love love love

Going to be so busy with projects this weekend that I will hardly have time to breath let alone post new stuff. So working on this magazine I came across this amazing artist, Stina Persson. I am in love with her artwork, it is so incredible.  Just amazing stuff, so I had t share. I highly recomend you check out the rest of her art on her webpage. 

 

♥k.h.w.

Inspiration is everywhere.

So I got caught up in a painting last night and missed the game altogether. I don’t know what it is but I have been finding the most amazing inspirational art all over the place lately, I just don’t have time for all of it. Short post today because I really should be catching up with my homework. Some new artists today! The first is Joey Chou, he is from Taiwan and California. His website is full of quite a range of really comic like work (which I LOVE) with lots of color as well as a bunch of traditional stuff. He has defiantly mastered quite a few styles. Some of the characters remind me so much of the animation in like, the emperors new groove or some disney movie like that.  OKay so a few of my favorites from his site below, you can check him out HERE.

 

The second artist is Alexis Mackenzie. Her current site is under construction so I couldn’t get a lot of information about her except that she is from San Francisco. But She does collages mainly, and I seem to be drawn to this stuff lately.  The link to her web page is HERE, but her flikr has quite a bit of her work- some of it is just so beautiful. So the link to that is HERE.  In the interview I read with her she talks about collages being something other than the typical, heres the excerpt. The whole interview is on Fecal Face.

“I always have a hard time describing my work, mainly because I feel like when I say that I make collages, people instantly get a mental picture of “collage” which is usually like, y’ know… more hodge-podge than what I do. This is a difficult question always. Well, I would describe them as sparingly composed and seamlessly put together. They usually feel quiet to look at. I think they are peaceful, which makes sense because I feel like when I’m working, I’m meditating; it’s very good for clearing my head of daily noise and clutter. They are generally depictions of ladies inhabiting and exploring a strange and beautiful world which is in a continual cycle of breaking down, decomposing, and giving way to new beautiful life. I like to combine elements from disparate ecosystems in order to accentuate their similarities, and to place things in a context which changes their function and relationship to the things around them. Surreal is one word for it. One thing that I strive for is to create things which are beautiful just to look at, and also rewarding to think about. That to me is what makes good art – accessible and challenging at the same time.”

Okay so I guess that wasn’t a short post. I just got caught up. Homework here I come. 

♥k.h.w.

Mai Tai’s may taste good…

But they are a pain in the ass to make.

So its been a hectic couple weeks for me. I decided last minute two weeks ago that I would enroll in this fine art bartending course. Mostly just to get some distraction from all the bull I have had to deal with over this past month. It sort of worked, I met some fairly entertaining people and hopefully it will lead to a  job over the next week. Im going to be on a job warpath this week, thats my promise to myself. Anyways, I passed tonight. The whole thing reminds me so much of making coffee-at least the streamlining part of it, I really miss my job at bean to cup, I wish somehow I could work there from here. 

School is crazy, Ill have some cool stuff to post this week from my projects. Some stuff i’ve been working on outside of school as well. Its been so cold in Van over the past couple days its weird, just when I thought beach weather was right around the corner…. 

This may or may not be useful to you- its kind of an interesting site, It has all these tips and tricks that people post and then other people who have tried them rate them. Its sort of an urban myth buster I guess as far as trivial day to day things go. Anyways check it out here  http://daytipper.com/

And…. In one of my classes we are working on the basics of developing a web page, so maybe within the next few weeks this blog will be accessible from my actual domain that I bought, and i can design something other than this super boring white background. So In general its been a tough couple weeks, I guess Im starting to learn that sometimes you should listen to your brain, even when your heart doesn’t want you too. Logic is really hard for me when it comes to my own situations, but Im learning and Im better off this way. And there is such a thing as too much death cab, hahaha.

Ill post some Art during the hockey game tomorrow, and depending on the way they are playing it will effect the attitude of the post. I wish I had money to actually go! Something about being just down the street from GM place makes it almost legitimate that im there.

G’night!

 

♥k.h.w. 

Miss Piggy is from Iowa

Great article from CNN.com about the Muppets and other childhood characters and their backgrounds, why they were created. Some of my favorites below, the whole article is here.

 

 Elmo: The way it’s described by a Sesame Street writer, apparently this extra red puppet was just lying around. People would try to do something with him, but nothing really panned out. In 1984, puppeteer Kevin Clash picked up the red puppet and started doing the voice and the personality and it clicked — thus, Elmo was born.

