Hi everyone. It’s been a while. Happy Valentine’s Day.

This was a fun little project I did with watercolor and masking fluid. Super easy and really fun. I’ll post a tutorial next week. Stay tuned!

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Anyway, the good news is that I was able to update our theme (and something else called a framework) and the new media uploader (which is really nice, by the way) works perfectly! The bad news is that I lost a bunch of the styling for the site and it looks rather ugly. Also, we lost our cool changing logo on the top.

I’ll try and figure it out over time, but it might not be immediate since I have several other things on my plate right now. Thanks for putting up with it for now.

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Here is what I came up with. Each tile is actually 4 painted pieces of cedar veneer laid on top of a 1.5″ square slice of wood (also cedar). It turned out really nice because piecing the veneer triangles together left small imperfections, which ended up playing well into the game’s mosaic look.

Thanks Renske for the wonderful idea. I promise I won’t sell it or anything.

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So, not wanting to rip them off completely, I took one last look, opened Illustrator and started on a few letters from scratch. It was a little slow moving at first as I tried to make the overall shape appear to be a normal flat letter, while it also followed a few laws of perspective. I began to discover the rules and patterns that made up all the letterforms, though, and after a while I had a whole alphabet.

But wait. What’s cooler than a whole set of 3D letters? That’s right. A whole set of 3d seriffed letters! Yes!!!

And, since I had just wasted an entire evening while my lovely wife did the dishes, vacuumed the floor and who knows how many other less enjoyable tasks, I decided to be somewhat helpful and put my alphabet to use. Happy belated Holidays!

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I decided to make a digital painting of the Kinderstrauss because I’ve always wanted to learn to paint on my Wacom tablet. I followed a Lynda.com tutorial and then got to work. I’ve since learned that most digital painters never touch the blending brush, so I still don’t really know how the pros do it. The blending brush is a lot of fun though. It just takes a little while to learn the settings.

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My family has always had a tradition of doing gingerbread houses every year, but we tend to take things a little overboard. My favorite was when we did an entire New England fishing village with a lighthouse, boat and church (complete with stained glass windows and interior lighting). There are few things more beautiful than a gingerbread coastline in the winter.

As I’ve gotten older I have carried this tradition to my own family. My wife and I have done a gingerbread train, a rocket ship and a brownstone. Here’s this year:

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Let me repeat what Micah mentioned below. Check out the site and the other artists. It’s for a GREAT cause and $30 for a print is not much, but the benefits of helping others is priceless.

Also, for those wanting to know abrazos is Spanish for hugs.

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I have been up very late many nights this week working on a couple of posters for Print Aid NYC. I had two concepts that I liked and, since I couldn’t decide, I went with both.

The first concept is a little hard to explain and therefore doesn’t come across terribly well. After some initial feedback I was thinking about scrapping it entirely, but I was really having fun with the illustration (based stylistically on my daughter’s birth announcement), so I kept going. Here was an earlier sketch, followed by the final illustration.

When Kong started coming to a close I had another idea based on the torch he was holding. This concept is very simple. So simple, in fact, that I am not even going to bother telling you.

So, if you like either of these, please go to printaidnyc.com and buy a print. They cost $30 and all the profit from the sales will go to help with the hurricane Sandy relief effort. And if you don’t like either of these, that’s fine too, because I am not the only designer at this party. There are already several, and more will be added daily. In fact, our very own Stephen Bramwell did one that is basically awesome. Please check out the site, spread the word, and buy some posters. Thanks.

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Anyway, the group is called Print Aid NYC, and we are looking for designers interested in donating their skills (in poster form) to the cause. Because this is a time sensitive effort things are going to move fast. The plan is to have a website up within a couple days and have it filled with posters as soon as humanly possible. If this interests you, please email me at thedesignercoop[at]gmail[dot]com for more information.

Thanks so much. And if anyone reading this was harmed in any way by the storm, please know that you are in our prayers.

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