Amongst the ho-hum scribbles of any designer, the few gems that rise above are at times scarce. Until today, I hadn't made it outside of that stagnation. It's important to remember though that some of the best work comes out of the times where you continuously make, instead of spending days and days on one single piece.

Similarly, I was inspired by an image I came across previously, and it knawed at me until I satisfied the urge. I don't often scale my work very large in Photoshop unless forced into it, because I find the vast amount of working area to be more revealing. I have to stress over more detail in the work area, while in Illustrator, I can start small and scale later. So I created the image at 2560x1920, meant to be used as a wallpaper mostly for myself. The exercise/goal was photorealism, no use of tutorials, and accomplishing a visually appealing image.

Here's the end result: 

Full resolution for download can be found here.

So what happened? Well, I learned some helpful new tidbits about lighting, edges and shadows, and texture. It's incredible how different an image can turn out when you rough up something, add a little noise, get the shadows just right. The more I mess around, the more "aha" moments I come across that allow me to better understand how my favorite designs came about.

The lighting is too nuanced to me, particularly on the button and the rest of the structure. Either something should have been done to more clearly separate the foreground and background, or the lighting/shadows perhaps more contrasty.

I also realized that while I love typography, I suck at it. I can't tell how many revisions I went through before settling on what you see here, and in retrosopect, there was still more I could have done. Oh well. Practice practice practice. I'll grab a book or two, snag some online articles and gun for a type class. Should help smooth things out.

More to come as this term picks up and I start setting a better pace this year for designs and experimentation.

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Today marks the first week following the completion of my first semester at Emily Carr University. It was a tiring, thrilling, and engaging road over the last four months, and I've enjoyed it sincerely. Big thanks goes out to my teachers in this round: Alexandra Phillips, Celeste Martin, and Trish Kelly.

I'm always drawn towards things that make me uncomfortable, and that right now is sharing my work from this semester. So without further delay, I give you my works, in whatever creative quality you find them.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Looking at the following of Parkour, and its explosion into the view of regular society, it's easy to be awed at some of the stunts and moves these people are pulling off. As a long-time practitioner, and also an outsider to this scene, I feel it's perhaps easier to see this than some who are immersed with it daily. 

The problem I see with Parkour today is a simple one. It's continuity; Not for the art, but the practitioner. I've seen it many a time at jams, happening upon the odd practitioner, and virtually every Parkour video on the Internet today. The big, flashy moves are neat to look at, and one sufficiently knowledgeable in the art can see where these moves are used to offset someone lacking in foundational training. But far too many people are using Parkour in short, expressive bursts, rather than thinking in terms of transportation. When Parkour first hit mainstream awareness, it was explained as I still (and hopefully others) tell it today: with a heavier focus on getting from point A to B in as efficient a manner as possible, regardless of obstacles. Whether it be explosive and dynamic, or smooth and fluid, people are still operating on a start-stop basis. I recall back in 2004 when Ryan Leech of Norco trials riding fame produced Manifesto, where he attempted to transform his art by eliminating setup and recovery hops. This allowed for a much more fluid approach, and far greater continuity. It required significantly more skill, concentration, and awareness to attain this sort of level. It was so obvious, and yet groundbreaking all the same.

Today, I see the same dilemma plaguing Parkour. There are too many stop points, too many quick stunts, too many people not meditating on how far they can go with the art. Does this mean we shouldn't do Parkour if we don't have a proper run set up? Not at all. At some point, you have to stop. If you're on a roof, you obviously don't want to keep going until you end up rolling right off the building. In the words of Asid in Jump Britain: "You can create so much with just a rail, it's incredible." Sebastien Foucan, David Belle… You watch them, and they can turn a simple setup into an ongoing flow of moves; They stop when they want to stop. For me, it raises the question then: Why do we stop? Do we lack confidence in ourselves, or perhaps imagination?

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I'm an avid reader. Anyone who knows me beyond a casual introduction will be aware of my almost neurotic obsession with consuming information. It doesn't matter what, so long as it's new and it's data about something. It stems ultimately from a childhood of heavy reading; I owe thanks to my father in particular for backing it financially where he could with buying books and encyclopedic materials. I used to swear up and down as a child that one day I'd know all tangible information of any discernible utility. Hah. The naivety of youth. As an adult, having tasted the bittersweet sobriety of reality, I know now that is a farce. It is not possible in this day and age to be a renaissance man, or any such offshoot of the all but romanticized idea. Think tanks, savants, lurkers on Quora… They have something to offer the world intellectually, certainly. Of what that is, I know not– though I do admire them. I'm drawn to people who know more, if for no other reason than leeching that knowledge, through some form of osmosis or whatever. Sometimes it's simply acknowledging that these people have a genuine interest in the outside world.

