we have to shake the tree...we will make it fall

transfered image from the drafting papers onto bristol board and inked all the live long day...its got its rough spots but in pretty good shape. could still use a little working I'm sure. I added the quote just for placement, since I won't be actually designing the t-shirt and am not exactly sure how they will handle this. 

good morning gocco

Its been at least a year since I've pulled out my Japanese gocco printer, what with the cost of supplies out the roof and well, my experience with gocco in general has been somewhat spotty. The results are always a tad unpredictable in terms of evenness of printing and multi-screen registration is a real b*tch. 

But all snarling aside, I had the perfect project to crank out on gocco, so after an energetic morning round of paper cutting, I got to it.

Drying the prints on the sun drenched kitchen table.

Gocco inks and screens taking a breather on the New Yorker magazine.

Very limited edition of cards in honor of the arrival and safe homecoming of Marcas Liam Taylor, the littlest bear of all.

illustrator for hire: part 2

For an upcoming POWER: People Organized to Win Employment Rights t-shirt. I did several sketches for them...guess which image they liked the best, the one I'm working on refining now? The quote is the only thing they gave me for direction on this freelance project. But cool! My first t-shirt design (I mean, not some jinky print I did myself at home with fabric inks and gocco or some smeared up linoblock).

illustrator for hire: part 1

Illlustration project for the UCSF Parent/Infant program. This is only one of the (hopefully) multiple images I will be creating for their website and other marketing uses, and despite my common sense, I decided to go ahead and carve a linoblock out of this image, even though the illustration below (plain old graphite on paper) is cleaner in some ways. There is just something about my favorite medium (and sharp knives) that I just can't resist.

I've learned a lot through this project already- not being a mother myself, I am challenged with the unique and quite funny challenges of drawing people coddling babies, without looking menacing or distant. Things that might seem totally innocuous to those of us who are still awkward when a relative or good friend pitches their newborn into your arms saying, "can you hold her for just a sec..." and launches off before you can really protest know exactly what I'm talking about. Floppy, doughy, big headed...but really ultimately adorable. I don't have a babe in arms just yet, but I can carve one out of clay.

birthday in pt. reyes

We started the trip on Thursday by trekking out to Tomales Bay with Doug, Buddyray, Kimi and Anthony to the Tomales Bay Oyster Farm for serious birthday grinding. Despite claims that he doesn't really like oysters (ok so he still maintains that he doesn't like raw oysters), Buddyray tucks away a small kingdom's worth of grilled bivalves. He is followed closely behind by Anthony, who has already pledged allegiance to the oyster feast.

Buddyray warming his paws by the grill, groaning with oysters and sardines wrapped in shiso. 

Anthony contemplates his victim before slurping the oyster raw (with cocktail sauce, of course).

We, the intrepid backpackers. Anthony and Kimi are suited up with the external frame packs she used to climb Mt. Whitney back in the 70s. 

The next morning, we discovered a pair of mice had sabotaged our box and shredded all napkins, cloth towels,  tea bags, and other soft fuzzy combustibles into oblivion! If you think I was mad then, this was before the rodent jerk jumped full throttle out of my foodbag, helter skelter into the bushes! Followed by his kamikaze wife! I screamed, readers. Yes indeed, I screamed. It was a good thing my snake wasn't tucked into my coiffure that day.

These two were nearly blown away at Sculptured Beach. 

There was a mighty wind that arose in the afternoon as we set up tents, and again at night. On the second night, we were surprised by numerous night visitors (human). First Angie and Luke appeared out of the shadows long after nightfall, and then some crazy German cyclist pedaled up asking if we had seen his camping party. He had biked all the way from Menlo Park and looked sorely in need of a blanket and some s'mores.

Going home meant loading up our sherpa.

Wait, we need to climb 300 odd stairs down to the edge of the earth where we can scream mundane phrases at each other in the deafening wind, and threaten to push each other off the cliff to the fate of seagulls!

Butt that's not the tail end of our story. Driving home on Lucas Valley Road, we encountered nearly a hundred cyclists along the road, on what must have been a breathtakingly beautiful race. 

"It is no longer a question of whether or not we should set aside some more of the yet remaining native California landscape as 'breathing space'....If we do not, we will leave our children a legacy of concrete treadmills leading nowhere except to other congested places like those they will be trying to get away from."

- Former Congressman Clem Miller, author of the Point Reyes National Seashore bill presented to the 87th Congress, January, 1961.