Blog
May 29th, 2014
I’ve done a lot of lettering commissions in my day, but this was something new for me. When my client approached me about this project, she told me she had spent the past few years working on her personal practice as a writer—as a fellow creative whose work has also been changing lately, I was immediately intrigued. She had come up with a “motto” for each year, which reflected the self-work she had been doing and her thoughts on her writing process.
So she asked me to create a hand-painted lettering design for each year motto,
with a different style of lettering in each one that would reflect how her ideas and process has changed over time.
I’m really happy with how these turned out (and I hope she is, too!)—and even better, it’s got the wheels turning for me. Who knows—maybe I’ll try something like this for myself someday. Hmm… I wonder what my own mottos might be…
May 26th, 2014
Photo by Jessica Spring
Jessica has been churning out a crop of lemonade journals lately, including some fun new ones from the outtakes of our Focal Point print. Look for them soon in the shop!
May 22nd, 2014
We’ve had a string of unseasonably sunny days lately—so rather than stay cooped up inside the studio, I headed down to Portland to do a little drawing. Just east of town is the stunning Historic Columbia River Highway, which serves up vista after vista of the Columbia River Gorge. All I had to do was sit back, open up the sketchbook, and enjoy the view.
May 19th, 2014
We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the restored Point Defiance Pagoda yesterday, marked by its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places this week.
I spent a day sketching at the Pagoda this month, raising a silent toast to the next hundred years. You can see my sketches over at the Drawn the Road Again blog.
May 15th, 2014
I’ve been working on a super-fun lettering commission lately, which has been giving my paintbrush plenty of exercise.
My client gets to see the finished paintings first, but once she does, I’ll post them here.
More soon!
May 12th, 2014
Much as I’d love them to be done by now, there’s still about a zillion flats to be cut for my Local Conditions book. I can’t do them all in one go—all that hand-Xacto-knifing is really hard on your hands. So I fit the cutting in wherever I can, whenever I need a break from some other project or process. Still, even though the progress is slow, it feels good to see a whole stack of finished pieces, ready to contribute to the edition.
May 8th, 2014
I was out running errands the other day, and had just gotten out of my car when she appeared—out of nowhere, not ten feet from where I stood.
I froze, not wanting to spook her. But she was utterly unconcerned about me. She stopped and turned, apparently waiting for something.
Or someone.
Then, without once looking back, she led her fawn right past me—I could have reached out and touched them—and on down the street, on some errands of her own.
May 5th, 2014
I cross-posted this (in a slightly different form) over at Drawn the Road Again, but I’m too excited not to share it here, too. After I illustrated two iconic Tacoma theaters, the kind folks at the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts offered me a media sponsorship of one of their upcoming shows. I was happy to say yes (hey, free tickets for me and my friends!), but I didn’t give it much thought beyond that—the illustrations were plenty of fun on their own. But then they said, “We think we have the perfect show lined up for you.”
Photos by Mariesa Bus (left) and Laurie Cinotto (right)
And that’s how I got to chat with Ira Glass yesterday. (Yes, of course he’s charming and super nice!)
While I waited my turn at the meet-and-greet, I did what I always do: reach for pen and paper. The best part was the sketch turning into a collaboration—when I asked Ira for his autograph, he added the word bubble.
Yep, that was a good day.
April 30th, 2014
Don’t be distracted by Ric’s smile—see the puddles everywhere? See the winter gear people are wearing? Sunday was the craziest Wayzgoose yet, hands down. That’s because we had both the biggest crowd ever and the worst weather imaginable. So that smile is one of triumph: getting a decent steamroller print that day required beating some serious odds.
It rained sideways while Jessica inked.
It hailed while we lined up our block.
Photo by Dr. Jamie Brooks
It froze while we peeled our prints up.
Photo by Dr. Jamie Brooks
It blew a gale while I painted.
Still, despite the mishaps, I think it turned out alright. Jessica and I are calling our print “Park Place”—created in gratitude over the passage of a bond that would fund our city park system. The map in the center shows most of Tacoma’s parks, with twelve of our favorites called out like properties on a Monopoly board.
We even took a snippet of the illustration and sent it over to the talented screenprinting booth folks, who turned it into a t-shirt design during the event (you can just see a peek of it in the upper left corner).
Since the rain and wind prevented us from hanging the finished prints outside during Wayzgoose, most of the people who came that day didn’t get to see anybody’s finished print. So today Ric, Jessica and I remedied that.
Thanks to Spaceworks Tacoma, all of this year’s steamroller prints are on exhibit in the Woolworth Windows downtown…
…where you can see them—in fair weather or foul—now through August 21.
Thanks to everyone who visited or volunteered at Wayzgoose this year, and to King’s Books and the Tacoma Arts Commission for making it all happen!
April 25th, 2014
The carving is done, and we can’t wait to show you the finished product. See you at the Wayzgoose on Sunday!
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