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 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!
Meet the crew! I’m pleased to announce that my crew and I will be performing April 11 & 12 at Imago Theater in Portland for the next Portland Puppet Slam. Clockwise from the top we have Uncle Shelby, the Calistoga Kid, and Pearly Sweetcakes, everyone’s hippie darling. We’ve been hard at work fabricating these guys and piles of props to perform a rendition of a little-known Shel Silverstein piece from the seventies. Come see what all the fuss is about! Tickets are available here, but get yours soon. They sell out fast.
Here’s the elf I drew this year for my gaming community’s secret santa project. She didn’t have nipple like last year’s, but I think the recipient will be pleased nonetheless. The other image is a little certificate I drew up on request for another player to give to their secret santa. It’s an artful Christmas!
Here’s some concept art I’m developing for one of my most beloved online games, Armageddon MUD. I was asked to come up with some designs loosely based on Mayan and Egyptian garments and accessories. I haven’t done such minimalistic pen and ink drawings in awhile. It was a fun exercise.
Some more fun character portraits from Armageddon MUD. We have one wind magicker, and one dwarven badass mama.
Here’s a color study of a really fun freelance project I’m working on. The client asked for a bird wing made of bicycle parts. I’ve never been great at nonorganic shapes, but I’ve been having a blast with this one.
