Lame April Hiatus

It’s no secret that I’m a “semi-regular” blogger, but I’ve been slowing down to an embarassing rate recently. I’m really pushing my drawing this month (for reasons I’ll explain later), and because I’ll probably have to start going crazy with work for the end of my last semester of college, so I’m gonna opt out of blogging for at least April. That’s not to say that I won’t blog, but this gives me an excuse to not. Keep an eye on my flickr if you are interested in new drawings or photos.

Postcard #2: This Is All One Line

This one goes out to a longtime loyal RSS subscriber. Also, if you do subscribe, come check out the new masthead, which wouldn’t see otherwise. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but it’ll do for a while.

Quaderno: Il Gesu Church Angel

For my first on-site drawing class, we went to Sant’Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio Il Gesu Church, an extremely Baroque church here in Rome. The church The chapel I drew at is dedicated to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order and former knight. Above is my favorite of the three drawings/sketches I did there. This angel looked to me like he was sliding down a banister. He’s giving what looks like either the hand gesture for “OK” or for blessing others. Below is a picture of what the sculpture looked like from where I was sitting. Click on it to see it bigger.

Illustration on Wikipedia

So, I’ve been thinking about illustration a lot recently. Personally, a lot of my thoughts about illustration revolve around how I’m not capable of doing it and how jealous I am of people who are. It was best articulated for me by the Chair of the graphic design program at AU, who explained the difference between the traditional track and photo track in the graphic design major (I decided to minor anyway). Basically, if you don’t have the years of structured drawing skills, you do the next best thing—photography. However, illustration’s role in Design (as opposed to design) has definitely changed from an either/or kind of situation. This is well analyzed over in an article on Design Observer.

But even more recently, a Phillip Greenspun donated $20,000 to Wikipedia expressly for the purpose of paying illustrators for top notch accompanying illustrations. According to the proposal, Greenspun touts many advantages of illustration found in the above DO post: “What can take pages of text to explain may be understood in a single picture. A visual representation can inspire understanding of a novel concept far more quickly than the textual equivalent.” Sounds great.

But wait a minute, isn’t Wikipedia free from monetary compensation? Who’s to say that words are less valuable? (illustrations will go at $40 a pop.) I wasn’t sure myself, until I read this blog post by Greenspun himself, saying, “To me, paying an illustrator is like paying a typesetter or someone else who assist in preparing a manuscript.” In fact, it’s like paying the programmers who keep Wikipedia up and looking great. And how will it work? According to the post:

1) author sketches in pencil, scans, and uploads to a queue, (2) illustrator somewhere in the world downloads the pencil sketch, reworks competently, and uploads to an approval queue (email notification to the author), (3) author reviews to make sure that the professionally drawn illustration is consistent with the pencil sketch, (4) illustrator gets paid and drawing goes live on Wikipedia, with hyperlink credit to a page where all of the illustrator’s contributions are shown and that has contact information for that illustration.

I think this is a really positive and interesting development for the design community and the internet. As opposed to new technologies that limit creativity and streamline information into one soulless format — Amazon’s Kindle only allows black and only has one typeface — Wikipedia is opening a new market for a timeless skill. A skill of which I am still very jealous of people who possess it.

An illustration for MORE Magazine by Jillian Tamaki, a great illustrator I just discovered. Check out her sketchblog and website.

NRA Pamphlet/Zine

So Wonkette recently discovered what they are calling a secret NRA graphic novel, but it is actually closer to a pamphlet or zine with really good illustrations. As you can see above, it’s called Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century. Click here to download the PDF. I’m not sure how secret it is any more or if it ever was, but from a design perspective, I’m pretty impressed.

Design is certainly alive in the activism tradition, but here’s an angle I don’t usually see. The NRA puts together some pretty good propaganda. Below is my favorite illustration, from an article about how New Orleans citzens had to surrender to their weapons to the National Guard while people mobbed and looted. (I don’t know much about this particular point, but it does seem problematic.)

The colors, thick borders and extensive hatching ironically remind me of protest artist Mike Flugennock. However, I think that this is artistically better. Being that there’s no publishing information or accreditation, it’s hard to find who did the illustrations, but they are pretty engaging. Since I’m an InDesign man, I decided to take a look at some of my favorite spreads in the PDF.

This large commanding illustration is a great visual element, and I like the grid structure they have established, but I’m not sure the lines separating columns are necessary, especially since they run up to the top of the page above the picture. Whoops.

Despite the comical nature of an angry lobster and pig, this is pretty well constructed. As an aside, I know plenty of girls who could be that girl in the illustration. The spread is consistent with the overall system of the pamphlet but still visually interesting and enticing. The illustration on the right is the perfect size for the page—it’s a great element to break up the full page of text. I think it’s kind of unnecessary to say the title, “Freedom In Peril” on the top of every page, but it looks fine.

Though every section/article starts off with the left page dominated by a large illustration, I think this spread works particularly well. It evokes a feeling out of “Grand Theft Auto” (the headline type) and “Road to Perdition” (rifles out of the old car) at the same time, which is very effective for what they are trying to do here. The hand-drawn, cross-like quotation symbols are a nice touch.

All in all, this is very ridiculous, but also very interesting.

Experiments in Hand-drawn Type

So, ever since I wrote this post, for the Dovecote, the literary journal I find myself designing and helping to edit, I’ve been practicing with hand-drawn type. I’ll say that it’s a nice break from the frustration I find when I try to draw. With drawing, I usually get frustrated quickly at the lack of resemblance between the subject and my rendering of it, but type is instantly rewarded and equally experimental. It’s fun, quick, and definitely something to just sit and do while I think about other things or relax. Here and some things I’ve been working with. As always, you can see bigger ones on my flickr.

I was going to do more with this, but I kind of liked the simplicity of it after I inked it. I did this with the French sport/art in mind. Apparently I spelled it wrong, but that’s a theme in my life.

We just watched the Little Mermaid. I don’t mind thinking about it as pebbles or bubbles; works for me. I really like this, especially that no letter is ever the same.

I spelled shadow wrong, so I just left it. This one is actually the third or so version of this ‘face and it’s still kind of sketchy, but I really think there’s potential here. I think next time I’ll actually draw in the baseline so it doesn’t look all over the place. Also, I meant to finish it with “wn dog,” because that phrase is a pangram, or one that contains every letter of the English alphabet.

I’ve been drawing shapes and doodles like this for a long time, but this is first time it occurred to me to make one in the shape of a letter. It’s actually one closed shape that doesn’t really start or end and I think it looks really organic. Might be perfect for my roomates’ new grindcore band?