Sugar Coated Advent 2012, Day Four: Castle of Candy, Q. Cassetti, 2012, adobe illustrator.Here is another fantasy house—one that could not stand up nor support the candy it is weighed down with. Nonetheless, it is a little advent window for you.
As I progress in this study, I am really prodded along by a lot of learning I am doing with my tools, my thinking and the desire to keep encrusting these poor layouts with more and more stuff. Obsessively so…that this illustration still feels remarkably parsimonious and too spare for my liking but there is a limit right now for how far I can go…but maybe as we proceed, these things will get junkier and more stuffed with color and texture, pattern and form.
I am getting a bit more adept with brushes/symbols/ swatches and my new favorite tool “make with top shape” in the collection of warp tools. I wish I could take that concept of “make with top shape” and wrap it around my brain to see what odd and lovely thing would pop up in front of me. I am being entertained by the stuff that I can do that is now driving crazy illustrations and ideas. So it is technology and technique informing content and content coming back to push on technique and form to answer a need but open a door as well. Curiouser and curiouser.
Today we have a big Farmers Market meeting to review and brainstorm the past and future. Rob is still enjoying the pleasures of NYC with lots of work, meetings and grown up presentations. Our littles are still toiling at their work, studies and the ongoing personal friendships and sometimes dramas that college will present them. I am surrounded by the court of honor (2 grey cats, a half blind white cat, and a stinky big black dog) in charge of watering, feeding and taking them out. Had a nice meeting with Richie Stearns and sweet Rosie about an illustration of a tractor for an upcoming album. Am all over it. Finished a ginger illustration for the upcoming Ginger Vodka for Myer Farm Distillery. More special projects happening daily.
Gotta get to the vectors or they might run away.