Pulling Through With the Wee Hours

I worked at the restaurant all weekend.  It was awesome.  I love my chef and my co-workers.  They are great great people, but when I leave my job I am so exhausted and ready for bed.  Add a 2 and a half hour drive to the end of work and I am pretty much lost to the world for the next 24 hours.  Such was the case this weekend.

I was sitting at my kitchen table eating lunch today wondering if I was ever going to finish anything today.  I cleaned up a little around the house, which I guess is worth something, but I have 2 illustrations that I need to finish this week as well.  It was at about lunch time when I realized that it would do me no good to attempt to do more work for clients after working an entire weekend.  Hopefully this is a sign of logic to come.  Tomorrow I need to wake up and work on illustrations, but after a night of working on my fine art stuff, which is more cathartic and less focused around communicating a specific idea, I feel more prepared to do so.

I am also pleased to have finished up another 15 or so pieces for my installation in May.  My thesis project really is a bit ridiculous, so I think any time that I am feeling a little non-plussed with my day over the next several months I will do as I did today and just crank out some more drawings.  I am also sharing a couple commissions that I wrapped up at the end of last week today.

Hope you dig the stuff.

I am stoked to even have gotten moving today.  At about 6 I didn't think that there was a hope of doing so.  Have a good night peeps.  Will talk to you soon.

Peace
-Mike

Just One More

I've been making a bunch of the Vertical Mixing series for Christmas presents over the past several weeks.  I have been absolutely awful at documenting them, but I remembered to document this one.  I love the Owlbot.  Expect more from him.

Speaking of which, I was approached by an old friend recently and he has Mighty Lark scripts written up.  I am absolutely floored with them.  He really captured the essence of what I was looking for in that character. 

Starting next week, as a result, I will be putting together a full Mighty Lark story to be unveiled, well, whenever I am comfortably through enough strips that I have a buffer.  I got burned out on that project very quickly when I was behind.  I don't want to do that type of thing to myself anymore.

Thanks for checking in folks and Happy Holidays.
Peace
-Mike

Boston Public School Library Project

Thanks to the lovely Meighan O'Toole of My Love for you, I was selected to work on a series of illustrations for the Boston Public School's library.  The illustrations are used as depictions of subject headings in the card catalog.  I'm posting a couple of these now, and will post the rest when they have all been approved.  This was a really fun project to work on and I am very pleased to share it with you.

I have definitely figured out this year that I love being an Illustrator.  It has been a huge step for me to answer the "so what do you question?" with "Illustrator" rather than "cook".  Projects like this one really help me to think of myself seriously though and I am incredibly pleased to be in the position that I am now.  I've tried pretty hard to get to this point, but all of that work kind feels worth it when I see work like this in the world.

Hope you all like it too.
Peace
-Mike

Where Do I Start?

There is so much to tell.  I think I will write a couple of blog posts tonight just so there is no confusion between the different ideas and projects that I have been working with.  In some cases it seems that the only unifying characteristic is that I did the work to begin with.

It has been a massively productive year.  I have no complaints with my work ethic.  My writing ethic seems to have fallen a little by the wayside, however.  I think I left off on some images of my large scale robots.  Each robot served as an internal location in which to frame a group of paintings and drawings. 


The rest of the robots looked cool too.  I definitely had issues transporting said robots when I was through constructing them though.  That said, they apparently didn't read particularly well as robots either, but seemed more like a human-sized shape.  I'm not sure if that is really a bad thing either.  Below are the installation photos.  Only a month and a half late.

These were awesome to work on, but the big problem with them was exactly that.  They were too BIG.  I hurt my back and neck de-installing the piece and it is still in the bed of my pick up. Hence the thought that perhaps I should make something a little bit smaller.

These guys resulted.  At the same time as I started making these, I started listening to the DJ, Cut Chemist, who is the DJ for Jurassic 5.  His solo, The Audience's Listening, features a song which repeats the line "The Robots are coming" which was stuck in my head the entire time I was making these.

I was incredibly pleased with the way that these worked out and realized while making them that it really was starting to operate in the same way that my work last spring with the blocks was working.  Naturally I decided to combine the two.  Soon I will post the sketches for my thesis which demonstrates that synthesis.

Hope y'all are well and your holiday season is great.
Keep up.
Peace
-Mike