The Day At The End Of 4 Days, As Long As You Start That Count On A Monday.

M&M Wedding

Meg & Mike, the sweetest couple, asked me to work up a whole graphical package for their summer wedding. It was a real pleasure figuring out which elements represented each of them separately then worked together as a whole package. 

The main double-sided wedding invite contained a mixture of flora from the bride's and groom's respective region mixed with some from their wedding location, Ithaca NY.

The back of the invite was maybe the funnest part of the project. This hand-written font I worked up really seemed to fit the style of the couple and the mood of their farmer's market, DIY wedding.

Many of the elements I used in the main invite were then used for name and table cards. Here's a good portion of them all laid out above.

Meg & Mike chose passages (sometimes lyrics) to accompany my illustrations on the table cards. 

The illustrations made their way onto name cards the guests could match up with their assigned table. *Photo courtesy Anna Simonak. 

The groom and I even brewed up a special champagne-style beer for the wedding and I hand-cut a stencil and painted the bottles with its fitting batch name.

Rejected Tracks - The Sloest

This is one of many ‘rejected tracks’ in the Prescription Strength Hugs (my music-making moniker) archive. I recently stumbled upon this one and am not sure why it got axed, as I quite like it. Dug it out and illustrated the instrumentation and lyrics (which I typically hate displaying, but again, kind of liked them). Please enjoy.

Happy New Year Late!

This Christmas, I made my girlfriend a calendar and am still in the process of making. Every month it features different characters from comic books we both enjoy. Here we have the wonderful Lumberjanes. I went with the cover artist Noelle Stevenson's style and since it's the Year of The Goat - goats. Eleven more to come in this series. Enjoy some 2015.

No updates last week because I was in Florida, sitting on the beach, watching white ibises probe the sand under receding waves for morsels. 

Front of a recent wedding invite illustrated for a couple getting hitched in Scotland. 

Yesterday I posted a Happy New Year for all the folks who follow my blog. After that, I went about my work day as usual, getting back into the swing of things after a most excellent break the past week and a half. During lunch, however, I checked the blog, I suppose egotistically, and the strange and happy dragon on the front page really struck me. I made a few doodles on a notepad and surmised what he or she might look like at different angles. As I did, a mascot for the year of 2012 took shape and seemed rather undeniable once done in color. This is Newton.

Man, Seattle is a super great city. We went to Pike’s Public Market and got some excellent sweet and savory pastries and of course saw some fish get ceremonially tossed. Then we biked to see the Space Needle and neighboring architectural interests. After plenty of biking in the rain, we ended the day with a viewing of the strangest movie I have ever seen at a great cinema that prides itself on cult rarities and good beer. If you’ve any interest in bizarre, psychedelic Japanese horror movies of the late 70s, see House (1979) pronto. More soon.

Continuing this week of records with another Prescription Strength Hugs release! These are songs that didn't make an EP for one reason or another, usually tone problems or whackiness. You can check out the mounting collection of my tunes at the Bandcamp page!

<a href="http://prescriptionstrengthhugs.bandcamp.com/album/b-sides" data-mce-href="http://prescriptionstrengthhugs.bandcamp.com/album/b-sides">B-Sides by Prescription Strength Hugs</a>

Bird 5: Blue Jay

A very pretty, pretty mean bird: the Blue Jay. These things would always scare away the smaller birds on the feeder at my childhood home. In the city, they’re a bit more humble with nastier competition.

Legends of Rock #06 - Paul McCartney

Fab four going strong with the guy holding it down on the low end and writing a whole lot of tunes - some not the best, but some timeless and wonderful. Don't get much bigger a rockstar than Paul.