Finished Dairy Identity Project

Available on other, slightly neglected blog.

Ducky

For a brochure project for class.

Sketchbook

Charley Harper

I hate seeing "R.I.P." next to the names of people who have died. I've always hated it; it seems unserious to me, like it belongs on a cartoon gravestone in a Bugs Bunny animation.

So I really didn't like seeing this headline from Treehugger come through my RSS feed last night, bringing me news of the death of illustrator Charley Harper. I've always wanted to buy his prints, but I've neverbeen able to decide on just one.

Busy

Swamped with end-of-semester projects and beginning-of-quarter work. But I made a kitty for you! It's part of a series of three spot illustrations to accompany an article on protecting migratory birds.

The Shape of Love

Final Project

Almost finished.

Second Circle, Apartment 3G

Information Graphic

Even after several days vacation *yay* and feeling better emotionally, mentally, and physically than I have in about three months, I'm still not writing.

To tide you loyal hawklets over until the muse drops by for tea, I'll share the work-in-progress of my Information Graphic for class. It's a visual depiction of the known species on earth, broken down into 16 large categories. If the 980 gymnosperms in the world are represented by this one gingko leaf:

Then the 950,000 species of insects look like this:

'Cuz God is inordinately fond of beetles, that's why.

Learning Illustration

In addition to learning to be logical (which I've found I'm actually extremely good at - I currently have earned 105.4% of the possible points in the class), I'm also learning illustration this semester.

From my earliest memory, I've always been a drawer (that's "draw-er," not like the sock drawer). Until three or four years ago, I used to draw every day - either in my electives in college (mostly art and design) or as part of my journal. Something happened those three or four years ago, and I stopped, and I'm not quite sure why.

So here I am, rusty with the pencils and struggling in my "Imaging and Illustration" class; having difficulty adjusting to the process of thumbnailing and roughing and sketching; so used to turning on the computer, whipping out the graphic stylus, and firing up Illustrator, only to be disappointed that the output on the screen doesn't match the vision in my head. The professor gave me some exercises to practice technique and to learn to see shapes and planes better and how they stack and build in the software to produce results. And the results are, I think, fantastic.



I'm going to try to do some drawing every day again. I have a whole notebook of jotted down scraps of conversations, ideas, and miscellaneous odd ends just waiting to be illustrated.