This brings me to a recent revelation, however. I've been enamored with this information gluttony for too long, and my appetite for it has been anything but satiable. I use Instapaper to store articles of interest for later reading while I dutifully scan through my 10,000+ unread articles each day for those gems of knowledge. To date, I have over 800 such articles pending, I'm juggling over 20 books, and have two languages on the go. I'm not really burning out, but what I have found is that I'm losing out on other parts of life with this obsession. Personal interactions with people I care about suffer, school and work don't receive my full attentions. The concept of flow used to be in my bones, and now it's relegated to a Post-It note.

My decision following this is… aggressive to put it lightly. Going forward in the coming weeks, I'll be scanning through my collection on Instapaper, and deleting all articles that aren't immediately recognized as being of lasting use to consume. Tech news, and other more transitory information is to be trashed immediately. Once that list is purged, all of my RSS feeds that are culprit to the less important information streams will be unsubscribed. Having reviewed my workflow heavily during this time of introspection, I estimate this will cut my current time and energy expenditure by half or more, leaving more time for books, language learning, people, and *gasp* outdoors.

I moved some months ago into an area rife with used book stores, and never gave them a second thought. Having ventured in and picked up a few hundred dollars worth of books for less than $30, I've found a great way to discover old materials and take a risk on a book, rather than a short article on the Internet. One reason to back this is that I've noticed a steady decline in my attention span as I rapidly refocus between articles and other aspects inherent to digital life. Over time, it has eroded my once laser-sharp focus and resilient attention span to an immediate need for that 'fix'. I'm an information addict, and though some may scoff, I don't see my position as much better than a drug addict. One need only gloss over entry level neuroscience to see that the Internet plays its own part to wreak havoc with the reward system. So, screw you dopamine, and screw you lack of focus. I'm going to get my attention span back; I'm not going to read more– or less, I'm going to read differently. There will be more focus in my consumption of information, and while I won't be as vast a walking collection of random facts, I'll be a more well-rounded, better 'ME'.

"Saying no is actually saying yes to other things." - Patrick Rhone

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Holy. Well, that daily tracking of art didn't go over too hot.

In the last while, I've been keeping up fairly well on small sketches, but they're process stuff and pretty small. Since September 1st, I started University at Emily Carr for my degree. The workload is pretty decent, but it's still ramping up; Time will tell how heavy it actually gets.

This past Monday, we had a nude model in to assist with an experiment in surrealism. We were asked to sketch for 20 minutes before we rotated our sketches to a fellow student, who continued on the drawing, and then we repeated that once more. It's astonishing what can come out of a drawing when three separate people work on one drawing. None of them were bad at all, though I'll definitely have to work on my drawing skills. I still very strongly dislike pencils and charcoal. Pretty much anything that isn't ink-based, so there's something to work on.

So far, the most arduous of the course load has been with Core Studio, where it's the most technical, and hands-on. We're currently focusing largely on design principles and gestalt theory...so we're assigned these projects that force us into demonstrating them specifically. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Back to work...

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In any case, here is some sort of robot snale, some mechanical disc-thing, and tire treads? Yeah...

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Whew! How long since the last post? Too long, probably. I'm almost keeping up with the daily commitment of drawing each day. Currently the only real roadblock to posting any sort of content is what I deem actually finished...though I think the clock should be that factor, and regardless of a completed work, should be published. So...let's roll through a few recently pieces and sketches ranging from casual ideation down to speed drawing. The last two were each under 60 seconds as tests.

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Pixelmator has always been a bit of an unsung hero for what it manages to pull off at a below-$100 price tag. I decided to forego Photoshop to force myself to work with limited masking and filter abilities. The goal here was to create a photo-realistic Nike+ Sportsband that was lying on my desk.

So, some basic stats: roughly 4hrs painting and nit-picking over details, drawn on a Wacon Intuos 3. It's worth noting that this was my first ever digital painting, so I'm not unpleased with the end result (but I hate the straps!!). An important lesson for me though, is to work in bigger resolutions. This bit me hard, as I had also started at 600x600 resolution, and worked inside that...which doesn't offer much for scalability, so I ended up with a very small drawing.

Time to nurse the sore wrist.

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Well, there's no real fancy story here as to the beginning of this blog. I've come across many designer-centric blogging platforms in the past, but many are barred entry to only the crème of the design community to act as a filter for quality. Commendable as it may be, it still functions as yet another hurdle to those of us in the earlier stages of the arts. Here, I hope to commit myself to designing/drawing something almost every day for that purpose, as well as keep my writing skills somewhat respectable.

So, here's to the posts ahead.

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