Continuing to work on the hand lettering project and play with type. I have enjoyed the search for an interesting looking window pane to use the pens to write with on. Once I have the final product for this project I plan on photographing it with my lights so I can successfully add it to my portfolio for future reference. I also have been putting a lot of thought into what I want my project to be for the exiting show next semester. A personal photo project/series that I started a few months ago is what I am leaning towards at the moment. I want to turn the photos into full vectors and graphics as well as do hand drawn type to go with each photo in the series. I would love to have the final product printed on a huge canvas. The series would consist of 6-7 pieces when all is said and done. I think doing something that I already started as a personal project that I was passionate about and turning it into something more into a graphic is going to really help with pushing it to the limits. I also have been running a Christmas shoot special with my photography and plan on taking my designing skills to advertise for myself and make flyers so I can market to more people than just the ones I have on my business facebook.

I've been looking for a window pane to do my chalk project on. Yesterday I went thrift shopping and looked for various things to do my hand lettering project on. I still haven't settled on a thing to actually do my hand lettering on but the opportunities are endless. I am excited about this project and will probably be buying the special pens to work with as well as chalk. I also think a mirror might be cool to work with.

I have continued to work on my Lyceum series and I can honestly say that I am happy with the way that it is coming along. Sometimes when you have an idea and you put it into play it does not turn out as magnificent as you expected it to. I went with the idea of adding texture into some of my silhouetted figures as I had planned and was happy with the result.

Lyceum

I am doing a lyceum poster with my old ink figure drawings from drawing 2 class. I also plan on using my violin as a reference photo or as the actual poster for one of the posters. Another idea I really want to put into play is getting dancers to do something with a flowing type of fabric and use a slow shutter speed to capture some motion photos for one of the posters. I am really looking forward to being able to use some of my photography with my design work as well for this particular project.


I also photographed my first wedding not too long ago. It was definitely a lot of work but it paid off and was a beautiful day so I got some great photos!

Over the past weekend I did my first bridal shoot. I was very pleased with the outcome. This weekend I will be shooting the same girls wedding for my portfolio. I offered to do it for free because I knew no one was going to hire someone to shoot a wedding who didn't have experience already doing so.

I am looking forward to progressing into the next project and have been looking at app designs to study them. One I particularly like the simplicity of and works well just by using typography is the vine app. 

I have continued to work steadily on my candyland invitations and spy novels. Due dates are coming up and I must stay on my toes! This semester is definitely a challenging one. I am enjoying my projects though so I cannot complain. I did a maternity shoot this past weekend and had quite a bit of fun with it. Using the internet to gather inspiration we found some cool photos to use to base our shots off of.


I ordered a Wacom Inkling pen over the weekend and I am eagerly awaiting its arrival in the mail. I am excited to try it out.

After plenty of contemplating and lots of debating I decided to go with a different route for my invitations project for my typography two class. I did not make this decision on a whim however as it would mean starting the project over. I really did not have a lot of the resources I needed in order to do the ballet invitations the way I wanted to. I did and do however have plenty of resources and references for doing a Candyland themed birthday party invitation for this project.

I have a bit of an obsession with Candyland I guess you could say. It ranks up there with Hello Kitty and Sailor Moon in the fond memories of my childhood that I honestly do not think that I will ever grow out of. Maybe it is my obsession with bright and fun colors that makes me love Candyland themed things. I do not really have an obsession with actual candy I just think it is all so pretty to look at. This inspired me over the summer to do a candyland themed photo shoot.

I have to say it was an ultimate success. I made a scene that looked like you were actually walking into the world of Candyland for my shoot. With spray paint galore I sprayed pinks, blues, and purples all over bags of stuffing I purchased and sprawled it across the ground to look as if I were walking in a world with ground covered with cotton candy. Giant lollipops and gum drops surrounded me.

When thinking of what else I could do my invitations for for this project it occurred to me: Why not do Candyland? I mean after all I worked so hard on making my vision come true for the photoshoot...I had all the references I needed....why not make it happen?

And if you don't have any reasons not to do something, I'd say that's a pretty good reason to go for it.

My buttons are going to consist of swirls as if they are lollipops, my type looks as if it is candy striped. I am vectoring out a photograph for the cover of the invitation now which will be the most time consuming part of the project but once that is out of the way I am pretty much in the clear. Although time is short I do not regret making this decision and it was one I was happy to make.

Making progress

I took some reference photos for my spy novel series this weekend to start vectoring out. The first book is called "I'd tell you I love you but then I'd have to Kill You". For that one I am illustrating a mysterious teenager (sun glasses/spy glasses) shhing somebody and in the reflection in her sunglasses you can see the silhouette of a young man. I thought that was pretty straight forward and spy novel-esque.

Today I also did a shoot for a lady as an anniversary gift to her husband. We did a nerdy pin up look using a nintendo as props. I also took some of their baby for her to give to them and she was such a ham. She was the first baby that I have really photographed so I couldn't get over how cute they were. 

I am doing my invitations project for a fictitious ballet recital. I plan on making the invitation look like a jewelry music box that has a ballerina on the inside when you open it. Here are some photographic references that I will be vectoring out in addition to a ballerina jewelry box as well as ballet slippers.

I also have decided on a direction for my spy novel series. I plan on doing the Gallagher Girls because it is about teenage girls who go to a school that is actually for spies. It has super cheesy titles such as "I'd Tell You I Love You but Then I'd have to Kill you" "Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy"

I wanted to be able to have a little more fun with this series than you can with most spy novels because they are so serious. Because mine have such cheesy titles and the target audience I have a little more lee way. 

