA has fed data to the CIA drone program the NSA doesn't actually use drones themselves..... yet.

Happy Veterans Day!

Happy Veterans Day!

For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade.
In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments.
The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses.
A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning:
that all glory is fleeting.

Coney Dog

An unorthodox color wheel example for art class.
Sadly this cute lil  guy's bichromatic vision lacks the third cone necessary to see the colors of his own rainbow wig.

Blue Shadows on the Trail

Another Art Class example, this one of using silhouettes, positive and negative space, and layers of space, all with cut colored paper. 

The inspiration for this project was seeing the Multiplane Camera Walt Disney developed for "The Old Mill" and then later used in features like "Snow White" on display at Disney World a couple of years ago. The idea was that animation lacked depth because the camera could on pan and tilt but not move through the scene along the z axis. The Multiplane Camera broke the background down into multiple layers of space which were then physically separated into racks whose proximity to the camera could be adjusted to give a moving camera effect because though each element was flat they now had genuine physical space on a z axis that could be adjusted.

In the project we create a z axis by separating the layers with pieces of foam board and hot glue (which I haven't done here actually- I just left it as layers of colored paper).

I've done this project for two years now but this is the first time I tried making one myself.

Metro

Another Art Class demo.

This one is the robot lady from Metropolis- part of my machinations to make sure that whatever we use as source material in class is safely within public domain.

2 Kool 4 Skool

Count Day was this week, so I thought I'd draw a student who was too cool for school (in that they no longer attend school).

(I used an old picture I took for a self portrait project she never finished to make a regular portrait rather than a self one)

P.J. Harvey

A poster for one of our upcoming theme days for school. Students worked on the other days but nobody took Monday.
I had to draw it pretty quickly, and for something I turned out in less than ten minutes I think it looks pretty good.

Another Word for Pirate Treasure

We're using grids to scale images in art class, and what better extension of that than map making? So we're going to make treasure maps. This is my example.

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Night’s Plutonian shore

I took an old drawing and the text of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and turned it into a Word Cloud piece as an example for an upcoming assignment on positive and negative space. I thought the students would have fun doing them and that it might help get the idea across.

The truth is something you don't have to lie about

Another lady doodle from my little notepad. I drew it while watching the first episode of "The Hour," which I'm told is an excellent series and so far it is.

Simoriah

Another lady drawing from my little notepad. This one I managed I think to make not look like Steven Tyler. 

Doodle looks like a lady

Another doodle from my new little notepad. It was supposed to be a lady. Unfortunately, I think she looks a little like Steven Tyler. Oh well.

Menlo

I attended the 2014 Inspire Conference this week and they gave us notepads, in which I doodled one of the speakers, Richard Sheridan, head of Menlo Innovations. I also doodled a fish monster, a fat kid and some other weird stuff in it, but I thought I'd lead off with this.

As close as a star to the moon

More from ArtWorks and more from me doing examples to hash things out as far as figuring out timetable, potential challenges, fixes, ect, this time with the trifold mailer layout. 

It also gave me the opportunity to take elements we didn't go with as a group and see what they would have been like taken to conclusion.

In Brightest Day, In Darkest Night

Making examples for class fulfills a number of purposes. It let's me know how much time the project could take, it let's me know what sort of challenges students might run into and how to fix them, it let's me know if what I'm asking is even reasonable to expect, and it let's me get some of the urge to control the process and the results out of my system. I don't need for their work to be my work because I already did my work, so their creations can be different and with pleasant surprises.

One of those pleasant surprises was the background to this image.

One of the students wanted to make something resembling the 2012 ArtPrize lantern launch. I helped her put together some of the elements and I think she had a very creative idea which turned out pretty awesome. Unfortunately it wasn't the direction the rest of the group wanted to go, opting instead for a more painterly approach. I still really liked it and hated to see it become a dead end, so I used it as the starting point for my examples.

Below is a version formatted for mass e-mail using one of the example logos I whipped up.

The orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us

One of the more difficult aspects of doing a collaborative group project with students is ceding some control of the results and at times even the process to allow the students to learn, to make and correct their own mistakes and ultimately let what gets created be their work and not your own. You want to guide the work, not dictate it. And that's really hard.

An area in our project I where I found this exceedingly difficult was in the lightbulb logo.

Partly it was because I didn't feel we had spent enough time on logo design, text and font design, or the overall importance of logos to branding and marketing. It felt as though the most important, iconic aspect of the work was being sidelined and we were proceeding into the final with a rough placeholder. Partly also it was that I felt going with the rough first draft as the final is fine, but only if it's after you've already tried and exhausted a bunch of other options and decided that the first was the best. 

