Poster roster.

It seems as though - even if I set aside a time to do things - I wait until it's late or until I should be doing something else. Posting right now is fulfilling both. It's late and I have a couple of other blogs that I wanted to write tonight. I just spent the evening doodling. C'est la vie and all that.

I was thinking about poster ideas and how I wanted to go about doing things when it comes to doing this project. My main inspiration is Derek Hess. In a nutshell, he started out doing flyers for his mate's bands and that progressed to posters. From there, he's done album work, magazine covers, calendars and what he doesn't use on an item, he sells as is.

This flyer is one of his most recent ones and it was done in 2008.

This is one of my favourite flyers. I work in pen, so my lines are visible. All of them. Derek Hess' style encourages me in that a style similar to mine can be used and accepted in a wider community.

I included this one as I like the way he has almost pieced together two completely different things and made them one. The mite's legs and jaws with the skull's upper structure. Drawing the unreal in a way that makes it seem almost possible.

But onto his posters. I wanted to get some ideas as to what I could do with my poster. I thought of creating a band or gig poster promoting the band that my dad was in through college. 'Nolo Episcopari'. It's latin. For 'I do not wish to be a bishop'. That's where I get it from...

This is his most recent gig poster. It was completed this year. One thing that interests me is his use of different media. His work - whether in ink or not, is always enhanced when he puts a bit of colour behind it. Even if it is just a splash or brush stroke. The beauty of doing this in photoshop is that I can Cmd+Z if anything goes awry.

The thing I like about these two is that they both have combinations of things that wouldn't go together. The body with the gramophone cone as an ear, the cicada nymph on a pumpkin surrounded by Snoopy characters. I like that - in the second poster - he has used his black lines as shading as opposed to using a darker colour in the shaded parts.

And one for luck.

This is just one of his pieces that I really like. It's using his loose style, it's using mixed media, it's using superimposed characters. I think it's an amazing mix that comes together nicely.

And for my doodle, this is one of my pieces for the 'Alternative Representation' project:

Logo a go-go.

The first steps to creating a logo is to draw as many small pictures as possible.  Profound.  It's news to me, anyway - I've honestly never really given it that much thought before.  I'm learning already, folks.

Here's the first page of little ideas:

The ideas ranged from everything between prayer and food, sleep and music.

Refining the ideas like the amateur goldsmith I am, I reduced the jumble of doodles to a well seasoned selection, before mixing them back up in twos and seeing what I got.  One such combination grabbed my attention in a way that if it were a person, I'd say "Hang on, mate.  Do that again."

The winning combination was of a pencil and a guitar.  After I had found them, I proceeded to work and rework the image until I had a blend that was silky smooth.  Also included above are the fringes of another design and a head with nothing but a big mouth.  That's how I roll.

The finished idea is here.  I used the negative space in the guitar to highlight the graphite in the pencil.  I elongated the eraser and the eraser holder to show the head of the guitar and I used the lines of the side of the pencil to show the strings (I know - there aren't enough).

I'm very happy with how it turned out.  I'm made happier with the knowledge that it's not going to be my best work.

Now all I have to do is create this logo in Adobe Illustrator...

Bonus game - the drawing from a previous project is in one of these pictures.  Can you find it?

And a doodle.