Steve Zissou

Here's my suicide print of Steve Zissou. I still might try doing something else in the background, I'm not entirely sold on the yellow.

Snowboard catalog.

I'm in the middle of working on my catalog right now. The rough draft is due tomorrow so I've been busy drawing coloring book pages and mazes. I was going to post the maze but for some reason it only comes up as a blank square. When I have more time I'll try to fix it, otherwise you'll probably have to wait until Thursday for my Steve Zissou print to be done.

Camera phones

I guess I'll start off with a couple pictures I've shot with my camera phone in the last week. This first one is of a van down in Orem that apparently gets a little bit too hot, so they installed a swamp cooler on the back. All it needs is the spoiler and you're basically set to start your own A team.

And this is a shot of beautiful Logan and its signature Inversion while I was on my way to school today. It had actually cleared up quite a bit at this point, though we still can't see the mountains. Anytime they call a red air day you know it will look about like this, which might have something to do with them not requiring emissions testing.

Anywho, Willie McMillion from Bluebird and Solid snowboards came and talked to us today about our boards. He said all of the designs were a lot better than most of the designs he just saw at the trade shows. It was pretty sweet, he gave us a lot of info on what all goes into making snowboards and a lot of background on Solid. It's got me thinking about emailing some more companies and trying to get some more feedback on some of my designs and how to break into that market (maybe do some freelance stuff?).

For the past 2 days we've had Karen Kunc up here doing a residency, which basically consists of doing a seminar and a workshop. It was really cool to watch her work, she makes good use of stencils and has figured out how to get this great fuzzy quality that you don't usually see in woodcuts. I'm already trying to figure out how to incorporate some of her techniques into my next woodcut assignment, which is a portrait of Steve Zissou. I'll try to get some drafts of it up soon, but we're probably looking at next Tuesday.

Oh, and just a heads up for anyone considering buying Turbotax this year, buy it at Best Buy where they'll give you a free movie of your choice. We just completed our Pirates trilogy.

Valentine's and President's Day

Overall, a great weekend. Thursday night was the annual Valentine's Ball at the Provo Library so since we were already getting Monday off because of President's Day we decided to take Friday off and make an extra-long weekend of it. We spent a lot of time with family and friends and surprisingly I actually got some homework done.

Saturday afternoon Whit and the girls in her family went to see Definitely Maybe and us boys went and saw Jumper. Both came home disappointed. It wasn't the worst movie I've seen, I'm afraid Eragon sits on that throne, but it was just very poorly done. It wasn't a character driven movie (they really did nothing to make you care about the characters aside from that basic human feeling of not wanting someone to die), nor was it a plot driven movie, it was based on special effects and it never explained anything. In addition it was only an hour and a half long. They really needed to take the extra half hour and develop the character's more and give the viewer something to relate to. I'd say it's probably worth seeing, but only at the dollar theater or rented from Redbox. I'm told the book is better so I'm going to give it a try.

I was extremely excited when I got home from the movie to find that Whit had gone to Target and bought me this awesome bottle of water and 5 bags of Sweettarts Jellybeans. I'm a sucker for cool glass bottles and decanters. I'm not sure what it is about them that I think is so great.

Saturday night we went up to Salt Lake with my parents, Mark, Lana and Gabe to eat some of the best Chinese Food I've ever had at David's Kitchen on 3300 South. My dad is a regular there and knows that basically everything's good, so when we were seated they didn't give us menus and instead we just leave it up to David to make something that we'll like. The only things we requested were three orders of Pot Stickers and some Walnut Chicken, which I would say is a necessity if you are going there.

I'm getting tired of writing so I'll end it here. I've got a busy day ahead of me, though things have opened up some since I found out the guys from Solid snowboards are coming to look at our designs on Thursday instead of today. Aside from my normal class I have today we've got the visiting artist Karen Kunc here to do a workshop and seminar, so I'll be busy with that for most of the day.

Well, I never got around to scanning this on a big scanner so my crappy little one will have to due. Whit keeps our camera in her purse and when she's at home I always forget to grab it from her so you'll have to put up with the wrinkles in the paper and the cropped image until later. I made sure you got the most important part, you know, my face. I'm getting close to being done with this print. There are a couple areas that I've got to work on and then I'm going to scan it in and try screen printing it, adding some colors and other stuff. We'll see how it turns out. None of that will be done by the Undergrad show so all I'll enter there is the finished looking woodcut print. I've got this weekend to work on it because I've been neglecting my other assignment. The album cover won't be until next month and we haven't decided if we're doing the year we were born or not. I think I've got it narrowed down to doing Billy Idol if I have to do 1982, otherwise I'm thinking about doing Bowie.

