Rock-n-Romp Squid

photoshop/illustrator collab. for the rock and romp t-shirt design. i dig.

In-Design layouts

Mine:

For CK:

three dimensional ai

An in-class diddy done with the grid tool:

An interior with a window creeper:

Killer Carrots and The Like

Here are some more illustrator creations and photoshop/illustrator combinations.

Glass Squid Faccceee

Dumbo Octopussss

Dragonfish

Me at the nature center. Found a carrot.

Asparagus Tentacles

Ima getchu

Well...there's an eggplant.

Illustrator Biz-nass

So here are some things. I embellished the rings a bit. I like the tomatoes.

The bottom one is a banner design for work study. I just felt like it needed an explanation.

All I've eaten today is cake and beer.

"No, no. Think of the doughnut as a metaphor for Capitalism."

Hubert, neal, and i flung open the lid of the dumpster underneath the white circle of the steet light to reveal the holy grail of krispy kreme doughnuts. Don't worry. This isn't our first doughnut heist. We threw the boxes of fattening delights through the crisp October night air going from hand to hand into the car until it we had to look out our rear view mirrors were rendered useless.

"I know what im gettin' all my friends for Christmas..." chuckled Neal.

"Would you like a doughnut, Hubert?" I asked my finger in a motherese voice.

He didnt respond.

He never does...

I loaded myself with 2 doughnuts and let the world spin.

I have a low doughnut tolerance.

........................

-Xanga post of mine, dated October 2006

So I rushed home to see the fam for a couple nights over the fall break and managed to slip into this stop-motion project with my bro. The local gas station gave us the doughnut for free.

I sometimes miss living in a small town.

I used the above old blog post as a rough idea for the stop-motion, except the consumption of said doughnut takes me through an experience.

A More Current Currency

The alliteration in the title of this post is mostly for the joy of alliteration (which is abundant). I would say they're not so much more current as they are more attentive to the history of the US' wealth.

The existing bills are already historical, but as we know, it's problematic to point to a specific history of individuals and call it the history of a nation.

Also, the architecture and the language pictured on the existing bills connects our image as a country with Roman antiquity. This is certainly accurate in its comparison. It could be said, I suppose, that what these redesigned bills do is try to depict the implications of that connection.

Money-Minded

When I'm given a lot of leash in assignments, my tendency is to subscribe to one of three approaches: morbidity, humor, or morbid humor (my favorite). I'm not sure which of those this currency redesigning project is falling under.

I began thinking about not just our currency in it's physical sense, but our country's wealth and how it came to be. Conclusively, we are primarily a nation built on the resources and labor of other peoples. I understand that now our pieces of paper are really more of an idea based on "trust" and that the wealth doesn't necessarily exist in the same state it once did, but I don't think I'm going to touch that issue with this. Seems unfruitful.

I'd like to redesign our currency with a particular dark frankness.

Instead of presidents or political leaders or thinkers, there will be images of workers from other countries or images representing the U.S.'s major industries. For example, there will be one bill about the oil industry. The hard part of this is choosing which people and which industries to represent. We've been all over the place this past century. Grief.

This is the first I've done:

It's rather jolly so far, but I'd I'm considering putting the quote by Sam Walton on the front: "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We are going to be successful..." But I feel like I could find something more deeply sinister. In general, I feel it needs more text anyway. On the back, which doesn't exist yet, I'm considering having images of George Pullman to compare the two men and the similarity of their business models.

This project is eating up my time in one yummy chomp. At least I'm enjoying it.

Brushin' Up on CS5

I like how this first one came out, but really, it just made my hands ache to hold a brush and feel the material of the paint under my physical control as opposed to my will alone. It doesn't help that my roommate has been joyously painting away on three 7-foot canvases every time I come home.

The ache to paint is like the ache to hug. But the hugging ache seems to be experienced more in the pectoral/bicep region of the body and my painting ache occurs in my forearms and wrists. And, of course, both affect my chest.

This is from a photo of an uncle teaching the guitar to a cousin of mine at a family picnic in the '60s.

I had a hard time know which brushes to use for the textured aspects of this one. I dig the clouds, though.

And here are a couple of lighting edits I did. The top images are the altered ones. That second one is a doozy. Watch your step.

Postcardia III

Here are some postcards about what I would do if I went to outer space. Obviously.

Postcardia II

Jesus (including the pre-concieved art history understanding of Jesus), puppies, and outer space; these are three of my favorite things.

The space environment was actually the most complicated endeavor of these two. It's seamed from 3 different Hubble images and then I played around with the clone stamp on a low opacity, sort of using it as one would a paint brush to blend.

Postcardia

This is the first of my postcards. There are more. But blogger.com refuses to upload them.

Also, this one isn't 5 x 7, I just wanted to get an image on here to perhaps get some feedback. I will post all of them together in due time.

I spend too much time alone in my apartment. And this is pretty much what it's like. Also, I think the image of the school sort of acts as a stand-in for the academic art world. And I could be seen as a representative of that community, as well, having discourse with myself, maybe about art because I'm in front of an art school...and that's how I feel about Modernism.

And sometimes Po-Mo.

I'm extremely frustrated with this photo-loading issue.

Practices in Digital Painting

I decided to take Intro to Computer Graphics this semester to see how the other half of Memphis College of Art lives...up in those cold rooms, hiding behind those newest generation pizza box macs, glancing longingly at their coffee sitting on the shelf beside the well-designed "NO FOOD OR DRINK" signs on the wall.

I stroll into the first day expecting to see oh, maybe Meredith Root, or Don DuMont at the wheel of this monster, BUT NO. Dwayne Butcher. Yes, Drip-Masta Dwayne. He is back in my life. I will put my muumuu on.

I've experimented with some of the tools and this rubber duck that we all found on our desktops, waiting for us like a folded napkin at a soiree.

Arbitrary text choices.

With this bad boy up here ^, I opened photobooth and drew myself with some of the brushes (a rather broad selection, indeed). CK pointed out that I could've taken a photo and drawn over it, to which I thought "yes, that would have been the pussy way to do it."

It's very, very cold in these mac labs.

I wish I were here instead.