The Amorphous Blob I call a Dog.

Every once in awhile it does happen. You start a job completely jazzed about what you are about to do. You tell yourself "I'm going to knock this one out of the park I'm going to make this look amazing." Then you realize something, a small thing you didn't consider, you suck at drawing dogs. Now maybe for you it isn't dogs maybe it's hands or eyes or something really very difficult. For me my Achilles heel has always been dogs. For some reason my brain does not wish to process what a dog looks like and sees it more as a amorphous blob with ears and a brown spot. This of course makes it very diffucult when you work for someone who runs an online dog tag business and is paying you to create the logo.

Recently my former employer Monica who ran Barnyard Tags sold the business to her sister Diana who is renaming the business Sweet D's Tag Boutique and with the new change wanted a new logo. I was so excited to do this because lets face it I'm a sucker for people starting out new business and I love when I can be a part of that and give them the look that they are going for. When I said yes the idea of drawing dogs did not cross my mind. I realize it should have considering she sells dog tags but it didn't and I ended up having to draw a dog.

Strangely enough the dog actually did come out looking like a dog versus the amorphous blob with ears mentioned earlier but I'm still not happy with it. I realize that like every artist out there I pick at my work. I sit in my chair and stare at the computer trying to figure out how to change it, how to make it look better, how to make the text look like the dog didn't poop green letters. And I pick over and over again I pick at it till I want to fall on the floor and writhe around like I did when I was 3 and was forced to take a nap.

I'm still not thrilled with the outcome of it but Diana loves it she thinks it is so cute and exactly what she wanted. At this point I have to just tell my inner whiny picky child that you did create something good and that in the end money talks and when the customer is happy so is my bank account.

With that I am going to go and start work on another of the many projects I can't say no to. I wish this post was more about what I'm personally working on but paying customers come first because they keep me in mac and cheese and ramen. For any of you out there that read this yes you 3 people, if you are feeling generous or just down right board please take a look at the logos and any helpful criticism is welcome.

1st Day

So it's sort of the first day of my attempt at finishing one of my own projects. I am committed to doing this but I also have a paying job that has to be done by tomorrow and since I spent the Holidays without my computer I'm doing it all tonight. This of course puts a bit of a crimp in the whole "working on my own stuff thing." But I have decided on what I'm going to work on which is the last project I was working on before I became so busy.

About 4 months or so ago my Mac that I have had since I was 18, named Glitter Baby (named so based on my belief that all computers are Drag Queen drama mongers), refused to turn on. This had happened before and usually when I set him in front of the air conditioner and left him off over night he was fine the next day. This was not the case though since he refused to turn on. He was sent down to Dan the computer guy and he gave me the bad news that he was busted. My baby died and while waiting for my new baby to come in I was left without a computer, internet and basically my drug of choice. Instead of going a bit stir crazy like the last time the computer broke I decided to go feed my other drug habit which is that of Copic markers. I marched myself down to T-Square spent a good 30-45 mins. picking out 4 Copic markers. This process takes time you have to test them out and see if they are the right fit for you and since I was on a gray color kick you can imagine that picking out the right gray did take some time. I eventually ended up with Cadmium Red, Neutral Gray No.8, Black, and a Colorless Blender and while expensive was completely worth it.

Now that I had the colors I had to come up with an idea. At the time I was going through my computer loss I was reading a lot of books that I had started and never finished and noticed that every single one was marked with bits of paper or post-its where I left off. Somewhere in my apartment I have a stash of really nice bookmarks but I have no idea where that is and I figured looking for said bookmarks would only cause me to tear my room up so instead I decided to create my own and with that my own book store.

I haven't attempted something like this since college when you would create an entire business and do their whole look. So I created Rainy Day Books located in New York. I wanted it to be simple and sleek and of course come in gray. So here are the first two attempts at logo designs.So far I'm leaning towards expanding on the second one but I still do like that bit of red in the middle of the first one. But here you have it hopefully the beginning of something usable for my portfolio and now back to working for money and listening to Rancid's …And Out Come the Wolves Album which I'm happy to say is quite possibly annoying the redneck who wanted to feed the the stray cat anti-freeze. It's the little things that make me smile.