And just because I know all three of you that look at this page were dying from the anticipation of knowing what my final snowboard looked like, here it is:

I only made subtle changes, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. And I was really impressed with the majority of my classmates'. I took the class for about a month last year and saw the boards that they did then and I think these are much better. Now on to the catalog.

Is that really where rainbows come from?

Here are the postcards we did for the upcoming Undergraduate Art Show. In case you need some convincing of my artistic talent I'll let you in on a little secret: I drew the unicorn. I know, I'm pretty good. I'm kind of a big deal up here. People know me. Anywho, I've got to figure out what I'm going to enter into the show. I'm thinking that I'll do one of my new self portrait. I haven't got images of the work in progress up yet because it's 12x16 and my scanner will only do about 8 1/2x11. It's looking pretty good so far, you'll just have to trust me until I can get a hold of a bigger scanner (or a camera). But you can trust me, I'm the guy who drew the unicorn.

Tomorrow my snowboard's due. I've finished with the top, but I still haven't touched the bottom aside from getting rid of the Bluebird logo that shouldn't have been there. Chalk that one up to ignorance on my part. Once the board's turned in we get to start working on our next project, the snowboard catalog. We'll pick 7 boards from our classmates + our board and put the eight of them into a small 12 page catalog. It should be fun.

Flores

Here is the preliminary final version of my Guatemala inspired snowboard for my Visual Continuity class. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. In the process of doing this I also learned how much of a black hole the computer can be. I sat messing around with it and then looked at the clock and had lost 4 hours of my life without making much progress. I had to pull myself away from it and draw out a battle plan before jumping back in. I need to make a few tweaks here and there, including redesigning the bottom (can it be called a redesign if the first one was just thrown together?), but none of it should take more than an hour or so and it'll be ready to go out.

I was pretty worried yesterday with the whole State of the Union address that we wouldn't get to see American Gladiators, but faith came through and I wasn't left disappointed (except for the cheerleader that couldn't get over the wall on the Eliminator).

DONE

I ran my edition this morning, so this is the final product. Hope you like it. Now I've got to work on my Guatemala-inspired snowboard.

almost done

While there is plenty more I could do with it I'm thinking it's about done. I've really got to concentrate on some of my other assignments.

Anorexic?

Here are some changes I made last night and this morning. I felt like I needed to change the shape of the face a little but now I'm worried that it hollowed me out too much and I look anorexic. Oops.

"MacKay told me to call this There's a Knot in My Neck"

Ok, here is my work so far on my self portrait for my relief prints class. It's just a basic black and white print to get us back into the swing of working with wood. We don't have a due date for it yet but I'll try to post an updated print a couple days a week (Thursdays for sure) until it's finished.

We also talked today about the print exchange that we will be doing this semester. The idea we're probably going to be running with is redesigning a record cover from the year we were born. It should be pretty fun once I find an album that was released in 82.

Nothing to Update

I don't really have anything to update on here. I'm back to school but haven't gotten any of my assignments far enough along to show any progress on them. Maybe tomorrow. I've got a couple self-portraits and a snowboard to design, so I should have some good stuff up in the near future. I've been busy trying to figure out the specifics of screen printing on Plexiglas for my project in Advanced Printmaking, but without much luck.

Anywho, Whit's home from aerobics so I better head.

MOS. 5:15

"...as we become more spiritually mature and increasingly steadfast and immovable, we are less prone to zealous and exaggerated spurts of spirituality followed by extended periods of slackness. Recall the tortoise in Aesop’s fable to whom I referred earlier as an example of steadiness and persistence. The hare, on the other hand, is a classic example of a “spurter”- one who is given to short bursts of spectacular effort followed by frequent and lengthy periods of rest.

"A spurt may appear to be impressive in the short run, but steadiness over time is far more effective, far less dangerous, and produces far better results. Three consecutive days of fasting ultimately may not be as spiritually effective as three successive months of appropriate fasting and worship on the designated fast Sunday. An attempt to pray one time for five hours likely will not produce the spiritual results of meaningful morning and evening prayer offered consistently over five weeks. And a single scripture-reading marathon cannot produce the spiritual impact of steady scripture study across many months. (David A. Bednar, Steadfast and Immovable.)"

