Advent Day Seventeen

Advent Day Seventeen, Q. Cassetti, 2011, pen and inkFirst things first! SNOW!

Our Community Chorus did themselves proud regaling us with song, Christmas carols and solos—all beautiful and energized by the passionate singers who presented the concert. We all loved it. And dead center was our singing boy who loved being smack in the middle and surrounded by good singers who want to work as hard as he does to make music. He told me this morning that if he goes to Landmark, he intends on joining the Brattleboro community chorus to keep doing this with others. This is a gift to me…though it is not about me, but having my boy sing, be part of a community and be motivated to engage this way delights me to no end. And all of this not pushed or shoved by his parents, but all on his own. Terrific.

I am thrilled with having a portrait of the artist Erwin Eisch to create for the Corning Museum of Glass’ ongoing shows about the masters of studio glass. I had a first blush with him yesterday (about two hours in) with many more hours to build this thing. I used to work directly from a non-tweaked file…and I find that coming back to the original image and editing with my own eyes and hands is working so much better. The technique of pushing the reference prior to doing the editing takes too much out…and I would rather be the one to do it. I will post as I go on (and then I will show you the vectors to better explain the work). I forget how fun these things are. I should do a few of writers/people of note as Ithaca College used my Poe illustration to promote their summer studies program (I also designed the brochure) and I need more scrap for them to pick from….Reason enough, right?

More on illustration: I plan on a small body of work after Christmas derived from the amazing book Chime by Franny Billingsley. It is a tremendous book—and much of it matches with this pen and ink approach. There is a pair of twins, a wicked stepmother, a lion boy, and many otherworldly characters. And then, what next? Maybe illustrative logotypes for my young farmer friends. That sounds right.

I smell like celeriac. I just peeled a pile of them and am going to steam them and freeze them for a puree (with potato) for Christmas. I am stunned by this celery root as it has never entered my life until now…and its soft celery taste, not the full bore of celery stalks, can hide in all kinds of things…dimensionalizing the food). It makes a great add to soup and my guess stuffing (chopped fine and sauted). New CSA veggie to explore will be fennel. That is a bit more tough, but I am up to it.

Alex requested the seven fishes for Christmas (though the italians do it on Christmas eve). As I am not italian, it may be the three and a half fishes for Christmas with a broiled salmon (with a parsley herbal chop), a crabmeat casserole, something shrimp and a half of something else (half might mean appetizer). I am loving the CSA spinach…so some of that…and a salad. Who knows. I think a chocolate dessert and a lemon dessert. Need to get cracking.

Jacob is here! Must go and see what sort of things that are going on in the back room. I hope no trouble!

 

Bright and Shiny

Cool,clear and beautiful today. Alex was up early to prep for his Physics examination. Kitty and Thea were up bright and early to get on the bus to get to Ithaca to watch a friend give his final presentation of a project. I got the trash and recycling to the curb—trying to make some sense of the trash room which was essentially “trashed”. Its nice to have that done.

I wanted to share this interesting link with you….which you may be interested in (or not) but I think its cool, kind of a celebration of our digital age, the digital cottage from whence the digital cottage industries happen. To wheel this back a bit, I love where the world is these days. One can, if inspired, start a business, sell stuff online, and create a job, a business, create a salary without having to pander to “The Man” and all that entails. So, the paradigm of going out to “get a job” may become more staying put, and creating a niche for yourself. Etsy is a model for that…but anyone with a website can/could be in business. One step further, anyone with a computer can be a small manufacturer. What with the amazing stuff that is created for scrapbooking, one can do limited edition vinyl, paper, plastic laser cutting combined with the lovely Epson printers (large scale) that can print paper, fabric, material etc. Laser cutters like Cricut, The Silhouette, or the Klik-n-Kut (CNC cutters)  that work with standard purchases along with VECTOR Graphics (hello! this is my world!!). Companies like Spoonflower allow us the opportunity to create patterns and custom fabrics for ourselves and for sale. Klic-N Print allows you to print on ribbons, stickers. There are all sorts of inexpensive on-demand and conventional printers out there online that I cannot say enough about. And there is this new site I have discovered, Ponoko, part of the “personal factory movement”. This is what Ponoko says to explain the business they are in:

Welcome to the world’s easiest making system.

Ponoko is an online marketplace for everyone to click to make real things.

It’s where creators, digital fabricators, materials suppliers and buyers meet to make (almost) anything.

We kicked off at TechCrunch40 at the end of 2007 with a vision to reinvent how goods are designed, made and distributed worldwide.

The core of this vision is the trade in product designs – kinda like the trade in music (iTunes), photos (Flickr), movies (YouTube) and software apps (iPhone) before us.

We host tens of thousands of user generated product designs, ready to be customized and made into real things with the click of a mouse.

But hosting designs is only a part of the puzzle. Importantly, we also provide the world’s first digital making system that means these product designs can be priced instantly online and made locally, as close to the point of consumption as possible.

It means goods can be made in the greenest way. Making on demand reduces warehousing and wastage. Plus, making locally emphasizes digital transportation of goods instead of the traditional shipping of physical products.

Check it out. Isnt it great we have so much within a mouseclick away? Think of all you could do and make.

Cat Alert

Lubok Cat, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalHarumph. Working away at branding stuff. Was quite pleased during the conversation with the consultant that my work (self propelled) was put out there for the consultant to review as how to take a concept further. Also pleased that the due diligence on the palettes were also referenced for them as well. I would have done the work for my client if I were in the hot seat for this branding stuff, but these guys definitely march to a different drummer than I do. Different motivations, bigger teams, bigger billings and from that (from my ant’s eye view) higher expectations from the client…but this is the element of the equation that goes south. It is an interesting process that I have chosen to act as a design advocate for my clients versus the self proclaimed victim of something that was imposed on me waiting for someone else to throw the first hammer at the proposed work. And so it goes.

The cat is done in illustrator/ working with the new and wonderful blob brush. The blob brush (shift b) is a brush that creates a shape (not a vector that looks like a shape) that you can grow or erase out of…more intuitive than the pen. To my thinking, its working with a speedball round pen. Wonderful tool…just trying to get my way with it. am working the sloppy color as the Lubki prints are random…and using some brights just to see where they can go. I am jazzed as its vector immediately so scaleable etc. etc. Trying to get a handle on some techniques as the going big with the Hangar posters really did a lot of teaching re what works for this challenge of illustration/and to some degree identifying the theatre. I will be working this way for a bit, just to see where it takes me.

It is lunch time already. I ordered Alex’s Sausage fest shirts online (cheap) at cheaptees.org yesterday and am thinking holiday thoughts in advance of our meeting. Gotta go.