During the month of August, I decided to try my hand at creating some new illustrations that combined short nature quotes with simple integrated imagery and stylized lettering. I selected quotes from John Muir and Theodore Roethke as my starting points, and laid out a simple wireframe for each piece in Illustrator with the pencil tool. Next, I printed the templates and inked over them on tracing paper. While inking each piece with my microns, I attempted to create different textures in the visual elements. Overall, I’m really pleased with how these turned out.
The Muir screen print and the Roethke screen print are both available for sale on our Satchel and Sage Etsy shop.
Two weeks ago, I finished up a new illustrative series of woodland creatures. Today, I’m pleased to announce that they are available for sale over on the etsy shop that I share with my wife, Satchel & Sage. You can buy 1 print, a set of 3, or all 12. Here are a few photos of the goods. A special thank you to my amazing wife, Morgana, who did a beautiful job staging the photographs. Enjoy!
Continuing my Anamonogram series, here are the next four hand-illustrated pieces. In the order they appear below, they are as follows: #5 KIN/INK (high-res), #6 BEST/BETS (high-res), #7 NOTE/TONE (high-res), and #8 EARTH/HEART (high-res).
With the addition of #5-#8, I wanted to add a few notes on the execution of these studies that I over-looked in the original post. The study has a 3-color limitation of black, white and warm grey, which demands spontaneous and creative uses to diversify the look of the pieces. In particular, the atypical application of white on the tea-dyed paper is something I’m loving, which is an evolution from the previous Venn by Pen project (that only used black on tea-dyed paper). Lastly, I’m exploring different ways of overlaying and intertwining the letters of the two words within a confined space, which has produced mixed results. Cheers!
A year ago, I dyed a lot of archival paper in tea baths for a series called Venn by Pen. At the end of 2011, I pulled more of the tea-dyed paper out to start another experiement called Anamonograms.
The idea for this series was created from a simple 2-step process. 1) Search for a meaningful Anagram, which is a set of letters that can be used to spell out two or more words. Look for Anagrams that have a nice juxtaposition of meaning between the two words. 2) Loosely or tightly lock-up individual hand-drawn letters to create a series of monograms that make up the two-word illustrative piece.
So far, I’ve produced 4 of these, and I think there are more to come. They are a great exploratory exercise in layout and interconnected lettering styles. To see the high-res versions, head over to my Flickr here. Enjoy!
Recently, Morgana and I collaborated on three illustrated 11″x17″ 2012 wall calendars, which are now available for purchase over on our Satchel & Sage Etsy shop.
Check them out here: (1) Patchwork, (2) Blossom, (3) Artifact Series
