Sketch

Herman Melville writes some great adventures. A couple years ago I read the book “Omoo” and now I am reading “Typee.” It seemed an excellent counterpart to the book on Gauguin’s symbolism that I am reading as the entirety of the book is set in the Polynesia. Melville’s characters are always interesting, as the narrator is ultimately him. He allegedly experienced something akin to what happened in his books on Polynesia, but what interests me, is that when his characters find themselves in the dramatic situation that catapults the plot of the novel, they always find a buddy.

Similarly, as I’ve been working through the ups and downs of my personal life I’ve been looking for company as well and as a result I have reached out to the members of Freehand Armada and I’ve started a couple new projects. When life gives you lemons, make something new.

I’ve started two new projects with Freehand. The first is a zine of varmints performing skateboarding tricks. I will share some of those as the sequential pieces materialize more. I have the first, a badger doing a nollie kick flip, almost done. He just needs to land. The second project that I started is a newsletter project. I want to do some reviews of all sorts of things in my Portland community; a couple artist studio visits, reviews of gallery shows, reviews of new pinball machines at Arcadia, and a segment that my buddy and I just came up with, The beverage review. We will review whatever beverage we are consuming while working on our other projects. Mostly this will become a rolling review of our cheap beer of choice. The first was of Narragansett and you can read it here. Each beverage review will be accompanied by a drawing of the can.

I’ve also begun a #nanodrawmo project for the month. I am going to do a small watercolor of 50 different shorebirds.

I’ve been really into the way that watercolor feels and how mobile it is. I have gotten to the point where I pretty much carry my watercolor kit around with me everywhere. These drawings have been pretty quick. The interest in shorebirds really sprung from a book that I was reading earlier this year on the migration of the Red Knot, a type of Sandpiper, who travels all the way from Tierra Del Fuego to Nova Scotia every year. That is a long trip and seems fitting to the way that I’ve been feeling about my life of late. What a long strange trip try to account for all of my needs.

So I’m finding that in order to really be creative and loose, it has been really helpful to push silly projects with my friends. I was beginning to take myself too seriously. I need some friends to accompany me on my journey. Hopefully we don’t take our art directly into the maws of cannibals.

Peace

-Mike

I am working on art for skate decks tonight and it’s pretty exciting since that is the first thing that I attempted to do when I graduated with my undergraduate degree in illustration. I think I know less about Illustrator now than I did then, but I think I know more about art and illustration now, so this should be interesting. I’m wondering how much of the Illustrator I will remember as I move along here. Some of it comes back relatively fast while other aspects I am sure will take me an entire evening to understand again. It is a worthwhile venture though. It is also a venture that people who don’t know all of the details will say things like, “Why don’t you already know everything about the program since you are an illustrator?” or “You should understand all of the tools at your disposal”, but I think that equally important is probably the fact that I understand how visually I can create an image far better than I could when I was 22. So I guess all things considered, I am glad to be operating the way I do now. I’m going to make this work, because I want to, and I may need to, and frankly, it would be nice to finally have that job at the design firm, whether it be “selling out” or any of that b.s. I would be happy for that sale if it were offered to me. Check out the original sketch. Tis one of those awesome marble boards.

Wish me luck. I would like more of this type of work. I think it would be good for me, and it might even make my parents rest a little easier, which after all of this time would be an incredible blessing.

Big ups!
Peace
Mike