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Last call
June 23rd, 2014
If you’re local, this is the last week to catch my You’ll Like Tacoma Show on display. So head on downtown to Brooks Dental before the lights turn out!
Blog
Summer sampler
June 19th, 2014
I stopped by the Collins Memorial Library this week to see the new Puget Sound Book Artists exhibition, and look what’s in the show! If you haven’t had a chance to see my Mnemonic Sampler abecedary in person yet, the PSBA folks have it beautifully displayed in one of the wall cases. (The display is definitely better than my low-light cell phone photo of it…sigh.)
And they were even kind enough to include a snippet of it in the exhibition poster—can you spot it?
Catch the show now through July 31!
Just a snippet
June 5th, 2014
I’ve been drawing a lot of Adirondack chairs lately—which, since I adore them, is just fine with me. I’m working on illustrating another book with Quarto Publishing Group, that will be released in late fall of this year. I can’t share any salient details yet, but I thought I’d show just a wee slice. As soon as the book comes out, I’ll let you know!
Words to live by
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…
Making lemonade
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!
This American Sketchbook
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.
Water off a goose’s back
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!
Version 10.0
April 21st, 2014
Here we are: year ten. Since the time Jessica Spring founded the Tacoma Wayzgoose all those years ago, it’s become one heckuva beast—and a veritable Tacoma institution.
So here are a few sneak peeks of the giant linoleum block Jessica and I are carving—and we’ll reveal all on Sunday:
10th Annual Tacoma Wayzgoose
Sunday, April 27, 2014
11 am to 4 pm, Free!
King’s Books
218 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, WA
If you’re new here and don’t know what a Wayzgoose is, or you just want to relive the glory days of old, here are links to all the Wayzgeese (gooses?) I’ve been a part of:
• 2009 (Tacoma)
• 2010 (Tacoma)
• 2011 (Tacoma)
• 2011 (San Francisco)
• 2012 (Tacoma)
• 2013 (Tacoma)
Itching for more? Well, then, see you on Sunday!
All a-quiver
April 3rd, 2014
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with creating pattern repeats. Surface design (illustrating for textiles and other things that use repeat patterns) is something that has interested me for years and years, but I haven’t had much of a chance to create repeats of my own until now. I’ve been taking an online class since last year that deals with surface design and creating pattern collections. So I applied what I learned to the playing around I did last week. I have no idea where this is all going, but the journey has been a whole lot of fun so far!
On the same wavelength
March 31st, 2014
I just picked up a sheet of the new Shirley Chisholm postage stamps—not just because Shirley is awesome, but also because the color scheme matches our Shirley broadside perfectly! (Great minds think alike?)