 Count von Count made his first appearance in 1972 and was made out of an Anything Muppet pattern — a blank Muppet head that could have features added to it to make various characters. He used to be more sinister — he was able to hypnotize and stun people and he laughed in typical scary-villain-type fashion after completing a count of something and thunder and lightning would occur.

He was quickly made more appealing to little kids, though. He is apparently quite the ladies’ man — he has been linked to Countess von Backward, who loves to count backward; Countess Dahling von Dahling and Lady Two.

Kermit was “born” in 1955 and first showed up on “Sam and Friends,” a five-minute puppet show by Jim Henson. The first Kermit was made out of Henson’s mom’s coat and some ping pong balls. At the time, he was more lizard-like than frog-like. By the time he showed up on Sesame Street in 1969, though, he had made the transition to frog. There are rumors that he got the name Kermit from a childhood friend of Henson’s or a puppeteer from the early days of the Muppets, but Henson always refuted both of those rumors

Animal: The Who’s Keith Moon may have inspired everyone’s favorite member of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. This is speculation, but people who support the theory will point out that Jim Henson named one of the Fraggle Rock characters “Wembley,” which is the town where Moon was born.

Miss Piggy is apparently from Iowa. She started as a minor character on “The Muppet Show,” but anyone who knows Miss Piggy can see that she wouldn’t settle for anything “minor.” Her first TV appearance was actually on an Herb Alpert special. It wasn’t until 1976, when “The Muppet Show” premiered, that she became the glamorous blonde with a penchant for frog that we know and love today. Frank Oz once said that Miss Piggy grew up in Iowa; her dad died when she was young and her mother was mean. She had to enter beauty contests to make money.

 

♥k.h.w.

Mixed Media Type

Tiny Canvas Letters that I made from stencils. Im still trying to work them into the poster, but my photography skills aren’t good enough to capture them properly.  Also, Im sure everyone has noticed the new fad spreading around Facebook, 25 things about yourself, blah blah etc. Well this guy has gone on a full on rant about it, and also listed his 25 things he did not want to know from a bunch of different lists. Check it out here. Some of them are pretty funny, he  hates on twitter too, which I happen to really like. Some uses of it are pretty trivial, but if its used right it can be a good tool.  I wonder how many more of these “25 things” variations are going to start popping up all over fb in the next few weeks. 

This new assignment we all have for typography,(record everything we do day to day, for a information design) totally opening my eyes to how much time I spend doing useless stuff. I spent 23 hours at home yesterday, most of which in front of my computer… that is craziness. In my defense most was homework and I did take a break to watch the Canucks game. I have also spent 6hrs this week WALKING. Gah.

♥k.h.w.

 

Finally!

Taking an opportunity between periods of the Canucks game (which they are KILLING the blackhawks btw) to update some stuff, and share. Al Lewis, conceptual artist- his collage work is really simple and inventive, I don’t think I could look at images and see other things from them the way he obviously has a gift too. Check him out at http://www.allewisconcept.com/collagetest.html

As well as Peter Clark. Another collage artist, but his pieces are much more alive, and full of motion. I really dig his stuff. How people see other things in some objects is just phenomenal. Also hopefully this week I’ll be able to post some of these cool tiny canvases that I made for a project, and then ended up going in a different direction, So if I post them it may not be a complete waste. Off to finish watching the rest of the game, its like they are a whole different team tonight, like they actually want to win. weird. 

 

♥k.h.w.

Identity Work

Project I’ve been doing some work on. Logo’s, blah blah. Comment. Enjoy.

♥k.h.w.

This Made my Day

hahahahaha, so true.

♥k.h.w.

and also…

If your really interested in the previous post, I would recommend this article. Its so well written and it gives you a great feel for the importance of type.

 

http://ilovetypography.com/2008/04/04/on-choosing-type/

 

♥k.h.w.

Elegant Typography

It is so Gross outside here today, I woke up to snow on the ground, which I guess is acceptable considering it is January… but all the sunshine lately had me tricked into thinking spring was right around the corner. So now I’m just sad that I have three more months of this bummy weather. I want to wear flip flops again. 

The more I search into the world of typography, the more and more fascinating it gets to me. Before school it was never even something that crossed my mind when it came to Design really, and now I’m starting to realize that it is a huge factor when it comes to the look of your final product. There is just so much depth to the art of it, and this huge community that I had no idea was in existence. This is one of the more clever things I’ve seen while searching around for a new assignment I have. I think its a brilliant idea. 

 

Amitis Pahlevan

 

♥k.h.w.