Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Summer...

Yikes! Been a while, and I hadn't meant for so much time to go in between updates. I've deliberately avoided applying to any art shows for the summer to keep things loose for a couple of travel dates, but mostly to be on hand to help my parents and concentrate on doing some new work.

Cedar Key t-shirt sales the first weekend in May were a big success and it was a great weekend. Two solid days of sailing; gorgeous weather and great people. Oddly, I made it all the way home with a broken axle on my boat trailer though. I knew something was up with some mysterious clunks on the way down US19, but my safety stop didn't reveal anything; bearings were cool and everything seemed fine. No more  sailing until I can get Bob and Nick to take that apart for me.

I have a another block started, a hand-built catboat in Cedar Key, but nothing interesting to show there just yet. I've decided to take my etching in another direction though and stop putting birds on things. Back to doing mythic and fantasy to satisfy my twee line work urge, doing what I really want to do anyway. The block prints continue to do well with maritime and Arts & Crafts themes, which I love. More personal work will be done in etching now though.

To that end, off to Fae Escape Atlanta 2012 on the weekend of the 15th & 16th with my jeweler buddy, Christina Paluszek-McClure of Kryzia Kreations. She's the only jewelry exhibitor up there and I'm going as non-exhibiting "civilian" this time. First time going to a convention of any kind for me since 2009 and the first Faerie con. Great thing about this one: Charles Vess is the artist guest of honor at Fae Atlanta; it'll be great to see him and his incredible art up there again. I'll be bringing up my sketchbooks and looking forward to hanging with some interesting people.

In the meantime, my current project on the drawing board and the Mac is a centennial logo for the local coastal community of Crystal Beach. Going for a retro, WPA style here:

This odd object is the original,
 spring-fed fountain in the waterfront park.


2 comments:

  1. I like the widened layout of the middle one, for a shirt, but don't care for the fountain.

    I like the layout and text of the bottom one, with the image of the top one, for posters.

    So... myth and fantasy but A&C, maritime, and birds sell? EƤrendil the Mariner! Or maybe something Nordic and cool?

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  2. Thanks, Gilmoure! Just met with the client and making the changes; I'm using the middle layout you like. But deleting the text-on-a-curve and going to bring the embedded, stacked type treatment down into the sunset, but leaving the nice bendy trees below.

    Client likes the fountain, but I'm going to decrease the contrast — thus reducing similarity to a... well... a sombrero as Bob sez. Now I can't see anything but a sombrero, damn him...

    Because the client is _always_ attracted to dumbest option of the three comps. It's been a Law of Graphic Design I've noticed for almost thirty years.

    Taking same logo, replacing fountain with their pier on the water instead of the boat. That's it: they can take their pick tomorrow because I have to have the t-shirt spot color vectored version for the t-shirt and the smaller, 5-color embroidered patch version done by Monday.

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