Illustrations and picture making by Samala.
It’s been awhile.
Here we have Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick, whose Twitter slogan is “Commissioner with a hard left hook.” I don’t follow politics, but I think he’s kind of amazing.
Whippet good.
Ode to Summer Being Nearly Over.
I’ve been working on a long-standing barter project that’s very near and dear to my heart. My 13-year-old son just received his black belt hapkido at Portland’s Ninja School, a martial arts academy specializing in Heuk Choo Kwan style that’s dedicated to their students’ transformations and sense of personal empowerment. The owners are really awesome folks, and we worked out a trade for my son’s tuition in exchange for a comic book to promote the school. It’s been a great project, and the storyline they’ve been cooking up is expanding well. Here’s a sample of the work we’ve done so far.
I had some time during a webinar at work today to doodle and ended up doing a little self-portrait for a new Facebook profile image. Two of the DJs at work fell in love with it and asked for their own.
I recently joined Reddit (woohoo, time waster!) and discovered a subreddit in which people around the world post photos in the hopes that one of the artists in the community will draw them. It’s a surprisingly good drawing prompt. I wish people posted more pet pictures though.
Check it out! I made a giant (slightly accurate) watercolor map of Portland!
Thumbnails for the next CD cover design I’m doing for work! I got together with our staff photographer Bennett Dewan with just a few loose ideas. He took a series of gorgeous photographs of our friend Joe playing the guitar and sent me the best ones to illustrate. Updates soon! This thing is a quick-turn job.
I had the most fun job ever land on my desk the other day: designing new staff t-shirts for the rock radio broadcasting station I work for. The directive? “Do what you think would look cool and we’ll go from there.” I’ve always loved iconography, so I whipped out some sketches to vectorize in Illustrator. I knew this was a laborious process, so I started to play around with the program (I haven’t used it since school, which was a few versions ago) and had a glorious epiphany. Illustrator CC has a grown-up version of the infamous ‘live trace’ tool. It’s basically a two-click process that allowed me to finish a day-long process in a matter of minutes. I’m satisfied with the product and I learned something new along the way. Color me tickled.
I’ve finally gotten a new laptop, huzzah! I’ve had a slew of art to upload, but I was without a scanner for a long time. I’ll start to trickle out some watercolors and whatnot I’ve done over the last few months.
I’m also pleased to brag that I got a brand-new shiny job at a fancy building in downtown Portland doing graphic design and web work for a radio broadcasting company! I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve learned more in my first week than I have since I graduated from school, ha. It’s going to be a fun journey. Stay tuned for updates!
