Questions?

Ok, wow. I completely forgot to update this last week. Well, actually I didn't forget, I just realized every time I was about to, that I didn't really have any ideas for posts. But I've come up with a few for this week, so hopefully they'll come out okay and I can post a few times this week.

One of my ideas was to ask you guys to leave questions about graphic design or typography, or even things about art school, or computer programs, or websites, or anything. So if you guys leave some good questions I'll put up a post in a few days answering them, and hopefully it will be interesting.

Because I feel bad about not posting any actual art things on here for a while, here's another old piece that most of you guys have never seen, a blend featuring Anna from the band Play. Even though I made it in April 2006, I still think it's kind of cute :)





So, please leave questions in the comments! I can't wait to read them :)

Update Fail and Links

Yeah, so I kind of failed at updating this week. I just feel bad always posting old stuff, since it seems like kind of a cop-out. But the trouble is, the only new stuff I'm really doing at the moment is for my internship and I'm not allowed to post it online. So it's kind of a dilemma.

However, I think for this post I'll stop being completely narcissistic and talk about other people for a change, namely recommend design books and podcasts and things that I've found helpful and you guys might like too.

Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-Critical-Designers-Students/dp/1568984480/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245553038&sr=8-3
This is the first book about typeography I read, and it's a really good introduction to the formal things about type. It has sections about the history of type, the parts of the letterforms, and paragraph and book formatting. I really can't recommend it enough for someone who wants an introduction to type in a way that's not completely dull (there are lots of pictures!).

Read Between the Leading Podcast
http://readbetweentheleading.com/
This is a podcast about typography. Yes, it's one of the dorkiest things you can listen to. It's hosted by Aaron Heth and Matt McInerney, two students at Savannah College of Art and Design (I think that's what SCAD stands for. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) It's nice that it's hosted by students because they don't claim to know everything and they talk a lot about design education, which, being an art student, is something I'm quite interested in. They also get some really interesting and prominent guests on the show, like John Boardley from ILoveTypography (see below). Also, none of the shows are over an hour, so it stays interesting without dragging on for too long.

ILoveTypegraphy
http://ilovetypography.com/
This blog is probably the best typography blog out there. It has so much information and John posts mega-awesome-long posts with links to tons of work you never would have see otherwise. It's a really great place to go for inspiration or just to be jealous of other people's talents.

I think that's all I'll write for today. Let me know if you like this kind of post and maybe I can make it a weekly thing.

Drawings

I said in the last post that I would share some other drawings here. These are probably the only ones you'll see since the rest are kind of embarassing how terrible they are. I don't know, maybe my standards are too high, since half my friends at RISD are illustration majors and they're all incredibly talented. But whatever. Enjoy.

This is probably the drawing I'm most proud of. It was for the RISD home test, which is where they give you three topics and you have to submit drawings of them as with your application and portfolio. The one they do every year is to draw a bike. I spent about three weeks on this, even though it was also from a photo (don't tell the RISD application people). However, if I had tried to do this from life I think I would have permanent neck damage. Anyway, it's in graphite on 18"x24" paper.




This one was also for the RISD home test, and the topic was to draw whatever you want in graphite on 18"x24". So I decided to draw a deer skull with a piece of rope and my dad's gun (it's heavier than it looks). This one probably took about 2 weeks, and I'm pretty happy with it, especially the texture on the skull which took forever. (For full disclosure, I'll admit this was also from a photo).




Ok, this one was from life. It's a drawing of a model I made for drawing class first semester, which was later turned into the larger drawing below. The sketch is in charcoal pencil and the final piece is in charcoal. I'm actually happier with the sketch than the final; I think the little figurines turned out kind of adorable.








This one was also from a model for that class. I don't really have much to say about it since I don't think it's that great of a drawing. It just took forever to get the perspective looking almost acceptable (still not perfect). Oh, maybe I should also explain what it's of. The assignment was to draw an event that happened in our childhood, so I chose the time that a bat got into my room and my mom had to hit it with a racketball racket and trap it under the garbage can.




This was from my second semester drawing class (yes, it was required, otherwise I never would have taken it). I probably spent a good five or six hours getting this to where it is now, so when I remember that day I kind of want to rip my eyes out in boredom.




Finally, this is also from that drawing class. It's really big, probably six feet across, and I also wanted to rip it into tiny little pieces because drawing it was so painful. I think I spent two classes on it, which would probably add up to more than 12 hours in total. I still think the drawing really sucks, but after putting that much time into it, I might as well put it out there.

