Thing-a-day.com

working off pictures from Nylon magazine…slim pickins at the airport for magazines with pictures of interesting looking people.

It’s been a while since I last posted, and I’ve got lots of Things I need to post…starting with today’s then working backward through the weekend and then when I was back in Austin last week.

Today’s thing is an illustration assignment…this is the revised piece for the editorial on school uniform (see the idea sketch of the wolf on Day 1). The thrust of the article was that uniforms try to find safety in homogeneity, and don’t teach kids (harhar) to deal with the complexities of life.

I love this dressing. It’s so cool and creamy but you can shovel it on, unlike ranch or bleu cheese. I got the idea for walnut oil from a co-worker, who uses it in vinagrette. I just take a few tablespoons of walnut oil and add about twice or three times as  as much plain yogurt. It doesn’t really matter how much…it’s up to you. Then add a little salt and lots of fresh pepper to taste. Whisk it up and pour it on to greens. It’s fantastic if you add avocado and walnuts to the salad. The one pictured is just mache.

At my parents house, you can always count on there being jars of my dad’s dark chunky marmalade in the cabinet and a loaf of soda bread on the countertop. I must be homesick, since I spent today making those two things. The marmalade turned out nice…dark and caramelized. The soda bread I had some problems with–I think I must have lost count while measuring flour and not put enough in, because although it had a beautiful crust, the inside was doughy and uncooked. I just kept it in there at a low temp until finally it was done. It’s edible, but not great. (though with a heap of marmalade on it, you can’t tell)

I’m going to turn this into a shirt. First I wanted to see if I could make it a dress so I disassembled the weird shorts-bottom on it. I pinned it like a dress, but decided that for it to look good as a dress, it would need some shaping, which is beyond my sewing skills. As a shirt, it would be cute and require only cutting and hemming, which I can do! Stay tuned for the finished product

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A few doodles and sketches and class assignments in progress over the last few days.

One is the “bad” childhood memory, the start of my career as an outlaw bandita.  I musta been 3 or 4 and saw my brother with candy in the store. So I reached up and grabbed some gum off the shelf. I apparently didn’t know about the whole ‘buying’ concept, which turned out to be a problem when my mom discovered the gum in my fat little fist about to go into my contented face. I think I had to go in and hand it back. It wasn’t so bad, really, but I remember the whole thing came as quite a surprise to me, and an unpleasant one. Mostly, I chose this topic because I wanted to google pictures of Piggly Wiggly stores. Wish I’d had time to do their logo and lettering justice.

Other sketches are a kaiser roll (see day 4) and idea generation sketches for a book review illustration assignment…the book is about horse races, and involves lots of gambling, addiction, cheating, superstition (apparently nuns in parking lots are bad omens) and racetrack weirdos

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For yesterday…The instructions were to illustrate a”good” childhood memory. This one is when I went on a trip to Germany and Austria with my family as a little kid. While there, I ate lots of kaiser rolls with butter, enjoyed the guesthouse beds with those big fluffy white duvets and long white fluffy pillows (which I’d never seen before) and generally had a great time. I stuffed my face at every Cafe Konditorei (pastry shop) they’d let me in.

I also bought a pair of FM radio headphones at a store called “Hi Fi” (which I think was already a dated concept by then). I made up a ridiculous dance which I did as a means of transportation instead of walking down the sidewalk.

I would have liked to have captured the utter goofiness a bit better, and made the kid have more personality, but this is what I had time for.

Mockup for an illustration of a book review. The book is “Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource” and reports that a billion people lack clean drinking water, and that since usable water is finite, our shortage will continue to grow. However, the book’s take is not hopeless, and the last chapter is a set of remedies.

For my illustration I decided to play with images of water, thirst and sand, since it’s so dry. Also, playing with the idea of hope in a glass half full.

So it’s day 3, but this is my first post. I went home sick from work on Friday, and the most productive thing I did was microwave some take out. Still sick, but with time on my hands, yesterday I was glad to have the impetus of some assignments for a class I’m taking to stop the weekend from turning into a binge of Nyquil and Twin Peaks episodes.

So here is the Thing of Day 2…my assignment is to produce a spot illustration for an editorial. The article is called “The Trouble with School Uniforms.”

Here’s a quote from the story:

Is it even reasonable to expect uniforms to solve the problems for which they are recommended? Can violence be reduced by borrowing an idea from the military? Can class differences be smoothed over by making kids dress identically? (In any case, those very real differences ought to be addressed openly rather than camouflaged.)

Here’s my idea sketch. The final will be produced on scratchboard at 5*7.