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.

Rose sketches/new style, Q. Cassetti, 2008, pen and ink.Alex and pals smoked meat all day yesterday. This morning, he went out and gathered up a bunch of old apple wood branches, and started another fire in a nice, neat smoker—placing two chickens he marinated last night (all by himself), and a big piece of pork to make shredded, pulled pork. His buddies came over and they were very clannish. All good.

Am mulling over illustration a bit. Not a problem, but a puzzle in my head. More later as it resolves itself. Need to get some trace in my notebook.

Have a great meeting planned for this p.m. to come up with a strategy with my clients on how to manage this branding process, branding consultants and the due diligence that I did with the proposals they put forth. The question becomes how directive and prescriptive we need to be as the consultant is very much in a “take no prisoners” approach—they are right/we are wrong…So its very much picking the devil or the deep blue sea. There is no middle ground and both approaches have issues. Surprisingly, the whimiscal, more fun approach is a freaking bear to apply. I mean, how can you overlay a fresh and fun look and feel when your company deals in life and death details of people’s lives? I mean, for employee communications and for more lively topics, this is fine—but when you are talking to the financial community, do you want to be considered whimsical and fun? or solid and trustworthy. There is a real hiccup in this thinking.

New resource: Ka-Blam, digital printing for comics and manga. They have cheap comic book formats along with taking that a bit further with a squareback/perfect binding option. They also offer preprinted art boards (their spec or ours) using a nice Strathmore inking paper for the creation of comics (or in my case inked drawings). So, I am looking at using the small sized Manga book 5” x 7.5” to create a small holiday book of my advent calendar pix for a limited group of friends. I am going to do a card for everyone—but then this book will be for the special folks. I may print CMYK all black unless there is color work…And, as with LULU you can order one as a sample before you go further…

Gotta go check on the progress of the smoker, lunch and work. Just wanted to say that I was still up and ticking.