Watching the Skies

With the advice of a fellow colleague from Pyramid, I’ve been watching some of the Ancient Aliens series on Netflix. So far, I feel like it’s some bogus stuff. There are some scenes where the faultiness of the evidence is being masked by the over-enthusiasm of a particular scholar or expert. Therefore, the entertainment is coming out of how crazy any one expert looks, talks, or acts. Case in point: wacko Giorgio Tsoukalos:

Giorgio was appointed as Erich van Daniken's (probably spelling that wrong) successor. Daniken was the author of "Chariots of the Gods" - a much more concise and possibly better publication than Ancient Aliens.

The Condo Saga

In January of 2011, I began my tour of duty on the Board for the Hilltop Condominiums in Takoma Park, Maryland. Hilltop is a small condominium community founded out of 20 small apartment units. In the period 2006-2007, the tenants disputed a right of sale with the original owners, hired a development company to convert some units but leave others alone in what has become an unending and problematic business relationship, and chartered a condo association and made some bad choices.

An abstract diagram of the units. May become a bigger piece.

This is the beginning of a series of images and posts on one of the craziest volunteer experiences I’ve ever had. Sketches from my sparse sketchbook will be posted as well as my own remarks on what’s going on. It’s a great story worth telling and something I feel I shouldn’t keep to myself.

Portrait of one of the Association members

The Paper Collective!

Paper Collective’s (http://www.thepapercollective.com) first night of awesome is tonight. They are an organization devoted to getting people who have non-creative lives to be more creative – hats off! Here’s my submission for their first paper project: http://bit.ly/ijKEw4

More desk art

New Art and hello

Hello blog:

It’s been a while since the last post – a long while. I’ve been busy with Condo Board stuff, work stuff, and travel. I hope to get my act together and put up more of my sketchbook online. Been interested in designing/fantasizing about a comic book involving a post-apocalyptic future where everyone rides bikes and uses bb guns and their wits to survive.

Craft Fair: Epilogue

This past Saturday marked my official first craft fair – it went quite well! My task at the fair was to do live screen-printing, which I found to be difficult with water-based ink. You see, the ink I use dries on the screen as I work, so it meant a lot of cleaning up the screen. It was a good lesson in the limits of Speedball inks, and it’s made me want to research more into the world of high-performance textile inks that don’t dry. Not sure, but I think Union Ink gets a lot of mileage in that area.
Despite the mess, I managed to have a blast. Here are some photos

Another satisfied customer

Lot of cool stuff at the fair. They'll have another in the summer so you can check it out then!

Crafts & Kisses

Candy Hearts

For Saturday, Feb. 12th, there will be an event at La Casa in Mount Pleasant where I’ll be hand-printing t-shirts – live! These are the designs that are going to be there. Possibly more photos of the actual event to follow.

$5 if you bring your own shirt to print on, $15 if you want to buy a shirt pre-prepared.

Baby Shower

My co-worker Elisabeth Kvernen is having her baby shower at the office on Tuesday. I thought it would be nice to print up something for her. I ended up printing a onesie and a burp blanket. The burp blanket had better colors, so that one ended up being the prize winner. The onesie suffered from my lack of practice since before Christmas and – well, you can see for yourself:

The message was "Graphic Designer in Training". Elisabeth's a graphic designer.You can't see it too well in this lighting, but the colors really show up well with the blue background.

This onesie didn't turn out so well. The dog's face printed all washed-out looking. I tried doing some touch-up work and may continue to do so. Next time, better test more on newsprint or buy more onesies to make mistakes on.

You can't see it too well in this lighting, but the colors really show up well with the blue background.

Beer Labels: Conclusion

Conclusion:
Making beer labels using Pronto Plates may not have been the best method. Pronto Plates require you to wet the result paper a bit, which is a problem for label paper that has a water-activated adhesive. Lesson learned: next time, screen print these guys.

Layering was another issue. When I printed my first layer, I messed up the “Grizzly Beer” logo and hence had to go back and make another layer with a better version of the logo. No matter what color I picked, though, it didn’t show up on the yellow background and super-dark background image. The solution was to use a white grease pencil to white-out the background in order for the logo to appear on top.

First pass - logo doesn't come out so well here

The grease pencil came in handy

Hey, they're not perfect, but they're still going on the bottles

Beer Labels

Sabeth Jackson and I have been collaborating lately, and as part of that, she has been teaching me a lot about lithography and printing line drawings using Pronto Plates. It’s been a great experience. As a result, I’ve embarked on creating my own beer labels for my next batch of “Grizzly Beer” brand homebrew. This is only stage one of the process, as I need to add the text logo, so more pics to come.

This is where I realized that you need to draw everything backwards in lithography

Final design - stage 1

Detail