We have some beautiful giant pumpkins growing in our backyard. I’ll take pics soon.
Archive for the ‘nature’ Category
Pumpkins
September 29, 2008Strange fruits, the sequel
July 8, 2008More pomegranates.
July 7, 2008The lovely pomegranate
July 6, 2008More fruit patterns….today, the lovely pomegranate. It’s such a gorgeous fruit that I want my depiction to do it justice. So I will begin with some pomegranate studies, in which each fruit sketch is treated slightly differently:
Now I’m going to try an asymmetrical version using one of my favorites from the studies:
And reversed:
And, finally, a symmetrical, mandala-esque pomegranate tea towel pattern:
Eggplants
July 3, 2008Avocados
July 2, 2008Onions
July 1, 2008Strange fruits
June 30, 2008Mod nuts
June 26, 2008Our next segment: fruits and veggies
June 25, 20086.21.08
June 21, 2008Today’s pattern pics come straight from north Denver, where my son Gus is performing in a play at the Bug Theater.
The Bug is a cute old theater, built in 1912 as a nickelodeon movie house. According to the website:
The theatre now known as The Bug survived multiple incarnations and more than 25 years of dormancy before local artists Chandler Romeo and Reed Weimer renovated the building in 1994 and founded the Bug Performance & Media Art Center (BPMAC), a non-profit organization dedicated to serving Denver audiences by facilitating the development and presentation of diverse arts and cultural programming.
You can see how the various incarnations impacted the building in some strange ways. Here’s an old pic (again, from their website, thanks Bug) that shows what it looked like originally.
When you get up close to the building, you can see that the original tile extends out beyond the wall (apparently built in the 50s), and that the wall was built at an angle.
Look at this great tile. It’s exactly the same as the tile border as in the Grow store. We always speculated that the Grow store used to be a barbershop or apothecary, but apparently that same style of tile was used in theaters also. I’d never seen these tiny circular tiles before.
Here’s an up-close of the 50s wall. I love this style of wall…but why did they put it at an angle? Was the architect trying to “modernize” the building when they enclosed the lobby? And look at the interesting pattern in the piece of steel between the sections of the building.
This large metal floor panel could have been just flat, but instead it has two unusual patterns pressed into both sides.
At night, the right-hand panel glows with light, because some of those circles are filled with a thick glass. You can see where they’re broken out in the photo above. Underneath the doors is what looks like a spider-webby stairway that presumably goes under the theater, and a little clamp lamp that someone put under there, to make the panel glow.
Next door to the bug is an environmental consulting firm and a little gallery where my friends Sarah and Kelton met years ago. The consulting firm has nice decorative steel window bars, a little bullet hole, and a lovely manhole cover in the front sidewalk.
And, for the last north Denver pattern, a close-up of the building across the street, which was also apparently “modernized” in the 50s with the addition of a stone facade.
We have a book at home called “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame, and now founder of an interesting organization called The Long Now Foundation which was founded “…to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking, [in order to] creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years…”).
Anyway, the How Buildings Learn book discusses these kinds of issues. Brand essentially argues that buildings are almost like Darwinian mechanisms, in that they have to change and “grow” to adapt to human needs and environmental and economic conditions.
6.16.08
June 16, 2008One more using that same teardrop shape…I keep thinking I’ll be able to do something with it that I really like, but so far they’re just so-so. I’ve been working on a pattern that I will hopefully post tomorrow. It’s much more elaborate and thematic than most of my other patterns. I’m hoping it will turn out looking similar to how I’m imagining it. Wow…that was a lot of gerunds in that last sentence.
Anyway, here is a little drawing of cartoon raindrops. I think it would be fun to animate this and use it in the background of a narrative cartoon. Henry is learning Flash, so maybe he will be able to help me animate it.
6.14.08
June 14, 20086.13.08
June 13, 20086.12.08
June 12, 20086.11.08
June 11, 2008I’m still experimenting with the variable weight line and abstracted botanical shapes. I think I like the last one best—the result of subtracting almost all the elements. These look a little more Arts & Crafts than 50s. I’m trying to put my finger on what makes a shape evoke a particular period in time. Iconic decorative arts pieces?