GRAPHS!

I don't even want to make a book anymore I just want to make GRAPHS.

I spent kind of way too long making these represent really accurate information.

Here's a graph of what states we were in on which day and how many miles we traveled, plus elevation.



Here's the key, which is showing up way bigger than everything else. I'm gonna have to differentiate between the the greens of the midwest a bit more.



Here's another about being in the car. The width of pictures represent mileage, totaling over 6,000. Each picture is a different day. States are represented by the color bars. Every picture was taken from out of the car window.



Here's the abstract version, which I like better.

Symbols

I want to do something like this for each day. Although most days are just going to say drove and camped. With a scale for rating the beautiful majesty we saw. Still fiddling. There's so much crap to work out.

this is what I do on saturday nights.

A friend of mine asked me how to make a pinata and I kind of lost my mind.

I am actually working on it

Everything is so so ugly mid-project! I am moving stuff around a lot. And making a lot of place saver images in InDesign. There's going to be a pie chart apparently?

And my colors are clashing OUT OF CONTROL because there is like 3 different color schemes happening. We all need to sit down and have a talk.

I'm using the landscape illustration to track progress throughout the book on the bottom. That's the only part I like so far. I also want to add how many miles we went each day, and really wish I had logged it while on the trip. Now I have to go back and estimate with google maps. I haven't decided if I want to rework the landscape to reflect the actual distances traveled in each state, or just leave it with each state as a unit.

Nanodrawmogetitlol

So, tomorrow is November, and I've always wanted to participate in Nanowrimo, but because I'm not really good at long writing, I will be pretending I'm participating and finishing my Road Trip book, which I've been sort of working on for the past however many months, but also a little just sitting with my thumb up my ass about it. I've finished some illustrations I want for it, in addition to doing a lot of planning, and the words are actually mostly written, they just aren't funny yet.

50,000 words is the Nanowrimo goal, and if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then that means I have to make 50 pictures. HAHA SEE WHAT I DID THERE. MATH. REAL LIFE. HAHA. GOD. So one picture is a page ok.

So that's 1 spread a day I guess. DOABLE.

Here's one of my many plan sheets. Before I was trying to plan it using regular sized sheets, and it just didn't work at all. This is the only way to do it.



I only ever get things done if I make up fake reasons and pretend the internet is holding me accountable.

butts

Here's some little icons I made for the book that I will NEVER FINISH WRITING.





That is actually an extremely realistic representation of this lady who was waiting in line ahead of us at a gas station in Illinois, who didn't understand how pants work. Later in the trip we started calling these people "Middlies." Short for Middle Americans.

cats

This past Saturday I teamed up with Charlie Slick, musician and inventor, to paint this award winning painting during a live art performance. Charlie made a giant Spirograph, which worked impeccably to create that background pattern, and then I painted a cat.



It's 4 feet tall and makes an excellent centerpiece for any room.

We were set up in a basement bar in Ypsilanti underneath a Mongolian Barbecue. There were 3 other artists there, and a screen printer. The girl next to us had art that had a lot of feelings and was very "political." She made a painting of the basement bar we were in and everyone standing around in it. Except she also added green alien guys into the crowd. That was her artistic license. Next to her there was this guy sitting at a tiny table with headphones on painting this weird line drawing on a canvas. He didn't look up or talk to anyone the whole time. I don't know what his deal was.

On the other side of us there was this girl doing "live model painting" where she painted on these two dudes. For the first part of the night she was just sitting in a chair waiting for her models to get there and we weren't sure what her deal was either. Then some guy came and climbed up on the chair wearing only his underwear and she painted a sun on him. I got uncomfortable while she was painting his underwear right over his junk. It was right next to us. Then another guy came and she painted a moon on him. Sun and moon, cool. She was using acrylic paint on those guys and I don't know if you have ever had acrylic paint painted on your skin but when it dries it totally sucks. Those guys probably really hated her then. Maybe that was part of the art too.

People were pretty into our piece when we were doing the spirograph part. We were trying to pace ourselves because we were gonna be there for 5 hours so we took our time and tried to make each step really important. No one else tried to pace themselves and they all finished before us. The joke turned out to be on us because then all the audience left and went to go stand in front of the weird DJ or sit by the bar.

So then I painted the cat and a few people looked at me, which was weird. I usually hate painting in front of people but I guess painting a giant cat in a girl outfit is different. Some guy came by and told me that it was pretty good but if I wanted it to be great I should make the cat be "suckling on a divine breast." And then said some things about bishops. I think he was trying to be funny.

I said, yeah ok buddy. That's not how jokes work.

Here's something from my sketchbook.



Whenever I'm stuck, I know I can always draw a cat.

magical laser website

A few weeks ago I found out about this website, ponoko.com, that will laser cut stuff for you out of all kinds of different materials: felt, acrylic panel, mdf, wood, leather, even METAL. It is SO GREAT. I immediately knew I wanted to make something using this process, but I didn't know what. I still don't know what. But I'm brainstorming. I sent a test file in just to get a look see at what the quality was like. I got it in the mail today and the precision of the cuts and engraving is just beautiful. So clean.

You can also BUILD stuff by making plans and laying out all the separate pieces that will fit together. I really want to build something.

Here's the little lion I got cut out of an acrylic sheet. I just want to look at it all the time.



I'm gonna try felt next.

tour de troit

Today me and my dad and my brother rode in Tour de Troit, a 30 mile bike ride through the city. It was our second year doing it and it was great! There were somewhere around 3,000 people.

The ride starts at Roosevelt Park, in front of Michigan Central Station, and loops around the city, ruining people's days who are trying to drive anywhere. Sorry everyone who had to wait for 3,000 people on bikes pretending to be cars to go past before they could pull out of their apartment building, or cross a street or something.

It was pretty windy today, and the ride was fine except for one part where we were riding directly into the 200 mph wind for about 3 miles. MISERABLE.

The meeting spot.

So many people! Also, so much spandex. :/

Me and my bro at the halfway break. COOL HELMETS!

paint?

Today I was having an existential crisis/organizing my studio space, and I had a sudden urge to do a painting to take a break from the crisis.

I haven't painted in about a year and a half. I forgot how when doing a self portrait like this, you don't have to think hardly anything at all.



I only used burnt umber, yellow ochre and white, because I hate mixing colors. It got me about an hour of peace.

Also here's a nice picture of a deer

Awww

One time when I was a kid I was playing in the woods behind our house and I found a dead deer. It had no eyes and the empty sockets were staring directly at me. I had nightmares about it forever afterward.

cool story

I re-did this in an exercise in type-bullying. Also I made it more gross.

highfive infographic

I had the WORST highfive the other night. A bad highfive is enough to make you wanna cut your own hand off. I could feel the wrongness of it like a residue on my palm for hours afterward.

I made this instructional poster to help make this never happen again.