New Portrait

My friend Roya moved to NYC. Good luck out there!

Flicks

Recently Julie and I met one of our neighbors who is a huge dog lover, trainer and often takes in dogs to foster. She works frequently with Bull Terriers and has a soft spot for them it seems, as do myself and Julie. A few weeks ago we got a note asking if we would be able to take on a foster puppie for a short amount of time as she was at her capacity. This is how we ended up opening our door to Flicks.

Day one, Flicks arrives at our place and is a little unsure of his surroundings.

He soon settles on the couch.

It's been a busy first day.

Treats are in order. We are told that he loves peanut butter inside a bone, who wouldn't.

Day two. In contrast to our own dog, he is an angel in the bath tub.

Hes gets a special shampoo for his skin. Will be cleared up very soon.

Julie dries him off, making this look like a scene from E.T.

As you can see his coat is a little patchy and pink still, can't wait till it has grown in. Should take four weeks or so.

Another busy day, Flicks insits on squeezing in behind our dog B for an hour or so before bed.

New Bespoken invite: BLOGGED

The fashion week invite we just completed for Bespoken got some attention. It's an old 45 with the invite details printed on the label, these guys fancy it for one of the prettiest fashion week invites for fall 2010. Can't wait to get one in my hand.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Spot The Tiger

Last year I made a promise to myself to start making some statements with my work instead of just making eye candy. You can imagine how excited I was when Mike from Chorus Rising invited me to contribute towards the non partisan debate/art project Spot The Tiger. The project matches social issues with images created by a diverse range of visual artists. It was definitely challenging tackling such a big issue in an illustration, I have done very little of this and it made me realize how hard being a professional illustrator or satirist must be.

My chosen issue is weather prisoners should have the right to vote. Hop on over to Spot The Tiger , cast your vote and check out the other great work.

Anchortapes

THE FLING - *STRANGERS* from Anchortapes on Vimeo.

Anchortapes.com is the latest project from Long Beach local Billy Kostka. He has been sifting through, selecting and ultimately filming some of the best musical talent in Southern California. The most recent session is from Long Beach four piece The Fling. My personal faves include the Deep Sea Diver sessions and The Flings silly hat version of 'Elinor'.

I was glad to help Billy out by putting together some branding for him to use on the site and for the video ID. I look forward to doing more with Anchortapes in the future.

Good Day Shirt Design

Every year Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles lend out every one of it's employees for one day a year to local non-profits and charities. As an employee, this is a great opportunity to go out in to the community and spend a day with your colleagues and do something more than just sitting behind a desk all day. This year I was asked to come up with a design for the shirt that everyone is given to wear that represents our association with Saatchi.

As Saatchi grows every year in to more and more pro-bono and non-profit events, it was decided that we should make a shirt design that could be versatile and used for any of those such occasions. The result is this, something fun that I hope encapsulates a little of what goes in to these great efforts by the kind souls at Saatchi LA.

First Lucky Pixie product

Both myself and Jules decided that we should try to make some products between us as a joint project. She has the craft and business streak, and I like design-y things for the home. Here are the first few things we have put together, pillows, tea towels bracelets that Jules has hand made out of shredded junk mail.

There's much more we want to do in the future but for now the next goal is to get 'Lucky Pixie' up on Etsy as a shop.

Painting my dog blue

Over a year ago, I was carpooling with a group of friends from work and on picking up, one member pointed out an old sign that had been taken off the front of the salon below her apartment. It was a simple hand painted sheet of plywood that looked like it had been battling the elements for a number of years. I was immediately intrigued and charmed by it, so much so that I asked my friend (yes, Kieth) stop one evening on returning from work and throw it in the back of his truck. I kept it at the side of our house for over a year until I was under threat of having to throw it out.

The time had come to paint the sign. I was determined to not have this turn out like most of my other paintings and take months, if not years to complete so I held myself to one weekend. Sketching quickly, and in retrospect borrowing heavily from one of my favorite artists who will go unnamed (I'll let you guess) I tried to get this done as rapidly as I could and still get a good result.

Starting after work on Friday night I sanded and primed, leaving a faint trace of the hand painted sign underneath. Using my awesome and very sleepy dog as an easy source of material and with the help of Jules, we were able to get done painting on Tuesday night. Not quite the weekend but on my track record, not bad at all. Capt. Kieth came to the rescue once again to help hang the sign, which weighs upwards of 100lbs I'm sure, even after having a cycling collision with a reckless BMW driver on his way over, he still got it done.

Landscaping '09

Before






After





As previously promised, here some photos of the process we went through to get our garden to it's current drought-resistant state.

Shovels were broken, muscles were strained, dirt and beers were aplenty. Happy to say that we are four or so months down the road and all the plants are growing in nicely. Can't wait for the weather to warm up a little so we can take full advantage. Thanks again to Chief Designer Keith Ellis for being such a badass, and to Julie my wife for hatching the idea in the first place.

It kills you mural

Leave it to creative tornado Sayer Danforth to decide he's going to paint a massive mural in his house. I'm just glad he invited me to pitch it. Lots of late nights ahead methinks.

Congratulations to my good friend Justin and his lovely new wife Jen. Great couple, great wedding. Here's the stag himself.

Japanaholic #1

I love going to the Japanese market in Torrance. Not only are the noodles delicious but the whole place is a visual roadtrip. Tuna candy, crazy deserts, and the best bread ever. These are a few little gems I spotted. Gotta feel bad for Ponyo though, he looks pretty pissed off about being in that little bag.

Done diggin

A few weeks ago a plot was hatched between myself, Julie and a few friends to do something about the terrible state of our front yard. With Keith as chief designer we went ahead and ripped out the grass. Many back-breaking hours later this is the result. We went from a grass lawn with flowers and a crappy old bar to a drought resistant, low maintenance yard that needs next to no water. Thanks Keith, and thanks to Jen for lending us your husband for the last three weeks. Before and after photos coming.