B for Beekeeper Poster

I'm working on the revised Cardboard Rhino logo, but I'm not yet finished due to my continued work on the press materials for my senior thesis film here at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

The film is a documentary about a local beekeeper, and I thought that to tide everyone over until I get the new rhino done I would show you the poster design I just finished up.



The smoker, the veil, the field, the smoke, the clouds, and the individual bees are all from seperate photos that I patched together. I like minimalist movie posters, especially the poster for Downhill Racer and for Rosemary's Baby, so that's what I decided to go for, and I thought that style would make it more clear that the movie is more than just a nature documentary.

Faith Healing for Cars

Holy Hands On Mechanic
"By Your Faith, you bring your car to us"
"By Our Works, your car will be repaired"

(click to enlarge)

Found taped to the door of "The Love of Jesus" Thrift Store.

Rhino Wear

I was given the task of converting this little sketch of the magnificent Cardboard Rhino into a t-shirt design. Here's the original source material.

Using that as the basis I did some sketches of my own. I felt I needed to give it a little more movement, and simplify it. Here are four of my sketches (I did about 8 or 10). The one with the arrow is the one I eventually picked.

From the sketches I did a few large drawings based on both the design I ended up picking, and a few of the others. I used a black Sharpie for most, but did a couple in brush and ink. Here is the original photo of the drawing I decided to use.

I liked this drawing best, but I also wanted to use the foot impact element from one of the brush and ink drawings I did. Here's a photo of that element.

I took both the above element and my favorite drawing into Photoshop and tooled around with them. I made the lines darker and thicker and put the two together. Here's the basic design, all cleaned up.

I thought color was a good idea, so I did a colored version, too.

I also did versions that would work on black t-shirts. Here they are:


Overall, I'm happy with the results. Dad will be seeing them for the first time on here, too, so if he gives me some suggestions I'll tweak it and post that, too.

Mother's Day

A mother's art takes many forms.

My Sicilian mother saves her creativity for the kitchen. Even after raising 9 children to somewhat-successful adulthood, she takes pleasure in making anything from simple Italian treats to full-scale feasts. (In this photo she is making Sfingi, sometimes referred to as Sicilian Donuts.)

Happy Mother's Day to you Mom. What's for dinner?

River Encounter

He stood upon the bank, and thank.
This isn't as it ought, he thought.
That's quite a mighty drink, I think.
In which i could get sunk, he thunk.
I see it every day, I'd say.
I watch it every week, I'd speak.
But still inside my head, he said.
Its presence scarcely pokes, he spoke.
– by Conor O'Keefe

Comic from Space

Here's a comic I did a while back that I got around to photographing. I used the opportunity to swith the order of last two panels, which I think makes a big difference. Click on it for a larger image.

Another Cardboard Rhino

Every time we think the population of Cardboard Rhinos is diminishing, we encounter new evidence of Rhino sightings. This one came yesterday, after telling my class at the VCU Adcenter about the Cardboard Rhino blog, one of them told me that have been carrying around a Cardboard Rhino given to them by a friend. I didn’t believe it, but she produced evidence, which I quickly photographed to share here.

So I invite you, the few readers who may have happened onto this new blog, if you have had a sighting of a Cardboard Rhino, in any form, please submit a photo.

Found Music

I was recently trying to watch the trailer for the upcoming movie, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and the player really screwed up. It was Windows Media Player, so no big surprise. Anyway, it did some really weird stuff, and ended up just playing the audio from the trailer, and it played only garbled and chopped up into little increments.

I immediately realized that I had stumbled across some amazing music that sounded like what aliens must listen to, so I used the always-handy Ambrosia Software program Wiretap to record the sound.

EDIT: Okay, because of difficulties listening to the music I've matched it with a simple animation an uploaded it to YouTube.