I want to thank the little people...

The Springfield Advertising Club hosted the 30th annual ADDY Awards Saturday, February 21. I had 4 entries, 2 from work at the City of Springfield and 2 of my own freelance work. The City, of course, did not pay for my personal entries in case you were keeping close tabs on Springfield's financial problems. Anyway, it turns out that 3 of my entries won ADDYs! My wife sat patiently through nearly 3 hours of awards mostly given to Noble & Assoc. She was such a trooper. We decided next year I should enter stuff in the categories they announce at the beginning of the ceremony.

The piece that won for the City was a logo I made for the Brownfields program. It is an EPA partnership-type of program that can assist developers clean up abandoned gas stations or other industrial waste land to make it safe for new construction. Like recycling the land. Hence the arrows and building in the background. The "B" is for Brownfields of course.


Another winning entry was an illustration of Sufjan Stevens (Soof-yawn Steev-inz) that I did as a part of my self-promotion packaging. He is my favorite indie folk/rock musician. He plays banjo, guitar, piano, clarinet and probably every other instrument known to man and comes up with these extravagant arrangements that pay homage to Michigan, "Illinoize" and swans with some religious undertones. Or overtones, I don't know. In his "Illinoize" tour, he was onstage wearing wings and some kind of boyscout uniform while his orchestra of "Illinoizemakers" wore butterfly wings. I painted him with those wings communing with nature/Creation, specifically a robin which is Michigan's state bird. I use this illustrated portrait on postcards that I send to magazines. I think it's time for another mailing.


The third winning entry was my stationery I made for mailing out with these promotional cards. I hand-painted the edges of some paper and envelopes and worked my "M" logo into it. Of course my business cards were also a part of the package.


Now that you see all these together, can you tell what my favorite color is? Maybe I should branch out to other colors of the rainbow. Anyway, it was a successful evening and I expect to be doing even better (and colorful) work in the coming year, so stay tuned.

ADDYs

I just got word today that "some" of my work will receive ADDY awards. "The ADDY® Awards is the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition, attracting over 50,000 entries every year in local ADDY® competitions. The mission of the ADDY competition is to recognize and reward creative excellence in the art of advertising.

Conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the local ADDY®
Awards is the first of a three-tier, national competition. Concurrently, all across the
country, local entrants vie for recognition as the very best in their markets."

So they called earlier today as a bit of a teaser to get me to buy a ticket to the fancy awards banquet. Well, it worked. I'll be taking my lovely wife again this year, Feb. 21, and I will let you know which entries won. I'm so excited!

This is how I envision the Keep on Truckin' T-shirt. The shirt will be a "Tarheel" blue. I'm now looking at brands and cost of shirts. Did you know there is a company that makes bamboo shirts? Also there is an organic cotton to cornsider. I don't know, I'll have to consider the look and feel of the shirts too. I want people to actually wear the shirts. Maybe I'll get the ones made of human hair donated from the beards of Tuvan throat singers high in the Himalayas. Fairly traded of course. I'll weigh the possibilities.

Eagle Tshirt design

Music listening to: random playlist-currently White Stripes.
Here's another T-shirt design I want to print. I can't quite figure out what words to put in the banner. Can you help? I WAS thinking clever - tongue firmly in cheek, but I slept on it and now am thinking maybe something philosophical like what you'd see on a tattoo or something. Possibilities: FAITH HOPE LOVE, TRUTH EQUALS FREEDOM, TASTES LIKE CHICKEN, BANNERS KILL EAGLES. Just joking ... but maybe. I am torn. Any better ideas? Please give me your two cents! I am meeting with the T-shirt printing gurus at Czar Graphics today to see how they can help my designs become wearable. Wow, I feel like a real entrepreneur (French for "business man").

Wynton process

Wynton Marsalis

I did this painting in November of one of my all time favorite musicians. This one has been my favorite jazz musician since junior high when I was learning the trumpet - Wynton Marsalis.

Here's a little background:
Born in New Orleans into a Jazz family. He has done a ton of work through music education and is an expert in jazz history (appearing in the Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary). He is a virtuoso in trumpet performance, but also he is an amazing composer winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first time it has been awarded for a jazz recording.

So the apple in my painting represents his involvement with education and even the worm in the apple is inspired to play music by just being near the guy. Mr. Marsalis is still an inspiration to me after all those years since junior high. I frequently listen to his music while I paint and I just recently picked up my trumpet again after letting it sit for 10 years. Check him out, maybe you'll be inspired too!

Keep on Truckin'

Music I'm listening to as I type provided by: Dr. Dog's album "We All Belong"
I tried something new with this T-shirt design (top) by drawing all-digital! I've used a pen and Wacom tablet in Illustrator before but it has always seemed cumbersome because it tries to fill in the strokes and I couldn't get the pressure sensitivity to work right. But I saw a Photoshop tutorial from a GoMedia enewsletter with some recommended settings and it worked beautifully.

The theme again came from my friend Adam for a T-shirt and/or bandanna idea for a church youth retreat. Originally we thought a retro '80s cheesy shirt would be fun, but after the Ascend shirt went over so well, I thought I would do something more fashion-oriented similar to Ed Hardy graphic clothing. Without the skulls and knives of course.

I started with the acrylic truck painting that I did last year originally for my 2-yr-old son's bedroom (which after I finished it thought it looks too scary for someone who's 2). Opened the file in Photoshop and made a layer over it and traced the basic outline of the truck using the Wacom pen and tablet. Then turned off the painting layer and filled in details with simple hatching marks. Made another layer and drew the banner and lettering freehand and then that was it. It's nice drawing with the pen tablet because you can also erase with the same pressure sensitivity so I ended up with a scratchboard effect. I'll have to play around with placement on the shirt and ink and shirt colors of course, but it has potential.