John Green Drawing

Most of you have probably seen the video I posted of drawing John Green, but if not, here it is:


And here is a scan of the final drawing:





As I said in the beginning of that video, I usually hate to draw. I understand how some people can find it relaxing, but I just feel bored and frustrated when I try to draw from life. Friends of mine who are illustration majors tell me about how they just zone out and lose track of time when they draw, but that zoning out is what I do when I'm designing somthing, not drawing. I know it just takes practice and if I really wanted to, I could get better at it. However, as a graphic designer, I don't really think it's a necessary skill, past doing readable thumbnails.

The thing with drawing for me is moderation. For example, when doing the John Green drawing, I would work for about ten minutes and then take a half hour break. However drawing for any longer than that just makes me tired and annoyed, and you can only imagine what torture the 7.5 hour drawing studio freshman year was.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a little background information on the video. Tomorrow I'll be posting drawings I've done in the past, so be on the lookout for that (I would have included them in this post, but it's late and I don't feel like finding all the images). Let me know in the comments why or why not you like to draw and what your methods are. Also, do you think drawing is a necessary skill for graphic designers?

E-cards

Today I'd like to share what I did last week at my internship, which was making e-cards. It's really exciting because a lot of people will see these and send them, and how well they're designed might play a factor in whether someone sends one, which could cost the charity a donation, which was also kind of nervewracking. But anyway, without further ado, here's how to see them:

Go to https://www.charitywater.org/store/

The cards that I designed are:
Father's Day: 3rd and 4th on the top row, 2nd and 3rd on the bottom row
Birthday: 2nd on the top row
Get Well Soon
In Memoriam
Wedding, Engagement and Anniversary: All

If you like them, please consider sending one and making a donation! It's a really great cause!

Unfinished art

Today I'd like to share some art that I started a while ago and don't really plan on finishing anytime soon. However, I think they still have some potentional so I'd like to share them.

First is this Illustrator piece that I was working on in August 2006 to enter into one of these contests. The skin was fairly easy since I was working right on top of the photo but I was a bit intimidated by the hair and never got around to finishing it.





This was just a random vector illustration that I decided to make one day in December 2007. However, I never really had a use for it so I would periodically forget about it, then come across it in an old folder and try to think of a use for it, and then forget about it again.





Next is a layout I was working on in January 2008 for when I was going to put together a website for my duct tape stuff. I doubt I'll ever use it, but I still think it's kind of cute.





Finally is a logo I was working on in February 2008 for the Chudley Cannons (a Quidditch team from HP) which I was going to put on a purse. I actually think I still have the purse I was working on so if I can find it I might put a picture later. I'm not sure if I'm still a fan of the font, but I might try to work with it more if I have time.

Cheesiness Alert

What's this? A new blog post? Well, I'm really sorry I didn't post for the past few days; I just started an internship in New York City, which means I leave the house at 7:30AM and don't get back until 7 at night three days a week. It's exhausting but I love it, which is what this blog post is about. I'm warning you, it might get cheesy, so back away now if you don't want to read that sort of thing.

When I opened up Photoshop for the first time 6 years ago and began posting in the blending forum I've mentioned before, I wasn't expecting it to become my career. I was just bored and liked the people who were posting there. So, like a true nerdfighter, I had to get involved. Obviously I wasn't very good at the beginning, but over 4 years of using Photoshop almost every day, I began to pick up on what was good design and what wasn't. I liked the people who were posting and I liked the community, though looking back at it, we were probably very annoying to everyone else on the forum. But it gave me something to do, and it gave me a goal to try to achieve: to become the best blender there. I don't know if I was actually the best, but by the time I stopped posting there two years ago I was certainly better than most of the other people. I had achieved my goal of becoming well-known within the community. Of course, that's when I started getting bored with the forum. I had recently done RISD's pre-college summer program, which showed me that there was a lot more to graphic design than just making computer wallpapers. I decided that I wanted to go to college for graphic design, mostly because I wasn't really that interested in anything else. I got into RISD somehow (looking back at it, my portfolio was horrible), and now I'm learning so much about technical things in design that you can't learn just from experimenting.

Fast foward to this summer. One of my first assignments at my internship was to design some e-cards. These were basically 800x600 graphics that had a short message and the URL put with whatever I could design to show the holiday creatively. And as I was designing them, I realized that these graphics aren't far off from the kind of graphics I was making back in that forum four years ago. Of course they're much better designed than the stuff I was making back then, but the techniques were all the same. And it was just so rewarding that what I had worked so hard on during high school as a way to not be bored could turn into a valuable skill that I can someday make a living off of.

I guess what I'm trying to say through all this rambling is that I love graphic design. And I want to give my 14-year-old self a hug for deciding to stick with it.

That's all for now. I'll try to post more artwork tomorrow.