Pin Up in the Naval Museum

This past weekend I gathered some last minute photos for the final parts of my Retro Packaging project.   I shot in the Naval Museum and everyone there was extremely welcoming and even thrilled that we were shooting there. 

Pin Up

I worked on taking some more pin up style photos for my retro packaging project this past week. I still have a few more sets to shoot so that I will have a variety of different locations as well as girls on the covers of the different packaging items. Carson suggested that I should use a half tone feature with the photos I took to give it even more of a retro feel. I feel as if this will help with the artist I chose. Because my pin up photos don't really contain alternative retro girls like the lead singer in the "Horrorpops" it will help to give it more  of a retro wild flare that they have on their covers. When all is said and done I think the outcome is going to be good.

Over Spring break I did a lot of shooting to build up my photography portfolio and to give myself some more material to be able to work with in potential design projects. I literally shot almost every day we were "off" for break.

Wait, That's a Logo...?

I am looking at my local competition on facebook and some of the things I see shock me. Some people's work is just so terrible. I ran across my recent exes "photography" page and he used a generic script typeface to make a logo and it was just God awful...I mean seriously, if you don't get it hire a fucking professional for Christ's sake.

I mean...How does one react to this?

........

Type in Nature

I have started to go around shooting for the type project in nature recently. I have found that by looking around for these letterforms that some are fairly common when you look for them but some are going to be difficult to run across or find. I think Q and Z will be very difficult to find. Some letters will definitely be more organic like q and found in nature and some will be more found in man-made structures such as z.

Flourish Script

I am introducing a new typeface for our upcoming project that we will be starting soon. Right now I am still sketching everything out and nothing is finalized but so far I am happy with the direction it is going in. I am making an ornate script-like typeface using flourishes and whatnot.

Currently I am still working on tying everything together and there are certain elements that will be altered once I digitalize everything and get it into illustrator.                             

Here are some flourishes that could be used for inspiration. 

Pin Ups

These last few weeks I have been talking about my retro packaging project and what I plan on doing with it. This past weekend I did a little bit of networking because I really wanted someone who had an old hot rod car that could be used for a pin up shoot. I went to the parking lot on 9 mile where the old guys go with their hot rods on Saturday night and the very first one I approached was willing and excited to help me out. Although nothing has been put into play yet as far as this shoot goes I know because so much planning is going into it that it's going to end up being a bang. I have contacted a hair stylist who specializes in pin up hair styles and have been researching their outfits and clothes.

I also have found a guy who has a 1940's framed motorcycle who is going to let me shoot with it as well.

I also created some new business cards for myself and I am extremely excited for them to come in. I did a textural painting to scan in to the background of the card to give it some texture and a little bit of my flare to it.

I've continued on with the info graphics project after the first critique with a little bit of a different mind set. I did decide to go ahead and focus on the animals being affected by the ocean pollution as well as the eco system in general because it is an important factor. My project is focusing on the effects of oceanic pollution as a whole not just the facts about it that relate to how we contribute.

Ideas are flowing..

I found quite a few record labels and pictures of Jimi Hendrix that inspired me to take my initial idea of having a silhouetted imaged of someone with a fro and expand on that. 

I really liked the use of type to create the silhouetted image of Hendrix in this pictures. I am going to search for a very retro typeface to download and use as the outline for Hendrix. I want to use one of the photos of him smoking as a reference so I can have the smoke coming out of his mouth as well. 

I also talked about having a retro 70s background with wild psychedelic colors in the background behind the silhouette. 

I like all three of these images but the last one especially gave me quite a bit of inspiration. I plan on creating a textural painting with these crazy colors to put in the background. I hope to have the smoke coming from his mouth fade into the background by putting it in crazy psychedelic colors as well. I am extremely excited to make some further leeway on this project now that I have more in store for it than the pinup shoots/style I have set up and planned. 

I was reading about dead zones for another idea for my info graphics ocean pollution project. I really want to depict fish in gas masks since essentially dead zones aren't able to produce enough oxygen for the ocean life to survive in areas where they exist. I saw a picture online of a fish with a gas mask on and I thought it was brilliant. It's straight forward and to the point and visually gets the point across while catching someone's attention. 

Another option is to use skulls and crossbones and things such as that to get the point across visually a dead zone literally means the ocean life cannot live in that area. 

Fros and picks

I am currently working on sketching out and vectoring out a silhouetted person with a fro and a pick to depict a 70's feel for the retro project. I am going to use psychedelic colors to depict the 70s feel further.

 I ordered some pin up clothes for a shoot for this weekend and have myself and another girl to model for photoshoots that I have set up for the pin up style feel. One of the shoots I want to do an army type pin up feel as inspired by this album cover:

I am going to borrow a trumpet from my friend who is a music major and I have a pin up army costume that is very retro. I am going to play around with making the photos look old/retro after I take them and and vectoring them out to give the album cover a cartoon feel to see what looks better.

Also I am continuing the research and art work for the info graphics project. I am going through with working on having an outline of texas filled with trash as well has having a chart of algae in comparison to amount of plastic in the ocean.

I am currently working on doing research for the infographics and retro projects for our design classes. Some of the things that I am going to do with the infographics are more than likely going to include charts. I am thinking that with the ratio of plastic to algae being so crazy in certain parts of the ocean that is what one of the infographics will be like. I will have that one as a bar chart showing the bottles of plastic compared to the algae. of plastic compared to the algae. Here is an infographic that uses the 

chart method that I am going to use. 

I am still doing more research for the retro project. I do know that I would probably like for one of the items to have an 80s feel to it and another one a disco style feel. I am still going to do the pin up girl for one as well. I plan on doing a photoshoot and getting photographic references that I can vector out for my pin up girl model/cartoon.