Frustration

I know that I should always be happy when I have paying projects to work on. I know that I should look at them as padding for my portfolio and money towards a new car. But right now I have four projects in the works and I have to say it's just burning me out. I should just learn to say no or to be more accurate let them know that my services are available but there is a queue and I would be more then happy to create something amazing for you but it might not happen for a while. This never happens of course because I think I can take it all on and then find myself either sick or screaming into a pillow.

This isn't where the frustration comes in though, because at some point between the sickness and the screaming pillow moments I realize that although I might have taken on too many jobs the fact is that there are four people out there willing to pay me to create something for them. There are four people out there that looked at my stuff and said "I love it and I want something of my own from you." The frustration comes from the fact that it has been at least 3 or 4 months since I have worked on anything that is truly mine and mine alone.

It has been keeping me up at nights having ideas in black and white with red in the middle. Wanting to just sketch these things to get them out of my head. To plop myself down throw on Philadelphia Grand Jury and zone out into that little piece of heaven. But when I get home I find myself throwing little artist hissy fits knowing that I need to work on the paying stuff but also dreading it because it's not filling up that little part of me that art projects usually fill up.
So in an attempt to fill up that part of me I'm going to attempt to create a little challenge for myself. The idea is to work on one of my projects in conjunction with the others. To have a one month deadline starting on the 28th of this month because that's when I will be back home from the holidays and have access to my computer again. I'm going to give it till December 31st right before the New Year to finish it and post it up here and hopefully in the meantime post on my progress with it as well. My hope with this project is that it will make me stop feeling so down and out of it when it comes to art. Because I do get to that point when working on projects that aren't my own where I want to throw up my hands and say screw it I'm going to go watch TV instead and I slowly start to hate my art and myself. I really would like to not get to that point and get past it and I want this to be the way I do that.

It's a bit strange the way this all came about. In a way it was my idea and in a way it really wasn't. So many years ago someone from my Russian History class recommended I read a blog that was on live journal. They suggested I check it out after comments were made outside of class about a certain part in Russian history that I won't repeat here. They steered me to this blog and one story in particular to get my interest peaked. It was about, what can only be described as by far the most shady booty call ever. They said I would either laugh so hard I would cry or I throw up depending on my choice of humor. Although it was a bit sick I ended up laughing so hard I did cry. After that I wanted more but it turned out that not everything on there was shady and torrid but actually smart and insightful. It ended up being about this guy who dropped his nice paying job to write books and tour and possibly become homeless. I found myself obsessed with stalking this blog and reading it everyday just to hear him rant. In the beginning I did just want to hear shady hook up stories because it was a major guilty pleasure but the other stuff he wrote about, life and just being a part of it that hit a chord somewhere. Eventually I did stop reading it due to switching to a different college and just forgetting about it all together like only a true A.D.D. person can.

But last week when I was sick and laying in my bed reading stuff on my phone I thought about that blog again and was overwhelmed with curiosity to see if this guy was still around if he actually followed through with anything that he would rant about. Turns out he is and I spent the better part of the day falling in and out of sleep reading his blog. I couldn't believe how far he came from when I first started reading this to the present. There's a bit more sadness in the rants then I remember but he's still there and still ranting to people about living their life. So my thinking was if this guy could do all this and still be around still be ranting and raving then I should be able to turn out one simple art project in a month. My ambitions are low but I figure it's at least a step in the right direction.

Thus begins the experiment to see what I come up with. And if you are feeling overwhemed with curiosity about that blog I would recomend reading about Christopher Gutierrez and maybe getting a little something out of it.

New Job!

I'm going to ignore the fact that I haven't posted anything on this blog for what seems like forever and just dive right into what I am currently working on.

Due to the amazing talents of Liz to procure me design jobs I was introduced to Kathy who is starting up a new business called The Well-Mannered Dog Center. It's only in the beginning stages of getting off the ground but the general idea is to create a large facility for training, grooming, kenneling, and so much more for your dogs. This project is rather large considering Grand Rapids had absolutely nothing like this here on the scale she is looking to build. With this huge endeavor on her part comes an even bigger endeavor for myself, to create an entire look for a new business. I have to admit it was a bit daunting at first considering I have never done anything on such a large scale or for such a high profile customer. So far the logo design has be chosen and business cards are in the works to being made.These are at the printers right now and even though I have faith they will produce them correctly I still have moments of fear when I wake up in the middle of the night hoping they understand what full bleed means. The next phase of this job will be starting to create the brochures which hopefully can be done in the next week or so.