Tangerine Heart for Sketchbook 3, Q. Cassetti, 2010, sharpiesIt was wildness yesterday. It was Monday, the day after Thanksgiving. So, plenty to catch up with, and plenty coming at us fast. We are wrapping up the pancake/muffin mixes today along with stuff for the Museum, for Cornell and for the Big Client. Got a fast one from the Big Client this morning— a redo of a presskit that 2 agencies have touched aready and is missing the “wow”. I pried and pushed to find out what the “wow” means…and so confounded, I am working on a cracked acrobat file with layers upon layers of vector patterns merged with the text/copy. A mess just to pry the content out of the file. Ouch. Lots of flat planes of bright color…I hope that gets us to wow. I have very little wow in my mojo…I work very hard not to have wow.

Had a great and inspiring conversation with a like minded art director with an agency in NYC that is pursuing my doing some illustration for a Dairy Cooperative in NYS. He gets my work and worked with some of the Fraktur images, the vector stuff and some of my black and white work…parsing it to “Realistic”, “Folk” and “Symbolic” drivers to the work. Plus, he married the work with some cool fonts that I have been inspired by (and bought the one, and two more yesterday—see BadTyp to the left). I totally had forgotten about FontShop. Neville Brody (wonderful Neville Brody) is one of the principals there…and thus the work is fun and inspired (along with fonts from Matthew Carter). We talked prices. We talked deadlines (all doable)…and hopefully something will happen. Could be a good project and a good relationship as I really love this creative. Great brain…and we have common sensibilities.

Am working on a bunch of black and white Matryoshka doll illustrations (Wikipedia). They are just like chips…cannot get enough of them as they are decorative and fun. Not much meaning there…but I think they could be festive.

Gotta go and move the needle.

From the Sketchbook 11/2010, Q. Cassetti, prismcolor and sharpieSent a bunch of ideas to Edible Finger Lakes for their Winter Issue. I sent them a bee, a home sweet home and a valentine for them to pick from. If there isnt anything that will float their boat, there there is more to pick from.

I spent an hour or so with Joe Sepi at Pioneer Printing in Lodi. Heaven. Joe knows what I like and was pulling out all these wonderful european papers (Gmund and James Cropper) as well as funky bone industrial paper that they do hangtags for the local parks…but could make an amazing postcard etc. He walked me through the foil stamp and finish book pointing out woodgrain, sparkly snowball patterns, holographic, metallics and flats. He showed me this great foil that acts on a rub off card…which makes another opportunity to offer my clients. I asked about press kit folders— and Joe wandered over to his shelf of magic samples handing me Hmmmmm one more interesting shape after the next. Over- stimulation without caffeine or sugar. He didn’t blink or flinch when I brought up my valentine up…and perhaps chipboard and matte silver foil… didn’t make him shake or guffaw. And the papers from woodgrains, to a silky suede, to almost a japanese-y thin, laid finish feeling almost antique…were lovely. There were uncoated papers with matte and gloss stripes (!) in rich chocolate browns or heavenly pebbled tarnished silver finishes. Joe suggested I share a sheet with him if I design his business card to highlight his company…! What opportunities. Cornell Cards await. My holiday envelopes and my valentine with the tattoo (I need to design). I was reeling until the phone rang.

My client has us creating an eyewash coffee break slide show for a presentation next week before a session on Communication. The trick is finding the right music. I had Erich looking for it and Alex too. I went to iTunes and gathered up a ton of techno, remixes and digital stuff. Its a taste decision…ouch…I generally miss…not tasteless but cannot often climb into my client’s head exactly. So, we will see. I am moving as fast as I can to find images that speak to information, communication, passage, connection and the devices along with “digital” style images. I shouldnt lose sleep over this one…it is only for a coffee break…and a 2 minute loop…but its not my strong suit.

Current status of my sketchbook is up (from 10/28 to date)>> And did a bunch of new links on the Hartford MFA Illustration Squint Blog (some of my stuff in Behance spurred by a classmate’s pleasure in being selected) here> and here>. I posted the same stuff to the Hartford MFA Facebook Page too. I got some new folks logged into the Squint site so that they can add their respective class stuff versus all of it on my shoulders. I am doing 2009, 2008 and 2007 news…with help from the classes ahead. I hope this works out. I posted some of my sketchbook work to the Moleskine, “my Moleskine” site>>. Nice thing about the Moleskine page is it makes it easy to twitter these illustrations along with posting to the bookmarks networking site, delicio.us page.

I am lubok crazed again. Guess I will need to draw it out of my system. Magical Cats, Flying Cats, cranky cats.

Gotta go. Dinner awaits.