To that end I wanted to present an alternative, not only to show that there were other options to consider and kickstart them to making some of their own, but also to show what could very easily be accomplished in Illustrator with vectors rather than trying to paint something in Photoshop.

Ultimately the students still wanted the rougher original, which was fine, but at least with these mock ups they could see some options. 

What they drew at work today

Typically this blog is what I drew at work today (hence the name), but today, it's what they drew at work today. My students that is. Or former students I should say as they received their completion certificates today. 

Today was the last day of the ArtWorks Program at UICA and this is the final product they created.

It's a trifold pamphlet for The Green Light Project, an awareness campaign for youth homelessness and runaways. 

We had a real client who chose to participate with a bunch of high school students rather than going with their usual design firm. We went through multiple pitches, multiple critiques, numerous variations, and a slew of final tweaks until we arrived at a final product the students and the client were pleased with. 

Not all the creative choices were ones I would have made, but that's kind of the point and I couldn't be prouder of the group or the work they did.

So instead of my work, here's theirs.

The Zed Word

Another doodle at Art Works. He's next to a face a student drew that creepily looks sort of like my brother circa 1996. I have cropped it out to concentrate on the  zombie which looks a bit less creepy.

Not the MOMA

At the summer arts program I'm doing at UICA in Grand Rapids the mural group put down butcher paper on a bunch of work tables. My group, the graphic design group, was in the mural work space while they were off on site doing their installation so we doodled on their doodle covered tables. I drew a dinosaur. And a zombie, but more on him later.

Exquisite Corpse

I'm doing a summer arts program for high school students called ArtWorks at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art through Kendall College of Art and Design and it's pretty great. We had a little bit of extra time today after our guest speaker session and so we played the parlor game "Exquisite Corpse."
If you're not familiar with the game, the premise is that each player draws a section of the body unaware of what the other participants are creating. At the end you unfold the drawing to see the completed form.
I drew the top section and the bottom two thirds were a couple of the students.
Adorable!

Doodle monster

A monster I doodled with my niece and her markers.

Click Bait

So, if you read this blog from time to time, you know I'm a bit nerdy and a few days ago I posted this.

I thought that 15 year old painting would get some nice attention if I posted it to the Star Wars Google+ Community.
What did I get?
Nothing.
One solitary +1 from a community of  over 115,000 users. One lousy click.
And it's not like other posts weren't getting attention. Other posts, lousy ones, were easily getting dozens of clicks.

So I decided I needed to game the system. I needed to come up with something those geeks would click. So why not Darth Maul? Dorks love Darth Maul. Even the ones who hate Phantom Menace still love Darth Maul.
It was sure to get clicks.

It topped out at 83 +1's.

Meanwhile a half naked lady in an Ewok t-shirt got over 250.
I think maybe I should just stop trying to impress dorks.

May the Fourth of July Be With You

A nerdy painting I made... oh geez, fifteen years ago I think? Maybe fourteen years ago? I was digging through some old stuff recently and found it.

Backhand

A redo for an assignment example. The idea is that students get to do the Thanksgiving turkey style hand tracing, but then have to add every detail inside from careful observation.

Of course it helps to have older hands with some details to draw.

Planet of the Shapes

Another redo.

"You make man... like me?" "No. Woman."

A new "How To." Woman, friend for you.

How to Make a Monster

Another "How To" redo. Frankenstein's Monster this time.

Pussy Galore

Yet another "How To," this one new rather than a redo.

Dino DNA

Another "How To" redo.

That's So Raven

Another "How To" progression redo, this time finishing up that crow sketch from before. 

At this point, you might be wondering what's with all the birds?

Well, as Alfred Hitchcock pointed out, birds are intensely creepy. 

They don't have teeth, but some of them eat meat and some of them even eat other birds, and what's going on with them downstairs? It's confusing. And in a disturbing bit of convergent evolution, there's even a type of magpie that can pass the mirror test for self awareness- something humans can't do until about one and half years old. And as Jurassic Park taught us, they used to be dinosaurs. And they can fly.

Creepy.

Hummingbird Go!

A "How To" progression for Art Class, a revision to a previous lesson example.

You're the Man Now Dog

I'm in the process of going through and revising some of my materials for class and found I needed a drawing of a dog (I'd referenced a dog drawing in my description of representational art but never included one). So I drew a dog.

It could be any cartoonish bull terrier, but I'd like to think that it's Spuds MacKenzie, the Original Party Dog who in the late 80's enticed children to drink alcohol until sadly dying in disgrace and obscurity from kidney failure in 1993.

Party in peace Spuds. Gone but not forgotten.