So I'm sitting in Elder's Quorum yesterday but my mind's not there. I'm thinking about some recent changes and things I've got coming up and overall not doing a good job of paying attention when something catches my attention and brings me back in the middle of this quote being read. It's been a while since I've had one of those "is this specifically for me?" moments. Nothing that I've heard had really hit home until I heard this quote.
Lately I've been going through some introspection trying to figure out the details for a project for my printmaking class that will deal with a personal revelation, tearing down some of the facades that we may put up in public and finding out what lies beneath. It's been an ongoing inner discussion I've had trying to determine what it means to "live your life" and "be true to yourself." So when I heard this quote it struck a chord and made me feel like this is a big part of what I've been looking for.
Anywho, school's back in, and truthfully I'm somewhat relieved. I've cut back on my hours at work so hopefully I'll not be so strapped for time on my projects at school, though I can already tell that I'm spending too much time thinking about the time we'll spend in Switzerland this summer.

Threadless

My friend Jason showed me this site yesterday. It's called threadless, and designers can upload their designs onto the website where people will vote on them. If the design gets enough votes, they do a run of tshirts and the designer gets $2500. All the tshirts are about 15 bucks, so it's not a bad price to buy either. The style of the shirts is a lot like shirts you may find at Urban Outfitters, and I like that there is such a concentration of different artists and cool designs.

Heroes

It's been another great Christmas. We got so much more than we wanted, except Whit still doesn't have a kitty or a puppy. I had to promise her that after we get back from Switzerland she could get one.

Heroes was on sale at Best Buy this week. Neither of us had really seen beyond the first episode but had heard great things about the show so we bought it and that has been our life for the past couple days. Even last night after going to bed we ended up getting up and watching one more.

Also, I recently added a sidebar that I'll keep posted with what I'm currently reading. Over the break it will probably get updated every few days, during school probably only once a month or so. Right now I've got a list of 4 or 5 books that I'm trying to get through before school starts.

The Book Thief

In celebration of having finished my finals I was finally able to finish the book I've been reading every spare minute I've had since Thanksgiving. I'd recommend it to anyone, it was a great read. It's been a while since I've had a book that has captured my attention like this. It deals with Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with her foster parents in Nazi Germany. She starts to learn the power words have and finds herself stealing books since her family is too poor to buy them. The whole story is told from Death's perspective who becomes aware of Liesel early on when he comes to collect her little brother's soul.

Well, I'm off to work.

1942

What a relief. Finals are over and for the most part I'm happy with where I went with them. Pictured above is my Printmaking final. It used two plates (one for each color) and was a fun experience. I still need to go in and put some highlights on the airplane but overall I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Healthy Energy

Our final assignment in my Brand Identity class was to do a logo and packaging for an all-natural energy drink. We had to choose the name, write a positioning statement (how the brand wants to be perceived), create a mark of identity and design 3 bottles of the product. Turns out the application is really a pain in the butt. It really opened my eyes to how much goes into all of this. I was surprised to see just how much baggage there is with the shape of a bottle. Anywho, this was my mark of identity. I liked the irony of it being called "Verde" but having a multicolored logo. Overall it has been a great class that I've learned a lot from but I'm very glad it's over.

Aunt Fanny and Marco Riviera

Here are the two prints I sold at the print sale. The top one titled "Aunt Fanny" and the other "Marco Riviera."

Also, I was on Ikea's website this morning looking at frames for some of the stuff we bought when I noticed a red link that said IKEA Madness. Curiosity got the best of me and soon I found myself entertained by dancing lightning bolts and screws. Check it out if you are entertained by fun flash animations. It tells the story of how some of their designers came up with their stuff, but it's done in a fun way. It reminded us of the Blur music video Coffee & TV, with the little milk carton.

USU Print Sale

The past two days the "Printmaking Guild" has had a print sale. I wasn't planning on entering anything originally, but after some convincing by my teacher and a couple friends I entered in 3 pieces to be sold. Ultimately I assumed that only one print would sell, the one I posted here below. But, as of 4ish this afternoon two of the three were sold and the one left was the only one I expected to sell. Turns out my face must be the moneymaker since both prints sold were self-portraits. It felt pretty cool to sell them, being the first prints I've ever sold. Tomorrow I'll post some images of them.

Another cool thing about selling the prints is that one of them was actually sold to the USU housing... something, to put into some of the on-campus housing. So technically I have a piece in the University collection.

Whit and I are both pretty stoked about our purchases, though not about the money we spent (more than we should have). We have such talented people in the program up here. Now we just need to have it framed so we can proudly display it all.