Jump rope

Sketch

Slowing down.

Wishing everyone a Happy Holiday. Arizona is usually beautiful this time of year. This year, not so much. So it's indoors for a while.

-W.

Pro tip maybe?

We've discussed the nuances of scanning watercolor paper quite a bit on this blog in the past. Ted observed that turning a watercolor paper 90 degrees helps at times if a scan is not showing up well. I have a trick I'd like to add

To get a "flat" scan on bigger pieces that might have a few visible bumps in your scans just turn the paper art side down on a towel and mist it with water, soak up any small pools with another towel and then repeat until the paper gives in and lays flat. Then just scan it in slightly wet.

Obviously, be careful to not get the art side wet in any way. It should feel dry.

-W.

Digital Illustration

Geeky Teeth

A video compilation of my son's Geeky Teeth blog.

Maze

I like this painting that I ran across by James Jean.

Stan Lynde - Rick O'Shay

On my father’s ranch I learned that no task was beneath me, and that if a job needed doing, somebody needed to do it.

I was born in the heart of the Great Depression. Dad considered himself fortunate to find work herding sheep at $30 a month on the open ranges of the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana. With my mother and me, Dad followed the sheep to new grass and a variety of temporary homes—sheep wagons, tents, dugouts, cabins and ranch houses.

When I was about five, I found out comics were written and drawn by people called cartoonists. It had never occurred to me that a person actually wrote and drew comic strips; I’d thought they were some kind of a natural wonder, like Old Faithful or the Grand Canyon. I resolved from that day . . . 

Full article at True West Magazine online

Jack Davis Original Art

MAD Magazine's Jack Davis designed the characters for the 1970's Jackson Five animated television series. 

Unused Cover Sketch

Occupy Design

Occupy Design: Visual Tools for the 99 Percent

Last weekend, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. hosted spontaneous "Hackathons" to brainstorm how to use various platforms to help Occupy Wall Street. One of the ideas hatched was Occupy Design, a new website that gives a "visual language" to protesters across the country. Jake Levitas, a designer from San Francisco who's heading up the project, says it's a chance to fight back at media who characterize the movement as directionless.

"These are people who have valid concerns grounded in reality and grounded in data that can be communicated visually," Levitas says. "If we get these signs on CNN instead of the ones that say 'Screw capitalism' on a piece of cardboard," viewers don't see a generic grievance but "exactly how people are being screwed and by how much. It’s a lot harder to argue with statistics than it is with talking points."

The site provides big-think infographics that illustrate data on the wealth gap, symbols for overarching concepts like "justice" and "community," and practical signs to use on the ground like "toilet" and "landfill." Levitas says it's a chance for designers and techies to contribute to the movement, even if they can't make it to a protest.

"There’s all this untapped potential for people who are extremely talented," he says. "It's essentially a way to connect occupiers and designers. Everyone has a different role in this movement."

--The Daily Good

Jim Henson's "Tale of Sand"

Read a preview of Jim Henson's "new" graphic novel, Tale of Sand.