Too Many Shows

I made a whole heap of cards this month, and even with a few shows getting pushed, I still wound up with six cards. Whew. I'm trying to mix it up between illustrated cards and photographic cards. Keeps things interesting. Though I did overuse Futura, now that I look back over the batch. I'm particularly fond of the VMW graphic, and not so much of the names that were added to the bottom at the very last minute.

Mustache March!

My friend Avi's office has a Mustache March competition where the guys grow mustaches during March and then submit photos of their mustaches for official judging in random categories. He had the brilliant idea of dressing up as an old-timey villain and posing menacingly in photos with another friend of ours. He sent me the raw photos to dress them up and put together a single graphic for submission. It's hilarious. The judges thought so too, awarding Avi's mustache Most Daring. Hooray!

Theater May-hem

Super corny, I know. I quite like the quiet simplicity of the Before Sex/After Sex card, and the photo effect on the Love, Lust card. The other one is kind of eh. This month is very red, apparently.

Only Two Shows

Kinda skimpy this month. I realized I've subconsciously been making an effort to make each card different in style and color. I think it's partially a result of boredom with my "regular" style and trying to experiment and see what kinds of strange things I can imagine. Though looking at the cards as a whole, I think that my preferences for bold colors and singular images are still very apparent.

Spray Paint is Awesome!

I've been itching to make art again for a while. In college I made a screenprint of a woman wearing an artichoke as a dress, and I'd always planned on continuing that series to include other vegetables but didn't get around to it until about a month ago. I designed two more prints and revised the artichoke one, sent them off to be laser-cut into stencils (cheating, I know), bought spray paint at 33third (huge selection of colors, cheap, local, and very helpful), and waited eagerly for my stencils to arrive. I painted my first batch February 19 and when I brought them down to Jewlicious to show off, people liked them so much they all sold! I even got tweeted! I made a second batch earlier this week, and I'm hoping to experiment with different materials in the near future. Let me know if you want to buy one or three!

Here's a single artichoke print, three colors on cardboard, the inside rectangle being 6" x 11":

And one with all three on one board, from left bok choi, broccoli, artichoke:

Happy Go Marni! Now Happier!

I just redesigned the blog of a good friend and baker/blogger extraordinaire, Marni Landes, aka Happy Go Marni. We wanted something that reflected her perpetually sunny disposition and showcased her subject matter, but didn't overshadow the photos of the delicious pastries. I was very pleased with it, she loved it, and best of all, reading the comments, it seems everyone else did too! I will shamelessly quote here:

• "it's awesome!!! great job! i love the mini-marni!"
• "Lovely and bright! Very Happy Go Marni. :)"
• "Super cute new design!"
• "I love it!!!"
• "Love the new look! Yellow makes me happy, and it's a unique blog color. Perfect."
• "Congrats on the new look! It DOES seem more fitting. It looks more vibrant and bubbly -- just as you always are. ;)"
• "Love the wonderful logo and sunny mood of your new design! Makes me happier, too, for "happy go marni"!"

Here's the new look on the blog:

And a close up of the logo:

Theater Theater

New shows. I was feeling the stark single images this month.

Jewlicious 6.0!

I was down in Long Beach today at Jewlicious, an incredible weekend of Jewish arts, culture, thought, and socializing in the 18-30 crowd. This is the third year I've sold my M.o.T.s Jewish t-shirts there and it may have been my most successful yet. I met some cool people, got tweeted, and got to stick around for an acoustic set by Matisyahu at the end of the day!

This lady wasn't there for Jewlicious but had come to bring her daughter to Hebrew school. She hung around for a while to chat and bought a shirt. Kinda random.

Purim Party

I recently started doing some work for Temple Beth Hillel, a borderline-confusing exercise because of the name. Here is my first project for them, a 5" x 7" postcard for their 4th Annual Purim at the Pier event at the Santa Monica Pier. They wanted the card to be hip and evoke club party fliers, but it still had to be family-friendly to target families with kids. We were all very happy with the result.

New Year, New Shows

Theater postcards for the new year. These were done on a super-quick turnaround, and while I'm happy with how they came out, I wish I had a bit more time to finesse them. Two of the cards this time around are photographic. While the Chicago card in particular looks very straight-forward, it took quite a bit of work to make a photo that had just the right quality to it: nothing too modern to keep it timeless, simultaneously sharp and nostalgic, recognizable and distinctive. I had to use all the tools in my photo-editing and color-correction toolbox to make something that looks like it didn't have any work done to it.