Where thoughts are reborn.

Alright. Something's gonna happen with this Pelican thing... but not really. I was asked to submit a Pelican shirt design for the Keep-A-Breast charity. So I put it off for a while; played with some different ideas; spun my wheels; and eventually put together some rough typography using photos I'd taken of opium-scented incense smoke (which tends to give me massive headaches, and maybe you too so I'd say stay away from it unless you're into getting headaches). I will say that although I think it turned out tight enough, the idea isn't that strong - and I wanted to tweak the letters and add some layers of pattern behind it. If they chose my design I mean. The band decided to go with an older shirt design with a new color scheme, and (for now) this gnarly graphic gets filed under Ideas We Forgot. You'd buy one right? Me too.

"I should take a nice long vacation. Maybe go to Hawaii. That's what I'm gonna do, give up design and start playing music again. I wanna sing."

Hi blog buddies. Haven't been posting nearly as much this month. But then I'm just basing that off February's record-setting 8 posts - that's a lot to keep up with when each post involves countless hours of making something from scratch (as opposed to posting YouTube videos). And it's not nearly as cold out as it was in February. And I don't get paid to do this (yet).

Not excuses, explanations. Still, if you really want to know what I've been up to then here's a few recent/current/future design/art/creative goings-on (on top of the 9 to 6 job):

• EDTA work: WTOP's "The Electric Drive" Logo, Diagrams, Banners, Print Ad, Poster for Iceland Fuel Cell Bus Workshop

• PELICAN t-shirt design submission for Keep-A-Breast

• Lying to Make Friends graphic novel

• Minority Corporate Council Association 2007 Annual Report

I'm also pretty stoked for a couple things in the near future. Artomatic 2008 starts May 9 and, while I had no idea they were doing this yearly now and probably would've tried to get in on it if I had, this should be pretty sick (in every sense of the word). Also I want to check out the Takashi Murakami retrospective in NYC soon, similarly sick. And then I'm going out to Los Angeles for a week at the end of May. And then in a cloud of smoke I'm leaving it all behind and moving to Hana.

Ideas We Forgot to Steal: "Photo Blog Time!"

I was planning on posting these without any explanation, but then I thought one was probably necessary. A little over 3 years ago I participated in an art show with 3 of my friends at the Charm City Art Space in Baltimore, MD. If you know the CCSpace, then you know that the actual space they exhibit art in is about the size of a kitchenette. Very DIY. If you know me or my friends in real life, then you instantly know who did what. But if not I'll break it down for you. Krange did the giant charcoal drawing of himself masturbating in the corner, along with the graffed-up skate decks (I think he gave out some of these as Christmas presents). James did the surreal Monty Python-esque illustration, and seemed deeply embarrassed at the time that he didn't put more effort into preparing for the show. Don did all the random colorful canvases spread around the space, a lot of which I think were experiments from his painting classes at Marymount. He definitely won the award for Most Art Exhibited. Don was also instrumental in organizing the whole thing — and even made a pre-show set-up mix cd which we all made fun of at the time but in retrospect was pretty awesome of him. And then I'm responsible for the bizarre black-and-white pattern graphics. Yeah. I printed them out that morning for free on the oversize plotter at Kinko's. I knew there was a reason I ever worked there. I was going for a punk-psychedelic style with them, although "drunk with anxiety" is probably a better description for the final results. Along with how I'm looking in that group photo. Yikes.

Work In Progress #1810052

Blog time. I was accused of running out of things to post after that last one, it must have seemed pretty half-assed. And it kind of was. So, I hope you're into that, because here's another half-assed post: a half-finished illustration. Which I don't have a thorough explanation for right now. Just know that it's based of a dream I had years ago – aren't you glad you don't have dreams like this? Eventually it will become some type of poster or large print, possibly in a series. And the colors will very likely change as well, I was testing out this palette and I'm not that into it. Cover of Juxtapoz, here I come, woo!


Here's a detail of the illustration: