Tuesday Tunes

This song is one that I used to listen to a lot my first semester at college. I had the record, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and a wonky old record player that was a hand-me-down from my brother. The record player played a little slow and so to this day I imagine The Only Living Boy In New York a lot different in my head. But I think it is a great song slow or at it's intended speed.

Tuesday Tunes

Here's a lovely song for your Valentine's Day listening pleasure. The Troggs really know how to sweet talk a lady.

Also, if you enjoy Bill Nighy as much as we do, you might like this version of the song. It definitely deserves a spot on your holiday playlist.

Tuesday Tunes

We're going to start posting some tunes for you to listen to on Tuesdays. We like to call it tunesday. Dorky? Yes. Awesome? Yes, indeed. So, we'd like to start off with a bang (pun intended). This is a song that we entered in our local oldies station's "That's Our Song Contest." We really hope we win and everyone can cringe and giggle a little when it is announced on the radio. Oh and this video is of a middle-aged man in a sweatervest playing acoustic guitar in his kitchen. We feel this is the best video of this song ever made.

Ring Ring!

Well, David and I have finally broken down and purchased new phones. You know, the smart kind. So, in honor of this special occassion here's... ABBA!

I probably sound more like this when I sing along though...

Chunky toon animals!

Meet Mr. Gwumbles, a grizzly bear who is, objectively speaking, awesome.



Jennie just cut the linoleum to print this guy in two colors. I hope that it comes out - we wanted it to be small enough for a roughly 3" x 5" note card, which meant some very fine detail.

I've got a bit of a dinosaur problem, so I was driven to render a feathered dinosaur called Caudipteryx in this style, which is totally new to me. I'm digging it!



Mr. Gwumbles got his name from when our dog, Mitzie, was growling for some reason or another the other night and Jennie took the chance - as she often does - to tease her with a baby voice. "Ooooh! Miss gwuff gwumbles is mad!"

Jennie hates baby talk, except for when she's teasing Mitz. It's a double standard, but then we all know that two standards are better than one.

Sneak Peek: Indiana University's MFA catalog 2012

One of the nifty opportunities I've come across in my MFA career is the chance to design the catalog for the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts' 2012 MFA class. I presented three ideas to the committee in charge of the publication last week, and based on that meeting, they picked their two favorites. I got the final decision today, and I'm pretty pleased about it.



I recently shared a bushel of sketchpad ideas at Flickr, and this was present in a slightly different form. I don't do a ton of custom letterforms, but as I've been fairly typographically obsessed for the last year or so, many of my better ideas sprung from the sheer pleasure of playing with the letters M, F, A and seeing what interesting shapes I could conjure. Looking back at the last few years, I wanted something that differed quite a bit. In color palette, it's close to what my friend (and graduating MFA) Gatis created two years ago. The big "MFA" staring from the front seems to have my flavor in it. I've been favoring pure, flat color lately, departing from a long period of experimenting with blending modes and textures in photoshop. The typeface accompanying the artwork is U-bahn by Manfred Klein.

Next, I'll be laying out the rest of the book, which is a 10" x 8" landscape format, to be printed by World Arts in nearby Spencer, IN. I'll be sure to share photos of the final product here.

Illustration: Crikey the Turkey Vulture

On my first visit to the Indiana Raptor Center's Nashville HQ, I met Crikey, a turkey vulture. Turkey vultures are some of my favorite birds, so pretty soon I started illustrating her. Part of an ever growing series of birds, dino-birds, and bird-dinos.