The Spark

As day flows into night and creative sparks are loosed flaring into nothingness, one must seize those sparks and blow them into flame. Nurturing, encouraging, protecting it from the elements, in hopes that it will blaze in fury and sear the mind with it's pervasive ideas.

It is those ideas, born of flame and care, that designers must grab hold and exploit. It is the establishment of this process that must be pursued, to duplicate it again and again, that is the goal to be achieved, that is what a designer craves. Designers are more than just extensions of the tools they use, it is not enough simply to know how to use software and manipulate files. Designers must interpret a problem to the best possible solution, submitting it to the flames of creativity that it might be purified to base elements and processed into a simpler, purer form. These ideas, mixed with other ideas, create an ebb and flow that continues the process of refinement to the betterment of the solution. All having started from a spark.

School

School, in a word - rough. Don't take this the wrong way, or think that I'm complaining, because that is not my intent. School can be hard, as I said before I'm in the second semester of my second year of Graphic Design at Cambrian College and it is a difficult year. Which is bitter sweet because I am doing what I think is my hardest... but possibly not my best... work and sometimes the grades just aren't there to justify the time I put in. Which gets frustrating. 

I suppose if I was pulling off 80's and 90's in everything than maybe the course wouldn't be challenging enough, but since lately I've been in the mid 70's I'll say that it is definitely a challenging course. I love it though, I'm having the best time, I enjoy the rest of the students, the faculty is great and the environment is awesome... but I still can't wait to be done and released upon the world. Watch out, cause it's gonna happen :)

Here's a mock up of a webpage we had to design for a favorite book.

I spent a few hours today (probably 5 or so) working on another drawing for illustration class, the theme was "Room to Grow", I had a bit of fun with it this time and tried a completely new style for me. It's a style that I've seen other artists use over the years, both in children's books and in some cartoons. The style looks unfinished yet finished and has a real polished look to it... all in all I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. Inspiration was a photo I found of my 13yr when he was 2 and tried walking in my old pair of work boots.

Okay, so I discovered that doing a gradient mesh is very long tedious work, but can also be fun once you get into it. We had to work on a self portrait in my illustration class, after about 10 hours worth of work I gotta say I'm reasonably pleased with my rendition. It takes a lot of concentration and manipulation of the mesh to get it right but all in all it wasn't too bad, and here it is.

Okay, I know it's been a few days since my last post, not doing so well with the whole daily posting bit, but at least I'm posting more than once a month now :) I still don't really know what to post here. I know I put an image that I have either photographed or illustrated, and I will continue to do so, but I think I'll give you a little background about todays. I've posted an image that I did for my Graphic Production Fundamentals class. We had to create a couple of labels, for a 4 pack of juice and the package that holds them. I picked Old Orchard 100% Grape juice as my item. The package is an actual photo of a physical mock-up, but the bottle is an illustrator image I made using the 3d revolve tool.

Sunday? Really? Already? Yep, seems so, Sunday already. Which means that the weekend is pretty much shot. I suppose there are many of you who may be reading this that are gearing up for the Super-bowl tonight, well I'm not one of those people. As a tried and true, thoroughbred Canadian I am not interested in the NFL, my game is the CFL, which is already done for the year. So if you are one who is gearing up for the NFL showdown tonight, well have fun, but as for me I sure hope there is something a little more engaging on the Tele for me to watch.

Pretty slow day at work today, had a total of about 6 customers, not the best for a Saturday. On the upside though I was able to get some brainstorming done for an independent project at school. After work I came home and finished up an illustration for class on Monday. Hope you like it.

Whew two days in a row

Whew, two days in a row... well okay, I guess not since technically it's now 12:03am... but dang I was close eh? Not much to say today. Do something creative today, you'll be amazed at how good it feels :)

Still blogging away

I know, I know, I was trying to make a post a day but I guess until you get into the habit of it, it can take a bit of getting used to. Todays will be short and sweet, I'm going to leave you with another great inspirational site to check out for photography.

http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/